The Dragon and His Dinner:A Classic-ish Fairytale

  "Could I have eaten them all up?" he wondered. That just did not seem right. He had only been preying on this serfdom for 37 years, and it took at least 100 years to exhaust the food supply. The dragon was sure about the statistics, having been around for over 500 years, but maybe his mind was going. After all he was not such a youngster anymore, and he could easily have lost count of the years. Time seemed to slip by so fast lately, the years running into each other like an endless stream of clouds. It was possible, but not likely.

  He had gone to all of their usual hiding places. He stomped his enormous scaly feet to shake them out of the trees. No serfs. So he burnt the forest down. He pulled the roofs off their rickety little shelters. No serfs. So he burnt their homes down too.

  "Maybe they all packed up and left," he thought. That had happened before. Go out to get some chow, and they had all slipped out in the dark of the night. But the serfs always ransacked their dwellings before they left, and all their hovels had been intact this time. Besides, a trail of campsites always led him to them. And when he did find them, (they never got too far), they were invariably packed together in a big group. This was especially convenient. Just grab a couple claw-fulls of serfs and fly on home. But he had flown several miles in each direction, and no serfs.

  He even went to the castle on the small hump of earth. And there he found only ten little serfs standing in the courtyard. He thought this was a bit strange, but the serfs had tried to appease him with sacrifices before, so he gathered them up and brought them to his lair.

  One of these serfs was not a common serf at all, but the Prince of Muldenderry. He and his advisors had discussed and deliberated over the ‘Dragon Dilemma’ for the last six months. The population of Muldenderry had dwindled considerably over the years, and it was time to address the problem before the whole serfdom was gobbled up.

  This was actually the King’s job. But he recently had been captured by a great-ish sorcerer whom he ticked-off and was under the evil spell, Phalacrophobia. Hence the King spent his days sitting in his room counting every hair on his head. His high pitched screech could be heard from miles around whenever one would fall out, which was about one hundred times a day. This was another problem the Prince had to deal with, but that was a whole other ball of wax.

  Not to mention the pressure from the family for him to find a proper girl and marry. "It’s time to start thinking about continuing the lineage," they would nag, "you’ll have to work a little harder at it, you know." He had gone on three blind dates that week, all with the same girl, the Princess from the next serfdom; he liked to think of her as robust.

  So anyway, it was up to the Prince to take care of the serfdom’s problems.

  The general population of Mulenderry, as well as the royal court, had absolutely no confidence in their Prince. He was a lanky, scrawny, gangly guy who could barely see ten feet in front of him, (glasses not having been invented yet), and he certainly was no whiz with the sword and shield. But he said he had an idea about how Muldenderry could be saved from its horrible fate, so they decided to listen to his plan.

  "Let him try," the serfs had said to each other, "nobody else has any ideas. The sacrifice thing his father thought up never worked anyway. The King has gone loco, and we’ll all just become Dragon snacks anyway. Can’t hurt." And they were all very enthusiastic.

  The Prince gathered together his father’s twelve advisors and told them the first part of his plan. The serfs would build a giant cellar under the castle. When they heard the Dragon coming, the serfs would all race to the cellar where they would hide until the Dragon left.

  The town’s people liked this idea. "Maybe he isn’t such a dunce after all," they said, and went to work.