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By Kaye Lynne Booth
Deep in the darkest part of the forest, lived a witch named Tabitha, who spun stories, as well as spells. They called her Tiny Tabby, when they thought about her at all, because she was so small that she lived inside a large toadstool which grew from the rich, dark earth at the base of the oldest Sequoia tree. Tabitha chose to make her home there, far away from the rest of the world, where she could be left in peace to write stories and weave spells.
The world had not been kind to the wee witch, who was small enough to need to dodge between feet on the busy city streets to avoid being stomped by bustling people in too much of a hurry to even notice that she was there. And so, she had retreated to the depths of the forest, where the birds and beasts of the forest seldom ventured, and the sun rarely touched the pine needles layering the forest floor. While it was true that it was dark and musty, she was seldom disturbed from her writing. After a field mouse who had been chased by fox ran up her toadstool one day and perched in the eaves of the cap, nibbling at the edges in an attempt to make a meal of her cozy little home, she conjured a cat to chase off any unknowing creatures who might wander this far in.
Most days went by with Tabitha writing her stories undisturbed, taking time out only to eat and feed the cat, who spent most of its time curled up in her kitty bed by the fireplace. Tabitha had given it food and named it Puss, and because mice seldom ventured this deeply into the forest, Puss had become somewhat of a lazy cat, growing plump on rabbit stew made from the catch of Tabitha’s snares, which were always full, due to the enchantments she placed upon them.
Most of Tabitha’s magic was woven into her stories, which were wonderful tales of adventure and daring. Day after day, her enchanted keyboard typed out her words as she paced from one side of the toadstool to the other, dictating the stories that came into her head. One after another she stacked the completed stories in a box on the corner of her desk, until eventually, the stack reached the ceiling and overflowed into a new stack on the floor, and then another and another, until there was only a small space left around her desk and she had to clear a path to the fireplace so she could keep the fire ablaze to hold the darkness at bay and keep her little toadstool warm. Finally, she was forced to stop pacing and dictating, as there was no room left in which to stack her pages. Something had to be done. If Tabitha wanted to continue writing, (and she did, writing stories was her favorite thing to do), then she had to find a way to clear out the old and share them with the bigger world in order to make room for the new. She knew just the spell that would accomplish the task for her.
So, Tabitha set out into the forest to gather up the ingredients that she would need for that particular spell: a pinch of wolfsbane; seven caps of an unusually rare mushroom only found in the darkest patches of the forest where sunlight could not penetrate the canopy of the trees; a handful of hog’s warts, which are not at all easy to get because wild hogs are slippery and not likely to give their warts up without a valent fight; and the whiskers of an enormous catfish which lived deep down on the very bottom of the lake. She had to wrestle him into submission, since catfish are rather fond of their whiskers, and once plucked, they do not grow back.
Now most of these ingredients were quite difficult to obtain, which is as it should be, since magic should never be easy. If spells were simple to cast, everyone would be conjuring. No casting spells is an art, and they require both skill and talent, like any other creative endeavor, along with a certain amount of acquired knowledge. But the last step in this particular spell was the hardest, calling for all the ingredients to be mixed together and heated to a boil with the breath of a dragon.
Tabitha did know of a dragon, Zarg, who lived in a cave, deep in the heart of the mountain. She wasn’t on good terms with him after she’d distracted him with a mock attack on his cave long enough for her to snatch a few dragon scales from the floor of his lair where he’d shed them. That wouldn’t make her task any easier. Zarg was a smart dragon who didn’t take kindly to being made to look a fool. He wasn’t likely to have forgotten Tabitha’s trickery. Never-the-less, once she’d gathered together all the ingredients she needed, she set off toward the mountain, drawing the fireproof cloak that her grandmother had made for her around her tight to ward of the chill that the deep shade of the forest brought with it.
As she made her way through the darkest part of the forest, the fireflies she’d summoned lighting the way, it was her good fortune to come across a rabbit which had been lost within the forest depths for so long that it hopped around blindly, with no way to find food or protect itself from forest predators, of which Tabitha was only one of many.
Everyone knew the way to a dragon’s heart was through his stomach, so Tabitha built a fire and cooked up a lovely rabbit stew to offer up in apology for deceiving him. There was no guarantee that it would work, but Tabitha believed her chances were good, so she took extra time to search out the most delicious ingredients available to flavor her stew just right. When the stew was done, she continued on her way to Zarg’s cave, where she hoped she could convince the big flying lizard to cook up her spell with his breath.
