Cozy Fantasy Series Story #2 - The Dragon of Market Field

This week in Millhaven: A dragon lands in Market Field, people have opinions and Tam collects some buttons.

The Dragon of Market Field, and the Matter of Harwick's Apron

The thing about magic coming back after a thousand years is that nobody has the faintest idea what to do about it. Or to be more precise, everyone thinks they know what to do about it. That is, they have opinions.

People always have opinions.

Down at the Crossed Stirrup you couldn't buy a drink without someone telling you what they'd do if they saw a dragon, or a fairy, or one of those water horses they'd heard about from their cousin's wife's brother who lived up near the northern lakes.

Very confident, people were, about what they'd do if it turned out their mother-in-law was an actual witch and not just a fiendishly unfriendly and frumpy woman. They had all sorts of thoughts on what they would do if they met a sorcerer doing magic in the square, or pixies in that strange clearing in the forest, which was clearly where pixies would congregate.

However, when the dragon landed in Market Field on Wednesday morning, it turned out most people were full of piss. Most people just ran.

Oh, and screamed. There was definitely a lot of screaming.

This is not a criticism. Running, and screaming, were, on reflection, a perfectly sensible response to a creature the size of a barn appearing unexpectedly from the clear blue sky. Plus, it turns out that the sound a dragons wings make is not so much a flap as a THWUMP, and those people that didn’t run were temporarily deafened by the sound. A lot of the screaming that happened after the dragon landed had more to do with people not being able to hear one another.

The dragons shadow and the speed with which it grew knocked three people off their feet before they'd even looked up to see what was casting it.

The dragon landed badly. Although it’s not clear how well a dragon lands. It is possible that the dragon had been flying for an exceedingly long time and was tired. Additionally, it likely didn’t care about the flowers growing along the lane or the fence in need of replacing if it even noticed those things.

The ground disagreed vehemently when the dragon thumped down. Windows rattled. The weathervane on the baker's roof spun three full rotations and fell off. A horse that had been standing placidly at the market post snapped its lead and made its feelings known at considerable volume all the way to the far end of town.

Two horses, however, did not run.

This was because Tam was between them.

Tam hadn’t intended to be between them. He was leading them across Market Field toward the farrier's when the shadow came over, and by the time he'd registered what was making the shadow it had already landed and the horses had already done that thing horses do where they bunch up tight against whatever is nearest and nearest, on this particular Wednesday, was Tam.

He stood there with a horse pressed against each shoulder, all three of them looking at the dragon, and had the noticeably clear thought that this was going to make him late for the farrier. Not only was the farrier going to be disappointed, but so was the barkeep. This was Tam’s first official job for the barkeep, who had been less than agreeable to letting the ragamuffin boy take his two best horses. There had been a large amount of grumbling from the barkeep.

In the end, what with two people out sick and it being the only time the farrier could see to the horses, the barkeep had agreed that Tam should take the horses. With a hard stare, the barkeep made it known what would happen if Tam failed to return with the horses.

Tam hoped this dragon issue wouldn’t delay paying off his debt.

The dragon was enormous. It was also, he noticed, the colour of old copper gone green, with scales that, despite their color, caught the morning light in a way that made it difficult to look at directly, like trying to look at the sun. Its wings fold themselves up with slow hydraulic precision. Its tail described a long lazy arc across the field that demolished what remained of old Perwick's fence, which had needed replacing for two years and so, regardless of Perwick’s thoughts on the matter, the rest of the town agreed it was a favourable outcome.

The dragon had not looked at Tam. There was a general looking around, as if the creature wondered why it had chosen this spot to rest. As its gaze passed over the market the creature became still, as if it was caught in the gaze of something larger, much like Tam had been in looking at the dragon.

Tam looked toward the market, afraid of what he might find.

Instead of something larger or infinitely scarier than the dragon, the blacksmith, Harwick, was standing at his stall with his hands raised in what appeared to be a gesture of surrender, staring at the dragon with an expression that had moved well past fear into a kind terror that was usually reserved for middle of the night faces. He was wearing his leather apron upon which, catching the morning light with considerable enthusiasm, much like the scales of the dragon, were six large brass buttons.

Tam looked at the dragon. The stillness of the creature took on something new.

The dragon was, very definitely, looking at the buttons.

Behind him Tam could hear the town around him. There was shouting. There was running to and fro some people going to, others fro, none getting anywhere. Someone rang the bell in town hall which had the result of adding to the melee, but wasn’t, in the end, much help at all with the dragon.

"Right," said a voice behind him.

