There once was an ambitious young prince who heard tell of a sword of great power, guarded by a fearsome dragon. With this weapon, the prince thought, I could surpass my elder brothers and claim my father’s throne.
He traveled to the dragon’s distant lair, and while the beast slumbered, he looted through the troves of treasure and claimed the golden sword for his own. But as the prince threaded the weapon through his belt, the blade clanged loudly against the buckles on his boots. The dragon awoke in a mighty rage, and the prince fled in terror.
The dragon gave chase, but the prince eluded him, for his horse was the fastest in all the land. As night fell, the prince sought shelter in a nearby village, while the dragon pursued him still.
By dawn the dragon had discovered where the prince was hiding and laid waste to the village in his fury. The prince escaped once again on his swift steed, but the villagers and their homes were burned to the ground.
Now it came to pass that one of the villagers, a young girl, had been forced to spend the night in the woods after a pack of wolves had driven her up a tree. As she emerged from the forest at daybreak, she saw her village aflame and stood still in the middle of the road.
The fleeing prince nearly trampled her in his haste. His horse reared aside at the last moment, and gold coins spilled from his saddlebags.
As the prince rode away, the girl bent to retrieve the treasures. With these, she thought, I can make a new life for myself.
She traveled to the city and found work as a lady’s maid. The remainder of the dragon’s coins she kept hidden away, save for one which she wore about her neck on a strand of cord, for luck.
Some years went by, and one day the girl caught a glimpse of the new king as he paraded through the city. When she saw the golden sword at his hip, she knew him to be the man who had brought down the dragon’s wrath upon her poor village, and her heart was filled with vengeance.
She had been judicious with the dragon’s gold, and now she used it to buy her way into the king’s court, disguised as a noblewoman. Her beauty attracted the king’s attention, but it was her coolness toward him which inflamed him most, for he had grown even more proud and greedy over the years and believed nothing he desired to be beyond his reach.
He summoned the girl to his chamber. Alone for a moment, she drugged his wine, and when the king had drunk of it, she showed him her necklace with the dragon coin and confronted him for his crimes. The king remembered her then, but he was powerless to defend himself as she took up a knife from the bedside table and pierced him in the chest.
A hair’s breadth from his heart, she paused. The knife trembled in her hands as the king pleaded for his life. Her resolve wavered, and she dropped the blade and left the castle behind.
Humiliated, obsessed, and enraged, the king hunted her throughout his kingdom, yet time and again she managed to evade him, until at last there was only one place left for her to run.
Once more she returned to the wreckage of her village. In the distance lay the dragon’s lair, a vast valley of ash and rock where few men had dared to venture.
A desperate idea occurred to the girl, and she descended the perilous slope. Stopping before an ancient gate, she placed her last piece of the dragon’s gold upon a slab of stone and announced her presence.
When the dragon lumbered out to meet her, she was greatly afraid, though the beast seemed less savage than she recalled.
Young woman, the dragon thundered, how dare you trespass in my domain.
I have come to return the coin that was stolen from you, the girl answered. The others I have spent, for I was destitute when you destroyed my village. But if you promise to spare my life, I will tell you where the golden sword resides.
I care not, the dragon sighed in a breath of smoke. Take the coin and go.
The dragon’s reaction surprised her. She took up the coin, but as she had nowhere else to turn, she spent the night outside the gates.
In the morning the dragon discovered her and was angered that she had remained. A gout of flame burst from his snout, but she ducked in time to dodge it.
Please, she begged, allow me to stay here under your protection. My life is forfeit if I leave this place.
Because he had made her an orphan, the dragon took pity on the girl.
Very well, he relented. But you are forbidden to pass through the gate.
The girl agreed, and they dwelled together in peace. But her curiosity grew, and one day when the dragon flew up into the mountains, she passed through the gate.
A ruined palace lay beyond. Bones scattered the courtyard where the dragon slept. In the halls and rooms, she found the remains of what had once been rich and beautiful furnishings, now singed and broken and layered with dust.
At the back of the throne room was a great mosaic covered in grime. As she brushed some of the dirt away, she heard the beating of the dragon’s wings and fled through a crack in the palace wall.
The next time the dragon left, she returned and cleaned a little more dirt away, and so on and so forth until the mosaic was cleared. She could see now that it depicted a handsome and powerful king, with a bright golden sword in his hand and with emerald eyes the same color as the dragon’s.
When the beast returned, he found her there gazing still and roared loudly enough to shake the ground, but the girl was unafraid.
Tell me, she said, looking sadly upon him, how you came to be this way.
And the dragon told her of how he had once been a great king, who had come into possession of a mysterious golden blade, which had made him greater still. But the sword was cursed, and the longer he wielded it, the more corrupted he became. Over time he turned into a mad beast consumed with violence and greed and destroyed his own beloved kingdom in a fiery rampage. Only when the sword was taken from him did he begin to remember what he had done, and to regret.
The girl was moved, for she could see how the dragon suffered. Wishing to help him, she took up residence in the palace and began setting it to rights as best she could.
The dragon scorned her efforts, yet he watched over her all the same. And she watched him in turn, and at night while he slept, she crept into the throne room and brushed her fingers across the tiles that formed his once-human face.
He began to take her with him into the mountains. While he hunted game close by, she traded with the local tribesmen and bathed in the mineral springs. For the first time that she could remember, she felt safe and content.
As winter drew near, she slept curled in the dragon’s warm palm. Some nights, when he thought she was asleep, he slipped a claw beneath the neck of her gown and traced the coin pendant that rested there, above her heart.
Tell me, she said to him one day, what can be done to restore you?
There is only one way, the dragon replied gravely. The golden sword must be destroyed, yet only the heart of a dragon is hot enough to melt it.
The girl wept at this news, for she had come to love him, and he was the only dragon she knew.
Meanwhile the tribesmen had betrayed her whereabouts to the king. When next the dragon took her into the mountains, the king lay in wait, and kidnapped her as she went to bathe in the springs.
The dragon was grieved to find her gone, and thought she had forsaken him. But a kind sparrow told the dragon this was not so—that a wicked man with a golden sword had taken her away.
But fear not, the sparrow said, for fortune is with her still, and if you make haste, she may yet be saved.
So the dragon set out as the sparrow instructed. The king had locked the girl away in the highest tower of his castle, and while he considered how best to punish her, the dragon flew to her aid and dissolved the bars across her window with a jet of flame.
Seeing his prisoner on the verge of escape, the king’s rage transformed and consumed him. As he went forward to attack the dragon, the girl’s pendant blinded him briefly. She ripped the golden sword from his unwieldy claws and plunged it through him, where it melted in his monstrous heart.
The dragon’s scales fell away, and he became a man once again. He married the girl who had loved him even as a beast, and together they restored his burned kingdom to greatness and ruled there in prosperity for the rest of their days.