When she reached the cave entrance, she pulled the hood of her fireproof cloak up over her head and clasped it tightly in her fist at her throat before crossing the threshold, with her fireflies leading the way. She made her way through the winding passages of the cave, following them down into the depths of the mountain, where she knew Zarg lay curled around his precious gold. She had never understood what fascination dragons had with gold. After all, they couldn’t spend it. Yet, every dragon she had ever heard of guarded a pile of it, treating it as their most prized possession, and Zarg was no exception.
The day she’d swiped the dragon scales, she’d seen Zarg’s treasure mound, piled so high that it almost touched the ceiling of the cavern. She’d taken care to gather the scales along the outer cavern walls, keeping a respectful distance between herself and Zarg’s precious gold. That’s the only thing that saved her from his scorching breath, but even so, a dragon isn’t likely to forgive, or to forget.
The nearer she came to his lair, the more doubt crept into her mind. Would a simple rabbit stew really be enough to persuade the beast to help her? She began to think that maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Before she could change her mind and turn around, she rounded a corner in the tunnel and stepped into the gigantic cavern, where the huge green lizard sprawled across the top of the enormous pile of gold and silver, and gems galore, his wings spread out with their tips touching the ground on each side. It was as if Zarg were trying to cover the whole mountain of sparkly things in his loving embrace, and Tabitha detected a slight upturn to his black, rubbery lips as each rumbling snore erupted from them; a sure sign of sleeping easy and having pleasant dreams. Although she’d only had that one other encounter with Zarg, she was pretty sure waking a fire-breathing dragon from a dream he was obviously enjoying would be a very bad idea. All she could do was to pull up a rock at the edge of the cavern—as close to the entry tunnel as she could manage in case of the need for a quick get-away—and wait for the beast to awaken.
As Tabitha sat on her rock, waiting for the dragon to awaken, it occurred to her if she could find a pleasant way to wake the dragon, he might not be too irritated, and she thought she knew just how to do it. She pulled the pot of rabbit stew out from inside her fireproof cowl—there’s a lot more room within a witch’s cowl than one might think—and she built a fire on top of a discarded dragon scale she found on the cavern floor. Now one might not think it smart to build a fire in a cave deep inside a mountain, but Tabitha figured it would be safe, as there had to be a hole in the cathedralic ceiling where the smoke from the dragon’s breath could escape.
Before long, the stew was bubbling in the cauldron, and the aroma of rabbit cooking wafted up from within. Tabitha watched Zarg quite closely. She held her breath when she saw one of his nostrils twitch until his snoring resumed. A few minutes later, he rolled onto his back, breathing in a deep breath with both nostrils, and then, all at once, the dragon’s eyes flew open wide.
“Something smells delicious,” he said.
Tabitha rose to her feet as the dragon rolled back over onto his feet and scanned the dim interior of the cave through sleepy eyes with one scaley brow raised slightly as if in question.
“Hello, Zarg,” she said, as if she were an invited guest.
Zarg whipped his head around to see who had spoken. He didn’t get many visitors. He stared down his long bumpy snout at her and she saw the recognition in his eyes. “You!” he roared, a puff of smoke issuing from his nostrils. “What are you doing here, Witch? Did you come back for more scales? I venture it won’t be so easy this time.”
Tabitha’s blood turned to ice. It was obvious he hadn’t forgotten her. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat in a big gulp and took a step forward. “I didn’t come for your scales, although when you polish them up, they do make wonderful magic mirrors.”
A snort of flames shot from Zarg’s nostrils in her direction, making her take a step back on instinct, even though her cowl was fireproof.
“Are you after my treasure, then?” the dragon roared.
Stepping forward to regain her ground, Tabitha snapped to attention, even though her legs felt like jelly beneath her. “No, Zarg,”she said, shaking her head. “I’ve come to ask for your help with something.”
Another snort of fire erupted; this one came close enough that she could feel the heat from it in spite of her grandmother’s magic in the cowl. “Why would I help you, you thieving witch?” Zarg bellowed.
“I wouldn’t expect your assistance without a cost, you silly old fool,” Tabitha said, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “I’ve brought you this delicious rabbit stew as payment for your services. And it’s such a small thing that I ask.”
Zarg took another sniff of the air, which by this time, was roiling with the delectable smell of her stew. He raised a scaley brow, shooting her a questioning look. “Really?” he said with skepticism. “What is it which you desire from me?”
