Zurfina is always a fun character to write.  She plays a smaller role in this book than she did in the first three (including book 0) because she takes off about halfway through.  We don’t find out where she went until book for, those chapters in which she appears for the most part taking place during book this story.  Of course, she always manages an entrance, even when she’s not a big part of the scene, such as this time with Senta and Hero.

The home of Zurfina the Magnificent and of course of Senta, her apprentice, sat less than three hundred yards west of the town square.  It had a fenced in yard of six acres with many large trees.  The little winding walkway through the natural pines and maples, made the yard seem like a quiet little forest.  There were a few houses in the area, though none were located on lots touching the sorceress’s.  Neighbors usually referred to Zurfina’s house as a “tower”, though it was in actuality just a small building, no larger in floor area than most other homes, but rising to five stories.  The ground floor was a kitchen, dining area, and storage rooms.  The first floor up was the living room and Bessemer’s chamber.  The second floor up was a bedroom and playroom for Senta.  Above that was Zurfina’s bedroom and boudoir.  The very top story was the sorceress’s private study, in which none were allowed.

Senta opened the heavily-carved pine door and led the others inside.  The ground floor, like the others was mostly one big room, with particular areas set aside by room dividers.  Bessemer immediately shot over to a pile of fluffy pillows in the corner of the dining area, turned around three times, then curled up into a ball that seemed impossibly small.  Senta carried the large loaf of bread to the pantry and opening the door, placed it inside.  She closed the door then looked around the room.

 “I know that book is down here somewhere.”

Every flat area in the room was covered with dirty dishes, books, stacks of papers, clothing, full and empty bottles and cans, and jars of preserved foods.

“We should stay here and clean up,” said Hero.

“When Zurfina finally comes down, she can just magic it clean.”

“Can’t you magic it clean?”

“Hmm.”  Senta raised an eyebrow.

“Never mind.  I don’t want you turning me into a ham sandwich by accident.”

“If you turn into a ham sandwich our deal about my not eating you is off,” said the dragon from the corner, without opening his eyes.

Suddenly Zurfina walked down the stairs in the center of the room.  She had a pale green plaster smeared across her face, including her eyelids, which were closed, but she didn’t seem to need to see to know where she was going.  She made every step on the stairs without the least hesitation.  Her hair was wet and mussed, but the girls could clearly see the bald spot over her right ear.  The pale green plaster on her face was the only thing that she was wearing.  Her naked body was on display with her constellation of two-inch star tattoos, one above each breast, one around her naval, and one on each hip bone.  Still with closed eyes, the sorceress reached the froredor, a magical ice box, opened it, and took out a carrot.  She bit the tip of the carrot as she turned around and walked back to the staircase.  The girls could now see the fourteen inch moon tattooed at the top of her back, and the eight inch flaming sun in the small of her back.

As soon as Zurfina had disappeared into the ceiling passage up to the next floor, both girls burst out laughing.

“Is that you, Senta?” called Zurfina’s voice from above.

“Yes!”  Senta called back.

“Clean up down there!”

Hero and Senta both burst out laughing again.

Bessemer is the character that changes the most in the first few books.  After all, he’s an egg in Book 0: Brechalon.  In Book 1: The Dark and Forbidding Land, he starts to play a real part in the story, but he only says about a dozen words in the whole book.  In The Drache Girl, he’s reached the point, where he is the equal (or more) than the human characters in the story.  He still plays an inferior role to Senta, as he does here when he shows up at the end of Senta’s magical duel with Wizard Bassington.

“Let’s not play that game,” said Bassington.  “Let’s play something a little better suited to our unique abilities.”

He held out his hand, waist high, palm down and said.  “Maiius Uuthanum nejor.”

Red smoke rose up from the ground just below his hand.  It swirled and coalesced into a shape.  The shape became a wolf.  Its red eyes seemed to glow and the hair on its back and shoulders stood up as it bared its dripping fangs and snarled at Senta.  She held out her own hand, palm pointed down.

“Maiius Uuthanum,” she said.

Green smoke rose from the ground below her hand, swirling around in a little cloud, finally billowing away to reveal a velociraptor with bright green and red feathers.

“A bird?” said Bassington, derisively.

The wolf lunged forward, snapping its teeth.  The velociraptor clamped its long jaw shut on the wolf’s snout, and grasped its head in its front claws.  The huge curved claw on the velociraptor’s hind foot slid down the canine’s belly, slicing it open and spilling steaming entrails out onto the gravel.  A moment later, in a swirl of multihued smoke, both creatures disappeared again.

“Prestus Uuthanum,” said Bassington, placing his right palm on his chest, and casting a spell of protection on his own body.

“Uuthanum uusteros pestor,” said Senta, spreading her arms out wide.  She seemed to split down the center as she stepped both right and left at the same time.  Where there had been one twelve-year-old girl a moment ago, there were now four twelve-year-old girls who looked exactly the same.

