A Thief In My Garden

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. I was the first, and the best. The best dragon gardener, that is. My carrots are the sweetest, my zucchini the tenderest, my blue potatoes the most succulent. No other dragon can match my expertise in the garden.

I do have a little secret: humans.

No, it’s not what you’re thinking! There are no bodies buried beneath my radish beds. I don’t use human thighbones to stake my green beans. But I’ll begin at the beginning…

Where I grew up—in the Carpathian Mountains—dragons are not known for gardening. Traditionally, we’re the slayers of foolish knights, the abductors of virgin princesses. We raid herds of sheep grazing in the lowlands and burn thatched-roof cottages and the like. That was never really my forte, though. It was the cottage gardens I raided, not the livestock byres. Not the human villages.

You see, I’ve been a vegetarian since I left my mother’s clutch and went out on my own. In my opinion, it’s barbaric for any thinking dragon to eat the flesh of another sentient being. And humans are sentient, whether dragons like to think so or not. Granted, their intelligence is at the level of a four-year-old dragonling. They’re not very bright. But they are capable of reason if you give them a chance.

I could never eat one.

The mountains don’t have the best soil for growing vegetables, so I soon emigrated to the Valley. Romania was in rather a bad state after dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu ran it into the ground. Not many people lived in the town of Băile Tușnad anymore. They’d moved away to the cities to work in the factories. Now, there are more bears than people, and more sheep and cattle than bears, although the bears are doing their best to rectify that situation. Bears don’t bother me. They’re even stupider than the humans. And I’m much bigger than they are.

But because of the reduced human population, many of the nineteenth-century villas had gone vacant, falling to ruin. That included one large property on the outskirts of town, reputed to be the domain of Băile Tușnad’s late witch. She was rather infamous for the heavy price she exacted for the vegetables she grew, as well as the potions she brewed.

Hehe! I’ll admit she was something of an inspiration for this young dragon. You see, witches are different than other humans. They’re more like ten- or twelve-year-old dragons in their intelligence levels. Smarter, and easier to reason with. I'd heard about her growing up, stories of how she dealt with the humans. Unfortunately, they got her in the end...

But that's another story. Look it up sometime.

When I arrived in the Valley, flying in one moonless night to scout the territory, there were still traces of the old witch’s original garden laid out behind the crumbling brick wall which surrounded the property. She’d planted apple and pear trees, and there was windfall fruit just lying on the ground. Her onions had seeded back year after year, and although there were a few worms, the bulbs were quite edible. The raspberry and blueberry bushes weighed heavily with ripe fruits. And the asparagus, rhubarb, radicchio, and watercress were still as abundant as they had been the day the witch died.

I moved into the old stone villa that very night.

There was a lot of work to do, I’ll grant you that. Weeds had taken over several of the raised beds, and I had to burn them out before replanting. (Yes, I flamed the weeds myself, then added the ashes to my compost heap.) I had to raid a few of the town gardens myself, to find new stock for planting. Blue and red potatoes, parsnips, rutabagas, carrots. I engaged in a bit of creative liberation, I have to admit. It wasn’t as if I—a full-grown dragon—could just walk into the local garden center and ask to see their vegetable starts. Flying around late one night, I spotted a rack filled with starter plants that someone had left sitting out in front of the hardware store. Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, green and yellow beans. One of those A-frame racks. I just picked the entire rack up with my claws and carried it back to my garden through the night sky. It might have helped that it was overcast that night. Seeing a dragon flying overhead with a rack of vegetable plants in her claws would have attracted unwanted attention, after all.

I suppose I should have foreseen that when my enormous vegetable plants started to peek above the crumbled garden walls, well, someone would take notice. I’d shored up the walls as much as I could, using old construction materials I scavenged from a communist-era apartment block that had gone to ruin. But my snap peas were lush, more than thirty feet tall, and heavy with pods. They'd started running over the top of the walls and down the other side.

