Tarragon Hair: Dragon Fairy Tales, #6

By D.C. Harrell

The bigger the hair, the stronger the stare. 

While her parents are fishing, Amma feeds her seven siblings and readies them for school each morning. She doesn't have time for intricate hairstyles, but Grandma insists that pretty locks, not an education, will impress potential suitors and stop the neighbors' gossip. 

When Amma's mother is killed by a pterodactyl-like targon on the Kongamato River, Amma drops out of high school to care for the family. Faced with dwindling resources, Amma must retreat to Grandma's tidy plans or brave the dragon that terrorized her mama. 

Will Amma trust to Grandma's tradition or believe her own eyes? 

With the sixth stand-alone Dragon Fairy Tale, D.C. Harrell lures you through the cryptid legends of Africa, but hide your eyes if you take your supergirls nice and neat. This coming-of-age heroine will put the "bad" back into your hair day. 

Do you revel in the strange worlds of Nnedi Okorafor? Then this is the enchanted country for you. 

Got an hour? Download Tarragon Hair now and wake your inner dragon.

Or find all six Dragon Fairy Tales collected as Dragon Hoard: Dragon Fairy Tales 1-6. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stone's Throw Publishing
• Release date: Apr 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386856474

Book preview

Tarragon Hair

Tarragon Hair

D.C. Harrell

Stone’s Throw Publishing

Copyright © 2018 by D.C. Harrell

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published by Stone’s Throw Publishing, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55410.

dcharrell.com

For a FREE STORY, sign in at https://dcharrell.com/free/

Cover design adapted, with gratitude, from Sophia Feddersen’s (The Book Brander) design for Dragon Hoard: Dragon Fairy Tales 1-6.

Typesetting created with Vellum.

Contents

Get All the Dragon Fairy Tales

Tarragon Hair

Author’s Note

Get All the Dragon Fairy Tales

Sign into D.C. Harrell’s Letter Lair

for your FREE story at

https://dcharrell.com/free.

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Download the anthology here:

Dragon Hoard: Dragon Fairy Tales 1-6

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Or buy them individually here:

1. Fisherman and Old Cloot

2. A Deal is a Deal

3. Dragon Wear

4. Drake Take

5. Drakonian Pink

6. Tarragon Hair

Tarragon Hair

Tarragon hair! Amma’s grandmother grumbled, setting her bag on the packed, red earth. What will the neighbors think? Tarragon roots on your head, she pointed at Amma with her umbrella before laying it at her feet next to her bag. Targon in your eyes."

Amma’s grandmother was probably the only neighbor who believed that old proverb. Everyone else used tarragon leaves to preserve butter or chewed them to relieve toothaches. Father claimed the herb helped him sleep. Amma’s hair certainly twisted and coiled and spread like tarragon roots, but no one had actually seen the targon dragon for which the herb was named, since before Amma was born. As far as she was concerned, targons were mythical animals. Unstyled hair was no more a sign of dragon eye than looking at a targon doomed you to death.

I washed it in the rain last night, Amma offered, but she dropped her eyes, so that her grandmother wouldn’t see them snap defiantly. It’s time for us to leave for school.

Milling around in the sun, Amma’s seven younger sisters and brothers paused to observe the drama play out with their grandmother.

Not with your hair looking like that, answered Grandma, and she waved the children on their way.

With a stone in her chest, Amma watched their clean uniforms and sturdy shoes disappear around the grey-green spears of the sisal plant at the edge of the clearing. Amma’s spike of satisfaction that each of the children had remembered their backpacks did little to wipe away her own disappointment at not following them.

As she did every day during rainy season, Amma had risen in the early morning darkness with her mother and father, and while they left to fish the swollen Kongamato River, Amma built the charcoal fire, cooked corn into porridge and stewed white beans, onions, tomatoes and kale. She got the children up and dressed, fed them breakfast and loaded