The wizard waved his hand and said.  “Ariana Uuthanum sembor.”  All four Sentas found themselves stuck in a mass of giant, sticky spider webs.

One of the blond girls fell down.  One of them pulled vainly at the webbing.  The third picked up a rock from the ground and threw it with all of her might at Bassington hitting him just above the temple.  The fourth waved her hand, saying the magic word “uuthanum”, and dispelling the webs.  The girl who had pulled at the webbing helped the fallen girl stand up, and then the two of them merged together.  The other two girls merged into her, and once again, there was only one Senta.

“Uuthanum uusteros vadia,” said Bassington and he disappeared.

Senta stood there for a moment, and then out of the corner of her eye, she saw several pieces of gravel shift on the ground to her left.  She pointed her finger in the direction.

“Uuthanum Regnum,” she said.

A ray of colorful, sparkling light sprayed from her fingertip in the direction she pointed.  Bassington cried out in surprise and reappeared, though he didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects of the spell, which usually left its victims covered in painful rashes.

“Erros Uuthanum tijiia,” he said.

A huge spectral hand, more than five feet across, appeared in the air in front of Senta.  The middle finger was bent back beneath the thumb, and then flicked Senta in the chest.  She fell backwards onto her bottom, crunching her bustle, and sliding several feet across the gravel road.  She struggled to suck in a breath.

“Time to say ‘uncle’, don’t you think?”  Bassington crossed his arms.

Senta tilted her head back and at last managed to pull some air into her lungs.  The wizard waited.

“Well?” he said, finally.

“The sky is purple,” said Senta.  “My dress is orange, and my dragon is going to bite your head off.”

Bassington stared for only a moment at Senta’s blue dress, before diving out of the way, just as Bessemer landed with a huge whomp right where he had been standing.

“Maiius Uuthanum nejor paj!” shouted Bassington, pointing toward the dragon, and then turned and ran north up the road as fast as he could.

Red smoke erupted just in front of Bessemer.  As it dissipated, it revealed a huge shaggy man-like creature, covered in white hair and more than seven feet tall.  Senta had never seen a gharhast ape before except in books, but she recognized one now that she saw it.  The ape bared a set of incredibly long fangs, and yelling out a tremendous roar, jumped onto the dragon.  Two very human looking hands grabbed the dragon around the neck as the ape attempted to dig its fangs into Bessemer’s neck.  The steel colored scales remained impenetrable, though a startled look was visible in the dragon’s eyes.

“Bugger all,” he said.

But then his serpentine tail whipped out, wrapping itself around the ape’s waist.  With one hand, Bessemer pushed the vicious anthropoid an arm’s length away.  Then with one quick motion, he bit off the ape’s head, chewed it several times, and then swallowed.  Blood spurted up from the creature’s severed neck like a fountain.

“Eww,” said Senta.

Then suddenly, as she had expected, the ape’s body burst into smoke and disappeared, leaving the steel dragon holding a few stray wisps in his hand.

“Oh my,” said Bessemer.

“What is it?”

“I think the part I ate turned to smoke too.”

Senta got to her feet and looked down the road.  Smedley Bassington was nowhere to be seen.  She felt the back of her dress.  Her bustle was hanging lopsidedly to the right.

“Kafira in a hand basket!  I can’t afford a new bustle.”

“That was pretty exciting,” said Bessemer.  “I’ve never seen a real magic duel before.”

“Sure you have.”

“Well, I don’t remember it.”

“How long were you watching, then?”

“Since the beginning.”

“And you didn’t bother to help me until just now?”

“Well, I figured that you would win.”

“How do you figure?  I’m just a kid.”

“Come on,” said the dragon.  “We both know you’re no ordinary kid.”

Well, it’s a new month, so it’s time to talk about a new book.  The Drache Girl, book 3 of the Senta and the Steel Dragon series was actually the second book of that series to be written back in 2008.  It remains my favorite book of the series.  I think that is mainly because I enjoyed writing about the characters at that age.  Senta and her friends are twelve, and I based a lot of their interactions on things that were going on with the twelve-year-olds in my class.

I remember one day, one of my little blond girls came to class with scratches all over her forehead and nose.  Her little brother had put gravel on her face while she was asleep and then pounded on it with a rubber mallet!  That week, I wrote that Senta fell down, while running down the road, and got bits of gravel imbedded into her face.

Twelve years of age is a really special time.  Most kids have reached the peak of childish confidence and haven’t yet been overtaken by teen angst or adult dread.  Of course some are ahead and some are behind in their social and emotional development.  They think they know everything, but they know virtually nothing.  Or course, some are ahead and some are behind in that too.

I think you can see much of this phase in Senta, when you read The Drache Girl.  She’s much more confident than she is in The Voyage of the Minotaur, even bossing Zurfina around.  She still considers Bessemer to be her personal baby doll, as we see when he is accidentally shot by hunters.