“Nothing special, or difficult...” she said, reaching into her cowl to pull out the second cauldron, the one in which she’d mixed the ingredients for her spell. (Yes, I know. It might surprise one how much can fit beneath a witch’s cowl.) “Just use your dragon’s breath to heat this up for me, so it will turn out just right. That’s not so hard, is it?”
The dragon eyed her suspiciously. “Are you sure this isn’t just another one of your distractions?” he said, issuing forth another snort of flames, which licked at the edges of her cowl. “If you come near my gold, I’ll serve you up well-done.”
Tabitha held out her open palms and gave him the most innocent look she could muster. “No tricks, I promise,” she said. “There’s no reason we can’t be friends.”
“Dragons don’t have friends,” Zarg said. “Who are you kidding? What did you really come here for?”
“No, really,” she said, feeling nervous. That last lick of flame had come a bit too close for comfort. Her grandmother’s magic was old and there was no telling how long before it would begin to lose its power. She really didn’t want a good burst of dragon’s breath to put it to the test. “I just this spell to help me share my stories and make room in my little house, so I can write more. That’s all. Please, won’t you help me?”
“Bring that stew over here, and I’ll think about it,” Zarg said.
Tabitha gulped down another large knot which had formed in her throat. “You want me to bring it over there by you?” she said, trying not to let fear be heard in her voice, even though she was trembling inside. “You’re next to your treasure, which you warned me to stay away from. How do I know you won’t fricassee my fanny and then just eat all the stew?”
“You don’t trust me?” the dragon said, raising both scaly brows. “Don’t friends have to trust one another?”
“Well,” Tabitha said hesitantly, “I suppose they do.” She pulled the hood of her cowl as far over her head as she could and approached the cauldron with the stew in it. She’d made enough stew for a dragon and the cauldron was too big for her to lift by the handle, so she bent down and lifted the cauldron up onto her shoulders. “All right. I’ll bring it to you.”
When she set it down in front of the scaly creature, a poof of smoke issued from his nostrils. “Taste it,” he roared. “I want to be sure you didn’t poison it.”
Tabitha resisted the urge to cower down under the reverberation of his voice, which made the cavern walls rumbled. “I thought friends needed to trust each other,” she said, placing her hands on her hips, attempting to display bravery, in spite of her quaking knees.
“I’m still not sure that you ARE my friend. You’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble just to get me to cook a spell for you.” Zarg said, grumbling. “Go on. Taste it!”
Anger flared momentarily inside of Tabitha at the idea that Zarg didn’t trust her, but then she thought about sneaking into the lair as a thief on her last visit, deciding that she really couldn’t blame him. So, she shrugged her shoulders and took up a ladle-full of rabbit stew, placing it to her lips and tasting it. The rich flavor of rabbit rolled over her tastebuds as she looked up at the dragon. “You know, it’s actually pretty good,” she said through a mouthful of stew. She held the ladle out to him. “You should have some yourself.”
The aroma of the stew wafted from the ladle as Zarg sniffed the air. “Well...,” he said hesitantly, “it does smell awfully good.” He bent his long scaley neck down low and flicked out a forked lizard tongue out so fast that what she’d left in the ladle was gone before she even realized it. “Oooooh! That is good.”
“Then you’ll cook my spell in exchange for the stew?” Tabitha asked hopefully.
Zarg didn’t reply, but instead scratched his head with a curved black talon.
“What’s the matter?” Tabitha asked. “You said you liked the stew, didn’t you?”
“I do,” said Zarg. “I like it a lot. That’s the problem.”
Tabitha didn’t know what to think now. What Zarg said didn’t make sense. “So why is that a problem?” she asked.
“Don’t you see?” said Zarg. “I can eat that whole cauldron of stew in no time. What happens when I want more...? And it’s good stew. I will want more.”
“So, my rabbit stew is too good?” Tabitha said in disbelief. “You won’t trade because I didn’t cook up enough of it?”
“You couldn’t cook up enough. That rabbit stew is so good that if I eat any, I’ll be hooked for life... And dragons have very long lives.”
Tabitha’s heart sank down into a pit deep within her bowels. How would she ever convince Zarg to cook her spell for her? Apparently, she had been too successful with her last attempt, and in doing so, had defeated herself.
She gave out a deep sigh. “Isn’t there anything I can do to make you change your mind?” she asked without really expecting a positive reply. A tear slid from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. “I made you a whole cauldron full of stew.... What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Zarg said, letting out a huge puff of smoke from his nostrils and tilting his head over to the side. “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that before. What do I want?”
What had seemed a vast space upon entering, soon felt quite cramped as Zarg began pacing to and fro in the cavern, scratching his head with a curved black talon. She had to hop up in the air each time his tail swished by her.
Suddenly he stopped, turning to stare at her, and Tabitha cowered, feeling prickles of fear up and down her spine.
“You really made a whole cauldron of rabbit stew just for me?” he asked, raising one scaley eyebrow.
Tabitha nodded her head, unsure whether this was a fact that would please or displease the big lizard. She took a step back as he reached out a taloned claw toward her, but the curved portion brushed her cheek, wiping away the tear, which had settled near her nose.
“Why are you crying?” he asked. “Why is the spell so important to you?”
“It was supposed to help me share my stories so people could read them, and I’d have room to create more,” Tabitha said, nodding once more.
“Wait,” said Zarg with a snort of smoke. “That’s all you want? To be able to write and share stories?”
“Yes, that’s all I wanted,” Tabitha said, nodding again, although now she was beginning to feel a little foolish. “Is that so much to ask?”
“And you made me a delicious rabbit stew,” Zarg said, still scratching his scaley head with that one curved black talon, “and risked my wrath, just so you could write and share stories?”
Tabitha sighed, hanging her head. “Yeah, I guess it was a stupid reason,” she said, turning to walk away, back the way she had come. She couldn’t believe she had gone to all of this trouble for nothing, but she no longer held out hope of changing Zarg’s mind.
“Wait!” Zarg bellowed, his voice echoing off the cavern walls and stopping Tabitha in her tracks. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Tabitha thought it was obvious, but she replied anyway. “I know when I’ve lost,” she said. “There’s no more point in bothering you anymore. I’ve failed to concoct my spell successfully.”
She gathered up the cauldron with the spell and placed it inside her cowl, but she left the cauldron with the stew where it sat. She didn’t want to lug the heavy thing back through the forest, so she decided to leave it there for Zarg. At least her stew wouldn’t go to waste.
“Stop!” roared the dragon.
Tabitha froze in her tracks. She turned and looked back over her shoulder at Zarg, waiting to feel the heat of his dragon's breath against the back of her cowl. But it didn’t come.
“Why don’t you share one of your stories with me?” the dragon said in a quieter voice. “I like a good story as much as the next dragon. If it’s as good as your rabbit stew, I know I would enjoy it.”
She turned around to stare at the big, scaley lizard, who looked rather sad. “You want me to tell you a story?”
Zarg nodded his head. “It gets lonely in this cave. No one ever comes to visit, and when they see me, most people are too scared to even say ‘Hello’,” he said, a tear slipping out of his eye and down one scaley cheek. “A good story is just what I need, and you said you wanted to share them.”
Tabitha scratched her chin and thought. The dragon seemed sincere in wanting to hear a story, and she did have a great desire to share them. Telling him a story would seem to meet both of their needs, and besides, a smart witch doesn’t refuse the request of a dragon if she knows what’s good for her.
“All right,” she said. “Let me bring the stew over by this rock where I can settle in, and you can eat it while I tell you one of my favorites.”
Zarg smiled a toothy smile. If you have ever seen a dragon smile, you’ll know it’s not a pretty sight. The smile that Zarg gave to Tiny Tabby was a downright, out-and-out grin. He moved over to sit next to her to eat his stew and hear her story.
Tabitha told him one of her favorite stories about a princess who was locked in a castle, kept prisoner by a witch’s curse, and when she’d finished, the silly dragon was grinning like a lovesick fool.
“I just love happy endings,” Zarg said. “That was a good story. Are they all like that?”
“Well, no,” Tabitha said. “My stories are each very different, but they are all entertaining. Would you like me to tell you another?”
“I want to hear them all!” said the dragon, with an enthusiasm Tabitha had never heard from him before.
Tabitha scratched her head and thought. Zarg had given her an idea. “If you come home with me, you could hear each one before I send them out into the world,” she suggested. “I could create a cave for you out of my back room, once I get all the stories out of there, and you could stay over whenever you want.”
She hadn’t thought it possible, but Zarg’s smile got even bigger than it already was, as he nodded his head enthusiastically. She could see through the spaces between his sharp, pointy, dragon teeth. Puffs of smoke came out of his nostrils and floated up to the cavern ceiling. Apparently, Zarg liked her idea.
So, that is what they did. Tabitha shared her stories, first with Zarg and then with the rest of the world. Her house stayed clean, and she didn’t even need to cook her spell. Zarg came and stayed in his cave in the back room whenever he wanted and was never a lonely dragon again.