“Not until today.”He nodded, and she came to him for a pick up.Holding her in his arms, he wondered what he’d do now with her being so young and having such a great responsibility.“I won’t have to kill anyone for decades and decades now.People will fear me because I’m so good at what I do.He was a bad man, Daddy.Nothing like you.”
“I should hope not.”She laid her small head on his shoulder, and he reached out to Amy.Telling her what had happened, she told him that she was on her way to see to her.“I don’t know what you can do, love.She’s the dragon slayer and will be forever.I’m slightly afraid of her myself.”
“So long as we don’t do anything wrong, I suppose we’ll be all right.”Amy laughed.“I’m going to have to have a talk with her about this new job.Do you suppose she’ll be all right with killing her great-grandfather?I mean, yes, he was a terrible person, but she killed him by removing his head, and you said that she didn’t move.”
“I don’t want to think about it.”She laughed again.Taking Celesta to their home, he laid her on her bed and stood over her for several minutes.“She’s powerful, love.We’re going to have to tell my mom.If she doesn’t already know.”
“She more than likely has known since before she was born.”More than likely, he thought.His dad more than likely knew as well.“We’ll need to have more juice around for her.She’ll need it if her magic depletes her like it does me.Also, and this one is a biggy.Do you suppose we’ll have to talk to her about not killing her brothers when they tease her?”
“I don’t think we will.She seems to know what she’s about and won’t lord it over them either.She said she’d not have to kill for decades again, people would fear her.”Amy seemed to think that was a wonderful thing as well.She joined him in the room.“I’m going to watch over her for a while.You should, too, and we’ll try to put some perspective on this.Do you suppose my grandda was hurting the others?Why didn’t they say anything if he was?”
“Would you have had you been a young child?”He told her that he might well have not.“Then you have your answer.She looks so peaceful there.She said that she read his mind.I didn’t even know she knew how to do that yet.I’ve only just mastered it myself.”
“She’s known what she has to do for a while now.Celesta might not have known what she was, but she knew that she had to take care of him before it got out of hand.”She asked what Morning had to say.“Nothing.She just walked away when she started talking to me about what she’d done.Do you suppose it will say in the book that the dragon slayer killed him for deeds untold, or will it say that he’d been taken out by his six-year-old great-granddaughter?I think I’ll have a look to see.”
“It’ll say, dragon slayer.And I’m betting if we were to look, it would say that she is what she is, too.That she’s going to be taking care of us for the rest of her life.”He thought about how calm she’d been when she’d killed William.How it had happened in the blink of an eye, and he’d not even seen her move.That was a great deal of power, and he was slightly afraid for her.“What are you thinking about?”
He told her.“And not to mention, she’s going to need to take a mate one day.That’ll make her more powerful than she already is.Mom will love it.”They both laughed, but it was a nervous sort of laugh.“I’m going to my office.I’ve had enough excitement for one day.How about you?”
“I’m going to watch over her.She’s my darling baby girl, and I want to make sure she doesn’thave any nightmares from what she’s done.”He didn’t think so and said as much.“I believe you’re right, but I’m still going to watch over her.I don’t want anyone to try and harm her because of what she’s done.”
“No one will touch her.I will kill them myself.”He wandered to his office and sat down at his desk.He had planting schedules to go over as well as the list of new flowers that needed to be planted soon.All he could think about was that his little girl was going to be killing rogue dragons for the rest of her life.Fowler was suddenly very proud of his daughter.She was going to do a great job, too.
After working for an hour, he decided that he’d gotten about as much done as he could.There were still schedules to be finished up, but they were always going on about new schedules when there was no place to plant them.Getting up from his chair, he watched his children playing with the unicorns in the yard and noticed that there seemed to be no tension around.How could he have missed William hurting his children?Had he known, he would have…he didn’t know what he could have done, but it would have been something.
Before dinner, he sat his children down and explained what had happened to their great-grandfather.Not telling them what had happened, just that he was dead and wouldn’t bother them anymore.Jacob seemed the happiest that he was gone, him being the youngest male child he had, he wondered if he’d been picked out because of his age.It certainly seemed that way to him.
Telling his parents what had happened, he answered as many questions as he could.There weren’t that many, so he’d been right in thinking that they knew.Either one of them could see little bits in the future, so he wrote it off to that.When mom hugged Celesta and told her she was proud of her.Dad, as usual, had a bit of candy to hand out to the other children, and he made them all happy.Dad was like that.
