An extract from Anastasia Kim’s high fantasy novel: a captivating tale of enchantment, intrigue and the connections that shape our lives - sitting in a café yourself is an optional extra!

Chapter 1

Dragon Café

In a town far, far away

Over the hills

In a brightly lit café

There lives a dragon

That makes crème brûlée

But the story did not start out that way…

“Bloody rain,” I muttered as I opened the door to the café in the early hours of the morning. It was raining sheep and dogs outside, and no one in their right mind could be found outdoors in this weather. I was the exception. Time was money, and I had to open my business, though I was rather skeptical about there being any potential customers.

The café that I was suckered into running, courtesy of my eccentric aunt, was quaint. It had a nice homey feeling and was full of esoteric reading materials and different metaphysical knickknacks, like any other café in the city. People came here to drink magical brews and socialize. I hated the lot of them. It was just my luck that my aunt got bored of the business, and I was unemployed at the time. I wiped down the countertop angrily, remembering how I was maneuvered into taking on this job.

As I took time to wipe each table, I noticed that something was amiss. There was a mug, dirty, no doubt, sitting out on one of the tables. And it was not just any mug; it was my favorite mug. Glossy, belly-round, and forest green. It was a mug reserved only for my politest regular customers. This mug was special, and it was sitting out as if someone discarded it carelessly.

“Is there no order to the universe?” I lamented as I went to pick up the mug. The mug was surprisingly heavy. With a growing sense of dread, I looked inside. Right enough, inside the mug, two glowing yellow eyes peered up at me from an abyss of darkness. As I processed what I was seeing, the eyes elicited a mournful mewl. There was a dragon in my favorite mug.

My first reaction, after staring at the dragon dumbly, was to turn the mug upside down and shake it hard in an attempt to dislodge the creature. The dragon, all black but for glowing yellow eyes, tumbled out with a squeak and made to escape under one of the armchairs.

“Oh no, you don’t!” I cried out, grabbing a broom. The next five minutes were spent chasing the super quick vermin around the floor of the café. At last, I had him, presumably a “him,” cornered. Overcoming my squeamishness, I grabbed the dragon by the scruff of the neck between my index and thumb and carried him outside. I made a great show of tossing him out and clapping dust from my hands. If anyone were watching, I would have expected applause. With a great sense of accomplishment, I shut the door of the café behind me, leaving the dragon to seek shelter elsewhere.

The café was a mess: chairs were overturned, there was dust everywhere, and my favorite mug was rolling about on the floor. I sighed, resigning myself to starting the cleaning process all over again. Halfway through wiping dust off a small table, I heard a scratching at the door. Thinking it was an illiterate customer trapped out in the rain and seeking shelter, I went to the door and opened it. There was no one there. I looked out into the street, and shaking my head, shut the door again.

“Murleow,” I heard behind me. There were notes of questioning in this mewl mixed with a purr. I turned around and found the dragon on the counter top, staring at me.

“Get out!” I said harshly. I wanted no part in whatever nonsense the dragon brought with it. Everyone knew that if a dragon appeared, there would be heroic adventure to be had. I wanted none of it. I was sensible; I could not afford to have my life go out of control because of some pest. The dragon looked at me sorrowfully but made no move to leave. Instead, it crawled towards the cup used as a tip jar. Lithely, it slithered inside it and started purring.

Thinking quickly, I picked up the “tip-jar” cup and carried it outside. Surely once the dragon found its “horde” of minor penny tips, it would make no move to re-enter the café. It began to rain harder, and I hurried inside, shutting the door so firmly and finally that the door frame squeaked in protest.

~/*~

The day progressed mundanely, or as mundanely as it could in a magickal society. Having to deal with hysterical magick users that wanted additional shots of Calming Brew or teenagers that insisted they needed the best Charisma Boost was not easy. When I first began working at the café, the number of orders overwhelmed me, and it was very hard to refrain from telling every other customer to just drown their sorrows and anxieties in alcohol. But, as time passed, it got easier. I began to judge less, and the clientele began to expect less of me. No one expected that I listen to their problems that I did not care about, and no one expected that I dole out sage advice like my aunt did when she ran the place.

“What a cutie!” squealed a young University student. She was the type that expected all her drinks to be colorful and with extra sparkles.

I turned to the shout and saw, to my dismay, the dragon lounging in an abandoned cup. He must have gotten in with one of the customers. The dragon looked directly at me and mewled.

“Can’t you do anything else?” I sighed. The dragon, taking my response as permission, crawled over the chairs and the floor towards the counter where I stood. Experimentally, I took a coin from the till. The dragon’s eyes shone with a greed that would rival a two-year-old’s when seeing something that should not be in a two-year-old’s mouth. The dragon hesitantly crawled over to me. First the front paws would move as far as they could extend followed by the back paws. He looked somewhat like an oversized black caterpillar. When he got within reach, I grabbed him and, to the protests of the entire café, carried him outside.

