Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback (3 page)

“Who desires to drown?” asked the dragon spirit in a low, resonant

voice. It sounded hopeful. Most people knew better than to disturb

the guardian spirit.

“I am Weave-the-Storm’s daughter,” Tern said. “They call me

Early-Tern-Journeying.”

The eye slitted. “So you are,” the dragon said, less threateningly.

“I’ve never understood your dynasty’s need to change names at

random intervals. It’s dreadfully confusing.”

“Does the tradition trouble you?” Tern asked. “It would be difficult to change, but—”

The light from the hallway glinted on the dragon’s long teeth.

“Don’t trouble yourself on my account,” it said. Musingly, it added,

“It’s remarkable how you resemble her around the eyes. Come in,

then.”

“This is unwise,” the chancellor said. “Anything guarded by a

dragon is locked away for a reason.”

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• The Coin of Heart’s Desire •

“Treasures hidden forever do no good,” Tern said. She entered the

treasury, leaving the chancellor behind. The door swung quietly shut behind her.

Despite the dragon’s protection, it was difficult to breathe through the dream of ocean, and difficult to move. Even the color of the light was like that of rain and lightning and foam mixed together. The

smell of salt grew stronger, interspersed curiously with the fragrance of chrysanthemums. But then, it was better than drowning.

“What brings you here?” asked the dragon, swimming alongside

her. Its coils revealed themselves in pearlescent flashes.

“I must select twenty-seven gifts for the Twenty-Seven Great

Families to impress them with the dynasty’s might,” Tern said. “I don’t know what to give them.”

“Is that all?” the dragon said, sounding disappointed. “There are

suits of armor here for woman and man, horse and elephant. Give

one to the head of each family—although I presume none of them

are elephants—and if they should plot treachery, the ghosts that live in the armor will strike down your enemies. Unless you’ve invented

gunpowder yet? The armor’s no good against decent guns. It’s so easy to lose track of time while drowsing here.”

Tern craned her head to look at the indistinct shapes of skeleton

and coral. “Gunpowder?” she asked.

“Don’t trouble yourself about it. It’s not important. Shall I show

you the armor?” The undulating light revealed finely wrought armor

paired with demon-faced masks or impressively spiked chanfrons.

She could almost see her face, distorted, in the polished breastplates.

“That’s no true gift,” Tern said, “practical though it is.”

The dragon sighed gustily. “An idealist. Well, then. What about

this?”

As though they stood to either side of a brook, a flotilla of paper

boats bobbed toward them. Tern knelt to examine the boats and half

a verse was written on one’s sail.

“Go ahead,” the dragon said, “unfold it.”

She did. “That’s almost a poem by Crescent-Sword-Descending,”

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• Yoon Ha Lee •

she said: one of the empire’s most celebrated admirals, who had

turned back the Irrilesh invasion 349 years ago. “But it’s less elegant than the version my tutors taught me.”

“That’s because Crescent was a mediocre poet, for all her victories

at sea,” the dragon said. “Her empress had one of the court poets

discreetly rewrite everything.” Its tone of voice implied that it didn’t understand this human undertaking, either. “In any case, each of the boats is inscribed with verses by some hero or admiral. If you float them in the sea on the night of a gravid moon, they will grow into fine warships. To restore them to their paper form—useful for avoiding

docking fees—recite their verses on a new moon. And they’re loyal,

if that’s a concern. They won’t sail against you.”

Tern considered it. “It’s an impressive gift, but not quite right.” She envisioned her subjects warring with each other.

“These, then,” the dragon said, knotting and unknotting itself.

A cold current rushed through the room, and the boats scattered,

vanishing into dark corners.

When the chill abated, twenty-seven fine coats were arrayed before

them. Some were sewn with baroque pearls and star sapphires, others

embroidered with gold and silver thread. Some had ruffs lined with

lace finer than foam, others sleeves decorated with fantastic flowers of wire and stiff dyed silk. One was white and pale blue and silver, like the moon on a snowy night; another was deep orange and decorated

with amber in which trapped insects spelled out liturgies in brittle characters; yet another was black fading into smoke-gray at the hems, with several translucent capes fluttering down from the collar like

moth wings, each hung with tiny, clapperless glass bells.

