Written by Edgar Mason / Artwork by Holly Eddy
Her Ladyship, the Dragon



























Don’t fret, dear Magreth, and go back to your spinning.

That was what they always said to me, before, when I asked anything. Not that the spinning wasn’t
useful; on the contrary: The march that I call mine is high and cold, looking over the hills and to the sea.
Everyone, even a princess such as I was then, needs warm clothing, summer and winter.

They kept me to spinning, and to knitting, and to making lace and quilted cloth. Even a princess must
occupy her time somehow. I was told to continue with my makings, so I would not notice the doings
around me.

My father had been widowed when I was born: My mother was a mystery; my brother, fifteen years my
senior, gone from the house before I even entered it, killed north of the Wall. My father was as lonely
and cold as the seaside cliffs he ruled, but although he would have liked to have been made of stone, he
was not. A sculptress with fine, subtle tools could bend him to her will, and bend he did.

Her name was Rotheswide. She came from over the Wall, where the men are wicked and the women,
wily, and all the people, down to the children, ever ready to strike against us. When I think of her, I see
long, red hair, falling in curls like the sea, and her strong, heavy legs, rooted deep in the bowels of the
earth. My father could not see the magic that spun through her veins like the strands of gold I
sometimes spun into my yarn, and I, distracted by my little makings and stitchery, also did not notice.
Oh, I noticed her fawnings and I felt the sting of her cruel words, but I thought she was evil in the way a
peasant stealing fruit was evil, not the special kind that conjures serpents and dragons and suitors by
the score.

Oh yes, she tried to marry me away. My father, in his grief and cold, seemed to have forgotten that, at
fifteen, I was ripe for marrying. And, indeed, it was not the fact of marriage I despised, merely her choice
in men. For there was not a one among them who was not old or lecherous or bearing the glinting mail
of cruelty in his eyes. Their swords hung at their sides, limp or quick to hand, but all of them ready to
strike if I left myself open. Instead, I locked myself in my chamber, all hung with red tapestry, and would
not leave until they did.

That was when Rotheswide made her wicked move. A cheater in the game of kings, she moved in
darkness, with misdirection and treachery. She left my father’s bed, I later found, and went into the
dungeons deep below the castle, and in the darkness and the wet she worked her changing.

~ * ~

I do not remember my transfiguration; I do not remember growing and changing in the dark. What I
remember is this:

I woke up, my stomach rolling and twisting with hunger and pain. My back was scraping something, my
limbs heavier than I had ever known, even after a long day’s carding (the hardest work I had then done).
My mouth tasted foul, as if I had breathed in smoke and could not cough it out. I made to step from my
bed—and realized the foot that touched the floor was far larger than my foot had ever been. My father’s
shoes were not so large as this, and the breathing I heard from my own mouth was thick and hoarse.

I moved to the window, and my feet stomped heavily over the floor. I went into the moonlight, and a
shriek no human throat could make escaped me.

For the feet the moonlight bathed were thick with scales and claws, my hands—fine enough to weave the
finest lace—the size of cats, with claws like knives. I ached and trembled, and my back, my back! The
weight of something never before felt by me pressed me to the floor, and my sudden size—my stomach
churned with more than hunger, churned at the thought of claws and muscles larger than a horse’s—
made the floor creak beneath me. I heard footsteps in the dark, heard shouts from below and from
outside my door—and I could remain no longer.

It took little effort to go crashing through the wall of my tower room, and with an instinct I had never
had—never could have had—I launched myself into the blackness, under the wicked, whiteling light of the
full moon. The feeling of it—like falling, but never hitting ground, my stomach clenching every minute—
was alien and terrifying.

I was blind with hunger and shock. I saw the Wall appear before me, far below me on the ground. Again,
that hateful shriek escaped me—but this time, it released with it a stream of heavy fire, falling thick like
rain upon the Wall. Small shouts sounded below me, like the cries of infant mice, but I beat my wings—
the sickness in my stomach, the pain in my sickening long spine—and flew on, on to Rotheswide’s
country.

At the first sign of a dwelling, of a castle—such castles as they built in that heathen land—I burned; at
the slightest sound of a cry, I ate of the flesh of the crier; everything I saw, I despoiled. But when I came
to her land, to the largest of the gatherings of men, then did I unleash my true fury.

The castle was built on a high hill, with pasture all around: A beautiful sight, for defending against
attackers on land. But I came from the sky, and I caught them unawares.

The walls were stone; the floors, wood. I burned down through three levels, fire washing through the
building, cleansing it of her creeping, sorcerous kin. The hangings of the house burned blue from their
magic, and the screams of the people were as nothing to my roarings.

I will not cut my words fine and close but inaccurate: I devoured her people. I ate up her little kindred,
her cousins, her sisters, her father and her brothers. I set the village surrounding the castle on fire; I
ripped the sheepfolds as a doctor rips cloth for bandages. I trampled her screaming people and I
destroyed their shrines.

I stood on the hill and let out a hideous, trumpeting call.

