Dragon, Maiden, Knight, Et Cetera

“That time again, eh?” asked the knight, leaning forward on his sword. It was his third rescue mission this week, and by this point he wasn't sure if the author was trying to kill him off or not. He had been evil, but as of chapter 3, he'd been transformed into one of the good guys, with a dark past making him evil.

The dragon, approximately thirty feet long and covered in green scales—your typical fantasy dragon, shrugged. “I don't know what's taking her so long. I told her that the outline said she'd be needed today.” It—the author hadn't bothered to assign the dragon a gender—huffed, a wisp of smoke escaping its nostrils. “I suspect she's having a--'freak out'--over whether or not you're her One True Love, Rupert.”

“No, not according to the outline,” said the knight tiredly. “I'm a cheap ripoff of one of King Arthur's knights, crossed with your typical evil magician. I'm not really evil, though, apparently. I have a tragic past—someone burned my village and killed my parents right in front of me.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” said the dragon genially.

The knight shrugged. “Pfft, I'm supposed to be hellbent on getting revenge. I don't know what I'm revenging, though, as I was just home two days ago—after Chapter 3 was written—and there's nothing wrong with my village. Mum and dad are just fine—excuse the slang, mother and father. This author can't seem to keep a hold on whether they're going to use formal English or not.”

“Oh, tell me about it,” griped the dragon. “One minute it's, 'Oh fair maiden, I'm going to roast you alive, and no knight shall be able to save you!' and the next I'm supposed to be asking her why on earth her 'mom' 'sacrificed' her to me. Apparently my dietary habits have changed, and I enjoy eating maidens now.”

“Didn't you before?” asked the knight, his interest piqued. “I thought all dragons liked fair maidens.”

The dragon shook his (large, scaled, bespectacled) head. “No,” it said mournfully. “They give me indigestion. Sheep, now, sheep are all right—but you humans are much too greasy. Especially heroes. Extra grease, and spiky bits that poke you in the roof of the mouth.”

“It's the waterproofing on the armor, I'm afraid,” said the knight apologetically. “Most authors don't realize that armor isn't supposed to be out in the rain, and think it's romantic to write scenes where you go gallivanting through the damp with a maiden on your white palfrey. They don't seem to understand that there's nothing romantic about rust stains on your shirt, and there's nothing as can be done to waterproof it except rubbing it down with grease.”

“Oh, the rust stains are awful,” agreed the dragon. “And I understand about the grease. As a hero, though, that's the worst you have to face. You get to rescue the princess in a daring swordfight, without having to worry about whether you get a dramatic death scene or not. Us evildoers and dragons have to worry about how the author is going to work our deaths into the plot, or worse, if we're going to be reformed. Dragons cannot live on vegetarian diets.”

“There is that,” admitted the knight. He paused for a moment, and took his helmet off. “Look, say if I was to forget that the author wants me to slay you?” he offered.

The dragon shook his head. “No use, they'd just reform me.”

“Oh,” said the knight. “Sorry.”

“No hard feelings,” said the dragon. “I've got another gig lined up after this one. A Patricia Wrede knockoff where all the dragons talk and have princesses to wait on them hand and foot—without eating any knights or heroes, I might add.”

“That's not so bad, then,” the knight remarked thoughtfully. “Do you think they have any need for a black knight or an evil magician in one of those stories? I'm getting tired of the reformed evildoer turned hero shtick.”

“I don't think so,” replied the dragon. “Sorry.”

“No hard feelings,” echoed the knight, and sighed. “Oh, look, here comes the princess.”

There was a clanging sound from the top of the tower (conveniently described by the author as being “tall and thin,” and nothing else, mentioned only once in passing) as the princess rolled a suitcase down the stairs.

“Sorry!” she yelped, as it nearly flattened the knight. “It's in the script that we're to get a bit of comic relief.”

“Comic relief indeed,” he muttered, diving out of the way—in the nick of time, of course.

“Well, some of us have to follow the script,” she said, and glared at him. Her eyes were, of course, a bright crystal blue, set in a heart-shaped face, and her hair fell in golden waves nearly to the small of her back. Her feet were dainty, shod in satin slippers, and she stood almost six inches shorter than him. Typical fare, presented in a rather typical fashion—instead of scattering description throughout the story, the reader had been bludgeoned with it. The knight sighed, and found himself wishing for a peasant girl with muddy brown eyes and big feet.

“Shall we go, then?” he asked, waving a hand in the direction of his horse. “I've already—er, slain—the dragon.”

As if on cue, the dragon dramatically flopped onto the ground, tongue lolling out.

“Right, then—let's go,” said the princess. She hefted her skirts and climbed onto the horse. “Now to follow the script.”

“Now to follow the script,” sighed the knight, walking around front to lead his 'Nobel steed'--a horse with a sign full of mathematical equations hung round his neck. “Oh fair maiden, thou beauty is beyond compare,” he recited, wincing at the grammatical errors.

“Forsooth, fair knight, thou art winsome beyond my wildest imaginings,” said the princess. She had a taste for the melodramatic, it would seem, and pronounced her lines with gusto. “Hath thou come to deliver me to my one true love, Rupert?”

The dragon snickered from its position on the ground. Apparently it was more familiar with the story than the princess was.

“Forsooth, fair princess, I have not come to return you to the fair lord Rupert,” said the knight, wincing. “Actually, if you read the story, Rupert died in chapter four. I've come to deliver the news of his, er, death.”

“What? But who could have killed my fair Rupert?” squawked the princess indignantly. (Indignant princesses, that was what this story needed more of, the knight thought as he fiddled with bits of the horse's tack.) “He was the best and bravest fighter in the land!”

