Mother taught me to be polite to dragons. Particularly polite, I mean; she taught me to be ordinary polite to everyone. Well, it makes sense.

With all the enchanted princesses and disguised wizards and transformed kings and so on wandering around, you never know whom you might be talking to.

But dragons are a special case.

Not that I ever actually talked to one until after I left home. Even at the edge of the Enchanted Forest, dragons aren't exactly common.

The principle is what matters, though: Always be polite to a dragon.

It's harder than it sounds. Dragon etiquette is incredibly complicated, and if you make a mistake, the dragon eats you.

Fortunately, I was well trained.

Dragon etiquette wasn't the only thing Mother taught me. Reading and writing are unusual skills for a poor boy, but I learned them. Music, too, and fighting. Don't ask me where Mother learned to use a sword.

Until I was thirteen, I didn't know we had one in the house. I even learned a little magic. Mother wasn't exactly pleased; but growing up on the edge of the Enchanted Forest, I had to know some things.

Mother is tall-about two inches taller than I am-and slender, and very impressive when she wants to be. Her hair is black, like mine, but much longer. Most of the time she wears it in two braids wound around and around her head, but when she really wants to impress someone she lets it hang straight to her feet. A lot of the disguised princes who stopped at our cottage on their way into the Enchanted Forest thought Mother was a sorceress.

You can't really blame them. Who else would live at the edge of a place like that?

Sometimes I thought they were right. Mother always knew what directions to give them, even if they didn't tell her what they were looking for. I never saw her do any real magic, though, until the day the wizard came.