Sass Meets Scales

An Invitation with Too Many Exclamation Marks

On Tuesday morning, Calliope Thistlewhip decided that what her life lacked was a dragon.

Her life already contained a glitter cupboard, an unfinished kite, three warnings from the mushroom choir and a beetle she had appointed Minister of Surprise. The beetle had resigned. Calliope had not accepted the resignation because it was written on a leaf and she had mistaken it for lunch.

Still, a dragon would improve matters.

In Twizzlethorn Wood, a pocket of the Deepwoods where paths wandered around people they disliked, Calliope was known for excellent ideas followed by considerable sweeping. She had golden wings, a gold dress and the sort of smile that made shopkeepers count their spoons.

She was supposed to be making a lantern for Saturday’s Fire and Fizz Gala. Instead, she had designed an entrance.

There would be music. There would be a dramatic pause. There would, ideally, be a dragon.

Barnaby Thistlebane the Seventeenth lived under a root arch beside the old warm spring. He was a small green dragon with an orange crest, a collection of chipped teacups and eyebrows capable of discouraging conversation from across a clearing. He liked predictable afternoons. Calliope considered this a cry for assistance.

She arrived carrying a ribbon, two invitations and enough enthusiasm to frighten a wheelbarrow.

“Wonderful news,” she announced. “I’ve chosen you.”

Barnaby looked over his cup. “For removal?”

“For the gala. You’ll be my grand entrance.”

“I already have an entrance. It’s behind you. Please use it.”

Calliope laughed and reached for his foreleg with the ribbon.

Barnaby moved it away.

“No decorations,” he said.

“It’s only a little—”

“No.”

The second word landed with surprising weight. Calliope stopped. Usually, people laughed, chased her, or sighed in ways she chose to interpret as applause. Barnaby simply waited.

She lowered the ribbon.

“You don’t have to be cross.”

“I was having a lovely time being cross before you arrived. This is something else.”

Calliope looked at the invitation. She had drawn him on it already, surrounded by fireworks and wearing a crown considerably larger than his head.

“I thought you might like being invited.”

“You told me what I was going to do. That’s a different service.”

For once, she had no immediate reply. Somewhere overhead, the former Minister of Surprise flew into a leaf.

Calliope sat on the opposite stone.

“Would you like to come?”

“What happens there?”

“Lanterns. Music. Lemon fizz. A procession around the old crater garden. The local Fairy Queen gives a speech about community while everyone watches the biscuit table.”

“What biscuits?”

“Ginger knots.”

Barnaby’s eyes narrowed. This was not interest. It was a biscuit investigation.

“And what would I have to do?”

“Whatever you liked,” Calliope said, then winced at how unfamiliar the arrangement sounded. “You could look at the lanterns. Sit somewhere quiet. Judge the ginger knots.”

“I would judge them regardless.”

They made an agreement. Barnaby would come for one hour. Nobody would ride him, decorate him or announce him as anything other than Barnaby. If he wanted to leave, he would leave. Calliope repeated the conditions, though she tried to make “one hour” sound negotiable.

“One,” he said.

She nodded.

On Wednesday she returned with her lantern materials and asked whether she could work beside the spring. Barnaby pointed to a flat stone. On Thursday she brought a quiet wind-up beetle band, which became quieter still when he removed its winding key. On Friday they tested the lantern.

It looked like a splendid golden sunflower. It also listed heavily to the left.

“Artistic,” Calliope declared.

“Structural,” Barnaby replied, and showed her where the frame needed another brace.

She let him add it. He let her paint a tiny orange flourish on the brace. By sunset, the lantern could stand upright without being complimented.

Calliope was beginning to suspect that doing something together might be different from having an audience.

She decided not to mention this. It sounded dangerously like learning.

The Gala Acquires a Practical Problem

By Saturday evening, the crater garden shone with lanterns shaped like everything the committee considered uplifting. There were stars, swans, a heroic pear and one very long sausage whose maker had misunderstood the theme.

Calliope and Barnaby arrived through the ordinary entrance.

This cost Calliope more courage than she had expected. She had imagined trumpets. She had rehearsed a wave. Somewhere in her cupboard lay a small bag labeled EMERGENCY ENTRANCE GLITTER.

She had left it at home.

“You’re very quiet,” Barnaby observed.