Tam turned to find a man he vaguely recognized from the inn. He was small, rumpled, with glasses that had slid to the end of a nose. He clutched three notebooks to his chest like shields. He was looking at the dragon with an expression that bordered on delight. What with all the running and screaming around them, Tam had to look twice to ensure he hadn’t misinterpreted the man’s look.

"Right," the man said again, opening the top notebook. "Right, right, right. Wingspan approximately — no, wait, the wings are folded, I'll have to — and the colouration, that's extraordinary, that's not in any of the — Bramwick's taxonomy has absolutely nothing on this, I said as much to the committee, I said Bramwick was — " He stopped. Wrote something. Crossed it out. Wrote something else. "What is it looking at?”

"The blacksmith’s apron," said Tam.

"Hm." The man wrote that down as well. "Fascinating. There's a passage in one of the older texts, very obscure, Millicent of Forde. Nobody reads Millicent of Forde anymore which is frankly — she mentions a predilection for — but we understood that to be metaphorical, nobody took it literally, I certainly didn't take it — " He stopped again. Looked at the dragon. Looked at Tam. "Oh," he said. He licked his lips and then chewed the inside of his cheek. "Oh, that's not metaphorical at all."

"No," said Tam. He certainly hadn’t followed anything the man had said, but he felt it best to be agreeable on all fronts.

Across the field, Harwick had decided that standing still with his hands up wasn't working and had begun to edge sideways, as if the large creature with eyes only for him would not notice him moving.

The dragon's eye tracked him with patient precision.

Harwick stopped edging.

"Someone," said a new voice, issuing from a large, florid-faced man, with bushy eyebrows, and bushy mutton chops and a bushy mustache, which Tam had last seen covered in beer foam. Tam remembered the man from the tavern because the barkeep had threatened to call the constable over when it was determined that Tam’s group had stuck him with their dinner bill.

The man was, large and he arrived red-faced and out of breath from the direction of the town hall. He paused to take a few gulping breaths. “Someone is going to have to do something about that." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the dragon, which was no longer sitting in the middle of the field. It had stood up, crouched a bit, with its tail pointed one way and its long snout pointed the other. Tam had the impression of a hunter’s dog, pointing at the downed duck.

Only, in this case, the downed duck was poor blacksmith Harwick.

The constable made this announcement to the general area around him rather than to anyone specific. The general area around him declined to volunteer.

“I see,” the constable said in response to this. He looked at Tam. Tam was, he noted, already closer to the dragon than anyone else in Market Field.

"You," said the constable. "Stable boy. Do something.”

Nothing like being volun-told, thought Tam.

"What would you like me to do?" He asked.

The constable scratched his head. He clearly hadn’t thought this far ahead.

"Something.” He said this with more assurance than the word deserved.

Tam considered this. The horses still pressed close against his shoulders. The dragon still watched Harwick with the intensity of a lion which has sighted a zebra. He wanted nothing more than to stay hidden between the horses, but there was a sense that the dragon wasn’t going to wait forever and, eventually, what the dragon did would be less fun for poor Harwick.

Tam handed the horses' leads to the constable, who took them with two fingers, as if they were unappealing.

Then, before he could talk himself out of it, Tam walked across Market Field toward the dragon.

There was a great deal of shouting at this point from the assembled townspeople who stood shuffling around, trying to watch but not be seen, the content of which boiled down to a collective don't, delivered at various volumes and with varying degrees of grammatical completeness. Tam kept going. He took it one step at a time, holding his hands against his hips to stop the shakes and breathing through his nose so the dragon wouldn’t hear him huff and puff.

Huffing and puffing felt not quite right. Calm. He needed to be calm. A small part of him which he would not admit to, was immensely curious and excited to see what a dragon looked like up close.

The dragon felt him coming. The great head swung around and down, and the amber eye found him and stopped Tam in his tracks. His breath whistled in his nose and the small part of himself that he wouldn’t admit to, took in the various hues of green on the dragon’s scales.

The dragon's eye was extraordinary up close. Not frightening, exactly, or not only frightening. Ancient was the word that came to him. He had the sudden sense that whatever was looking at him had seen things that no living creature had seen, from heights that no living creature had reached.

Somewhere across town, a woman washing up after supper would have known exactly what he meant by ancient. But Tam didn't know that yet.

The dragon on the other hand seemed to find Tam, with his muddy boots and hay-filled hair, immensely uninteresting. It turned from him to look back at Harwick. It took one step toward the blacksmith. One step brought the dragon’s snout within fire-breathing distance.

Tam wondered if the buttons on the blacksmiths apron would survive roasting.

"Right," said Tam, mostly to himself. "Buttons.