“Do you people want a health and sanitation hazard?” I shouted irately after returning to boos and protests at my mistreatment of the dragon. The café quieted.

This process repeated several times, with the dragon sneaking back in with each new customer. He, the dragon, got cleverer in avoiding me as time passed. On his last “visit,” he hid in a hood of an adamant “defender of animal welfare.” I kicked him out of the café along with the “defender.”

~/*~

Finally, the last of the customers left, and the day was over. I could clean up and go home. I sighed again as I heard a pathetic mewl from under one of the chairs. The dragon was picking up crumbs off the floor and looked rather miserable. I sat down heavily at one of the tables, utterly bone-tired, with a dish of day-old crème brûlée. The crème brûlée was a flop at the café, as I did not have the money to order the necessary equipment so I could make the top of the dessert nice and caramelized. The dragon under the table mewled again and slowly crawled up the table leg. He approached the dessert dish with great caution.

I decided to show some mercy, broke off some of the dessert, and set it in front of him. He sniffed at it cautiously and made an experimental lick. Then, to my great shock and surprise, the tiny runt of a dragon reared up and blew a small cloud of flame at the piece of dessert. It caramelized perfectly.

“Huh, there may be some use for you after all,” I said as I pushed the rest of the crème brûlée towards the dragon. The dragon puffed himself up and caramelized the larger portion as well. Then he proceeded to consume the larger portion.

“Hey, that’s mine!” I cried and tried to wrestle the plate away from the dragon. He snarled about as menacingly as he could manage in response and puffed himself up again. Sensing danger, I quickly retrieved a coin from my pocket and offered it to the dragon. The dragon calmed, pacified. We assessed each other as I ate the now-perfect crème brûlée.

“What am I to do with you?” I asked the dragon. He mewled in response and hugged the coin closer to himself.

“I can’t just let you stay here.” I tried to reason with the reptile.

The bell over the door rang signaling a customer. I turned, irritated, in order to tell whomever it was that the café was closed, but found myself nose to nose with my aunt. Auntie was eccentric, even by standards of a magickal society. When the fashion of the year dictated that one had to be decked out in all black, she chose pastel colors for her clothes, accessories, makeup, and hair. Due to her shape, she came off resembling a cream puff pastry. Her appearance fooled many people, but I knew that she was one of the most powerful magick users in the city. She made quite the furor last year when she turned the city mayor into a genderless frog. She only turned him back when his wife started to miss him.

“Hello, dear Nephew,” she greeted me magnanimously.

“Hello, Auntie,” I replied and subtly covered the dragon with the empty crème brûlée dish.

“How is my business faring? I hear it’s in good hands,” she commented while absently looking around. That was another thing about her; I never knew where she heard things from, but she was very well informed. She must have had a web of informants all around the city, like a spider.

“Would you be a dear and bring me some Creativity Concoction and some crème brûlée?” she said slyly. I swallowed nervously and set about preparing her drink. I made a bouquet of lavender, rosemary, and sage and set it alight over a cup of warm milk.

“Don’t forget the Withania somnifera,” she called out from the table. I mentally slapped myself and added the root powder to the concoction. Stirring three times widdershins, and then once deosil, I blew on the beverage to cool it slightly and then handed it to my aunt. I excused myself to retrieve the crème brûlée from the walk-in ice room. My aunt frowned as I delivered the less than spectacular dessert to the table.

Perhaps I may have been turned into a frog or something equally as slimy in the near future had it not been for the little dragon. Sensing crème brûlée, he crawled out from under the dish and made his way over to my aunt’s plate. I could only watch with a mounting sense of dread as the dragon puffed himself up and caramelized the top of the dissatisfying crème brûlée.

I came to my senses first. I quickly shoved the abandoned gold coin at the dragon, effectively distracting him so that he would not eat my aunt’s dessert. My aunt raised her eyebrows at me. She did not appear to be shocked or surprised. This was much worse—she appeared to be scheming.

“I suppose that is one way of doing it,” she said, smiling.

“This isn’t going to be a permanent thing,” I stuttered. “There is no way I’m letting a dragon run amuck in the café.”

“I do not see why not,” my aunt said lightly, but I could clearly hear that this was not a suggestion.

 “I will clear the legislative hurdles with the proper authorities,” she added.

And so, it was final. In a magickal city where oddities were the norm. There was now a small dragon living in my café. A dragon that makes crème brûlée. I could already feel a future of absurdity, trouble, and unnecessary disruption to my established routine beathing down my neck.

Dragon Café is available now in paperback.