The dragon sizzled on the pyre in the center of the forest clearing. Sir Geoffrey watched its iridescent metal scales ripple as fat beneath them bubbled and popped. Grease dripped onto the burning logs. He and his two men had worked for hours to build up the fire and now could barely keep their eyes open. The wine -- gone now -- was probably a factor.
       When their horses began snorting, it took Sir Geoffrey a moment to rouse himself. He turned from the fire to see a girl walking from the shadows of the trees. In twilight, the glow from the bonfire gave her ruddy face an orange cast. A red scarf covered her hair, and she wore a tan cloak of handspun wool. Her right hand gripped a shepherd's crook taller than she was. He squinted. The girl looked about thirteen, not yet a woman.
       When she got closer, her small voice called, "That's mine."
       Sir Geoffrey rose unsteadily from the log he'd been sitting on. "What is?"
       "My dragon."
       He glanced back at the bonfire as burning branches settled, sending a cloud of sparks into the air. His men had stopped putting wood on the fire over an hour ago, and the blaze was slowly dying down. The smoke must have been visible for miles. Had that led her here? He blinked away smoke. "What do you mean, your dragon?"
       "It ate my sheep."
       Edwin, sitting on a log by the fire, laughed. The heavyset man didn't bother getting to his feet. "That makes you its victim, girl, not its master."
       "I've been tracking it for three days," she said. Her soft voice barely carried over the roar of the bonfire.
       "Who are you?" asked Sir Geoffrey.
       "Beatrix, daughter of Gabriela."
       "Well, daughter Beatrix." His tongue felt thick, and he spoke slowly, to not slur his words. "The three of us set out at dawn this morning. The king ordered us to find and slay the dragon that's been preying on sheep in the hills."
       "My sheep." Her brown eyes regarded him intently.
       She was foolishly brave for a girl alone in the forest. "You're lucky we found it before you did," he said. "You don't even have a sword."
       "We can offer you some of the meat," said Litton. The smaller man gestured to a plank near the fire, where chunks of meat carved from the dragon's soft underbelly lay half-eaten.
       "You're eating it?" she said incredulously.
       "Why let it go to waste?" said Sir Geoffrey. Its gamey flavor reminded him of venison.
       She looked concerned. "Are you sure that's wise?"
       "Indeed," said Edwin, "it was raised on the finest lost sheep."
       Beatrix frowned. "I didn't lose them. They were stolen. Did the king offer a reward?"
       "Gold medals," said Litton. "There will be a ceremony at the castle when we return with proof."
       "Proof?"
       This simple shepherd knew nothing of hunting dragons. "The dragon's gizzard. Such a beast is too large to drag back to the castle." Sir Geoffrey was swaying a bit from the wine and sat down heavily on the log.
       "She doesn't know about the gizzard," said Edwin.
       Beatrix pursed her lips but didn't contradict him.
       "It holds anything a dragon eats that it can't digest," explained Sir Geoffrey. "Sometimes gold and jewels, which the dragon is attracted to by their glitter. That's why we're roasting it. The dragon's scales are too hard to cut through."
       "Still," said Beatrix, "you managed to kill it with your swords."
       Sir Geoffrey's men looked at him. No need to tell the girl what had really happened. They'd found the dragon in the clearing, sated from a meal like a snake that swallowed a rat whole. The monster was lethargic and barely able to move. Normally, a dragon this size would have taken days to track and would have been nearly impossible to kill. It had taken them hours to gather wood for the pyre. When they'd tied ropes around the dragon's hind legs, it had struggled. They'd had to whip their skittish horses to haul it onto the woodpile. Flint and steel had gotten the bonfire going, blazing until Sir Geoffrey was convinced the dragon had stopped wheezing. They'd let the fire die down after that.
       "The sheep were all we had," said Beatrix in a choked voice. "That and the garden for Mum's herbs." She watched the dragon sizzling on the pyre. "If you let me have the gizzard, we could buy some lambs and start over."
       "Let you have the gizzard?" Edwin laughed and shook his head.
       "Certainly not," said Sir Geoffrey.
       "But you'll have your medals," she argued. "Just cut open the gizzard to see what's inside. Mum and I only need a tiny bit of the treasure to buy lambs. You keep the rest."
       "The gizzard's for the king," said Sir Geoffrey. "If we cut it open, what will he think? I'll tell you: that we stole the treasure."
       "But you're his knights. Just tell him what happened."
       The girl knew nothing of the conniving court. Other knights would swear that Sir Geoffrey was a thief.
       "We've avenged your bloody sheep," growled Edwin. "What more do you want?"
       The corners of Beatrix's mouth turned down.
       "We could bring you back with us," said Litton. "Another wench for the castle."
       Her eyes narrowed. "I'm a shepherd, not a wench."
       Sir Geoffrey shook his head. "A shepherd doesn't herd dragons. Was your foolish plan to snag it by the neck with your crook and lead it home to your mother? Men battle dragons with swords, shields, and lances."
       "I had a plan," she said, barely audible.
       Sir Geoffrey gestured at the fire. "Your plan has gone up in smoke. Come join us by the fire."
       She didn't move.
       He sighed. "How big was your flock?"
       "One ram, two ewes, and two lambs."
       He gave a disparaging laugh. "You call that a flock? Did it carry them off in one swoop?"
       She shook her head. "The first time, I was on the hillside, high above the valley. I heard something like leather flapping in the wind and turned to see the dragon fly toward me from the other side of the hill. It was coming fast, and I was too scared to make a sound. It snatched up the ram, which struggled, bleating in terror. The dragon rose and turned in the air, flying back the way it had come."
       "You're lucky it didn't carry you off instead," said Sir Geoffrey. "I suppose it had seen men with lances before. It probably thought your staff was a lance."
       She shrugged.
       "And then it took the others?" he said.
       "One by one, as the days passed," said Beatrix. "I couldn't abandon them or my mother."
       Sir Geoffrey wondered what had happened to the father, who should have arranged to marry off his daughter. Though now, there wasn't a single sheep for her dowry. At the sound of snoring, he turned. The girl's pathetic story had put both Edwin and Litton to sleep. They were exhausted from building the pyre and getting the dragon on it.
       Time to send the girl on her way. She'd start begging next, and he wouldn't spare coins for beggars. "Go home. Your mother will be worried about you."
       Beatrix shook her head. "It was her idea."
       "To herd a dragon? What a foolish woman."
       "Mum told me not to get close. Just follow it until it was finished."
       "Finished?"
       "We were down to just the two lambs," said Beatrix. "The dragon hadn't taken them yet, but it had taken the ewes, so there was no milk for them. Mum chose herbs from our garden, and we wove them into the lambs' wool. The dragon came again and took both of them at once. I watched where it flew and followed. I found bloody grass in a clearing where it had swallowed the lambs whole. I kept tracking it. The dragon was getting slower and weaker. It no longer had the strength to fly."
       Despite the bonfire's warmth, Sir Geoffrey's skin prickled. "What herbs?"
       "Nightshade. Mandrake. Henbane. I don't know the names of them all."
       Sir Geoffrey called hoarsely, "Edwin! Litton! Wake up!"
       The men didn't rouse. He tried to get to his feet, but his muscles had lost all strength. A veil was drawing over the edges of his vision. Beatrix approached and stroked his cheek with her small fingers, but his face had gone numb. He couldn't feel her touch.
       "Mum said the king would never give a reward to someone like us," she said. "Thank you for telling me about the gizzard." She looked up at the dragon on the pyre. "I'll need your sword."