The Dragon Grows Excellent Courgettes

How it begins

Orren's courgettes were excellent. This was the problem.

The village-show committee stood around them with notebooks, measuring strings and the deep concern reserved for a newcomer likely to win.

“Did you use magic?” asked the chairwoman.

“No.”

“Fire?”

“Not on the plants.”

“Treasure?”

Orren looked puzzled.

“What would I do with treasure?”

Nobody had prepared an answer.

Maia Sen arrived carrying a cabbage no larger than a sensible hat. She placed it beside the courgettes and examined the dragon's growing record.

Rainfall. Compost. Planting dates. A small drawing of a slug with an exclamation mark.

“You've been keeping notes.”

“I had disappointments.”

She turned the page.

There were many disappointments. Failed beans. A pumpkin that rotted beneath its own ambition. A line reading DO NOT HELP THE SEEDLINGS OUT OF THEIR SHELLS.

Maia nodded.

The committee preferred the courgettes to the record. A large unexpected success was easier to discuss than months of ordinary failure.

Orren drew one claw along the edge of the table without marking it.

“I could withdraw.”

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Then don't offer it merely because we're being awkward.”

He looked at her with one immense gold eye.

Outside the hall, rain began falling on the allotments. A gardener shouted that the new drainage trench had overflowed.

Maia put down the notebook.

Orren was already moving.

At the gate, he stopped.

“May I help?”

“Carefully,” she said. “Those bean poles are not dragons.”

They spent the next hour redirecting water, moving boxes and rescuing a very offended hedgehog from a bucket. Orren carried the heavy things. Maia told him which heavy things wanted to stay where they were.

By the time they returned, judging had ended.

Orren looked at the ribbons.

Then at the mud beneath his claws.

“Tea?” Maia asked.

He considered the question with the seriousness it deserved.

“Yes. And perhaps someone could explain why everybody keeps saying gardening is relaxing.”