“They’re marvelous indeed,” Tern said. She peered more closely:

each coat, however different, had a glittering crest at its breast. “Are those dragons’ scales?”

“Indeed they are,” the dragon said. “There are dragons of every

kind of storm imaginable: ion storms, solar flares, the quantum froth of the emptiest vacuum . . . in any case, have you never wondered

what it’s like to view the world from a dragon’s perspective?”

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• The Coin of Heart’s Desire •

“Not especially,” Tern said. In her daydreams she had roved the

imperial gardens, pretending she could understand the language of

carp and cat, or could sleep among the mothering branches of the

willow; that she could run away. But dutiful child that she was, she had never done so in truth.

“Each year at the Festival of Dragons,” the dragon said, “those who

wear the coats will have the opportunity to take on a dragon’s shape.

It’s not terribly useful for insurrection, if that’s what the expression in your eyes means. But dragons love to dance, and sometimes people

so transformed choose never to abandon that dance. At festival’s end, whoever stands in a dragon’s skin remains in that dragon’s skin.”

Tern walked among the coats, careful not to touch them even

with the hem of her gown. The dragon rippled as it watched her, but

forbore comment.

“Yes,” she said at last. “This will do.” The coats were wondrous, but they offered their wearers an honest choice, or so she hoped.

“What of something for yourself?” the dragon asked.

Some undercurrent in the dragon’s tone made her look at it

sharply. “It’s one thing to use the treasury for a matter of state,” she said, “and another to pillage it for my own pleasure.”

“You’re the empress, aren’t you?”

“Which makes it all the more important that I behave responsibly.”

Tern tilted her chin up to meet the dragon’s dispassionate gaze. “The treasury isn’t the only reason you’re here, is it.”

“Ah, so you’ve figured it out.” The dragon’s smile showed no teeth.

It extended a hand with eight clawed fingers. Dangling from the

smallest claw, which was still longer than Tern’s hand, was a disc rather like a coin, except it was made of dull green stone with specks in it like blood clots, and the hole drilled through the center was circular rather than a square. The most interesting thing was the snake carved into the surface, with every scale polished and distinct.

“Is it watching me?” Tern asked, disconcerted by the way the snake’s eyes were a brighter red than the flecks in the rest of the stone. “What is it called?”

• 26 •

• Yoon Ha Lee •

“That is the Coin of Heart’s Desire,” the dragon said with no

particular inflection.

“Nothing with such a name can possibly bring good fortune,” she said.

“It never harmed your mother.”

Then why had she never heard of it? “In all the transactions I have

ever witnessed,” Tern said, “a coin must be spent to be used.”

The dragon’s smile displayed the full length of its jagged teeth.

“You’re not wrong.”

Tern inspected the coin again. She was certain that the snake had

changed position. “How many of my ancestors have spent the coin?”

“I lost count,” the dragon said. “This business of reign-names and

funeral-names makes it difficult to keep track. But some never spent it at all.”

“Why isn’t it mentioned in the histories?”

The dragon’s eyelid dipped. “Because I like to eat historians. Their bones whisper the most delicious secrets.”

There was a saying in the empire: Never sing before an empty

shrine; never dance with ghosts at low tide; never cross jests with

a dragon. Tern said slowly, “Yet the empire has prospered, if those

historians are to be believed. We can’t all have failed this test.”

The dragon did not deny that it was, indeed, a test.

Tern looked over her shoulder at the door. Its outline was visible

only as an intersection of shadow and murky light. “There’s no other way out of this treasury.” When the dragon remained silent, she

touched the coin with her fingertip. It was warm, as if it had lain in the eye of a hidden sun. She half-expected to feel the rasp of scales as the snake moved again.

