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Dealing With Dragons

Patricia C. Wrede
Chapters (22)
  1. Copyright
  2. Dedication
  3. Introduction
  4. 1
  5. 2
  6. 3
  7. 4
  8. 5
  9. 6
  10. 7
  11. 8
  12. 9
  13. 10
  14. 11
  15. 12
  16. 13
  17. 14
  18. 15
  19. 1
  20. Buy the Book
  21. Read all of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles
  22. About the Author

Copyright

Text copyright © 1990 by Patricia C. Wrede

Introduction copyright © 2015 by Patricia C. Wrede

All rights reserved. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Harcourt Children’s Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1990.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

Portions of chapters 1 and 2 were previously published in a slightly altered form as “The Improper Princess,” a short story in the collection Spaceships and Spells, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Wrede, Patricia C., 1953–

Dealing with dragons/by Patricia C. Wrede.

p. cm.—(Enchanted forest chronicles; bk.1)

Summary: Bored with traditional palace life, a princess goes off to live with a group of dragons and soon becomes involved in fighting against some disreputable wizards who want to steal away the dragons’ kingdom.

[1. Fairy tales. 2. Princesses—Fiction. 3. Dragons—Fiction. 4. Wizards—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ8.W92De 1990

[Fic]—dc20 89-24599

ISBN: 978-0-15-222900-9 hardcover

ISBN: 978-0-544-54122-1 paperback

eISBN 978-0-547-53864-8
v1.0915

Dedication

For ALAN CARL and ANNIE BUJOLD
Because they liked the other one a lot

Introduction

Dealing with Dragons is officially twenty-five years old this year, but the real beginning of the story is a good ten years older than that. Thirty-seven years ago, I sat down at my computer and typed, “Mother taught me to be polite to dragons.” That sentence became the first line of Talking to Dragons, which is now the fourth book in this series and which I wrote as a stand-alone (I thought then) in the early 1980s.

I didn’t know that I was in the process of inventing a character who would become one of my personal favorites. I didn’t even know Cimorene’s name when I wrote that line, only that she was the hero’s mother. Her appearance in that first story was very brief, though her influence pervades the book. Yet even though she was one of the characters I liked best when the book was finished, I didn’t plan on writing a book about her. If I thought about writing another book set in the Enchanted Forest at all, I thought in terms of continuing the story I’d started in Talking to Dragons, not about filling in Cimorene’s backstory.

Enter Jane Yolen, multifaceted writer, poet, and, at that particular moment, anthologist. She was collecting stories for a children’s anthology, and she asked if I would write one. I demurred, on the dual grounds that I have considerable difficulty in writing short fiction (I am a novelist by inclination) and that I didn’t write for children.

“You wrote Talking to Dragons,” Jane said. “Write me something like that.”