Dragon’s Head Manor

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. As I read the first line of the first volume in the series of books on the polished mahogany stand before me, I smiled. As soon as I’d entered the library in the manor house on Dragon’s Head Island off the coast of Maine, my eyes fell on the beautifully-designed row of books prominently placed in the center of the enormous room. Each one was a collection of dragon stories, and I would have thought the collection was geared towards children except for the cover design. No one would ever give books with such gorgeous covers to a child. They could have been designed by William Morris, or another of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.

The twenty volumes were lined up in a row, in perfect order. And painted in cobalt blue, crimson, and emerald-green with gold-leaf accents, a twining dragon of the European variety slithered from one spine to the next. It was a masterwork of the book design arts.

But I can see now that I have begun my story at the wrong point. Allow me to start over, with the first letter. Not letter as in “A,” “B,” or “C.” Letter as in “epistle,” “missive,” or “correspondence.” In my line of work, choosing the right word is de rigeur.

This is the letter which I received on that unseasonably warm day in September of last year:

Needless to say, I was quite interested. If, in fact, it was a real offer. Too many Internet scammers were impersonating legitimate companies these days, inviting people to interview for non-existent jobs in an attempt to convince the innocent victims to reveal personal information about themselves. Not to mention the potential for this to be a new way for a serial killer to seek out potential victims. But if that were the case—if a serial killer wanted to murder a mousy middle-aged woman with a Master of Library Science degree—there must be better ways to find a victim without leaving a paper trail.

Not to mention that my life had gone to hell in a handbasket, as the saying goes. With the installation of yet another Conservative administration, and the tremendous increase in book banning across the US (which goes against everything I believe in), I was more than ready to leave the political uproar of modern-day librarianship behind. I was simply getting too old to have to fight for every new book to reach the shelves of the public library I worked in.

Life was too short. I responded to Mr. Peterson MacGillicuddy's letter immediately:

After that, my life changed irrevocably. I flew to New York City to interview with Mr. MacGillicuddy. It was not a scam at all, as the law offices where the interview took place were top of the line, and very impressive for this understated librarian. After the official interview, Mr. MacGillicuddy, along with one of the partners, a Mr. Drage, took me for lunch at Tavern on the Green, a rather famous NY eatery. Apparently, my personality was judged to be a good fit for working with this mysterious employer. My qualifications had already been vetted. By the time we had finished eating a most delicious meal, the offer of a guaranteed one year's employment—to be extended upon the agreement of both parties, being both myself and Mr. Athanasius Caturix, the master of Dragon's Head Manor—was tendered and enthusiastically accepted.

I gave notice at my public library in Dallas, sublet my apartment in the Bishop Arts District, and shipped my personal belongings to an address on Mt. Desert Island in the state of Maine. When I finally arrived at the ferry dock after several flights and two days of travel, my boxes were already loaded onto a private boat waiting for me to arrive and be carried out to Dragon’s Head Island.

Aside from Mr. Caturix, who I had been told was rather extremely reclusive, only two other people resided on the island, a caretaker and man-of-all-work, and the housekeeper, who operated the boat which delivered me to the island.

When I’d stepped onto the deck of the Boston whaler, a sea-worthy boat with an awning over the center console, my boxes—along with others labeled with the name of a local grocery store, no doubt intended for the kitchen of the manor house—were stacked around the narrow deck. I squeezed through the piles to take my place behind the captain’s seat, where the housekeeper turned to smile at me warmly, with brilliant white teeth fully exposed.

Mrs. Dhiragoni was a tall, wiry Black woman with unicorn braids. Her hairstyle looked like a wig, but it appeared that the multicolored hair was growing from her scalp. “Natural,” she said when she turned back from where she was holding onto the boat’s steering wheel and caught me staring.

“Your hair is beautiful,” I said. “But you said it was natural—”

“Genetics.”

It seemed impossible, but I left it at that. It seemed like this entire change in my life was a part of some grand fairytale, so I put the woman's appearance down to another part of a fantastical dream. I was surprising myself with my ready acceptance of things I'd never imagined could be real in my quiet little life. So, why not this?

