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Vorthrax the Unquenchable, Scourge of the Northern Kingdoms, Devourer of Armies, Last of the Crimson Wyrms, held a teacup the size of a thimble between two claws the size of swords and stared at it with deep and abiding hatred.
The teacup had little pink roses on it.
Across the tiny table sat a teddy bear. To his left sat a cream-colored bunny with floppy ears and a pink satin bow. On the empty chair in between, propped against the back, was a piece of paper with two words written on it in purple crayon: Katie BRB
Vorthrax had no idea what BRB meant. He suspected it was a curse.
“I have fought armies,” he said. His voice rumbled through the backyard like distant thunder. A nearby wind chime jingled nervously. “I have burned castles. I have faced things you cannot possibly imagine. And apparently this is what my life has become.”
The teddy bear said nothing. The teddy bear had a small bald patch on one ear and a look in his button eyes that suggested he had seen many tea parties and survived them all.
Vorthrax set the teacup down on its saucer with exaggerated care. Clink. Then he leaned toward the bear until his great horned head blotted out the sun.
“Can you believe this?”
“No,” said the bear. “I cannot.”
Vorthrax blinked. “You can talk.”
“Everyone can talk when she’s not looking,” said the bear. “I’m Barnaby. That’s Clementine.”
“Hello!” said the bunny brightly. “I love your horns.”
Vorthrax ignored this. “Do you want to know how I got here, Barnaby?”
“Not really. We saw you arrive about two hours ago."
“I’m going to tell you anyway.”
“I figured.”
The dragon settled back on his haunches, which crushed a decorative garden gnome flat. He didn’t notice. He was looking into the middle distance with the faraway expression of someone about to tell a very long story.
“It was the Siege of Castle Grimholt,” he began. “The greatest battle of the age. Three hundred knights on the walls. Catapults. Ballistae. Archers with arrows dipped in dragonsbane. And leading them all, Sir Reginald the Unbending, in his shining silver armor, on his great white horse.”
“That sounds scary,” said Clementine.
“For them,” said Vorthrax. “It was scary for them. I was winning. I had already melted the front gate and two of the towers. Sir Reginald’s mustache was on fire. It was, I don’t mind telling you, the finest afternoon of my life.”
He took a sip of tea, forgetting for a moment that he hated it. Then he remembered and scowled.
“And then,” he said darkly, “the wizard showed up.”
“Ooh,” said Clementine.
“Mortimer the Mostly Adequate. The castle’s court wizard. Eighty years old, robes full of moth holes, beard down to his knees. He came stumbling out onto the last tower with a spell book under his arm, and he pointed his staff at me and shouted, ‘Foul beast! I banish thee to a place where thou shalt never again trouble a living soul!’”
Barnaby considered this. “And?”
“And he sneezed.”
“He sneezed?”
“Right in the middle of the incantation. Smoke allergy. Which, frankly, is his own fault for living in a castle that was on fire.” Vorthrax’s tail lashed, knocking over a lawn chair. “There was a flash of purple light. A noise like a thousand trumpets. A feeling like being squeezed through a keyhole. And the next thing I knew, I was lying on my back in this… this…”
He waved a claw at the backyard. At the trampoline. At the plastic slide shaped like an elephant. At the inflatable pool with a cartoon shark printed on the bottom.
“This place,” he finished bitterly.
“The Hendersons’ backyard,” said Barnaby.
“Whatever it is. I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was a very small human, standing on my chest, looking down at me.”
“Katie,” said Clementine happily.
“Katie,” said Vorthrax, in the voice another dragon might use to say the plague.
“She was maybe fifty years old,” he went on. “She had a juice box in one hand and a stick in the other."
“She is five,” said Clementine with joy.
"She looked me right in the eye, the eye of Vorthrax the Unquenchable, and do you know what she said?”
“What?” asked Clementine, who already knew, because she had been there.
“She said, ‘Are you a doggy?’”
Barnaby made a small noise that might have been a cough.
“So naturally,” Vorthrax continued, “I roared. The great roar. The roar that shattered the windows of Grimholt and sent three hundred knights diving into the moat.”
“It was very loud,” Clementine agreed.
“And she put her hands on her hips and said, ‘Inside voice, please.’”