It was no great loss when the townspeople started picking the peas off the outside of the wall. But I had to draw the line at them coming inside the wall and stealing my vegetables. I’d put a lot of work into my garden. I needed to store up produce for the winter. Winter in the Carpathians is very harsh. I couldn’t let theft go unpunished.

It was late June when I caught her. She was young, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, though it's difficult to tell with humans. She’d propped a big branch against the outside of the wall and climbed over in the dead of night, landing right in the center of my cantaloupe patch.

Roared! Did I ever!

The girl fell flat on her face in the middle of the vines, which—the ground still harboring a little bit of magic from the witch’s time there—slithered around her arms and legs and held her pinned to the ground while I came running. Woke me out of a deep sleep, so I wasn’t in a very good mood.

Roared! Again.

“Wha-wha-wha-?”

“Stop blathering!” I skidded to a stop in front of the cantaloupe patch and roared at her. “What are you doing in my garden!”

“I-I-I—”

At first, I thought this human was stupider than the regular ones, but after a few minutes, she struggled to sit upright, still enmeshed in my melon vines. Her eyes were enormous, and I was afraid they’d pop right out of her head and spoil my best cantaloupes. Human body parts are not acceptable fertilizer for a garden. Not a vegetarian’s garden.

I sank down on my haunches with my front legs—and claws—curled under my chest and waited patiently for her to regain her senses. Finally, I spoke, albeit in a softer voice this time.

“You are in my garden,” I said. “Humans are not welcome in my garden.”

“I-I-I—”

“Again with the I, I, I!” This was exasperating. I don’t have that much patience! “You are trespassing. There is only one reason for you to come here. You were going to steal my vegetables.”

“I-I…I was hungry,” she finally formed a coherent statement.

“And that’s my problem because…?”

She sat up straighter, yanking at the vines wrapped around her wrists. “I didn’t know a dragon lived here,” she said, giving up her struggles. Her chin came up and she looked me straight in the eyes. “The witch who lived here died a long time ago. I thought…all this free food is going to waste—”

“It’s NOT FREE!” I roared. The girl quailed, sinking back onto the soft ground. She was compacting the soil. I’d need to work on loosening it again tomorrow so that the cantaloupe roots could spread. More time spent hoeing. “This is my garden now, and humans aren’t welcome here.”

A tear rolled down her bony cheek, tracking through the dirt on her face. Not just a thieving human. A dirty thieving human.

“You have so much here,” she said in a low voice. “And I’m starving.”

“Hmmpphhh! Lots of humans starve every year. Too lazy to grow their own food.”

This angered her, I could tell. “Well, if I had a place to grow food, I would!” she said. Then a crafty expression spread across her narrow face. “And if I had free vegetable starts to grow…like the ones that were stolen three months ago from in front of the hardware store...”

I shifted uncomfortably.

“So, we’re both thieves,” I finally admitted. “Stealing from humans isn’t—”

“Isn’t stealing? Then what would you call it?”

She had me there.

***

It took some negotiation, but we finally came to an agreement. Imagine! Me bargaining with a puny little human. But there it is—

My secret to a good garden is humans. A human. Who tried to steal but stayed to help.

I let her stay and work in my garden in exchange for a room in my villa where she could live when she wasn’t working. She dug several new beds for the following year’s planting and collected seeds to sow in the spring. We worked together harvesting the produce and storing it in the old cellar against the coming winter, to feed both of us.

And in the dark of night, I dropped off bushel baskets of assorted vegetables and fruits—melons, berries, apples, pears—all through the summer and into the autumn, leaving them on the stoop of the hardware store.

I had to pay them back for the starter plants I’d stolen. It was the right thing to do. In the new world, a dragon stealing from humans just didn’t fly.

Or so I’ve been told.

Thank you for reading! Likes, comments, shares, follows, and pledges are always cherished, like a dragon treasures a cavern filled with gold. And books.

Author's Note: I have challenged myself to write twenty-seven dragon prologues/stories for the Vocal.media Fantasy Prologue Challenge, one for each day the challenge runs. Here's a link to my next story:

Reference Source for A Thief In My Garden:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/world/europe/bears-transylvania-romania.html