Actually, the knight wanted to say, he was an old drunkard. He played Falstaff in the knockoff that some other author wrote, and he was good at it. You don't go around being good at Falstaff and then rescuing fair maidens and defeating dragons. Good thing he was only a bit character. “He, er, was poisoned. By the king of a neighboring land.”

“Poison,” said the princess dramatically. “Then you have come to save me, and to revenge the foul fiend that killed Rupert!”

“I've already revenged him,” said the knight kindly. “In chapter fifteen.”

“We're up to fifteen now?” said the dragon, standing and dusting itself off. “At last count there were only ten.”

“Fifteen,” said the knight. “They're short—the author doesn't have a very long attention span.”

“Then—good lord, what chapter are we up to?” asked the dragon mildly.

“Forty seven, I believe,” said the knight. “It was in chapter forty five that I was supposed to be standing around talking to you—er, sorry, slaying you, and chapter forty six where the princess and I meet and fall in love.”

“We're not in love!” said the princess hurriedly. “I love only Rupert!”

“You haven't read the script then,” the dragon commented, amused. “You're meant to be in love with him by now. After all, he is the story-equivalent of the author's object of desire, and you are the self-insertion passing for a main character—in stories like these you always fall in love.”

“Is what the dragon says true?” asked the princess suddenly. “Am I supposed to be in love with you, when I don't even know what your name is?”

“I don't think I have a name till the final chapter,” the knight replied apologetically. “Till then I'm just the mysterious man in black, with 'piercing green eyes and striking, shoulder-length black hair, kept back in a ponytail. If I lived in modern times, I would be fond of Metallica, and anti-authority, just like Tom Prichards in seventh period math,' as the author's note in the middle of chapter one says.”

The princess sniffed. “Well, I am Princess Alinora Dawn Morningstar the sixth, and I would like you to know that you don't need to read the brackets around the I's.”

“Comic relief,” sighed the knight.

“Well, I laughed,” offered the dragon.

“Comic relief is written into the script,” said the princess sternly. “You've no need to make up any of your own.”

“What, so I'm not supposed to have a personality outside of the original story?” asked the knight.

“The author should have written your part well enough that you don't need personality outside of it,” said the princess primly. “You don't see me straying from my written lines—at least, not much.”

“That explains so much about you,” said the dragon mildly.

The knight gave it a grateful look. “The author didn't bother to write me with any personality whatsoever,” he said. “There was an author's note stating that she's rotten at dialog, and so I don't talk at all until I meet you, and then it's just soppy things comparing your eyes to the color of the sky and whatnot. I don't have a personality.”

“Then you should be as your character in the original story, and stay reticent,” said the princess primly. “Until we're married, anyway. I don't believe the author wrote much about our marriage.”

“I'm not marrying you,” said the knight.

“You have to, it's in the script,” the princess countered. “And anyway, won't you like it? Look at how beautiful I am!”

“Right, right, you're gorgeous, but that means nothing, in the long-term. Anyway, I don't think the author wrote enough to be considered a legally binding wedding, so after all this nonsense is through we can each go our separate ways.”

“What, you mean you're not planning to stay with the story?” asked the princess. “I hear the author's writing a sequel.”

“Yes, and in the sequel Rupert comes back from the dead as a vampire, and I'm turned into a werewolf. I don't think I'll be sticking around for that,” said the knight. “Besides, I'm a free agent. I can go wherever I like, as long as it's a role I can play. After this I might just give up and switch to science fiction. At least there aren't as many dragons to slay.”

“There's robots in sci-fi,” said the dragon. “I don't think you need to slay them, though. The story I was in didn't.”

“You were in a science fiction story?” asked the knight.

The dragon shrugged. “A 'Reign of Fire' knockoff,” he said modestly. “With robots. It was nothing, really—didn't get many reviews. Not like this story.”

“Still,” said the knight. “How'd you like it?”

“It wasn't bad,” said the dragon. “Good lines, good action sequences, and I didn't get slain in the end—I was one of the ones they tamed and reformed. I got paid well, too.”

“Maybe I'll go ahead with it, then,” mused the knight.

“Ahem,” said the princess. “I hate to interrupt, really, but there's a story to be told, and we're the ones that have to do the telling of it.”

“Absolutely,” said the dragon darkly. “I mean, it doesn't look as though the author is going to.”

The princess gave him a dirty look. “The author has done a wonderful job telling the story.”

“The author also didn't refer to you as an 'it,'” offered the knight. “Maybe the dragon has a reason to be upset.”

“The dragon should have no reason to talk, let alone a reason to be upset,” said the princess icily. “Anyway, if you are not going to be so good as to stay with me once the story ends—if you are going to break character once we get past the final chapter—you could be so good as to follow the plot up to that point.”

“Right, right,” said the knight. He gave the dragon a woeful look. “Look me up after the story's over, why don't you? My name's Sir Roger the Valiant; I should be the only knight listed for hire in the classifieds. We'll have to talk more about science fiction and how I might be able to make a break in it.”

“Will do,” said the dragon cheerfully.

“Fantastic,” said the princess bitterly. “Now, as we're supposed to be well into chapter fifty two by now--”

“I get it,” said the knight. “O fair maiden, thou beauty is beyond compare,” he recited, finally leading her and the horse toward chapter fifty three, just peeking over the horizon.

“O brave sir knight, thou art valiant and wise,” said the princess happily.

The dragon watched both of them go, then trundled back up to the top of his tower. It was going to be a long ten chapters, and technically his (the dragon was a he, despite the author's description of it as genderless) contract wasn't up till after the author had written the words, 'And they lived happily ever after. The End.'

“Ah well,” he murmured, flipping through the outline to see what the princess and knight were being put through. “Perhaps he'll like science fiction.”