The dragon withdrew its hand suddenly. The coin dropped, and

Tern caught it reflexively. “I’m afraid not,” it said. “But that’s not to say that you won’t receive some benefit on your way out. The question is, what do you want?”

“What did my mother trade it for?”

“She asked to leave the treasury and never return,” the dragon

said. “Two days and two nights she spent in here, contemplating her

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• The Coin of Heart’s Desire •

options, and that was what she came up with. She didn’t trust the

treasury’s temptations. Of course, she thought she had been here

much longer. Time moves differently underwater, after all.”

Tern tried to imagine her mother as a young woman, newly

crowned empress, hazy with sleeplessness and desperate to escape

this test. “How long have I been here?” she asked.

“Not long as humans reckon time,” the dragon said. Its cheerfulness

was not reassuring.

“The gifts for the Twenty-Seven Families,” Tern said. “Whatever

becomes of me, will they be delivered to the court?”

The dragon waved a hand. “They’re yours to dispose of as you see

fit. I’m done looking at them, so I don’t see why not.”

Tern glanced around again. She might be here for a very long time

if this went wrong. “I know what I want,” she said.

The dragon drifted closer.

Her voice quavered in spite of herself, but she looked the dragon

full in the eye. “I don’t know what bargain has bound you here all

these years, but I want no more of it. Let this coin purchase your

freedom.”

The dragon was silent for a long time. At last it said, “Dragons are unpredictable allies, you know.”

“I will take that chance,” Tern said. Was this reckless? Perhaps. But as she saw it, the empresses of her line were as much prisoners as the dragon was. Best to let the dragon pursue its own destiny.

“Someone needs to guard the treasury, you know.” The dragon

canted its head. “You don’t seem to have a spare dragon.”

So this was the real price. “I will stay,” Tern whispered.

“A determined thief would make mince of you in minutes, you

realize.”

Tern frowned. “I thought you’d want to leave.”

“I do,” the dragon said, “but I take my duty seriously. There’s only one thing to be done, then. Pass me the coin, will you?”

Not sure whether she was more bemused or bewildered, Tern did

so. She felt a curious pang as the coin left her hand.

• 28 •

• Yoon Ha Lee •

“The guardian of a dragon’s treasure,” the dragon said, “should

have a dragon’s own defenses.”

With that, the dragon slipped out of its skin, so subtly that at first Tern did not realize what was happening. Scales sparkled deep blue

and kelp-green, piling up in irregular coils around the dragon’s legs.

The dragon itself took on the shape of a woman perhaps ten years

older than Tern. Her black hair drifted around her face; her eyes

were brown. Indeed, she could have been one of Tern’s people.

“The skin is yours,” the dragon said in much the same voice as

before, “to use or discard as you please. Don’t tell me that I never gave you choices.”

“At least wear something,” Tern said, appalled at the thought of

the dragon surprising the chancellor while not wearing any human

clothes.

“Your empire won’t thank you for giving it to a dragon to rule,” the dragon said, although it did, at least, choose for itself a plain robe of wool.

“You will rule with a dragon’s sense of justice,” Tern said, “which

is more than I can expect from the women and men out there who

are hungering after a child’s throne.” She handed over the keys of her office.

The dragon’s smile was respectful. “We’ll see.” And, pausing at the

threshold: “I won’t forget you.”

The door closed, and Tern was left with the coin and the dragon

skin.

It was not until many generations later, when one of the dragon’s

descendants braved the second treasury, that Tern learned that she

had been given a dragon-name. Not a reign-name, for she was done

with that, and not a funeral-name, for she was far from dead. The

empire she had ceded was now calling her Devourer-of-Bargains.

After all this time, she had come around to the dragon’s own opinion on this matter. It was a confusing human practice, but she wasn’t in any position to argue.

A number of generations after that, when a different empress

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• The Coin of Heart’s Desire •

braved the treasury, Tern asked what had become of the Dragon

Empress from so many years ago.