Hello again, Story Club members.

I'm Ivy, your ghostly host with the most, and keeper of the strangest, spookiest tales on

earth.

Today is another Ivy's chilling tale.

This scaly yarn story club members might make you stay away from apple orchards where strange things may lurk.

It's one I call big trouble with little dragon.

The village of Zavandia lay in ruins.

Oy smoke belched up to the blue cloudless sky

from half-furned huts made from straw and mud.

Villagers, the few who had survived the attack,

tore off their tunics and tried desperately to douse the flames.

Others heaved heavy buckets from a nearby stream

up to the devastated hamlet,

threw their watery payload on the flames,

and retreated to reload their pails. It was grumbler that did this, one angry villager said.

That dragon has devastated enough towns. Someone should journey up to the top of Mount

Cranpit where he lives, cried another desperate villager, and slay the beast where he

sleeps. Let's rally the troops and head up there, said the angry villager. If any dragons come

between us in that mountain, they will meet the same fate as grumbler. For the first time since

the dragon's attack, all the villagers felt hope and cheered. One and a half miles down the road from the village, Owen Gray saw the smoke.

In his 12 years, he knew that when he saw a great deal of smoke, it meant that Grumbler or some other dragon had attacked the village.

The oily smoke in the sky told the story.

...