Mrs. Dhiragoni spoke with just the hint of an African accent (Somali, perhaps?) as we chatted during the ride to the island. I later realized that while I’d told her much about my background, I’d learned next to nothing about hers. But I had an entire year ahead of me on Dragon's Head Island. There would be time to get to know her story.

And I was, after all, all about stories.

When we arrived at the dock on Dragon’s Head Island, the caretaker, Tarako, a nearly seven-foot-tall Samoan man, moved to unload the boxes from the boat into a golf cart while Mrs. Dhiragoni and I set off along a winding path through a thick stand of pine trees. It was a short walk, but when the trees opened out onto manicured lawns, it was as if we had entered another world. Scattered across the open field, a herd of beef cattle grazed peacefully.

What an odd place to raise cows, I thought. But it must be a part of my employer's no doubt vast economic empire. These cattle must be some rare breed, worth much more than ordinary cows.

The manor house—and it truly lived up to the name—looked like it had been transported intact from the English countryside. Long wings extended out from either side of the three-story-tall main block, inset with rows of gleaming windows. A columned portico rose above a sweeping marble staircase leading up to a twelve-foot-high oak door, carved with a—

Yes! It was! True to the island’s name, the figure of an enormous, winged dragon with a long tail graced the door. It loomed at the front entrance like a fierce guardian. Even if someone managed to sneak onto this remote island in the middle of nowhere, they would have second thoughts about breaking into the house when they saw this grim sentinel standing guard.

Mrs. Dhiragoni led me into the house and gave me a quick tour of the rooms on the lower level, then showed me to the bedroom/sitting room suite where I was to live for the next year. She left me there to begin unpacking some boxes which had arrived the day before, while the caretaker brought up the others. It soon overwhelmed me with all I needed to do to settle in and I fled my room for the lower level of the house and the room I was most intrigued by.

The library.

Moving on from my examination of the dragon-painted set of volumes in the center of the room, I started on the left-hand side, glancing over the enormous range of antique leather-bound books on the built-in wooden bookcases. As I moved along the shelves, I pulled out random volumes that caught my eye, searching for copyright information inside the front covers. The books on this side of the library all seemed to date from the 16th through the 18th centuries, if not earlier. Looking across the center of the room where overstuffed chairs and library tables filled the open space, I could see the brightly-colored spines of more modern volumes, those of 20th and 21st-century vintage.

This was a librarian's paradise! And I was blessed to work here, among these rare volumes. My nostrils filled with the scents of old paper and ink and leather, I continued my examination of the library's bounty.

The books comprised every topic of non-fiction known to man: philosophy, the sciences, history, war, memoirs, and more. The volumes of fiction were far more limited, on this side of the room, at least. But these all seemed to be first editions of early works. Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur from 1471. Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, 1532-1534. Richard Head's The English Rogue, printed in 1665. Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, and Camilla, from the late 1700s. And hundreds, no! thousands, more.

Against the rear wall, an entire bookcase was filled with picture books, Middle Grade novels, collections of short stories, and fantasy novels. High fantasy and urban fantasy and even space fantasies. What most of them had in common—at first glance, anyway—was the overarching theme. Dragons. That must have been a special interest of my new employer's, perhaps a return to the fantasies of his childhood. And no doubt the source of the island's—and the manor's—name. In any case, the quality of this section of the library was something out of every children's librarian’s dreams.

I was finding it hard to draw a decent breath, overwhelmed by wonder. Wandering past shelf after shelf of the rarest of books, first editions, hand-lettered manuscripts, quartos and folios, and even a glass case filled with scrolls (Roman? Egyptian? Greek?), I was a witness to the impossible.

How had all of these treasures survived—and remained unknown?—throughout the centuries?

Without warning, a bell began to tinkle somewhere in the vast room. Looking around for the source, I spotted an antique telephone on a desk in an alcove. It continued to ring as I drew closer, like something out of an old movie, until I lifted the handset.

"H-hello?"

"Welcome, Ms. Castle," a deep bass voice said over the old-fashioned line.

