age when printing and television had not yet been invented, a man who could do card tricks of a long winter evening was nothing to sneeze at. Besides, even a princess can turn into an old maid.
So I cast a favorable eye on his suit. The bargain was about to be clinched when I found out that his great-grandmother on his father’s side had been a goose girl. Naturally I could not form a mesalliance with anyone who had such a Rorshach on his escutcheon, even though I was crowding eighteen and well on my way to spinsterhood.
I tactfully told Suleiman we were through. “How durst thou aspire to the hand of one such as I, base-born varlet?” I demanded.
Having a bad temper, he waxed mighty wroth. “Sayest thou so, jade! Well, if thou’lt not wed me, thou’lt wed no other.”
I thought he meant he was my last chance, but it seemed that he had a more dynamic idea. He turned me into a dragon. “Thou shalt live forever in this loathly form,” he told me, “thy own fair semblance vanished forever, lest thou canst persuade a prince to give thee a kiss. And thou shalt dwell in the remote fastnesses of this isle and be visible to mankind only once in a decade until and if thy prince come.”
I tossed my head and snorted fire at him. “Thou mayst be noted for thy necromancy, Suleiman,” I said with hauteur, “but, certes, not for thy originality. At any rate, it appears I’ll outlive thee, scurvy knave, since thy curse seems to carry immortality along with it.”
“I shall expend the entire resources of my magical art to make myself immortal as well,” he sneered, “in order to have the pleasure of gloating over thee through the centuries.” And, stepping upon his magic carpet, he was off.
Seeing that I was no longer a marriageable commodity, my father packed me off to Loch Ness and married the dame in the South. Later, I heard, she poisoned him and usurped his domains.
I lived in the bottom of the lake for some nine hundred years, emerging at ten-year intervals to see if there were any princes in the vicinity. But there was never anybody but a peasant or two, so I sneered at them and retired to my boudoir, where I slept between appearances. There is nothing that can ruin a girl’s looks more than not getting enough sleep.
Of course, when I say there were no princes in the vicinity, I am not being strictly accurate. Suleiman was there, gloating—if you
count him, that is. The first time I pretended neither to see him nor to hear his taunts, but paddled