Suddenly he heard gunfire erupting from directly in front of him.  One, two shots.  Then a pause.  Then one, two, three, four, five, six, pause.  He looked up above the trees and saw a flash of steel shoot across the sky.

“Oh, bloody hell!” he shouted and ran at top speed in the direction of the gunfire.  That he carried no other weapon than a heavy truncheon worried him not a bit.  Two men with military issue service rifles, but wearing expensive hunting clothes, stood in the middle of the gravel road.

“Guns down!” yelled Saba, as he skidded to a stop in front of them.  “Drop your guns now!”

“See here chap,” said the first man, his accent labeling him as plainly as if he had worn a placard that he was from Old Town Brech.  He must have been very new to the colony, because Saba made it a custom to get to know everyone, and neither of these men he recognized.

“We’re doing nothing illegal,” said the second man.  “Just shooting some pests.”

“What exactly were you shooting?”

“We heard from some of the neighbors that these velocipedes….”

“Velociraptors,” Saba corrected.

“Yes, them.  They’ve been a menace lately, to the point of endangering the local children.”

“Quite,” said the first man.  “We went out to put a few down and found a small group digging right into those garbage bins.  We shot a few and killed two, I think, but one took off and flew into the trees.”

“If you listen to me very, and I do mean very, carefully,” said Saba.  “I just might be able to save your lives.  Lay your rifles down on the ground.”

“But I don’t under….”

“Do it!”

The men leaned over and carefully placed their weapons on the white gravel road.

“Nobody told you velociraptors don’t fly?”

A loud whomp made all three men jump, and they found themselves standing next to a pony-sized reptile with twenty foot wings, and more importantly a mouth open large enough to swallow a human head.  Steel scales reflected the light from the winter morning sky like shields and swords on a forgotten battlefield.  The steel dragon let out a huge roar, rending the air with a noise that must have been heard all over Port Dechantagne.  Little puffs of smoke flew out of his mouth at the two men as well as bits of saliva which burst into little sparks in the air.

“They bloody shot me!”  The dragon’s four word sentence disintegrated into another roar of rage.

One of the hunters started to bend over for his rifle.  Saba stepped on the gun and put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Let me see your injury, Bessemer,” he said.  The dragon folded its left wing, and held out the right wing showing an ugly lead mark on a shiny steel scale about midway between the first joint and the shoulder.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” said Saba.  “And you know this was an accident.  They were trying to knock off some velociraptors.”

“So was I,” said Bessemer.  “I didn’t expect it would get me shot!”

“It was an accident, honest and truly,” said the first hunter, shaking a little.  “Maybe we can make it up to you.”

“There was a time,” said Bessemer.  “When the only acceptable payment for this type of transgression was a virgin given at midnight on the full moon.”  Then he burst out laughing.  “Of course I didn’t mean you, Saba.”

The two hunters laughed, a bit nervously, along with the dragon, happy that the anger he had arrived with seemed to be going away.

“Well, no harm then,” said one.

“You daft fools,” said Saba, looking down the road.  “He’s the least one of your problems.”

By this time, neighbors from six or seven close by houses had come out to see what all the shooting and roaring was about.  Saba saw it first, because he had been watching and knew just what to look for—a black and white streak was racing down the road toward them.  And it was coming up quickly, headed directly for the two hunters.  Saba reached out and caught it as it zipped by him, all spitfire and claws.

“Settle down girl,” he said, holding Senta around the waist and lifting her feet, which were still running, off the ground.  She kicked and hissed for another moment and then stopped.  He set her down.  She stuck out her index finger at the two men.  Saba grabbed her by the wrist.  “None of that.”

He turned to the two men.  “You’d best be on your way home, in case the big one comes along.”

“The big one?”

“I’ll boil your giblets,” hissed the girl.

“Bloody hell, man.  Did you not bother to find out about where you were going to be living?  You’ve already got Zurfina’s dragon and Zurfina’s apprentice after you.  Do you want to wait around for Zurfina herself?”

Both the men turned the color of porridge.  “The sorceress?” asked one.

“Yep.”

“We’ll… We’ll just head home, then.”  The two men bent down and picked up their rifles and scurried away at a quick walk, glancing nervously over their shoulders as they went.

“Run now!” yelled Senta after them.  “I’ll find you and then…”

“Little girls do not go around threatening people,” said Saba, turning her by the shoulders to face him.  “It’s not even nine o’clock.  You should wait till at least noon before boiling people’s giblets.  Trust me, I know.  My mother’s a cook.”

She stuck out her lip.  “I’m not a little girl.”

“Of course you’re not.  You’re a very frightening sorceress, with a very nice hairstyle, I might add.”

“Thanks.”  She blushed for just a moment and then broke away from his hands to rush over to the dragon, throwing her arms around his thick serpentine neck.  “Are you all right, baby?”

The dragon’s voice, which normally put one in mind of a young man, went high and weak and pathetic sounding.  “I’ve got an owie on my wing.”

“And you just let them go,” growled the girl, looking at Saba.