Olive and the Dragon

Greenwing & Dart #2.5

by Victoria Goddard

In the Woods Noirell, magic wells with the waters of the River and drips like the honey drawn from its trees, and fairy gifts are indistinguishable from their curses.

In the Woods Noirell, travellers are told to stay on the Road, for if they stray they may well find themselves lost forevermore.

In the Woods Noirell, there are dragons.

Olive is the daughter of the Woods. She knew what waited at the end of her path long before she set foot on it ...

This is a companion novella to the main events of the Greenwing & Dart series. It takes place before the main series and can be read as a standalone, though is perhaps best in conjunction with Bee Sting Cake.

Genres: Fantasy, Canada, Novella

67 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 14, 2025

About the author

I walked across England in 2013, fulfilling a long-held dream. I'm currently the sexton of an Anglican church in Nova Scotia, which means I am keeper of the keys and opener of doors (and shutter-off of alarms). I have a PhD in medieval studies from the University of Toronto, looking at poetry and philosophy in the works of Dante and Boethius -- both the poetry and the philosophy come into my stories a great deal (and occasionally the Dante and the Boethius).

I like writing about the ordinary lives of magical people on the other side of the looking glass ... and the extraordinary deeds of ordinary folk, too. Three of my favourite authors are Patricia McKillip (especially 'The Riddle-Master of Hed' trilogy and 'The Bell at Sealy Head'), Connie Willis ('Bellwether' and 'To Say Nothing of the Dog,' which latter would make my top-ten books on a desert island), and Lois McMaster Bujold ('The Curse of Chalion' and its sequels).

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing short story about the mother of Jemis Greenwing. Within we learn much about the lore of "The Woods."

Victoria Goddard's imagination knows no limits.

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olive had dreamed of the next days a hundred times, for all it was no necessary tragedy for any of them, seeing fragments play out of a hundred different choices.
No necessary tragedy, if she chose aright.[loc. 61]

A novella set well before the beginning of the 'Greenwing and Dart' series, Olive and the Dragon focuses on Jemis Greenwing's mother Olive (deceased before the series proper) and her gift of seeing possibilities and probabilities. She is the heiress to the Woods Noirell, too, and she has not taken up her inheritance. There are some hard choices to make, and her son's futures have so many perils. And she has been summoned by a dragon...

I loved this, and it made me want to reread the entire series (in preparation for a new novel at the end of the year). I also found myself fixing on tiny details: Olive knows that bad times (the Fall) are coming; there is a visible companion to the Morning Star; the fairytale logic of who was and was not invited to a child's naming-day. And I think we see this same dragon again, elsewhere. 

I love the Nine Worlds, and especially Alinor, and the Woods. And, my love rekindled, I do need to reread at least some chapters of Bee Sting Cake.

[Catmoor · Rating 5 out of 5]

As is often the case with her shorter works, very little appears to happen. As is also common, the scenery and internal monologue of the viewpoint character work together with the actions to round out a person who was previously on the edge of someone else's narrative. So one could say that "Olive goes for a walk" covers much of the background of this piece, while it's foreground is an introduction to the lady of the Woods, and indeed of the woods themselves, all of which fills in another piece of background to the stories of Jemis, Jakory, Jullanar, Peregrine, Artorin .....

[Fernanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

amei que a victoria goddard escreveu esse conto para dar voz a uma mãe morta da fantasia, por muito tempo as mães mortas em fantasia não tinham voz, personalidade ou propósito, o único objetivo delas era estarem mortas, mas não no mundo victoria goddard, amei a personalidade da olive, de como ela vê e age no mundo, na expansão da mitologia de woods noirell, como expande a história do jemis e ver um pouco da infância dele e da vida da família dele antes de tudo, amei, ler uma história da victoria goddard é como voltar para a casa

"Elsewise it was familiar, a gift and a curse, a burden she bore like the expectations upon her, a reward like the joys of the duties she fulfilled."

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s lovely to get to know Olive and really see her agency. So far we’ve only seen her through Jemis’s eyes and they are clouded by youth and grief. A great many things are explained in this novella. Olive has the gift of sight and the power to shape (or attempt to shape) the future through her choices. And they are very hard. And of course it’s beautifully and lyrically written.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, she led a weird life!

Olive meets the dragon, and we get a sense for why she made the decisions she did. I want to know more about what she thought would happen, though!

[lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

anything that gives me more jemis lore is something i am so hungry for so desperately enjoyed this! kind of wild to read a novella in a pov of a character i know is dead in later books but i didn't let that stop me!

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love goodest boy Jemis so much that meeting a younger version of his mother and then seeing him at 9 through her eyes had me tearing up by page 2. This short evening's read had some exceptional prose and some lovely little bits of lore about the Woods and the Gentry (Fae) who live on their borders. It left me with an even deeper hankering to launch back into yet another Greenwing & Dart binge before the new book comes out in December. Also, I was delighted to realize that the ebooks sold directly on the author's website are DRM-free AND don't require a specific app to open, so they work with a kindle without giving amazon a cut of the her earnings.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author Victoria Goddard’s latest Nine Worlds title offers her usual brand of wholesome cozy fantasy, fleshing out a new corner of that ever-expanding saga. This time it’s a prequel to her Greenwing & Dart series, which normally centers around a young gentleman scholar named Jemis Greenwing. We find him here as a precocious nine-year-old instead, with his witchy mother — already deceased by the point when the main stories start — filling the role of protagonist in his place.

Her magic is different from anything we’ve seen before in this setting, manifesting as visions of potential futures for everyone she encounters, and it’s interesting to hear how she sensed the darkness that’s presumably the upcoming Fall of Astandalas. At the same time, however, this volume shares a certain weakness with many of the writer’s other novellas, in that the short length doesn’t provide much room in which to actually tell a satisfying plot. All that happens in this installment is that the heroine takes a walk through the woods near her ancestral home, gradually immerses herself into the fae sorceries there, and eventually meets with the titular dragon for a brief conversation.

The fairy-tale structure is neat, as is the further insight into Jemis’s family and their powers, but this is ultimately way too slim to blow me away like Goddard can do at her best.

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[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hello, Olive....

Here is another prequel novella to Greenwing & Dart series. I appreciate how Victoria Goddard builds her worlds and expands them!

This one is about Olive, Jemis’ mother. We find out what she did while nine year old Jemis was on that fateful trip with his father, Jack.

The novella is haunting, poetic, and poignantly beautiful. I am glad that Olive has a story now, it was a pleasure to get to know her. The Woods Noirell are also a character in this story - ”…breathtakingly beautiful, breathtakingly perilous.” For generations, Olive’s family have been their guardians.

Olive has a gift of seeing the future, or rather, possibilities, paths, choices and consequences. She has saved her little boy from dark futures many times. One day, she has a dream.

”Some days Olive could hardly bear to walk abroad, for death hovered around every soul she saw.”

”Olive was not someone who turned back. She hesitated, often, with the weight of all those futures pressing on her, unable to see the best path forward. She could be timid, and was certainly shy, finding it difficult to speak when her words so often collapsed possibilities for those around her, narrowed their futures down with every sentence.

But once she had chosen a doorway, she went through it.”

You come when you are summoned. Sometimes it turns out that you were the summoner.

[Blind Mapmaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Now this was a lovely (if too short) read. In contrast to the other short side stories to Greenwing & Dart we actually get to know a character that is not a major part of the series and not only that, we get her really unique perspective. All the lore about the Woods Noirell is also very interesting. Looking forward to more of this.

[Kiwi Carlisle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is a lovely little snippet of backstory. We see Olive and Jack and Jemis and even a certain dragon, and it’s delightful.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such beautiful, dreamy prose in this story. It was lovely to see Jemis’s mother and her gift and to learn more of the lore of the Woods.

[Howell Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential addition to the Plum and Dart series, featuring Jemis's mother, of whom we have heard much but never seen as she is dead when the books begin. Fun in itself and fills in more background.

[Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a lovely addition to the lore!

[Nicole Luiken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lushly described, a bit slow-paced, but I enjoyed this glimpse of Jemis' mother Olive. Her magical power was very cool and I liked the fairytale naming traditions of her family.

[Adrienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

These short stories and novellas that fill out the timeline and backstory of Greenwing & Dart are a lovely read.

[kvon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, focuses on Jemis' mother (who is dead before the main sequence starts), interesting view of the magic of the woods pre-Fall, and the perils of too much second sight/precognition.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed her word choices. They painted a nice picture of the surroundings and her feelings.

[Jeanne Sauvage · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love everything in this series! This book is no exception!

[Kate K. F. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is a lovely little backstory drop wrapped around Jemis' mother and is full of lots of hints and foreshadowing for other books in the series. A nice read to get more background.