In the packet of information that Peterson MacGillicuddy provided when I signed my employment contract, there was a section pertaining to communications while living at Dragon's Head Manor. Mobile phones wouldn't work, of course, this far from cell towers. There was satellite Internet, to take care of the business of maintaining library records, including searching auction sites and private sources for new volumes to add to the library's collection. And, of course, there was a note about using the island-wide telephone system.

This was the only way to communicate over distances, between the manor and the outbuildings and the dockhouse. But beyond the notes about the telephone system, there was included the one stricture which was quite pointedly focused upon. Whenever one of the house phones rang—any time, day or night—it was to be answered immediately. Never was a phone to go unanswered, upon pain of instant dismissal. Now I knew why.

The deep voice on the other end of the line was that of the master of the house. My employer, Mr. Athanasius Caturix. I hadn't heard his voice before now, but there was no doubt that the person I was speaking to was neither the housekeeper nor the caretaker.

"Thank you, sir," I replied. "And thank you for—"

"Do you see the dumbwaiter in the wall beside the Renaissance poets?"

I looked back towards the right side of the enormous room. In the short time I'd been perusing the collections, I had already noted that the more recent works were shelved to the right of the entry doors. There, about three-quarters of the way back, I spotted what looked like an ordinary wall panel set into the wall between bookcases, with the portrait of a military man hung above the gaping opening below. Within the opening, I spotted a heavy rope. That was how the dumbwaiter was raised and lowered, once an item was placed inside the miniature elevator.

"Yes, sir," I said. "I see it."

"Very good. Whenever I have need of matérielle from my library, you will put the items requested inside the dumbwaiter and send them down to me."

I had yet to meet Mr. Caturix, and there was nothing about him to be found online. And from the instructions he was giving me, it appeared that I was not going to meet him anytime soon. Mr. MacGillicuddy had said that he was something of a recluse, and preferred not to be disturbed. During our tour of the house earlier, Mrs. Dhiragoni has told me that I would take my meals in the 1920s-style kitchen, rather than in the vast dining room on the ground floor, so I wouldn't even see my employer at mealtimes, which suited me well enough. Now, it appeared that even in the course of my work for him, we would not meet anytime soon.

That was acceptable. I understood the quirks of book lovers, having been in this rarified community for so many years, first in academia and later in my work. I would meet him when the time was right, and I enjoyed working alone. I was fine with that.

In the meantime, I would do my job to the very best of my ability. I would settle into life in the manor and on the island. And as I did so, I would indulge in one of my favorite pastimes.

Communing with old books.

***

I quickly settled into my new role as a private librarian. It helped that I had an unlimited budget at my disposal. Apparently, Mr. Caturix was an extremely wealthy man, with little to spend his money on besides adding precious treasures to his library. I purchased many astronomically expensive books online, which were hand-delivered by Mr. MacGillicuddy, who was Dragon's Head's face in the world. Throughout the next eight months we dined together in the kitchen whenever he was visiting the island, served delicious meals by Mrs. Dhiragoni. But we never really got to know each other on a personal basis.

There was plenty of time to do research of my own, for my own pet project. For many years I had been compiling my family's genealogy, now boasting over 35,000 distinct ancestors in my personal GEDCOM. It was purely a labor of love for me, in memory of my deceased parents. I had been an only child, so there was no one to share my findings with. But it brought me a great deal of pleasure to be able to trace my Mayflower ancestors, my Salem Witch trials ancestors, and the many members of Scottish, British, French, and other European countries' noble and royal families who combined in my own DNA.

It was late May when the antique phone rang one day. I left the FamilyHeritage.com website I was perusing open on the library computer and hurried to pick up the handset.

"Good Morning, Ms. Castle," my employer said. His manners were always impeccable, beginning and ending every conversation with the greetings required of polite discourse. "I have a special request for you."

"Yes, sir," I replied. "What is it that you need?"

He hesitated briefly. That was unlike him, so I paid close attention.

"You are something of an expert in researching family lineages, are you not?"

"Why, yes, but how—?"

Of course. He had access to everything I did online, from his own computer hidden away in his private quarters, wherever they were. In the eight months that I had been living in Dragon's Head Manor, I had never seen any signs that Mr. Caturix was actually on the island. But I knew that his private quarters were somewhere below ground, since I sent the books and other materials he requested each day down in the dumbwaiter.

