A Dragon's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans

If you value your happiness and sanity, take your time and choose your pet wisely.

It was a lovely funeral for Fluffy, the best pet I ever had. I was pleased by the turnout at the mansion. Mourners filled the large backyard and mingled as the sun finally broke through the San Francisco fog. Everyone had loved Fluffy. She had such a gentle temperament--quite the nicest of all my pets. Even when she was feeling out of sorts, she never bit anyone--partly because I had trained her well and partly because she wouldn’t hurt a fly.

She was such a special pet that I knew I could never find another one like her. I intended to bide my time, perhaps sleep for twenty or thirty years, until the ache in my heart had eased a little. Even then, I wasn’t sure when I would get another pet.

But Winnie didn’t give me any choice. Just two days after the funeral, she stomped into my lair. Without any warning, I heard a key scraping against the lock; then the door jerked open. The little creature stepped inside. She was the scrawniest of specimens, dressed all in black. Her very curly, every-which-way hair was light brown.

Putting a fist on her hip, she studied me, her glance flicking from the tip of my tail to my glorious head. “Are you really a dragon?” She sounded disappointed.

“Don’t be rude,” I snapped. “And how did you get the key?”

“Great-Aunt Amelia put it in her last letter to me,” she said as she strolled farther inside my living room. Amelia was the ridiculous nickname that the other humans used for my Fluffy. “It had directions to the hidden door in the basement.” She stared at me bold as brass. “She was afraid you’d be lonely.”

“Well, I’m not.” I held out my paw to the obnoxious creature. “So give me the key and go away.”

Instead, she circled round my lair, stopping by the Regina and the metal song discs. She looked curiously at the large box, which was some two feet on each side. Delicate wooden inlays created lovely pictures of coral and shells on its lid, front, and sides. “What’s this?”

“A music box,” I said. It had been a gift from Fluffy’s grandfather Sebastian, who had been fun when he was young but had become terribly boring when he grew older. Still, he had never been stingy, and the music box had been only one of many expensive presents.

She pivoted slowly. “I thought a dragon’s den would be different.”

“I dare you to show me a nicer one,” I sniffed.

She waved her hand at the floor in disappointment. “I figured you’d have gold and jewels lying around in piles, not a carpet and a sofa.”

“Have you ever tried sleeping on gold?” I asked. Then I answered my own question because I knew she didn’t know. “Gold is hard and cold, and as for jewels . . . well . . . the diamonds leave scratches on my scales that take forever to buff out.”

If this fussy little thing had had any manners, she would have stifled her curiosity, but she was obviously quite feral. She motioned to the red velvet drapes with the tassels of gold wire. “Okay, then why do you need curtains? You’re underground.” Crossing the room quickly--her shoes tracking dirt all over the best Bokhara wool, woven by a master weaver--she jerked a drape back to reveal the painting before I could stop her.

“Huh,” she said, surprised, and then leaned forward to examine it closer. “What’s this doing here?”

Perhaps she had been expecting some oil painting by a celebrated artist instead of a child’s crude watercolor, but I wouldn’t have traded it for ten Rembrandts. A dragon with shining crimson scales soared into dark, dark clouds from which lightning bolts shot like jagged swords. A few years ago, Fluffy claimed she had found it at a holiday sale run by the parents of the Spriggs Academy students. She said that it had reminded her of me, so she had put it into a lovely gilded frame--Fluffy always had hd exquisite taste--and presented it to me.

And I’d been just as enchanted. The young artist had painted the red dragon with fiery eyes and a determined jut of her jaw as her powerful wings fought the winds. It was just the way every dragon should be.

“Get away from there,” I said as firmly as any dragon could. But she wasn’t listening.

She rubbed at the little spot of steam her breath had left. “The glass protects it. But even if I smudged it, I could always paint you another.”

I gazed scornfully at this preposterous creature with the unruly hair. “Don’t be absurd.”

She rounded on her heel. “I sent it to Great-Aunt Amelia four years ago.”

“It came from a school sale,” I insisted, but I was less sure now. I had never been able to break Fluffy’s habit of telling little white lies.

“Turn it around.” The creature jabbed her finger at the painting. “I wrote my letter to her on the back.”

I decided to call her bluff. “If your writing isn’t there, will you leave?”

She folded her arms confidently. “Sure, but I get to stay if it is.”

The painting hung from the picture molding that ran parallel to the floor and high up on the wall. I lifted the frame upward, unhooked the wires from the molding, and tore the brown paper from the back.

There, written with a pencil, were a child’s crude block letters:

DER ANT AMELEEA,

I LIKE YUR STOREES. MAMA REEDS THEM 2 ME LOTS.

It was signed: W.

A bony finger pointed at the signature. “The ‘W’ stands for Winifred. That’s me.”

“Fl--” I caught myself. “Amelia told you about me?”

To her credit, Winnie traced Amelia’s name sadly. “I thought the dragons in her letters were imaginary. But I loved hearing them, and later, when I could, reading them myself. It was great when I found a letter in our mailbox.” She lifted her head to look at me. “Then her last one was sad but wonderful too. She told me you were real and where to find you.”

Fluffy, Fluffy, what have you done? She had told me that she was leaving the house to a niece and her daughter and had taken care of everything. I assumed that Fluffy had drawn up a will. I had no idea she had gone so much further.