Hawthorn & Ash #77

Welcome to this week’s installment of many micro stories, ranging in length from 100 words to 500 words.

With each story we hope to deliver a little whimsy into the lives of our readers.

SCALE & SCUTE

Edwyn’s grandfather rose to knighthood through the slaying of dragons. Rich in title and coin, his son frittered these away in a few years. So much dishonor did Edwyn’s father earn that even the King-gifted knighthood was stripped away. Edwyn inherited no title, no coin, only bitterness. No longer a knight but a knackerman, Edwyn cut open stinking beasts to extract their bones for use and earned no renown.

Alas, the dragons were believed to have all been hunted in grandfather’s time, leaving Edwyn bereft of even a method of salvation. Until the day the Queen, known for youthful flights of fancy, issued a proclamation: a princely reward for the first to bring proof of extant dragons.

A glimmer of hope reached Edwyn. He set out for a certain grand river from grandfather’s battle tales.

The river was now but a trickle between exposed banks of parched earth. Yet the river’s retreat revealed bones amidst the dried banks. The tip of a jaw, the curve of a vertebra, the plane of a scale; all flaking away in the piercing sun.

An idea struck Edwyn, and so he dug. For days he dug, and bones tumbled into the light. Several crumbled away under Edwyn’s forceful touch. Old bones indeed, from before even grandfather’s time.

Edwyn unearthed a near complete skeleton, the head of a primitive mace used to kill the beast, and an abundance of scales, tough as rock.

 The skeleton was massive, armored, and otherwise unlike any dragon Edwyn knew. No wings, and it was missing the bone that ought to rest over the fire-starting organ.

If it were no dragon, Edwyn had no reckoning what creature it may be, even with his knackerman’s knack for bones. Regardless, the bones’ origins hardly mattered. The Queen had asked for proof, and what did a queen know of the lives of bones?

No need of the stone mace – he would leave it where it lay. The skeleton he would bring to the Queen and say the bones were new – skillfully extracted from the corpse of a dragon slain by his own hand. The prize would be his, dragon or no.

Edwyn hauled his find to the castle and knelt before the Queen.

“Alas, valiant seeker, proof was already offered, and the prize claimed,” the Queen apologized, motioning to the victor.

A dragon, much smaller than anything from grandfather’s tales, sat atop a pile of gold, kneading away at the coins and gemstones of its prize like a cat by a hearth. It purred like a cat too, deep in the fire-starting pocket of its throat, smoke wisping from its nostrils.

The dragon nodded at Edwyn’s pile of false bones.

“Hello, scion of dragon killers. Lovely Ankylosaurus fossils; a shame you appear to be missing the club.” The dragon peered around its nasal horn at the abundance of scales. It nodded in approval. “Particularly well-preserved collection of scutes. I find it so rewarding to have a collection of something, don’t you?”

Gabrielle Bleu writes science fiction and fantasy. When not writing, she watches birds and admires lichens. Their work has appeared in Archive of the Odd, Hexagon, and in Astral, Alien Fiction. Find more of Bleu’s work at gabriellebleu.com.

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!