TAMITHA WAS ALREADY high in the air by the time she realized a dragon had snatched her. She’d been moseying along the road, making up a poem about pasta in her head, when the creature swooped down from the clouds, all bulging red muscles and sharp scales. The dragon flapped his enormous batwings, wrapped his bronze claws around her, and took off into the sky before Tamitha could think of a word that rhymed with“linguine.”
Thousands of feet below her, vast forests glided by, looking like so many heads of broccoli. At last a stone tower came into view. The dragon descended, flew through a window on the tower’s east side, and dropped Tamitha in a clear space on the stone floor. The rest of the floor, and most of every other available surface, was covered in junk: staggering towers of grease-speckled pots, dozens of used-up watercolor palettes, hopelessly tangled yo-yos and paddleballs, and about a thousand of those aluminum tabs from the tops of soft drink cans.
“All right, girl,” the dragon said. “You are my prisoner, and if you don’t want to face my wrath, you must clean my castle.”
Tamitha brushed off her knees. “Is that why you snatched me out of the street? Because your house is messy?”
He wouldn’t have phrased it that way himself, but the dragon conceded this was more or less so.
“Couldn’t you have advertised for a housekeeper?” said Tamitha.
Now that she mentioned it, this seemed so obviously like the sensible thing to do that the dragon was embarrassed. To cover up his embarrassment, he shouted, “Silence, minion! You can start with the dishes.” He launched through the window and flew out of sight.
Actually Tamitha didn’t mind doing the dishes, provided she could sing while she did them, and she might have complied if the dragon had asked nicely and offered to dry. Under the circumstances, she looked about for the exit instead. A quick survey of the room revealed three doors off to Tamitha’s right. Tamitha assumed they were locked, but she decided to try the knobs anyway. She was very much surprised when the first door swung open without so much as a creak.
Denne historien er fra January 2018-utgaven av Cricket Magazine for Kids.
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Denne historien er fra January 2018-utgaven av Cricket Magazine for Kids.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
The Tale Of Paddy Ahern
THERE ONCE WAS a lad named Paddy Ahern who trod the green hills of Limerick, Ireland, offering to help farmers with their chores in return for food and lodging.
The Pedestrians
EACH TIME HELGA Estby looked over her shoulder, the big cat was there. Crossing Wyoming’s Red Desert on foot, in the dust and heat of August 1896, was tough.
The Magic Gifts
A Basque Folk Tale
The Dragon's Scales
“THREE YEARS I'VE been waiting, when Torquil promised he’d return them in three days. I’m not waiting three more days to get back what’s mine!” The dragon punctuated his remarks with a smoky snort and a lashing tail.
The Water Bucketre
A Chinese Folk Tale.
Between The Pages
One rainy night, while alone in the castle library with her talking gargoyle, Marcus, Princess Audrey finds a book with the odd title Finding Angel. Meanwhile, in modern times, a girl named Angel is celebrating her thirteenth birthday.
Swim Buddies
I LEAN OVER the side of the catamaran and peer into the crystal blue water. This is my last chance, I think.
The Bushwhackers
I CAN’T ABIDE living one more day in this pigpen!” I groaned and rolled out of bed to pull on my dress.
As American as Appleless Pie!
NOTHING IS MORE American than the humble apple pie. There’s even an old saying to prove it: “as American as apple pie.” So it may come as a surprise that many early settlers who forged the trails of our expanding nation were often without apples to make this most American of desserts. As pioneers headed west in pursuit of territory and gold, they had to leave many things behind, including apples. Not only did life on the trail make fresh fruit like apples hard to carry and keep, apple trees were native only to the east coast, which made finding apples in the West nearly impossible.
The Man Who Built A Better Leg
THE CIVIL WAR was only a few weeks old when seven hundred and fifty Confederate recruits gathered in the fields around Philippi, Virginia. It was early June 1861, and as yet there had been no real battles. The men had eagerly volunteered, but most had no training as soldiers. Their only weapons were the ones they brought from home— old-fashioned flintlock muskets, cap and ball pistols, and a few shotguns.
