By Grace MacPherson
Ebenezer Scrooge was not fond of dragons.
For one thing, they reminded him too much of himself, though he wouldn’t have admitted so for the world—although he might have considered it given a sufficient sum of money. No, Scrooge was not fond of dragons, and he looked down at the boy on the other side of his narrow desk with distinct displeasure.
“It’s no concern of mine. You can take yourself to the poorhouse if this dragon does destroy your pitiful farm. Now off with you—I have real work to do.”
The boy did not back out of the room as Scrooge had expected. Instead, his jaw tightened as he said, “Accounting?”
“Yes,” said Scrooge, and dipped his pen in his iron inkwell.
“Sir,” said the boy, his voice tremulous.
Scrooge surveyed him over the rims of his spectacles. “What?”
“You used to do… other work.” The boy swallowed, his eyes rising to meet Scrooge’s. “Important work. They say you were a dragon slayer… a long time ago.”
Scrooge had been many things, a long time ago, few of which he cared to remember. But now, under the boy’s earnest blue-eyed gaze, it was impossible to forget altogether—to forget the long summer days spent training in the courtyard with men he had once called his friends; to forget the light in Fan’s eyes when she hugged him on his graduation day as their stepfather watched from a distance; to forget the thrill the first time he killed a dragon; the even greater rush of adrenaline when he looked Belle in the eyes and told her he loved her…
But none of it had been enough.
Fan had died, neglected in her illness by their stepfather while Scrooge was too busy to write home, and Belle had left him in the terrible grief-stricken months that followed, and a dark curtain had fallen forever over the time when he had believed that men could be heroes and that dragons could be slain.
“Sir.” The boy’s thin shoulders caved forward, limp with helplessness beneath his worn coat. “Please.”
It was too late for Fan. Scrooge’s hoarded money that could have bought her treatment had not accumulated till years after her death. It was too late for Belle. She had long since married a cheerful cooper who had never known a day’s trouble in his life.
It was too late for Scrooge himself. He doubted his hand, so long accustomed to a pen, could grip the hilt of a sword even if he tried.
But was it, he wondered, too late for the boy?
He could read hope in the wide eyes, the parted lips, the tilted head—hope that he could either wash away forever or swell to life, hope that was as foreign to Scrooge as water was to fire.
And yet water was the only thing that could extinguish a dragon’s flame.
An unfamiliar sensation stirred in Scrooge. He had been that boy once, devoid of all hope when Fan had died and Belle had left him. Would he leave this boy to the same fate, locking away happiness like a dragon’s hoarded gold?
Fan, he thought, would not have liked that.
His forehead creased with a frown, and the boy’s face fell as he took a step back towards the door.
“Please, sir… you’re the only one who can save us now. If you don’t…”
“I will,” said Scrooge, and pushed back his chair to stand.
After all, he had never been fond of dragons.
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