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Chapter 1

Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley We hear theh They talk as though ere doing huon Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and iether and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful

He doesn’t devour theirl to his tower, and ten years later he lets her go, but by then she’s someone different Her clothes are too fine and she talks like a courtier and she’s been living alone with a h the girls all say he never puts a hand on them What else could they say? And that’s not the worst of it—after all, the Dragon gives theo, so anyone would be happy to marry them, ruined or not

But they don’t want to marry anyone They don’t want to stay at all

“They forget how to live here,”next to hion, on our way ho the week’s firewood We lived in Dvernik, which wasn’t the biggest village in the valley or the smallest, or the one nearest the Wood: ere seven h, and at the top on a clear day you could see along the river all the way to the pale grey strip of burned earth at the leading edge, and the solid dark wall of trees beyond The Dragon’s toas a long way in the other direction, a piece of white chalk stuck in the base of the western mountains

I was still very small—not more than five, I think But I already knew that we didn’t talk about the Dragon, or the girls he took, so it stuck in my head when my father broke the rule

“They remember to be afraid,” my father said That was all Then he clucked to the horses and they pulled on, down the hill and back into the trees

It didn’t make much sense to me We were all afraid of the Wood But our valley was hoirls never caon let them out of the tower, and they came back to their families for a little while—for a week, or sometimes a month, never much more Then they took their dowry-silver and left Mostly they would go to Kralia and go to the University Often as not they married some city man, and otherwise they becah soa Bach, who’d been taken sixty years ago, that she became a courtesan and the mistress of a baron and a duke But by the time I was born, she was just a rich old worand-nieces and nephews, and never came for a visit

So that’s hardly like handing your daughter over to be eaten, but it’s not a happy thing, either There aren’t so es in the valley that the chances are very low—he takes only a girl of seventeen, born between one October and the next There were eleven girls to choose from in my year, and that’s worse odds than dice Everyone says you love a Dragon-born girl differently as she gets older; you can’t help it, knowing you so easily ht lose her But it wasn’t like that for h to understand that I ht be taken, we all kneould take Kasia

Only travelers passing through, who didn’t know, ever complihter was, or how clever, or how nice The Dragon didn’t always take the prettiest girl, but he always took the irl as far and away the prettiest, or the ht, or the best dancer, or especially kind, soh he scarcely exchanged a ith the girls before he made his choice

And Kasia was all those things She had thick wheat-golden hair that she kept in a braid to her waist, and her eyes ar that ames, and could make up stories and new dances out of her head; she could cook fit for a feast, and when she spun the wool from her father’s sheep, the thread cale knot or snarl

I know I’ out of a story But it was the other way around Whenprincess or the brave goose-girl or the river-ined theht of her And I wasn’t old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon

She didn’t mind it, she said She was fearless, too: her mother Wensa saw to that “She’ll have to be brave,” I re her say to my mother once, while she prodded Kasia to cli her, with tears

We lived only three houses from one another, and I didn’t have a sister of my own, only three brothers ether fro out from underfoot and then in the streets before our houses, until ere old enough to go running wild in the woods I never wanted to be anywhere inside e could be running hand-in-hand beneath the branches I i their arms down to shelter us I didn’t knoould bear it, when the Dragon took her

My parents wouldn’t have feared for me, very much, even if there hadn’t been Kasia At seventeen I was still a too-skinny colt of a girl with big feet and tangled dirt-brown hair, and ift, if you could call it that, was I would tear or stain or lose anything put on me between the hours of one day My mother despaired of me by the time I elve and let me run around in castoffs froed to change only twenty minutes before we left the house, and then sit on the bench before our door until alked to church It was still even odds whether I’don so myself with mud

“You’ll have to nieszka,” , when he ca to rubby-faced, with at least one hole abouthed a little: what parent could really be sorry, to have a few faults in a Dragon-born girl?