Dragon on hip and thigh with rose on hand

Before the orchard was walled, when this hill was grey stone and sheep, a dragon lived in the cloud that sat on the ridge every August. It was no fierce thing. Its scales were the colour of pond water under a sky that couldn't make up its mind, and it moved the way smoke moves when a door opens, all curl and no hurry. The shepherds left it bowls of milk, and it left them rain on their turnips, which was a fair trade by anyone's reckoning.

Then came a girl called Ysolde Pery, with hands like a carter and a temper like hot iron. Her neighbour's field had the good rain, and she wanted it on hers. She climbed the ridge with a sack of salt, meaning to shut the dragon in a jar. The dragon watched her come up through the mist with its long head tipped to one side. "You may have the rain," it said, "if you tell me what the apples are thinking when they fall."

She sat in the wet grass until dusk, turning it over, and the apples came rolling down the hill and stopped against her boots as if they wanted an answer. At last she said, "They are thinking they would like to be eaten." The dragon laughed, a sound like water going through a sluice, and the cloud came down over her field and stayed there. Her apples swelled sweeter than any in the valley. And that is why the top row is left for the dragon, and why, when the August mist lies low on the ridge, you'll find a fallen apple at the foot of every tree, bitten clean on one side.