It was three days later when he remembered that he wanted to look into the book of dragons.It said that he’d been killed for things unbecoming of a dragon.And right in the spot where it talked about who had killed him, all it said was Dragon Slayer.He was glad.He didn’t want anyone to know right now that his little girl was the one who had done it.It was hard enough for him to believe.
Fowler went about his business as king of the other realm and kept up with the flowers.There were other duties that he had to do, but for the most part, he was to keep the faeries in line as well as them working on the newest batch of flowers being planted.He loved his job.
He also got to work with his brothers.That was the best part of being in the other realm, too.They would come to see him occasionally, and they would go flying.Being his other half was the best of both worlds, and he was happy that he’d be able to be his dragon with them.They were all going to go flying tonight in his realm so that the women could watch them.He loved it when Amy and his kids sat on the ground and watched him play in the skies.Someday soon, his kids would be able to join them, and he was excited about that as well.
It took him most of the day to get the faeries busy with the new plants.He didn’t usually have to watch over them so tightly, but since this was an old plant, one that had been gone from the earthly realm for decades, he wanted to get it right.Someday soon, someone would find the flower again in a patch that would be discovered soon, and they’d try to bring it back.He hoped so.It was not only a beautiful flower, but it had medicinal properties to it that would help a lot of people someday.
“Your lordship?There is a problem with the house that his lordship lived in.There is magic there that will not allow us to clean the place up.”He asked if they’d spoken to Amy.“Yes, sir.We have even been to see the former queen.Lady Morning isn’t talking to anyone today.She said that she’d handle it tomorrow.”
“So why are you coming to me today if she said she’d take care of it tomorrow?”He told him.“I can understand the need for it to be cleaned out, but wait until tomorrow.Her ladyship Morning has only just lost her husband recently, so it stands to reason she is a little emotional.”
She was more than likely having a nice jig if he knew her like he did.Hiding away so that no one would know that she was having trouble keeping her happy emotions in check.His death had been long in coming, and he was glad that he’d been taken care of.He kept thinking about how everyoneseemed to know he was trouble but himself.He was happy that he could no longer harm his children, either.
He’d been hearing all kinds of things about the former king and his ways around the realm.He’d been ordering the faeries around as if he had a right to, and they were torn between not helping him.Fowler knew too that he’d been talking to the trolls lately about rebelling against the king and queen, himself and Amy, to get better wages.He paid them a fair coin for what they did, and they seemed to be all right with that.It had been just William starting up trouble where he had no business.There were other things, too, that he’d been hearing about, and he was not too happy that he could only die the one time.He should have been killed long ago.
~*~
Madison heard the rumors that William was dead, but didn’t know what to believe.He’d heard that the dragon slayer had killed him, and he’d not known that there had been a dragon slayer found.Just as he was going to see his brother Fowler about it, he ran into Dyson.The two of them talked it over and couldn’t believe it either that someone had been found to take the position of dragon slayer.Neither one of them could guess who it had been.
“It has to be one of the children of Sidney.He has the oldest kids other than you and Emma.And you have only the one in comparison.”He said that he thought it might be a faerie that had been born long ago and was just now getting around to killing William.“If you were to ask me, he should have been killed a long time ago.To think that he’d been beating the others when he didn’t get his way.”
“Grandmother shouldn’t have allowed him back into the castle after he decided that he wanted to come back to live with her.I had no idea that he was beating her, too, before he went into the fade.”He told his brother that he’d been thinking that he’d been made to go to the fade, much like Grannie had been made to retire long ago.“Could be that.I never thought of that.”
They talked about how sad Grandmother had been of late.Of course, she would have been with him knocking her around all the time.But they didn’t know why she hadn’t taken him to task and zapped him into another realm.
“Pride, I’m thinking.She would have been very ashamed to have him knocking her around when she has her daughter to think of.I’m amazed every time I saw them together that Mom didn’t kill him off.She had to know that he was doing things to her mom.”Dyson asked if he thought that she had killed him.“I don’t know why, but I don’t think so.Mom would have had to have gotten permission from her mom, and that would have been the end of it.No, Mom didn’t do it.Besides, she’s not the dragon slayer.We would have heard about that before now.”
“I guess so.”They speculated on who it could be when their kids all got together.Even when Fowler’s children joined their kids, did they think much about it.They’d been hanging out together for years.“I have a lot of things to do today before we go to the other realm and talk to Fowler.I wonder what the meeting is about?Do you suppose he’s going to tell us who did the job?I’d like to congratulate them if I knew.And to thank them for getting rid of the bastard.”