“We were outside,” Barnaby pointed out.
“I said that! I said, ‘We are outside!’ And she said, ‘It's still an inside voice day.’” Vorthrax dragged a claw down his face. “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think anyone does.”
“Then you breathed fire,” said Clementine helpfully.
“Then I breathed fire,” said Vorthrax. “A column of flame hot enough to melt steel. I aimed it straight up at the sky, as a warning. And while it was still going, she held up that teapot,” he jabbed a claw at the flowered teapot on the table, “right into the fire, and said, ‘Oh, good. The tea was cold.’”
“It was very good tea,” said Clementine. “Perfect temperature.”
“And then,” said Vorthrax, and here his voice dropped to a low and terrible whisper, “she named me.”
There was a pause.
“Mr. Sparkles,” said Barnaby.
“Don’t.”
“It’s on your place card.”
Vorthrax looked down. It was. Next to his saucer sat a small folded card, decorated with glitter glue, that said MR. SPARKELS. Katie had spelled it wrong, which somehow made it worse.
“She told me to sit,” he said. “I sat. I don’t know why I sat. Something about the way she said it. Then she poured the tea, and passed the cookies, and told me I had to hold my cup with my pinky out because that’s how princesses do it. And we were just getting to the good part of the party, apparently, when she jumped up, wrote that note, and ran off.”
He glared at the empty chair and the crayon sign.
“Now is when she steps out?” he demanded. “Right in the middle of everything?”
Barnaby frowned at the sign too. “Where did she go, anyway?”
“Potty,” said Clementine. “BRB means Be Right Back.”
Vorthrax’s head swung slowly toward the house. Then it swung back toward the sky. Then it swung toward his own great red wings, folded neatly at his sides.
“She’s gone,” he said, and his golden eyes narrowed. “Nobody’s watching. I could fly away right now. Back to Grimholt. Back to my hoard. Back to setting Sir Reginald’s mustache on fire.”
“You could,” said Barnaby.
The dragon spread his wings. They were enormous, blotting out half the yard, casting the whole tea table into shadow. He flexed his mighty legs. He lifted his head toward the clouds.
And then he stopped.
“What?” said Barnaby.
“I’ve just realized something,” said Vorthrax slowly. “Mortimer’s spell. He banished me to a place where I would ‘never again trouble a living soul.’" He looked at the teapot, and the cookies, and the crayon sign, and the tiny chair. “I’ve been trying to trouble that child for two hours. I’ve roared at her. I’ve breathed fire at her. I showed her my teeth. She counted them. She said I had forty-two and that I should floss.”
“You should,” said Barnaby.
“The spell didn’t go wrong at all,” said Vorthrax, with dawning horror. “The old fool got it exactly right. I’ve been sent to the one place in all the worlds where nobody is afraid of me.”
He sat down heavily. A birdbath fell over.
For a while, nobody said anything. A butterfly landed on one of the dragon’s horns, looked around, and decided to stay. Steam curled gently from the spout of the teapot. Somewhere inside the house, a toilet flushed.
Clementine sighed happily and folded her soft paws on the tablecloth.
“Well,” she said, “I think we’re having a lovely time.”
Vorthrax the Unquenchable, Scourge of the Northern Kingdoms, Devourer of Armies, Last of the Crimson Wyrms, looked at her for a long moment. “…Of course you do,” he said.
The back door banged open. Small feet came pounding across the grass.
“I'M BACK!” Katie announced, climbing into her chair and knocking the BRB sign onto the lawn. “Did you miss me, Mr. Sparkles?”
The dragon opened his mouth to say something about armies, and castles, and things she could not possibly imagine. Then he caught Barnaby’s eye across the table. The bear gave the smallest shake of his head.
Vorthrax closed his mouth. He picked up his tiny rose-covered teacup, very carefully, between two enormous claws.
And he stuck out his pinky.
“Terribly,” he said.
Katie beamed. “Good. Because tomorrow we're doing dress-up. I have a tutu that will fit your tail.”
Clementine clapped her paws. Barnaby took a long, slow sip of his tea.
And somewhere very far away, in the smoking ruins of Castle Grimholt, Mortimer the Mostly Adequate sneezed once more, and had no idea why he suddenly felt so pleased with himself.
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