Empty Nest

Maud stretched out languorously upon her mattress of gold and jewels. The sight of it was both grand and impressive, and then some. The gold and jewels sparkled with an inner light and even in the drab lighting of Maud’s lair the mountain of treasure glowed tantalisingly. There is nothing like the sight of untold wealth and riches to get the greed buds itching and tingling and even the least materialistic would be dribbling enviously at Maud’s incredible hoard of treasure.

Then there was Maud herself. Maud was, and indeed still is, a dragon and being the female of the species, she was bigger, better and more beautiful than the young jack-the-lad dragons who couldn’t keep themselves to themselves and had to make a big song and dance on their bawdy nights out. Nights out that inevitably ended with a snack of several sheep skewered on a tree.

Dragons are naturally awesome, powered as they are by magical fire and brimstone. They are the impossible made real. Truly fearsome they are, and yet eye catching in a way that takes the eye and keeps it captured and enraptured and saying things like cor! Look at that! What a shiny whopper!

“Ouch!” cried Maud in quite an undragonlike manner.

A goblet had got itself caught between a couple of her scales, and while that was going on, a crown or tiara had made its way somewhere it really had no place being. 

Maud suffered for her art, but this was all getting too much. She understood the brief and how important the aesthetics of dragonhood were. This aestheticism transcended the practical goal of obtaining a considerable and significant chunk of the economy and manipulating the markets as a result. Or at least this was what had been instilling in her during her childhood and it had stuck in a similar way to that pesky crown.

Manipulate the markets, control the people, that was what Maud’s dad had always said. 

He also explained that this was a belt and braces approach because people could not be trusted. People could also not be trusted because they had this love hate thing going on with dragons, and it wasn’t unknown for the occasional ruffian to sneak into Maud’s home with ill intent.

Killing dragons was a thing, but for the life of her, Maud couldn’t work out why. A puny human trying to kill a dragon was the same as them trying to kick a castle down. It was going to hurt them more than it was going to hurt the castle. 

Maud understood that by holding this much capital, she became a political animal and the politics always went in her favour. Politicians were an odd sort and however things went, they needed dragons and they needed the dragons to have more money than the rest of the economy had. 

As well as being odd, politicians liked to over complicate things. If they managed to make things so complicated that it hurt to even look at them, then politicians could indulge in their most favourite of pastimes, lying. Politicians really liked to lie and with dragons they could wax lyrical because no one really knew all that much about dragons, so they instead made things up about them to bamboozle the populous and get their own way.

Dragons also handed politicians the gift of the Us and Them, which allowed the politicians to galvanise people, make them do stupid things and ultimately, pay more taxes which the politicians would then spend on something they called expenses. Expenses meant them. They spent the taxes on themselves, but everyone was too focused on the imminent threat of the dragon to notice what amounted to embezzlement on an industrial scale.

Although very little is known of dragons and how they tick, there is the well-known matter of the dragon’s secret.

Dragons are secretive and everyone know this. If they are in any doubt about the secrecy of dragons, all they have to do is try to think of more than a couple of facts about dragons. No one can. Therefore, dragons keep a lot of secrets.

The dragon’s hoard is subject to much speculation amid this secrecy that dragons are prone to. This secrecy extends to everything about the dragon, including its possessions.

For starters, how did the dragon amass such a glorious and extensive hoard?

The secret to that is simple.

The dragon’s hoard was on loan. 

Of course, that’s only one secret and anyone with a thimbleful of curiosity would want to know the even bigger secret, who is the hoard on loan from?

That answer is also simple.

The politicians.

How this system was derived, few people know. Those few people are the politicians and then there are the dragons. They know too, having been given a huge mound of treasure to fill their living space with.

Maud picked the goblet out from between her scales with a finely manicured claw and wriggled around in a seriously unladydragonlike manner to dislodge the crown that had crept somewhere it really should not have.

Part of the problem with treasure was that it was enchanted and enchanted objects take on a life of their own, they get bored and when they get bored they can get pretty obnoxious. The politicians knew this, but they never mentioned it to the poor dragons who were lumbered with the stuff.

Mounds of treasure are not conducive to a good night’s sleep and seriously bad for the posture. The problem was that dragons had nowhere else to put all the treasure they had been gifted, and being responsible for the treasure meant that they couldn’t leave it to go and kip somewhere more comfortable, nor could they find somewhere else to put it because they needed to be there to protect it. 

This gifting of treasure to the dragons from the politicians was totally unsatisfactory, but something the politicians knew about dragons was that they can never reject a gift. No, dragons were dutybound to accept a gift, come what may.

Now Maud had grown up with treasure. For hundreds and hundreds of years dragons and treasure had been a double act and Maud had just accepted the presence of the treasure. She had been born into treasure and played with it as a small dragon, then she’d just gotten on with her life. She’d met Dave the Dragon and they’d got along. They’d gotten along like the proverbial house on fire, which for dragons was a really, really good sign of compatibility, so one thing led to another and soon enough, Maud’s treasure had become a nest for her eggs. 

