TAMITHA WAS ALREADY high in the air by the time she realized a dragon had snatched her. She’d been moseying along the road, making up a poem about pasta in her head, when the creature swooped down from the clouds, all bulging red muscles and sharp scales. The dragon flapped his enormous batwings, wrapped his bronze claws around her, and took off into the sky before Tamitha could think of a word that rhymed with“linguine.”
Thousands of feet below her, vast forests glided by, looking like so many heads of broccoli. At last a stone tower came into view. The dragon descended, flew through a window on the tower’s east side, and dropped Tamitha in a clear space on the stone floor. The rest of the floor, and most of every other available surface, was covered in junk: staggering towers of grease-speckled pots, dozens of used-up watercolor palettes, hopelessly tangled yo-yos and paddleballs, and about a thousand of those aluminum tabs from the tops of soft drink cans.
“All right, girl,” the dragon said. “You are my prisoner, and if you don’t want to face my wrath, you must clean my castle.”
Tamitha brushed off her knees. “Is that why you snatched me out of the street? Because your house is messy?”
He wouldn’t have phrased it that way himself, but the dragon conceded this was more or less so.
“Couldn’t you have advertised for a housekeeper?” said Tamitha.
Now that she mentioned it, this seemed so obviously like the sensible thing to do that the dragon was embarrassed. To cover up his embarrassment, he shouted, “Silence, minion! You can start with the dishes.” He launched through the window and flew out of sight.
Actually Tamitha didn’t mind doing the dishes, provided she could sing while she did them, and she might have complied if the dragon had asked nicely and offered to dry. Under the circumstances, she looked about for the exit instead. A quick survey of the room revealed three doors off to Tamitha’s right. Tamitha assumed they were locked, but she decided to try the knobs anyway. She was very much surprised when the first door swung open without so much as a creak.
This story is from the January 2018 edition of Cricket Magazine for Kids.
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This story is from the January 2018 edition of Cricket Magazine for Kids.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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