Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(7)

“Why isn’t it mentioned in the histories?”

The dragon’s eyelid dipped. “Because I like to eat historians. Their bones whisper the most delicious secrets.”

There was a saying in the empire: Never sing before an empty shrine; never dance with ghosts at low tide; never cross jests with a dragon. Tern said slowly, “Yet the empire has prospered, if those historians are to be believed. We can’t all have failed this test.”

The dragon did not deny that it was, indeed, a test.

Tern looked over her shoulder at the door. Its outline was visible only as an intersection of shadow and murky light. “There’s no other way out of this treasury.” When the dragon remained silent, she touched the coin with her fingertip. It was warm, as if it had lain in the eye of a hidden sun. She half-expected to feel the rasp of scales as the snake moved again.

The dragon withdrew its hand suddenly. The coin dropped, and Tern caught it reflexively. “I’m afraid not,” it said. “But that’s not to say that you won’t receive some benefit on your way out. The question is, what do you want?”

“What did my mother trade it for?”

“She asked to leave the treasury and never return,” the dragon said. “Two days and two nights she spent in here, contemplating her ? 27 ?

? The Coin of Heart’s Desire ?

options, and that was what she came up with. She didn’t trust the treasury’s temptations. Of course, she thought she had been here much longer. Time moves differently underwater, after all.”

Tern tried to imagine her mother as a young woman, newly crowned empress, hazy with sleeplessness and desperate to escape this test. “How long have I been here?” she asked.

“Not long as humans reckon time,” the dragon said. Its cheerfulness was not reassuring.

“The gifts for the Twenty-Seven Families,” Tern said. “Whatever becomes of me, will they be delivered to the court?”

The dragon waved a hand. “They’re yours to dispose of as you see fit. I’m done looking at them, so I don’t see why not.”

Tern glanced around again. She might be here for a very long time if this went wrong. “I know what I want,” she said.

The dragon drifted closer.

Her voice quavered in spite of herself, but she looked the dragon full in the eye. “I don’t know what bargain has bound you here all these years, but I want no more of it. Let this coin purchase your freedom.”

The dragon was silent for a long time. At last it said, “Dragons are unpredictable allies, you know.”

“I will take that chance,” Tern said. Was this reckless? Perhaps. But as she saw it, the empresses of her line were as much prisoners as the dragon was. Best to let the dragon pursue its own destiny.

“Someone needs to guard the treasury, you know.” The dragon canted its head. “You don’t seem to have a spare dragon.”

So this was the real price. “I will stay,” Tern whispered.

“A determined thief would make mince of you in minutes, you realize.”

Tern frowned. “I thought you’d want to leave.”

“I do,” the dragon said, “but I take my duty seriously. There’s only one thing to be done, then. Pass me the coin, will you?”

Not sure whether she was more bemused or bewildered, Tern did so. She felt a curious pang as the coin left her hand.

? 28 ?

? Yoon Ha Lee ?

“The guardian of a dragon’s treasure,” the dragon said, “should have a dragon’s own defenses.”

With that, the dragon slipped out of its skin, so subtly that at first Tern did not realize what was happening. Scales sparkled deep blue and kelp-green, piling up in irregular coils around the dragon’s legs.

The dragon itself took on the shape of a woman perhaps ten years older than Tern. Her black hair drifted around her face; her eyes were brown. Indeed, she could have been one of Tern’s people.

“The skin is yours,” the dragon said in much the same voice as before, “to use or discard as you please. Don’t tell me that I never gave you choices.”

“At least wear something,” Tern said, appalled at the thought of the dragon surprising the chancellor while not wearing any human clothes.

“Your empire won’t thank you for giving it to a dragon to rule,” the dragon said, although it did, at least, choose for itself a plain robe of wool.