Nobody Owns the Dragon

How it begins

The dragon arrived with receipts.

Ruth had expected fire, a threat, perhaps a prophecy delivered in a language that made the windows shake.

Instead, a claw slid a leather folder through her office door.

"Property dispute," said a voice from the street.

Ruth opened the folder.

Inside were maps, royal purchase orders and an invoice for forty thousand tons of what the document called decorative pale stone.

The signature at the bottom belonged to the founder of the kingdom.

He had been dead for eight centuries.

"My consultation fee is payable in advance," she said.

A gold coin landed on the desk.

Then another.

Then a third, large enough to flatten the first two.

"That will do."

She went to the window.

The dragon occupied most of the market square. Its tail curved around the fountain. Shopkeepers stood in their doorways, deciding whether terror was compatible with continuing to sell breakfast.

"Which property?" Ruth asked.

The dragon lifted its head.

The courthouse.

The bridge.

The palace on the hill.

"All of it."

Ruth looked down at the invoice again.

Decorative pale stone.

She had leaned against those columns since childhood. Climbed the bridge parapet. Sketched the palace during school visits.

"No," she said.

The dragon's eye narrowed.

"People say that when they have understood something."

Her assistant appeared behind her carrying the morning post.

"Shall I send for the guard?"

"Send for a surveyor."

"Which one?"

"The one the palace fired."

The dragon settled its head beside the window. Close up, its scales were not armor but a landscape of old injuries, small repairs and patient life.

"I don't want your city burned," it said.

Ruth put the invoice flat on her desk.

"What do you want?"

The dragon looked toward the pale columns of the courthouse.

For the first time, its voice became quiet enough that only she could hear.

"I want you to stop calling my mother a building."