Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

she said: one of the empire’s most celebrated admirals, who had turned back the Irrilesh invasion 349 years ago. “But it’s less elegant than the version my tutors taught me.”


“That’s because Crescent was a mediocre poet, for all her victories at sea,” the dragon said. “Her empress had one of the court poets discreetly rewrite everything.” Its tone of voice implied that it didn’t understand this human undertaking, either. “In any case, each of the boats is inscribed with verses by some hero or admiral. If you float them in the sea on the night of a gravid moon, they will grow into fine warships. To restore them to their paper form—useful for avoiding docking fees—recite their verses on a new moon. And they’re loyal, if that’s a concern. They won’t sail against you.”

Tern considered it. “It’s an impressive gift, but not quite right.” She envisioned her subjects warring with each other.

“These, then,” the dragon said, knotting and unknotting itself.

A cold current rushed through the room, and the boats scattered, vanishing into dark corners.

When the chill abated, twenty-seven fine coats were arrayed before them. Some were sewn with baroque pearls and star sapphires, others embroidered with gold and silver thread. Some had ruffs lined with lace finer than foam, others sleeves decorated with fantastic flowers of wire and stiff dyed silk. One was white and pale blue and silver, like the moon on a snowy night; another was deep orange and decorated with amber in which trapped insects spelled out liturgies in brittle characters; yet another was black fading into smoke-gray at the hems, with several translucent capes fluttering down from the collar like moth wings, each hung with tiny, clapperless glass bells.

“They’re marvelous indeed,” Tern said. She peered more closely: each coat, however different, had a glittering crest at its breast. “Are those dragons’ scales?”

“Indeed they are,” the dragon said. “There are dragons of every kind of storm imaginable: ion storms, solar flares, the quantum froth of the emptiest vacuum . . . in any case, have you never wondered what it’s like to view the world from a dragon’s perspective?”

? 25 ?

? The Coin of Heart’s Desire ?

“Not especially,” Tern said. In her daydreams she had roved the imperial gardens, pretending she could understand the language of carp and cat, or could sleep among the mothering branches of the willow; that she could run away. But dutiful child that she was, she had never done so in truth.

“Each year at the Festival of Dragons,” the dragon said, “those who wear the coats will have the opportunity to take on a dragon’s shape.

It’s not terribly useful for insurrection, if that’s what the expression in your eyes means. But dragons love to dance, and sometimes people so transformed choose never to abandon that dance. At festival’s end, whoever stands in a dragon’s skin remains in that dragon’s skin.”

Tern walked among the coats, careful not to touch them even with the hem of her gown. The dragon rippled as it watched her, but forbore comment.

“Yes,” she said at last. “This will do.” The coats were wondrous, but they offered their wearers an honest choice, or so she hoped.

“What of something for yourself?” the dragon asked.

Some undercurrent in the dragon’s tone made her look at it sharply. “It’s one thing to use the treasury for a matter of state,” she said, “and another to pillage it for my own pleasure.”

“You’re the empress, aren’t you?”

“Which makes it all the more important that I behave responsibly.”

Tern tilted her chin up to meet the dragon’s dispassionate gaze. “The treasury isn’t the only reason you’re here, is it.”