I had come to the conclusion that he was either A) a normal recluse, afraid to come up from underground, B) that his life could be in danger from an international team of highly-trained assassins, or C) he was a vampire, who couldn't bear the touch of the sun on his face.

In the end, none of my guesses proved to be accurate.

"I would like for you to come to my study," he went on. "I have a special project which I would like to discuss, which would require you to stay on past the initial term of your employment. I understand that you have fitted yourself into the way things are done here and am under the impression that this additional assignment might be of interest to you."

I sank down into a chair near the desk. I will admit that this made me a little lightheaded. I had been there so long, and had given up hope that I would actually meet my employer in person. But apparently my work for Mr. Caturix had made the grade and he was willing to keep me on for a lengthier stay.

Admittedly, the $235,000 in my bank account—and the additional $50,000 to be deposited in just four months' time—meant that I wouldn't need to work again, not if I invested my earnings wisely. But I truly had enjoyed my work in the Dragon's Head Manor library. I'll admit that facing retirement on the pension of a state employee wasn't going to be easy. Accepting this job had been the wisest choice I had ever made.

Yes, I would like to stay on here, for as long as possible.

"Indeed, I would like to hear about the assignment," I said, trying to contain my excitement. "Does it have to do with your own lineage?"

"In fact, it does," he said. "I believe that it is time I had someone record my family's genealogy, and arrange for the publication of my family's extensive history in book form. Mrs. Dhiragoni will bring you down after lunch."

I was finally going to set eyes on the man who had changed my life for the better. And I could hardly wait.

***

As down-to-earth as I like to think I am, taking everything that comes my way in stride, my nerves were on alert. Perhaps its because I had read so widely throughout my career. Bluebeard, Jane Eyre, The Yellow Wallpaper. All of those and other stories told of women who came to a bad end. I gave myself a mental shake as the elevator descended.

Pull yourself together, woman! I chided. You’ve been here eight months and nothing has happened to you. Don’t let your imagination—

“This way please, Ms. Castle,” Mrs. Dhiragoni led the way off the elevator and into a Medieval-looking basement with arched vaults running into the distance. I followed a pace behind, looking around intently.

Unlike the luxurious private quarters I'd expected of someone who was rather extraordinarily well-off, with designer furnishings and high-tech accoutrements, this place was…

Well, it was frankly a dusty mess. It was obvious that Mrs. Dhiragoni didn't clean down here. As we walked past alcoves along the length of the vaulted corridor, I peered through the gloom to try to make out what each contained. The first few seemed to be filled nearly to the low ceilings with pieces of rough-hewn rock, stacked like heaps of coal in a Victorian cellar. Was Mr. Caturix a stonecarver, a sculptor?

The rock-filled alcoves gave way to others with finished works of art. Sculpture, indeed, but also paintings stacked in heaps against the walls, and fine Chinese porcelain, golden vases and jewel-encrusted goblets, mosaics and bas relief tablets and—

Mrs. Dhiragoni turned left and led me deeper into the bowels of the basement. A strange scent filled the air. Putrid...

Was it possible there were graves down here, in an ancient catacomb? That would be taking the whole "brought the entire manor from the Old Country to America" thing a bit too far. Or perhaps somehow the basements connected to an abattoir, where the cattle grazing above were slaughtered.

I shuddered. Hopefully, this wasn't where Mr. Caturix-Bluebeard kept his murdered wives.

We finally reached an area that looked more like living quarters, with recognizable furnishings. Curiously, one alcove was furnished with the elements of the bookmaker’s art. There were tables heaped with stacks of parchment sheets, pots of glue, paints and brushes, and jars of pigments. It looked like nothing less than an ancient monk’s scriptorium, like those I’d seen illustrations of in digital copies of illuminated manuscripts from the Medieval era.

Mrs. Dhiragoni led me into an alcove furnished with a mahogany desk and chair, an Edwardian sofa, and a computer set-up on a long refectory table. The center of the basement room was covered with what looked like a priceless Persian carpet, albeit well-worn, covering the original flagstone floor.

