Beyond Fantasy Fiction – January 1955
(1955)*
Evelyn E. Smith
Illustrated By DOCKTOR
What's a poor princess to do when she's dragooned into becoming a ...
Dragon Lady
-
BACK in the Eleventh Century, I was the only daughter of a rich and powerful king in the North, as well as being the most beautiful woman in the known world, though I say it as shouldn't. Naturally a combination of such talents as my looks and my dowry would make princes come from far and near to seek my hand in marriage.
Of course they had to be princes; anyone else would be shown the drawbridge, if not the moat, immediately. After all, I did have a position to maintain.
I was pretty choosy—nobody was good enough for me. This one was this and that one was that, and Father was getting pretty exasperated. He wanted to marry me off so that he could form an alliance with an old dame who reigned in the South—and he knew how I felt about stepmothers.
Princes came from hither and princes came from yon. I turned all of them down, and not politely, either. Then Prince Suleiman came out of the East. He was young, handsome and talented. He was a very powerful magician and, in an age when printing and television had not yet been invented, a man who could do card tricks of a long winter evening was nothing to sneeze at. Besides, even a princess can turn into an old maid.
SO I cast a favorable eye on his suit. The bargain was about to be clinched when I found out that his great-grandmother on his father's side had been a goose girl. Naturally I could not form a mesalliance with anyone who had such a Rorshach on his escutcheon, •even though I was crowding eighteen and well on my way to spinsterhood.
I tactfully told Suleiman we were through. "How durst thou aspire to the hand of one such as I, base-born varlet?" I demanded.
Having a bad temper, he waxed mighty wroth. "Sayest thou so, jade! Well, if thou'lt not wed me, thou'lt wed no other."
I thought he meant he was my last chance, but it seemed that he had a more dynamic idea. He turned me into a dragon. "Thou shalt live forever in this loathly form," he told me, "thy own fair semblance vanished forever, lest thou canst persuade a prince to give thee a kiss. And thou shalt dwell in the remote fastnesses of this isle and be visible to mankind only once in a decade until and if thy prince come."
I tossed my head and snorted fire at him. "Thou mayst be noted for thy necromancy, Suleiman," I said with hauteur, "but, certes, not for thy originality. At any rate, it appears I'll outlive thee, scurvy knave, since thy curse seems to carry immortality along with it."
"I shall expend the entire resources of my magical art to make myself immortal as well," he sneered, "in order to have the pleasure of gloating over thee through the centuries." And, stepping upon his magic carpet, he was off.
Seeing that I was no longer a marriageable commodity, my father packed me off to Loch Ness and married the dame in the South. Later, I heard, she poisoned him and usurped his domains.
I LIVED in the bottom of the lake for some nine hundred years, emerging at ten-year intervals to see if there were any princes in the vicinity. But there was never anybody but a peasant or two, so I sneered at them and retired to my boudoir, where I slept between appearances. There is nothing that can ruin a girl's looks more than not getting enough sleep.
Of course, when I say there were no princes in the vicinity, I am not being strictly accurate. Suleiman was there, gloating—if you count him, that is. The first time I pretended neither to see him nor to hear his taunts, but paddled around, humming to myself with a degage air, and creating a mighty splash every time I came near his side of the lake. He was a nimble-footed youth, though, so I didn't succeed in dampening either his enthusiasm or his robes.
The second time I even deigned to speak to him, for twenty years without talking had been rather trying to a female of my temperament. And the local peasantry could not speak Dragon language, which was reserved for the nobility and gentry and, of course, dragons.
"Ho, varlet!" I said, trying to deluge him.
"Ha, hussy!" he retorted, springing aside.
The next time I appeared, he didn't show up at all. I began to think something had gone wrong with his plans for immortality, and I was glad. Only ... he was the last remaining person of my acquaintance who could speak Dragon; in fact, he was the last remaining person of my acquaintance.
Apparently his spells were still working, however, for he did turn up a decade later. "Oh, good morrow, Suleiman," I said, throwing water at him. "Prithee, what is new?"
He leaped away, but was it my imagination or did a spot of moisture dabble the purple velvet of his robe? "Good morrow, cotquean," he replied. "Nothing of import. I believe some bastard from Normandy conquered the Saxons last year."
I snorted contemptuously. "Oh, those Southerners—anybody can conquer them!"
Suleiman didn't show for forty years. When he came, I was almost—not quite, mind you, but almost—glad to see him.
"I have come to gloat," he announced.
"Gloat away!" I splashed enthusiastically. He was absolutely drenched. "How now!" I exclaimed. "What hath befallen your erstwhile agility, Suleiman?"
"I've been sick," he explained.
But he didn't come again. So I was all by myself in the lake for eight hundred and fifty years. However, I always say if one has inner spiritual resources one is never really alone.
WHICH brings us up to date. One morning in 1957 came der tag. I smoothed down my scales, got my flame-thrower in working order and sallied forth to the surface ready to dazzle the world. By now I had virtually given up all hope of finding a prince and was interested primarily in frightening tourists. That always entertained me.
It was spring. The heather was in bloom. And there on the bank stood a prince.
To anybody else he would have been Fred Halbfranzband, Assistant Director of the New York Zoological Gardens, but I instantly recognized him as Manfred Agidius Rudiger Wolfgang Bonifaz Humfried von Halbfranzband und zu Saffian, rightful heir by lineal descent to the throne of Schwundia, which, even though that country had been absorbed into Luxembourg in 1867, still made him a prince in my book.
He was old, he was fat, he was nearsighted. I didn't care. All I wanted was for him to take me in his arms and kiss me—tenderly, passionately, paternally. I didn't care which type of osculation he used as long as the kiss itself was a fait accompli.
"Darling!" I trumpeted, leaping gracefully out of the lake.
Water inundated him. In my girlish enthusiasm, I'd forgotten how much tonnage I drew. But he didn't mind. "Aha," he exclaimed, his pale blue eyes gleaming behind his spectacles, "just as I thought! The so-called Loch Ness Monster is nothing but a surviving specimen of Diplodocus Britannicus."
I drew myself up haughtily. "Diplodoca Britannica, if you please." But, to my astonishment, he couldn't understand Dragon. In my day, it had been a required course in all royal curricula—which just went to show how times had changed for the worse!
"Watch out, sir!" one of Manfred's assistants warned. "It looks dangerous."
Me dangerous? The idea was absurd! I was tempted to eat him just for daring to suggest such a thing, but I restrained myself. After all, he belonged to Manfred ... and so did I. Besides, I preferred herring, proving I was a dragon and not a diplodocus, because, I found out later, diplodoci are herbivorous!
"Kiss me, darling," I roared, nuzzling Manfred—which was quite a trick, as I had to keep my interior furnaces under control. A French-fried prince would be of absolutely no use to me.
"Nonsense," the prince said to his assistant, "the creature seems quite friendly. Probably the legend of its ferocity arose because tourists teased it." He extended a slightly shaky hand—apparently he hadn't quite convinced himself that I was the innocent, playful creature I appeared to be. "Come here, nice boy," he said.
Nice boy! A fine chance I had of getting him to kiss me!
But I kept my temper. I remembered that if I stuck with Manfred I could be visible all the time. And, as I was an exceptionally handsome dragon—if I do say so myself—I felt that more people should have the privilege of looking at me.
MANFRED took me down to London, where I was exhibited to vast, cheering throngs. Getting an exit visa presented no difficulty, but my entrance visa to the United States was harder. Somebody had written an anonymous letter to the State Department saying I was a subversive, and the prince had the damnedest time disproving it.
The ocean voyage was—to put it mildly—ghastly. It was ghastly for Manfred too, as never before in his long zoological career had it been necessary to take care of a seasick dragon. He was a pretty nice fellow; he came every day to my modest apartment in the hold to smooth my levered brow and whisper words of encouragement, but he wouldn't kiss me. To tell the truth, I don't think it ever occurred to him.
I'd never before had any difficulty in getting a man to kiss me—quite the reverse, in fact—but I guess it's different when you're five-foot-seven, blonde and curved in the right places, from when you're eighty-five feet long, green and who cares where your curves are?