Trotting didn't exactly exude calm, but Tam had the feeling he didn't have much time. So trot he did. Harwick’s eyes flicked from staring at the dragon to watching Tam approach and back.

“Buttons,” Tam said, when he reached Harwick.

Harwick looked at the boy’s outstretched hand. Looked at the dragon. Looked down at his apron. He began, very slowly and without a word, to unfasten the buttons.

"Those were my grandmother's," he said, when Tam finally collected them. "She brought them from the city. Solid brass, the lot of them, she always said — "

"Do you want to be eaten?" Tam asked. He turned without waiting for a response.

He held out the buttons to the dragon.

The dragon looked at them with both eyes now. Tam could feel the weight of it’s gaze pressing down on his outstretched hands. It lowered its enormous head and sniffed the buttons with a delicacy that was genuinely surprising in something that size.

Then, with a suddenness that would have made Tam jump if he’d had a chance, the creatures tongue whipped out. When it retracted it left Tam with a handful of slobber, but no buttons.

The shouting behind them, which had risen in pitch when the dragon’s tongue came out, had stopped. The bell no longer tolled. The entire town was unnaturally silent.

"Oh," said the professor into the quiet. He appeared at Tam's elbow, writing at speed. "The hoarding behaviour," he said to no one in particular, or possibly to his notebook, "has always been documented as gold — every source, every account. Bramwick. Millicent. The Harrow Compendium. But really, if you think about it, what use would a dragon have with gold. Now, if it’s about the craft, the detail..." He stopped writing. He looked at the dragon which sat in complete contentment. "It's the making of things," he said quietly, and for once didn't interrupt himself. "It's always been the making of things."

Tam looked at him.

"Phineas Mole," the man said, without looking up. "Professor. I'm — there's a great deal to document."

"Tam," said Tam.

"Hmmm," said Professor Mole. Tam didn’t know if that was in response to his name or something else. When the professor wandered off without another word, Tam decided it was something else.

The dragon sat in Market Field for another hour, during which time it rolled the buttons around in its mouth very deliberately, as if washing them, and allowed Professor Mole to walk around it asking it questions the professor got no answers to. Harwick stood at the edge of the field telling anyone who would listen that it was his buttons, you know. The constable held the two horses and tried to look as though that had been his plan all along.

When it finally flew away, it was with a suddenness that was in no way heralded. One minute it curled in the field like an exceptionally large cat and the next, it spread its wings with a snap. With three massive strokes, which blew leaves off trees and hats of people, it was up and away and then gone.

The field was flatter than it had been that morning. As was the fence. The baker’s weathervane had not only toppled off the roof but had blown under the baker’s shed where it would stay until the baker could find something to pry it out with.

Harwick walked out to where the dragon had been sitting and stood there for a moment looking at nothing.

"My grandmother's buttons," he said.

"I'll look into recompense," said the constable, still holding the horses.

"Solid brass," said Harwick. "She carried them all the way from the city."

Tam collected the horses from the constable, who relinquished them with some relief, and began walking them toward the farrier. He was going to be extremely late. The farrier was not going to be pleased. Neither was the barkeep.

These were problems he understood, which made them more manageable than dragons. Considering how well he’d dealt with the dragon, he felt confident he could deal with these more mundane problems.

Behind him he could hear Professor Mole still talking to no one, about the Harrow Compendium and the nature of gold and the extraordinary implications of solid brass buttons for approximately six hundred years of received academic wisdom on the subject of draconic behaviour.

Tam still didn’t understand half of the words the man said. He was happy to leave the professor talking to himself.

That evening, at the Crossed Stirrup, there was considerable discussion about what had happened, what should be done about it and whose fault it was. In the end, the consensus was that magic was at fault for coming back without proper notice.

The small professor in the corner continued to mutter to himself and write everything down. He’d had to buy a new notebook. He drank the steins of beer in one go, which was remarkable in that he didn’t let it get warm and stale first. When Tam walked through the room on his way to the stables, the professor stopped mid-gulp. He slammed his half-filled stein on the table and scribbled something in his notebook which he underlined three times.

Later, in the stable yard, a boy with mud on his boots and hay in his hair finished the evening feed and stood for a while in the dark listening to the horses breathe. The news about Tam’s escapades had reached both the farrier and barkeep, so neither was angry, which was the closest to praise he got for his part in the day’s events.

Strange day, one of the horses said.

"Yes," said Tam.

He didn't find it strange that he understood. He'd always understood. It had just never been quite this clear before.

He stood there a moment longer, turning that over.

Then he went to find his hay pile in the corner to sleep.