“I’m having an ordinary entrance. It requires concentration.”

They placed their sunflower lantern on its little wheeled platform. Barnaby checked the brace. Calliope straightened a petal. Then he inspected the biscuit table with the solemnity of a visiting judge.

“Acceptable,” he said after his third ginger knot.

“That means wonderful,” Calliope told the baker.

“It means acceptable. Wonderful would involve a fourth.”

For twenty minutes, the evening went beautifully. Calliope introduced him by his name. Nobody sat on him. A moth asked whether his orange crest was available in other colors, and Barnaby said he would consult his tailor.

Then the procession marshal spotted them.

“A dragon! Splendid! We can put you at the front. Can you breathe a great sheet of flame when Her Majesty waves?”

Calliope felt the old idea leap up inside her. A grand entrance, delayed but still possible. The whole garden would watch. Someone might even find a trumpet.

Beside her, Barnaby went very still.

“He’s here as a guest,” she said.

The marshal blinked. “Just a small sheet?”

“No sheet,” said Calliope.

Barnaby took another biscuit. He did not thank her, but he moved the plate slightly closer to her hand.

At the center of the garden stood the Moonflower Wheel, a tall wooden frame carrying twelve lanterns. When its crank turned, the flowers were meant to open one by one. The committee had tested it extensively without lanterns, decorations or an audience, which Barnaby privately considered a limited experiment.

The Fairy Queen raised her glass of lemon fizz.

“May our community—”

The wheel gave a noise like a wardrobe arguing with a duck.

One lantern opened. Three closed. The heroic pear tipped sideways, and a garland wound itself around the axle. The platform lurched toward the biscuit table.

There are emergencies people prepare for, and emergencies that unite a room immediately.

“The ginger knots,” Barnaby said.

He sprang behind the platform and dug his claws into the packed earth. It stopped rolling, but the wheel continued straining against its tangled garland.

Calliope flew toward the crank.

“Shall I blast it loose?” she called, gathering a bright knot of fairy magic between her hands.

“Not unless you want twelve burning flowers and a flying pear.”

She let the magic fade.

“Then what?”

“Tell them to stop turning the handle.”

It was an embarrassingly useful suggestion.

The marshal stopped cranking. Two sturdy gardeners wedged stones beneath the wheels. Barnaby stepped clear, breathing hard, and pointed at the trapped garland.

“It’s pulled the retaining pin sideways. I can reach it from underneath, but someone needs to lift the ribbon off the teeth.”

Calliope hovered beside the axle. From this angle, the trouble looked small: a loop of decorative silk caught where it had no business being. She had tied that loop herself while helping the committee that afternoon.

She had thought it made the mechanism prettier.

“That one’s mine,” she admitted.

Barnaby looked up.

“The ribbon?”

“The extremely unhelpful ribbon.”

“Then you’ll know where the knot is.”

No speech. No grand accusation. Just a job she could do.

Calliope untied it carefully while Barnaby eased the pin straight. The gardeners held the frame. The baker moved the ginger knots to higher ground, demonstrating the calm leadership for which the evening would remember her.

When the wheel turned again, all twelve flowers opened.

The crowd applauded. Calliope nearly swept into a bow before noticing Barnaby backing away from the center of attention.

She followed him to the quieter edge of the garden.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I made a working thing into a prettier thing that didn’t work.”

“You also untangled it.”

“After nearly suggesting we explode it.”

“A versatile evening.”

His hour was up. Calliope could hear the band beginning, and their sunflower lantern still waited for its turn in the procession.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

Barnaby looked at the lantern, then at the path home.

“I could stay until ours goes around.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

They walked beside their sunflower as it trundled through the lights. It did not breathe fire, announce them or attract a trumpet. It stood straight, glowed warmly and completed the circuit without threatening a biscuit.

Calliope found that she liked it very much.

A Friendship with Room for Grumbling

Three days later, on Tuesday, Calliope returned to the warm spring with an invitation and a paper bag.

“The woodland fair,” she said. “Would you like to go?”

Barnaby regarded her suspiciously. “What’s in the bag?”

“Ginger knots.”

“A serious proposal, then.”

She sat on her usual stone. It had become her usual stone without anyone making an announcement, which pleased her in a way an announcement probably would have spoiled.