They gave me a ticker-tape parade down Broadway and did everything to make me feel at home; hung garlands around my neck and served up magnificent nut steaks (Manfred still was under the delusion that I was herbivorous) and chocolate creams. But nobody kissed me.
They put my picture in the papers (wrong profile) and wrote reams of copy about me; I appeared on television and was a smash hit. But nobody kissed me.
I was installed in the largest, handsomest, fanciest cage at the zoo (though I would have preferred a more exclusive one farther away from the refreshment stand), complete with private swimming pool. But nobody kissed me ...
And then Manfred, my prince, left me, left me to go back to his wife—a middle-aged hausfrau whose bloodlines were absolutely anemic. Bourgeois, that's what he was. Bourgeois!
"Well, good-by, Dipsy," he said to me, not without regret, for he was, like all Mittel-European princes, a man of strong sentiment. "I'll drop by now and again to see how you're getting on."
I clung to him, crying so hard I almost put out my fires. My last hope was going. If he didn't kiss me, I would have to remain a dragon for the rest of my life and, since dragons are immortal unless killed by knights sans peur el sans reproche—a category which has been extinct for ages—that was a longish time.
"Look how fond she's grown of me," Manfred said, and there were tears behind his thick lenses.
"Sometimes I almost think she understands. Honestly, Dipsy, I do hate to leave you, but you're going to have a very superior keeper taking care of you; he just came from the reptile house at Babylon with the finest credentials."
A little old man dressed in the blue uniform of the zoo attendants shuffled creakily into my cage, his eyes on the ground. "You'll take good care of Dipsy, won't you, Sol?"
"Yessiree, Mr. Halbfranzband," Sol said in a cracked voice, "I sure will. You just leave her to me; I'll treat her right."
I snorted, but there was something ... something ...
EVEN after Manfred had left my cage, I still had the peculiar sensation that came to me whenever a prince was in the immediate vicinity.
I looked at Sol. Sol looked at me. There was something terribly familiar in those bloodshot gray eyes. "Prince Suleiman!" I exclaimed. "C'est toi!"
"See, I told .you," he cackled. "Made myself immortal so I could stay and gloat over you."
"You've certainly come down in the world," I observed. "Whatever happened to your Oriental riches?"
"Spent a lot on those two spells; they were both expensive ones," he explained. "Finally had to trade in my carpet. And then prices went up so during the last nine centuries I couldn't afford other transportation to go to Scotland for the gloating season."
"How did you get here?" I asked.
"Oh, I've been working at various zoos off and on for over a hundred years, ever since I lost my last shred of magic power. Knew you'd turn up at one some day so's I could resume gloating."
"By the way," I said, "I may have been misinformed, but I had understood that Babylon was ka-putt."
"That's Babylon, Babylonia," he told me. "I worked for the zoo in Babylon, Suffolk County, Long Island."
I looked him over critically. "You haven't kept yourself in very good condition. You look more like a thousand than only nine hundred and fifty-two years."
"Forgot to sign up for perpetual youth along with immortality. Ah, if only, when I was a student, I had paid more attention to the classics and less to Hermes Trismegistus," he sighed, "this would never have happened."
I had a smashing idea. "Listen, Suleiman," I burbled, "you'll always be a prince, come what may. And in 1957 I can afford to be broad-minded; after all, what is a goose girl in the family tree compared to what current royalty is allying itself with? Why don't you kiss me?"
"I? Kiss you?" He chewed his ragged white mustache thoughtfully. "That's right—I could break the spell, couldn't I?"
"Sure," I replied excitedly. "And if you kiss me I'll turn back into a princess again. And I'll marry you. Nine hundred and thirty years ago, you vowed eternal devotion. Don't tell me that the mere passage of time has made you fickle?"
He smiled, showing long yellow teeth. "Oh, I'm still true to you, Dipsy. And, to prove that I love you for yourself and not for your beauty, I'm going to leave you in your present form so I can demonstrate my faithfulness."
"You mean you won't kiss me?" I breathed fire.
...
allforjesus2001