Maud’s eggs had been the greatest treasure that Maud had ever possessed and protected, but they didn’t stay eggs for long. Just a paltry six years. Then they cracked open and out came her children. 

Those were golden years, even with all that annoying gold cluttering up their home and making day-to-day life impractical. Now, hundreds of years later, with the children having flown the nest and dear old Dave long gone, Maud was thinking it was time for a spring clean. A spring clean of her living space and a spring clean of her very life.

There was nothing for it, Maud went to see the king of the realm. Kings were sometimes different to politicians and when they were, this could be a good thing for all concerned, except the politicians. In which case, these kings didn’t live out a favourable life expectancy. All manner of mishap befell the best of kings. Maud knew at least three that had died tragically whilst combing their hair.

At this time, there reigned just such a king, but thankfully he was bald and combs presented no threat to his longevity. So Maud went a visiting, choosing dusk to fly to the king’s palace and enter the subterranean network of tunnels that were in place especially for rare visits such as these.

Maud did not book an appointment, but had King Kevin wished an audience with Maud, he would have had to have planned it in advance and booked at least three months prior. Such was the way these things worked.

As Maud emerged at the court of King Kevin his courtiers fled in the most dignified of manners and left King Kevin to it. This was the usual protocol and was always observed in this manner.

“I have a proposition for you,” said Maud, stifling a burp that would have incinerated the King and a quarter of his castle in one gassy go.

Kevin retained as much of his royal dignity as he could, and he did very well. Maud was impressed and Kevin’s bearing gave her some comfort over what it was that she proposed they do.

“What would you have me do?” asked Kevin in a voice that trembled only a little.

“I have a gift for you,” Maud told him.

And that was that, because you see, like dragons, kings cannot refuse a gift. They especially can’t refuse a gift from a dragon, not unless they want to be chargrilled in a thrice, and King Kevin’s survival instinct was fully intact and working just as it should have.

Before this day, and prior to Maud’s gift to King Kevin, Kings had been strangely indentured servants. They were born into debt and beholden to their advisors. Their advisors were politicians by another name and it was the politicians who really held the power in this dynamic. If a king wanted to go to war, he had to arrange a loan with his chancellor. The chancellor’s loan was guaranteed against part of the hoard of treasure that Maud was forced to sleep so uncomfortably on and so the politicians had it all sewn up.

That was all about to change.

King Kevin was gifted what would become known as the Crown Jewels and he built a stronghold within which to store and protect those jewels. He mustered his finest and most trusted men to protect the vast hoard of treasure and as recompense for their sterling efforts, he provided them with endless supplies of beef. This diet of copious amounts of beef would eventually lead to a nickname for these finely dressed soldiers. Steak Munchers, Fillet Gobblers, Sirloin Chewers or something of that ilk.

Part of the bargain was that Maud would keep a magnificent eye over the treasure.

“But how will you do this?” asked the king.

“I have birds,” Maud told him, “those birds are my eyes and my ears and they will never leave the fortress that contains our hoard of treasure.”

“But what if they were to leave?” asked the king, keen as he was to understand the arrangement they were entering into and how it could work for them both.

“Believe me when I tell you that my ravens will never leave that place and the treasure that it contains. The day they leave is the day that your fortress falls and indeed your kingdom.”

King Kevin shivered at the dark gravity of such an eventuality, then he brightened, “so for as long as we do this and the ravens are present, my kingdom will prosper.”

Maud nodded, “that is the gift I offer you.”

“Then I accept,” the King grinned at Maud, “how can I not! I thank you for your kind and benevolent gift, oh Maud the Magnificent!”

Maud returned the smile, and King Kevin may have dampened his royal trousers, but Maud was far too polite to point this out to him, and she understood that these things happened, being as she was, a mother to six fine children.

With that, Maud left King Kevin to take a bath and make the necessary arrangements. Twenty years later, Maud delivered the hoard of treasure, but not before summoning one of her ravens and explaining what it was that she wanted from her. The raven flew away and returned with five of her sisters. They stood proudly before Maud the dragon who nodded to each and every one of them prior to raising her finely manicured talon and piercing the delicate flesh between the scales that protected her heart. 

Her talon dripped with her life blood as she withdrew it and one by one the ravens lifted their beaks so that Maud could drip one precious drop from her talon into their eager maws, thus she transformed those six ravens into the mythical creatures that would guard the treasure filled towers of King Kevin’s kingdom for a thousand years or more, and themselves become the stuff of legends.

As those thousand years passed, there would arise a story of the dragon who’s treasure the king possessed. A dragon that lived under the fortress of treasure, and was as much a part of the king’s treasure and his kingdom and the treasure itself.

But that is the stuff of myth and of legend. However, one thing is for certain, wherever it is that Maud sleeps, it is no longer on a terribly uncomfortable pile of treasure…