I know all this through the accounts of others; I remember little of that wicked night. But I have visited
the blackened ruins of the castle. I have seen the people, eking out their lives like ants on the edge of a
precipice. I have endowed them with many sheep and many more heads of cattle, to try to make amends
for my destruction.

But that came later. For when I had ravaged her land, I flew once more to the south. My hunger was not
yet slaked, and my stomach still roiled with sickness and fear. I swept back down the coast, laying
forests and fields to waste, until I came again to my own land.

It was only when I saw the castle, blazing with the homely light of candles and lamps, not of my twisted
lungs, that I stopped. I came to rest on top of a hill—I had often seen that hill from my window, when
distracted from my spinning and my knitting—wrapped myself in my wings, and rested.

I could not still my stomach, but I tried with all my might to still my mind. Oh, though I had not seen it, I
knew who was responsible for my state, for my newfound form. I waited on the hill, and watched the
castle.

I knew Rotheswide would not dare to face me; knew she had not thought far enough ahead to realize I
would destroy her the moment I saw her. I had not counted on my father sending all those wicked
suitors out against me.

The blood I shed on my own fair lands, blood that ran down to the sea, dripped from the cliffs in the
night—I hate to think of it now. At the time, my mind was cold, a predator’s mind. I slew those cruel and
stupid men, those men who had soiled the rushes of my father’s floor with their drinking and soiled my
person with their lusty glances. I slew them, and finally, my father and his wicked mistress sent no more.

It was then I flew to far-off hills, and returned with claws full of sticks and trees. With heavy, clumsy
fingers, I stitched myself a fortress out of branches and roots, out of the earth and all her people. I hid
myself there, in my homemade forest-fortress, and waited for her to come out.

~ * ~

I waited for many days, but she never came. I saw peasants and knights and gypsies, but Rotheswide—
never. I crouched there long in my wooden fortress, but she made no move on it. This game of queens
was one of quiet waiting, and I did not know which of us would win.

And then it happened: One day, a young man came out of the south. He had purpose in his stride and a
tremor on his lip. He was no wandering hero—a scholar, out of those learned cities of the south, the
cities I protect from Rotheswide and her bewitching kin. He came, not in armor, but in travel-stained
robes and sagging hose. He carried a book in his arm and a sword—utterly unused, even I could see—at
his waist. He walked into the castle, and he opened up his book, and he told them he could end the
dragon’s reign.

I could hear Rotheswide’s laughter at his foolhardiness from my hilltop forest—my father never laughed a
day in his life, and would not begin for this. But soon, in spite of their discouragement, the young man
returned to my view.

I was amazed at what I saw. For when he came to the base of my hill, he unbuckled his sword and let it
drop awkwardly to the ground, then laid down the book by its side, with a care that suggested that
vellum meant more to him than steel. Then he squared his shoulders, as far as he could, and walked,
unarmed, alone and still trembling in his chin, up to my very door.

Wonder upon wonder:  He came up to the opening in my forestry stockade, and sat down, his legs
shaking, under the apple tree that had been there from the first. It was in full fruit, limbs heavy with
apples like blood. He sat down under that tree, and looked up at me, and spoke.

He greeted me, his movements and his words awkward as a one-handed tailor. But the things he said to
me…They astonished me even through my dragon-mind, because, he said, he knew what Rotheswide
had done.

“I found the magic she made—the remains of the magic,” he said, stuttering over his words in his fear.
“They were in the dungeons. I…I sneaked away from the meal yesterday.” He looked at the ground as he
spoke, as if it were the grass and not myself to whom he spoke. “There was a lock of her hair. I
recognized it. And something—some gold thread, and I imagine you spun it.”

He said he had known I was not as I seemed because I simply sat here on the hill and did not attack the
castle or the town.

“If you were as big as they said—and you…you are…I’m sorry, your ladyship—you would have burnt them
all by now. And when I found the makings in the dungeons, I knew…I guessed. You’re not only a dragon,
are you? You’re someone else inside.”

The only reply I could make was a low hiss, but he seemed somehow to understand.

“I know what to do,” he said. “It’s true, I know it’s all true; I read it.” He looked up at me for a long
moment, and his mouth fell open a little. He looked as if what he saw was something he had feared and
desired for a long, long time.   

“I don’t look like a hero,” he said. He was right:  His hair and face were soft as a girl’s; his body was less
than strong and fatter than he needed. I could say nothing to contradict him—could, in fact, say nothing
at all, without burning him and all my forest home alive. My forest, that I wove for myself and myself
alone.

“What has to happen, then,” he said, as if he were puzzling it through inside himself, “is that…” He
swallowed, breathed deeply, turned his face to me and showed me the full tremor of his chin. “I must
kiss you.”

He paused for a moment, staring at me.

“I thought you only lived in books,” he whispered. He swallowed and looked at his hands.

He apologized profusely, for the indignity of it, for the awkwardness of it. He blathered, his words
looping one around the other like a knitted cable. But he stopped, he fell silent, this man who loved
words more than swords, when I brought my head as low as I could, and let my lips part—the sound
they made, like cracking bones, like creaking trees.

