Page 11 of The Dragon King’s Pet

“Hush,” Maryon replied. She turned her attention back to Mika. “You look tired, my lady, and you seem to have been through a lot. Allow us to take care of you. You will feel better after your bath.”

Perhaps it was only because she was lonely and scared, but Mika relented. Whoever these women were, they did not seem to intend her any harm, and it seemed that they would possibly be in trouble with this king who was holding her prisoner if she did not allow them to do at least some of their work. She wasn’t about to get anybody fired, that wasn’t her style.

“Okay,” she said. “I guess this isn’t any weirder than a spa treatment. And I do need to relax…”

“Thank you, Lady Mika,” Maryon said. They placed the bowls on a large marbled stand evidently constructed for the purpose and beckoned for Mika to sit on a seat set in a half circle lower than the rest of the floor. Apparently this was the bathing area. The moment Mika sat, the women began their work in a familiar way.

Mika really could almost make believe that she was at a very strange beauty spa as her hair was brushed out and wetted, lathered with a soft scented soap, and massaged until she felt vaguely human again. The younger handmaiden gave her some water to drink, cool spring fluid that quenched her thirst.

“You’re very beautiful,” Maryon said as she massaged Mika’s scalp.

“Thank you,” Mika said, almost on autopilot. “Tell me, Maryon. Am I insane, or are there dragons flying around outside?”

“You have not lost your senses,” Maryon said. “There is a flightpath to the north and you will see many in the skies.”

“And nobody cares about the fact that there are dragons all over the place. Nobody is running or screaming or panicking? There’s stories about dragons coming to California long before I was born, but there was war. It doesn’t look like there’s any war here… have your people made a truce?”

“I think the king will wish to explain all these things to you,” Maryon replied, cupping her hand just below Mika’s hairline on her forehead and pouring a slow trickle of warm water through her freshly washed hair. “You have streaks of red at the very base of your hair, my lady.”

“It’s my natural hair color, I changed it,” Mika admitted.

“Were you attempting to disguise yourself?”

“No.” Mika allowed herself to laugh, in spite of her strange circumstances. “I just like trying different colors.”

“Strange,” Maryon said. “But it is alluring.”

“How do you do it?” the shy Lythia piped up, blushing as she did.

“Well, to go lighter, you need a bleach. To go darker, you need a pigment that will hold. There’s lots of commercially available dyes.”

“Not here,” Lythia said. “There isn’t anything like that here.”

“Lythia, fetch me more hot water,” Maryon said, shooing the younger woman away. “I’m sorry,” she said when the younger woman obeyed. “She is very curious about you, and where you come from.”

“You mean, New York?”

Maryon smiled and did not reply. She had rinsed the last of the shampoo from Mika’s hair and was applying conditioning agents that smelled delicious, like berries and chocolate. Her long fingers worked the concoction into Mika’s hair with practiced ease and in spite of everything she had been through, Mika was starting to relax. Wherever she was, she was being looked after.

“I do really need to make a call soon,” she said, her eyes half-closing like a cat. “My friends will call the police if I don’t get back soon, and then my parents will find out I’m not at summer college like I said I was. And then my parents will freak out and my dad, you really don’t want to mess with him when he’s angry. So I’ve got to make sure that they don’t think I’m missing.”

“You’re worried about upsetting your parents,” Maryon said. “That’s sweet.”

“Sweet?” Mika smirked. “It’s self-preservation. My father is going to kill me if he finds out what I did.”

“Well, I don’t think you need to worry too much about that,” Maryon soothed as she rinsed Mika’s hair again, then began to slide Mika’s shirt from her shoulders and began to soap her body. Mika thought about protesting, but it was soon apparent that Maryon knew how to give a massage and Mika was in need of comforting.

“It was said you’ve been feeling unwell,” Maryon said as she ran her hands down Mika’s left arm.

“I wasn’t unwell,” Mika said. “My friends got some mushroom tea and we drank it and then everything got crazy. I don’t know what happened, but I had the weirdest dreams and then I woke up here, so I am guessing I must have gone to the wrong hotel. Maybe your king was kind enough to take me in.”

“He has certainly taken an interest in you, and he is very wise and very kind,” Maryon said, her tone becoming reverent. “You are very fortunate to have a second audience with him.”

“A second audience?”

“You met him, I believe, in a state of advanced inebriation,” Maryon said. “It has been the talk of the household for quite some hours now. You already have some fame as a result.”

“Really? Good fame or bad fame?” Mika giggled to herself. “There’s really only one kind of fame, I guess. This is so confusing. I don’t think I’m going to take mushrooms again.”