A Slight HiccupA Chapter by A Shared Narrative A page boy dreams of becoming a different kind of knight, after capturing his own pet dragon. Ixuthoth, the Great Wyrm, the Crimson Knight-Devourer was a wicked beast. For decades, he had terrorized the countryside, seizing crops, cattle, and countryfolk indiscriminately, to feed his many appetites. His appearance could be marked as regularly as the seasons, and the kingdom always readied its greatest knights to combat Ixuthoth, and keep losses and damage to a minimum.
A minimum was still a great loss, though. From shoulder to clawtip, the monster was estimated to be some thirty spans (taller than three of the knights’ tallest horses), and his neck as long as three men (the largest recorded number of men he had devoured in a single stroke). He exhaled fire so hot, it melted the flesh of the knights he didn’t eat in their armor, and his forking horns had to have been forged from the very lightning he called down through them.
The people of the land had come to fear Ixuthoth even more than usual lately. Two summer harvests ago, he stopped being seen. No ivory scales seen camouflaging him among the clouds before diving, no fire reaping crops with farmers still in the field, and no knights scattered about the field of battle, dismembered and dying. Whatever had kept him from his appointed rounds scared the people even more, for they worried that his hunger and his anger upon returning would be even worse.
* * *
There was a page boy, around eight or nine years of age, who had finished delivering a message across castle grounds one night. He had no illusions of being a knight, because his family was not rich enough to make him a knight’s squire, but he still had much fun serving the knights and learning from them when he would see them during the course of his duties.
In the dark of the castle’s garden maze, the boy dawdled. He had completed his task, and to be alone outside after dark was a special treat that he milked for all it was worth. His mother would smartly crack him across his knuckles when coming home, with her wooden spoon, for not coming home right away after delivering her message, but she would show kindness after and treat him to some sweetmeats immediately after, understanding the child’s desire to be around the kingdom’s heroes.
It was during this dawdling that the bow saw tiny lights appear and disappear within the edges and walls of the garden maze. Still being small, the boy cheated the maze by squeezing between the branches and foliage to follow the lights, with a few scratches for his trouble. What the boy saw would have made gouges in his flesh worth it: there, scampering after a sizable rat was a very sour-looking lizard spitting licks of flame no bigger than those that sat on the tip of a candle. Despite being twice the lizard’s size, the rat had no love of fire, and dashed past the boy’s feet and back into the maze wall.
The reptile was pursuing at its most rapid pace, and would have caught up had the boy’s reflexes been any slower than they were. The lizard slammed snout-first into the bottom of a glass jar the boy had laid in its path. (As a boy of eight or nine, he was still a fan of catching lizards and terrifying girls with them, as well as replacing his desire for a hound that his parents had no room for in the house.) Just as quickly, a lid shut behind the reptile who began attacking the inside of the jar with its candle-like fury.
The glass proving too slick to provide purchase for climbing, and its little fire not hot enough to melt said glass, it was soundly trapped. And thus it was that Herbert, the fairy dragonne, the candlewick Firestarter came to be the pet of a lowly page boy.
No one knew, however, that the boy had a pet. Despite every insistence on the boy’s part that he had caught a real, fire-breathing dragon - - even if it was a bit on the small side - - there was never anything to see in the jar when someone other than the boy looked. His parents indulged his imaginary pet, for it was cheaper than a real one, and had to tell him to stop bothering the knights that he was going to be a dragon tamer, and not a dragon slayer like they were. His mother humored him and told him that it wasn’t polite to show the knights up. His father was more pragmatic, and just said that he wouldn’t have his boy called a liar or mad.
* * *
Three more years passed in much the same way. The boy had become a messenger proper, beginning to learn his letters so that he might write the letters he delivers for the knights, or anyone who could afford it. He had learned to stop talking about his pet dragon, for a number of reasons. The first being that his parents’ lessons had taught him discretion in the matter, and the second being that some of the girls and women were beginning to think he was being crass and rude to them when talking about his pet dragon that he had even named.
The poor boy, bless his pure soul, was not versed in vulgarity (for the knights he spent time with were virtuous and clean-spoken, even when there were no ladies present), and had not quite grasped why it was rude, but just that they thought it was.
He had gotten a larger glass box for his pet after nearly a year of saving money from his work as a messenger and page. He decorated it with rocks and branches. Everyone saw the box the boy had decorated, but no one had ever seen Herbert, because he was a sour little fairy dragon and refused to show himself to anyone but the boy. The reason that Herbert only showed himself to the boy instead of sulking invisible all the time was that every day, he would make sure to bring a small mouse or vermin he found and feed it to Herbert, who pounced voraciously upon the prey. The real treat was the raspberry branches the boy had hung in the box. He would snap them off some of the bushes in the very garden maze where he had found and “adopted” Herbert.
The branches were a reward for behavior and learning tricks. Before he had bought the glass box, the boy had dropped some raspberries in the jar because he felt bad for Herbert. The little fairy dragon went absolutely wild and devoured the fresh, sweet, and sticky fruit. The boy laughed and told his pet that it looked like a real dragon that had torn apart its enemies, for all the dripping red it had across its snout and maw.
As a result of that response, the boy had trained Herbert to perform tricks in exchange for raspberries. Jumping and begging and breathing little candle flickers of flame. Herbert was reluctant at first, but the training took hold, and soon Herbert would almost fly around in his box for the boy, at the offer of one of the sweet fruits. The boy bragged to Herbert that when the little fairy dragon really came into its fairy magic powers, he would show everyone what he accomplished as a dragon trainer, and that they would hunt Ixuthoth and all the other evil dragons down, and show off that there are good dragons who can play nice with humans. If they have enough raspberries, that is.
The boy knew he wouldn’t be a knight like the ones he had become a messenger for, and friend to. He did have the dream of becoming an entirely different kind of knight, though, and inviting all of them to join his knighthood of dragon tamers. It would be a glorious order of men and good dragons protecting the land from evil dragons and trolls and the like. He had even designed his coat of arms for the order that he would one day lead, with Herbert as the biggest part of the crest.
* * *
Ixuthoth, for his part over the last five years, had come to discover that he quite enjoyed a pampered life of forced retirement, and appreciated the sweet, sweet fruit that he had previously been too big to have noticed, let alone taste.
If the curse was ever broken, though, he might even consider making the boy’s dream of becoming a knight come true. Might.
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© 2016 A Shared NarrativeAuthor's Note
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1 Review  Last Updated on October 13, 2016 Tags: short story, short stories, flash, flash fiction, dragon, knight, fairy, fantasy Author
A Shared NarrativeAboutI am mostly an on-demand writer. I respond to prompts and contests as an exercise to compel creativity in different ways. more..Writing
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