“Please take a seat,” the housekeeper said, waving me inside. “Mr. Caturix will be here momentarily.”

Rather than leaving me alone to wait, Mrs. Dhiragoni sat behind the desk while I perched on the edge of the sofa like a bird on a branch, ready to fly away at any moment. She pushed a button on a device which I took to be an intercom. “We’re ready,” she said.

Within moments, a strange noise arose in the long corridor outside. A kind of swishing and thumping approached the alcove where we waited. Did Mr. Caturix use some sort of golf cart or other conveyance down here, to traverse the long hallways? I kept my eyes on the arched opening, eager for my first glimpse of…

***

“Wha-what? What was—?”

The blackness receded and I could see again. Had I fainted? What an ignominious end to my employment! Mrs. Dhiragoni pulled back from where she had been leaning over me, old-fashioned smelling salts in one hand and the damp towel she’d laid across my forehead in the other.

“That is Mr. Caturix,” she said matter-of-factly, rising from the edge of the sofa I was now lying on and stepping back. Behind her in the entry to the alcove, was a mass of—

Scales!

The creature whose bulk filled the entryway completely, allowing no possibility of egress, was a…

Looked like a…

Dragon! A creature out of one of the storybooks in the library upstairs. In point of fact, it looked exactly like the one which twined across the spines of the set of twenty-some volumes on the stand in the center of the library, the very first thing I had noticed when I arrived in Dragon’s Head Manor eight months earlier.

I raised a shaking hand and pointed to the thing. To the living, breathing monster. “It’s…it’s…”

“He is Mr. Caturix,” Mrs. Dhiragoni said. “Please do not allow your surprise to overwhelm your manners.”

I swallowed hard and sat up straighter, my spine against the rolled arm of the sofa. And I stared.

Several moments passed before Mr. Caturix—the dragon—blinked and shifted his weight, his muscles rolling beneath his smoothly-scaled flanks. A tiny wisp of smoke rose from one nostril as he opened his mouth to speak.

“Such a pleasure to finally meet the woman behind the voice,” Mr. Caturix—the dragon!—said. “You have done excellent work in your time here. I hope that you will be amenable to undertaking this new project which I have in mind.”

It really was him. The voice I had only heard through the handset of the antique phone matched the bulk of this creature out of mythology. Out of fairy tales! This was the…man, whose library I had cataloged and organized and built up over the past months.

“You have, of course, noticed the vast number of family histories I possess,” he said. “The ones in the collection along the rear wall.”

He was speaking of the books about dragons. The fairy tales, the children's section of the library. He calls these histories—

Well, I suppose if one is a dragon, then those books might be considered history, rather than fairy tales.

Wait! How was I even thinking in my professional capacity as a librarian? As if dragons were real…

But dragons were real. One was sitting in front of me, blocking the entryway so that I couldn’t leave if I wanted to.

Did I want to?

No. No, I didn’t.

“I want you, Ms. Castle,” Mr. Caturix said, “to compile my family’s genealogical records into a database, like the one you use. A…what is the term?”

“A GEDCOM,” I answered automatically. “Genealogical Data Communications.”

A slight smile quirked my lips upwards, wondering what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints—the Mormons—would think of a dragon using their program to create a GEDCOM family tree. It seemed my little mental joke relaxed my iron grip on my body, because Mr. Caturix relaxed his muscles also, settling back down comfortably in the entryway.

His corresponding smile—reptilian lips slightly parted with rows of wickedly sharp teeth exposed—should have been frightening. But somehow it wasn’t.

I was a librarian. A professional of the Library Sciences. After dealing with patrons of all sorts in the course of many years’ work with the public, I could handle just about any crisis that arose. Was this so strange really?

Yes, Mr. Caturix was a dragon. A monster out of the mythological past. It wasn’t his fault that humans had ceased to believe in his kind. And he had a very important task to accomplish, recording a history no one else had addressed. This would be a masterwork.

One which would keep me here on Dragon's Head Island for years to come.

My smile deepened, and I gave him a nod, sitting up straighter on the Edwardian sofa in his office.

“When do we start?”

Thank you for reading! Likes, comments, shares, follows, tips, and pledges are always cherished.

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 entry: