She picked up her case and walked towards the Green Dragon Inn, wondering again what her grandfather had arranged for her here. And wasn’t she supposed to be saving his books? Maybe she should go back. But Percy had gone and the only way she could move was forward.
Effie wasn’t alone for long. Soon a stout woman in an apron came bustling out of the inn.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ she said. ‘Greetings to you.’
‘Hello,’ said Effie.
‘I’m Mrs Little, the landlady. Call me Lizzie.’
‘I’m Euphemia. Well, Effie. Do you know when . . .?’ she began. She wanted to ask about how long she would be staying; when someone might be coming to pick her up. It had only just dawned on Effie that she had no idea what she was doing here. But Lizzie Little was now looking Effie up and down and touching the material of Effie’s skirt as if to check whether or not it was real.
‘Another batch of new princesses. Always so exciting!’
‘Sorry?’
‘Only two of you overnighters this year. Still, you’ll meet all the others up at the big house tomorrow.’
Just then, a large car pulled up outside the inn. It stopped, but for a while no one got out. Effie could hear quite a lot of shouting and crying coming from inside. Eventually a door opened, and a girl of Effie’s age emerged, looking shaky. She was tall, almost impossibly thin and dressed in a pale cream satin dress that looked like a ballerina’s outfit. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail and tied with a cream ribbon. She was pressing a white handkerchief to her face.
‘Please,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t want to . . .’ Then a suitcase was handed to her by an unknown person inside the car. ‘Please,’ she said again. But the car hastily reversed, turned and drove away.
‘Oh dearie, dearie me,’ said Lizzie. ‘This won’t do.’
‘Is she OK?’ said Effie.
‘She’ll be fine once we get some blackgrain trifle into her,’ said Lizzie. ‘Anyway, you’re sharing a room, so maybe you’ll be able to cheer her up. You might need to remind her that it’s a great honour to be chosen for an audition at the Princess School . . .’
‘Princess School?’ said Effie, but Lizzie Little was already striding inside carrying both girls’ cases, saying something odd like, ‘Doesn’t like muscles, of course. Doesn’t like them stringy.’
‘Are you all right?’ Effie asked the girl.
She tossed her ponytail like a horse trying to shake off a fly. ‘You seem just fine,’ she said to Effie. ‘So, yeah, whatever, me too.’ She dabbed her eyes. ‘Let’s suck it up.’
Effie had no idea what the girl was talking about.
‘I’m Effie, by the way,’ she said to the girl, who had now thrown a leather jacket over her ballerina dress and looked even more stunning than before – except for her red eyes from all the crying.
‘Crescentia,’ said the girl. ‘I’d like to say I’m pleased to meet you, but I really would rather not be here at all. I never wanted to be pretty, you know.’
Effie didn’t get the chance to ask what she meant, as they were both called in for afternoon tea. The girls were ushered into a cavernous room made entirely of wood, with long polished tables that looked as if they’d been used for thousands and thousands of years. The end of one of the tables was laid for tea. There were cakes, sandwiches and a big trifle. The only odd thing was that almost everything you’d expect to be white, or possibly pale brown – like the bread, the scones, the cakes and the sponge in the trifle – was black. It looked very peculiar indeed. The sandwiches were made with black bread and the scones looked like they were made with the darkest chocolate. But when Effie tried one they weren’t chocolatey at all. They simply tasted like normal scones, only much more delicious.
‘I don’t want anything,’ said Crescentia.
‘Come on, girly,’ said Lizzie. ‘Blackgrain’s good for you. And let’s face it, you’re not going to get much chance to eat trifle after tomorrow.’
Crescentia took a tiny helping of trifle and one scone. Effie watched as she broke the scone up into smaller and smaller pieces until her plate was covered in crumbs. She hadn’t actually eaten any of it. She managed about one spoonful of trifle and pushed the rest around in her bowl until it turned into liquid.
Effie was about to bite into her third scone when Lizzie went to the kitchen for more tea. Effie had already eaten four cheese and pickle sandwiches and a cream bun. She had a helping of trifle in a bowl, and was very much looking forward to trying it.
‘You do know it’s drugged, don’t you?’ said Crescentia.
‘What?’ said Effie.
‘The trifle. I can taste it.’
‘Why would they drug the trifle?’
‘To make sure we don’t run away. Not that there’s anywhere to run to.’
‘Crescentia,’ said Effie. ‘Please tell me what’s going on. I really have no idea why I’m here. I thought that my grandfather had arranged a trip for me to go somewhere special because . . . Well, he died and left me this book, called Dragon’s Green, and I was supposed to be rescuing some of his other books, but then a car came to pick me up to take me to a place called Dragon’s Green and so I just assumed that something important might happen here. He told me before he died that I had to come here, to Dragon’s Green. But I don’t know why.’
‘Amazing,’ said Crescentia, shaking her head. ‘So your folks didn’t even tell you where you were going. That’s neat. Mine have been preparing me for years, ever since I was born so pretty. At one point I tried to run away, but they found me. Then I tried to get too fat to qualify. But apparently they take fat girls occasionally in case the dragon wants to binge.’
‘What dragon?’
‘What do you mean, what dragon?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, not a real dragon, though?’
‘Do you live on the moon?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Do you seriously know nothing about why you’re here?’
‘Truly. And if you could explain what’s going on I’d be really grateful.’
Crescentia sighed. ‘OK. Look, once this is over we’ll try to get out for a walk. I’ve been here once before with my sister, so I know where to go. We’ll tell Lizzie we want to have a look at the dragon. He’s pretty spectacular. Then we can talk properly. I’m sorry I was horrible before.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Effie. ‘You weren’t really. You just seemed upset.’
After tea, Lizzie showed them up to their room. It was a tiny space in the attic with two beds and a small wardrobe.
‘Get your audition outfits hung up,’ said Lizzie. ‘Don’t let them get crumpled at the bottom of your cases. And get your wash bags out ready for the morning. It’s an early start. The car’s coming for you at seven in the morning.’
‘Audition outfits?’ said Effie quietly. But she was sick of asking questions and so she just copied what Crescentia did. Well, more or less.
She couldn’t believe what she found in her suitcase. All the clothes inside it were made by famous designers that Effie had actually heard of. There was a silvery evening gown, a pair of soft black leather jeans, a pair of diamanté sandals with small heels, a cream silk pussy-bow blouse, a cashmere shawl and several other expensive items, all made of silk, cashmere or the finest leather.
‘What do you think?’ asked Crescentia. She was holding up two dresses. One was very similar to the one she was wearing now, except in pale pink. The other was black and made from a sort of soft suede material. It looked extremely expensive.
‘The black one’s a bit short,’ said Effie. ‘But I love it.’
‘I could wear it with leggings, maybe? They like you to look sort of classic-contemporary, I’ve heard. Like, not too girly and princessy exactly, but very refined. A bit fashion. Like a foreign beauty going to a nightclub, or a bohemian dinner party.’
‘Do you know what all that even means?’ said Effie.
Crescentia grinned. ‘Not exactly. But I’ve seen
pictures in the papers.’
Effie watched while Crescentia expertly created an outfit from the clothes she had in her case. The black dress with black leggings – or sheer tights, maybe? No, cashmere tights. The same boots that Crescentia had on now? Or maybe the ankle boots with heels? A long silver necklace with a big mushroom on it? Or maybe the choker with the dragon’s tooth. Not a real dragon’s tooth, obviously. And long black gloves.
‘I’m going to backcomb my hair for tomorrow,’ Crescentia said. ‘How about you?’
‘Let’s go for that walk,’ said Effie. ‘I really need to know what’s going on.’
‘Oh yes. Silly me. I totally forgot.’
‘I need to know why I was supposed to come to Dragon’s Green. And then I need to get back home somehow and rescue my grandfather’s books.’
‘Good luck trying to leave,’ said Crescentia, ominously.
The girls borrowed some wellies from Lizzie. They looked really quite strange as they walked down a beautiful green hill towards the village centre. They were still wearing their fine clothes, of course, and Crescentia had put on some lipstick.
From here they could see two big houses, one on top of a hill and the other by a dense forest. There was also a castle that seemed to be made entirely of battlements and looked a bit like a cake that had sunk.
The house by the forest seemed very attractive to Effie, although she couldn’t really say why. She could see that it began with an impressive gatehouse, and its two ornate gates were currently shut. A long driveway led up to a fountain, and beyond that, the big house, made from soft yellow brick with a grey slate roof. The house looked warm and inviting. It had lots of large sparkling windows and several mysterious-looking round turrets and small towers all attached in a higgledy-piggledy fashion to the main rectangular building. Effie desperately wanted to go there. But Crescentia wanted to go the other way.
‘That’s where we’re going tomorrow,’ said Crescentia, pointing at the house on the hill. ‘The Princess School. And down there is the village hall and the mill and the sunken castle. And all those fields beyond – that’s where they grow all the blackgrain that’s used for miles around.’
‘And the dragon?’
‘In the sunken castle, of course. Follow me.’
The girls walked past the village hall and down a short tree-lined lane. There in front of them was an old-fashioned village green with a maypole at one end and a cricket wicket marked out in its middle. The village green was surrounded by cosy cottages, all covered in flowers. It was an idyllic scene. People bustled around carrying flowers or baskets full of vegetables or buckets of water from the well. When the villagers saw the girls they oohed and aahed. A couple of the women shyly approached and asked to touch the girls’ clothes. A couple of the men said things like ‘Thank you for your sacrifice’, and then walked embarrassedly on. A boy a bit younger than the girls burst into tears as soon as he saw them and had to be comforted by his mother.
And then there was a terrifying roar.
It had come from the dragon. The roar was not terrifying because it was particularly loud or fierce. In fact, it was hard to say why it was so terrifying, but it was. It was a sound unlike anything Effie had ever heard, low and deep – the satisfied purr of a creature who would really quite enjoy killing you and eating you, who might even play with you a bit first. The dragon roared again – creating a small burst of flames – and then walked over to the edge of his vast garden, sniffing the air.
The girls ducked behind a tree. Effie could not take her eyes from the dragon. He was about twice the size of an ordinary man, with a reptile’s face and green eyes that were strangely human. He was dark grey, with shiny scales all over, except for his arms and legs which, apart from being grey, huge, and very muscular, looked almost like a normal man’s limbs. His wings, which were folded against his body, were slender, almost silky-looking, the thin grey flesh stretched over their bone structure like the skin on a drum. They gave the impression of vast paper fans, and Effie found herself imagining being cooled by them on a hot night and . . .
‘A real dragon?’ whispered Effie, still unable to look away.
‘Yep,’ said Crescentia. ‘Handsome, isn’t he? They say only a true princess – or a true hero, not that there are any of those – finds him attractive or interesting. To everyone else he’s a repellent monster. We mustn’t go too close. They say he really can’t resist beautiful maidens of any sort. I think he’s already smelled us. They say that if he put his mind to it he could bust out of his castle grounds whenever he wanted and rampage around doing anything. It’s only because of the work of the Princess School that he sticks around at all.’
Effie forced herself to look away from the dragon.
‘Why do they want him to stick around? Why does no one just kill him?’
‘Kill the dragon? You must be joking. What planet do you come from?’
‘Er . . .’
‘The dragon fertilises all the blackgrain fields for miles around.’
‘What, like . . .?’
‘Dragon poo is the only thing that will fertilise the soil in the right way to grow blackgrain plants. Most people around here can’t tolerate any other grain apart from blackgrain. If they didn’t have it, thousands of people would probably starve, especially through the winter.’
‘So . . .’
The dragon roared again.
‘He can definitely smell us,’ said Crescentia. ‘Let’s go and find somewhere to talk privately.’
15
The girls found a spot under a rowan tree just outside the village, near the walls of the big house with the forest beyond. Effie wanted to look at her watch, to see what time it was so she could work out how to get home. But she didn’t have her watch on. She’d been so surprised about her new outfit that she must have forgotten it.
‘So you’ve really never heard of the Princess School or anything?’ said Crescentia. ‘I suppose that’s one approach, keeping you completely in the dark. They say it’s hard for parents to know how to handle it. And if you come from a long way away . . . I guess they must have sold you just for the money, rather than the glory.’
‘Sold me?’
Effie felt tears come to her eyes. But she quickly blinked them away. This was almost certainly a dream. But wasn’t it supposed to be a nice dream? And anyway, her grandfather wouldn’t . . . But what about her father and Cait? They’d already sold her books. And they hated her so much they probably would sell her, given half a chance. But what for? Was it a punishment? Or was it just to stop her from wrecking their stupid deal with Leonard Levar?
‘OK, I’m going to pretend you’re an alien or something and start from the beginning.’ Crescentia tossed her ponytail again. ‘So, once upon a time, this village, and all the villages around it, were very, very poor. Every winter, people starved to death because there wasn’t enough food. A long way away from here, in the western valleys, a farmer discovered this miracle crop, blackgrain, which, as I’ve already said, can only be grown in soil fertilised by dragon poo. He sold everything he owned to buy just three small bags of seed from an old magician who happened to be passing through. The magician also threw in a large blue egg, which he said would be useful. The first batch of seeds came to nothing, but that spring the egg hatched. It was a baby dragon. The farmer did a bit of research, consulted another magician or some wise man who was passing through, and found that he could fertilise his crop with the poo he collected from the dragon. With me so far?’
Effie nodded. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Literally everyone in the world knows this, apart from you. Anyway, the dragon grew, and so did the crops, and everything was fine for a while. The farmer had a beautiful daughter who helped feed the dragon. On her thirteenth birthday she went out as usual with his bucket of blackgrain and, well, the dragon ate her.’
‘He ate her?’
‘He ate her. Then he ate all the other girls in the village. A couple of the g
irls’ brothers made swords and tried to fight the dragon. He ate them, too.’
‘Wow . . .’ said Effie. ‘That’s pretty gruesome.’
‘Yeah, right? Anyway, to cut a long story short, the dragon was somehow banished from the village. By then, he’d eaten pretty much everyone under the age of twenty anyway. He travelled across the land until he found a community that was willing to take him in. He basically struck a deal. If the village would provide him with one maiden, ideally a princess, every two weeks, then he would leave the rest of the villagers alone and live peacefully, allowing the local farmers to collect his poo to fertilise their blackgrain crops. It was seen by everyone as a win-win.’
‘Except for . . .’
‘Oh yeah. Except for the princesses.’ Crescentia gulped. ‘That’s us, now, or might be after tomorrow, if we get through the audition.’
‘Why exactly would we want to audition for that?’
‘Oh, because it’s very prestigious to go to the Princess School. Girls who get accepted are virtually guaranteed to become rich and successful in later life. You spend all your time there being taught how to be even more beautiful than you are already. You learn fine conversation skills, how to talk about art and poetry and literature. You learn the great ballads, and all the main healing potions. You learn to identify the most fragrant flowers, and use them to make perfume. You learn to enjoy fine wines and chocolates – although you never get to actually swallow them until the end. You learn to be a refined, rare beauty. Which is exactly what the dragon likes to eat. A princess, basically.’
‘So are you saying that the school provides princesses for the dragon to eat every two weeks? That’s awful. That’s . . .’ Effie searched for the word. ‘Immoral.’
‘It’s what they call practical. The dragon would be eating people anyway. This way at least it’s controlled. Parents who send their daughters to the school are paid a vast amount in return. Enough to give their other children an exclusive education and buy a big house and all the food they need for the rest of their lives. If you are born pretty, you are almost expected to want to sacrifice yourself for the good of your family and your community. I come from a place that relies on exports of black-grain from here. There are no beautiful girls in the whole place. They all come here to serve their people.’