He looked at me for a moment, and I saw terror in his face, and his lower teeth juddering fit to crack
each other into dust—but he, too, leant forward, and placed his lips against a few of my long and wicked
teeth, still stained with the blood of men.

I felt a twisting and a writhing, screaming—someone screaming—and I felt as if I would float away, and
the warmth of this wordly man grew greater, took up a larger part of my body, such that I could feel it,
not only on my teeth, but on my tongue, around my mouth, across my face, down the length of my
body. And when I opened my eyes, he was holding me, and oh! He was covered in blood and cuts and
scratches, but his face worst of all: That girlish face, sliced across the lips in long cuts that ran diagonally
out to his cheeks like some horrible grin. It was not just his chin that trembled now, but his whole body.
I could feel it in his arms, in his hand, even in his breathing—ragged bursts that splattered the blood
that was pooling around his teeth. It speckled over my face, scales of blood that would dry and peel
away.

“I…I hadn’t thought of this,” he said weakly, and fell to his knees, dragging me down with him. I could
only stare, feeling the lightness of my body, my mind still reeling with dragon-thoughts. Still trembling,
he pulled off his robe and his belt, handing them to me with a reverence usually reserved for neophytes
towards high priests. “Put these on,” he whispered, then fell back, dazed, propping his back against a
tree.

I had not realized how much I would be shaking too, my every muscle jumping, my sinews clenching and
unclenching in rolling cramps down my legs and back. But I put on his robe—dark green, it was,
discolored from rain and travel—and belted it tight. My feet were bare, but I did not yet feel the pain of
sharp grasses and rocks. Nor was my mind entirely my own again, for I took the young man by the hand
and pulled him up—my strength was greater than it had been before my transformation, and it seemed
to surprise even him. I ran down the hill, and he stumbled behind me, until we came to a halt by his
sword and his book.

“Take up your book,” I told him, and he did so, though his bloody hands stained the edges of the pages
and the blood that fell from his face stained the leather of the cover. I bent and took up his sword.
Casting away the scabbard, I held it up to examine it:  Though it was unused, it was a good blade.

“Come,” I ordered, and set my face towards the castle.

I was not challenged; I was not stopped:  The only sound in my ears was the hero’s labored, marshy
breathing and my own footsteps on the grass of the courtyard, the stone of the halls.

I sought for Rotheswide through the entire castle, but she would not be found. It was only when I came
to the dungeons that I uncovered her, crouching there in the dark over her sigils and her dried-up blood
sacrifices and her pleading imprecations to things that would listen to her once and once only.

She looked up when she heard me approach, and in the ghastly light of a single candle, her face
appeared haggard. Her blood-ocean hair, hanging too near the flames, singed gently in single strands,
suffusing the moldy stench of the dungeons with yet another unpleasant odor.

“What did you think it would do?” I asked her, when I saw her look of shock. Her eyes, wide in the grim
light, darted from me to the hero and back again. I could hear the man behind me wavering in his
breathing, in his standing, until he had to stumble sideways and lean against the wall for support. “What
did you think I would do?”

“You would not be here, holding that sword, were it not for me,” she said. Her smile wrinkled her face
into curving lines of shadow and hate, her teeth gleaming in the flame. I watched as another strand of
hair caught and burned itself out lazily, curling into a little plume of smoke that rose above her head.
“You would never have had the strength.”

Don’t fret, dear, and go back to your spinning.

“I have spun this tale to its end,” I said. “You are the last thread in my making, and I will cut you just as
surely.”

It is my belief that she smiled as I lunged forward with the sword, she was so mad and wicked. But at
the very moment I moved towards her, one of the singeing hairs around her face caught another on fire,
and another and another, until her waving red hair was consumed by flame and her chest poured out
another ocean, more red even than her hair. I smelt her burning flesh, smelt her blood—and that was
when my sins consumed me.

I felt tears falling down my face, tears such as I had not felt in a long, long time—not since before I
burned the northern castle, not since I killed the knights. And yet I pulled the hero’s sword from
Rotheswide’s chest, and struck off her burning head with it. Her body crumpled to the floor, only
human—and human flesh is too wont to burn and smell of cooking. I backed away, still holding the sword
in front of me, tears still streaming down my face, until I stumbled back into the arms of the hero. He
put his soft, pale hands on my shoulders, held me and kissed my hair.

“My lady,” he whispered. “My dragon.”

~ * ~

My father died soon after, and we buried him at sea. I am queen of this northern march now, my king,
the wordish hero who sat beneath my apple tree. I have ruled for many years now, and my strength is
failing. I have made war; I have made peace:  My makings now not of thread and needles, but of treaties
and of flames.

My strength, not of nation, but of person, is failing. Soon, this land will go on to my children, and they
will make their own wars, fall into their own peaces.

I…I have become a dragon.
THE LORELEI SIGNAL
Edgar Mason has lived all over the place, from Kansas to Italy, but
always seems to have too many books. Her work has appeared in
Basement Stories Magazine, Eternal Haunted Summer and Bull Spec,
among others.

She can be found online at http://radiosaturday.blogspot.com.