“There’s a lantern stall, a jam competition and a beetle rodeo.”

“Absolutely not.”

“The beetles are wooden. You wind them up and try to keep a teacup on a tray while they bump around.”

Barnaby considered this. “That is an unusually specific activity.”

“The prize is a toaster.”

His gaze shifted toward the blackened bread tongs beside his hearth.

Calliope pretended not to notice.

The fair occupied a meadow beyond the root bridges. By noon, the jam judge had become trapped in a polite argument with seven blackberry growers, and a very small orchestra was refusing to compete with the coconut shy.

At the beetle rodeo, teams of two guided a tray between moving wooden beetles. One teammate held the tray; the other turned little gates along the course. Ring the bell with the cup still upright, and you qualified for the final round.

Calliope had already invented a magnificent aerial maneuver.

Then she looked at Barnaby’s feet, the narrow path and the painted wooden insects rattling industriously through it.

“Would you like to carry the tray or work the gates?”

“Tray,” he said. “You can reach the high catches.”

“We should have a signal.”

“Stop means stop.”

“And forward?”

“I was considering forward.”

“Our rivals will never crack the code.”

The first round went well until Calliope spotted a shortcut. If she opened two gates together, Barnaby could slip between them and save several seconds.

She reached for the second catch.

“Wait,” he said.

She waited.

A wooden beetle rattled through the space where his tail would have been.

“Ah,” said Calliope.

“Indeed.”

They finished slowly. The cup remained upright. A team of mice finished faster, but their cup had acquired a large crack and an occupant.

“That’s our cousin,” one mouse explained.

“Still counts as a spillage,” said the judge.

In the final round, the beetles moved faster. Calliope called the gaps, Barnaby carried the tray, and neither attempted anything that would have looked magnificent on a poster.

They were almost at the bell when a gate jammed halfway open.

Calliope could squeeze through. Barnaby could not.

The crowd began shouting advice. Most of it concerned speed, and none of it concerned the dragon holding a cup of water while a wooden beetle repeatedly bumped his ankle.

“We can lose,” Calliope told him.

Barnaby glanced up.

“I know,” he said. “Lift the catch. Gently.”

She did. He nudged the gate at its hinge with one claw. A grain of gravel fell out. Together they moved through, rang the bell and set the cup down with a tiny, dignified splash.

They came second.

The toaster went to two hedgehogs who had practiced all winter and deserved it tremendously, though Barnaby reserved judgment on their victory dance.

The second prize was a bread basket.

“An insult with handles,” he said.

Calliope laughed so hard she had to sit down.

They bought two warm buns and put them in their magnificent disappointment. Then they wandered past the lantern stall, where a small golden sunflower hung among the stars.

The stallholder recognized them.

“The pair who saved the gala!”

Calliope opened her mouth. For a moment she could see the improved version: daring flight, terrible danger, her own spectacular magic illuminating the garden.

“We untangled a ribbon,” she said. “Barnaby fixed the pin. The gardeners stopped the wheels.”

“And the baker saved the biscuits,” Barnaby added.

“The real hero.”

They went home by the quiet path. Calliope carried the basket for the first half; Barnaby carried it for the second. Beneath the root arch, she set the remaining bun beside his chipped cup.

“I thought you’d make my life more exciting,” she admitted.

“A dreadful misunderstanding.”

“You did, though. Just differently.”

He looked at the basket, the orange flourish on their lantern brace, the flat stone where her paints had left a small golden mark.

“You make afternoons less predictable,” he said.

“Is that bad?”

“Occasionally.”

She smiled. “May I give you a hug?”

Barnaby sighed with enormous ceremony and lifted one foreleg.

“Briefly.”

She wrapped her arms around him, careful of his wings. He leaned into her shoulder just enough to ruin the severity of his expression.

“You look pleased,” she whispered.

“A lighting problem.”

When she let go, he moved the second teacup onto the stone beside hers.

There would be other fairs, other arguments and at least one future incident involving the Minister of Surprise, who had returned to public service without being consulted. Calliope would still have extravagant ideas. Barnaby would still grumble. Neither had become a different creature simply because the other had stayed.

But the next time Calliope arrived with a plan, she would begin with a question.

And Barnaby, who had once considered all invitations an administrative nuisance, would sometimes say yes.

Especially if the biscuits were acceptable.