High on Cinder Mountain lived a young dragon named Ember. He had green scales and a smile with too many teeth, but he was a nice dragon. He shared his snacks, he said good morning to the goats, and he once carried a lost duckling all the way home on his nose.

Ember had one big problem: he did not listen to his mom, the biggest and wisest dragon on the mountain. Every morning she told him the same three things: “Never sneeze near anything that can burn. Don’t fly near the village when it’s windy. And never flap your wings at a fire.”

“Okay, Mom,” Ember always said, but he was usually looking at a butterfly when he said it. By the time the butterfly flew away, he had forgotten every word. He never meant to be bad, but he thought rules were for other dragons, and he was sure nothing would ever go wrong.

One windy morning, Ember woke up feeling wonderful. “Stay close to home today,” said his mom. “The wind is too strong for your little wings.” Ember said, “Okay, Mom,” and then he looked down at the village. It was market day, and he could smell the warm cinnamon bread from all the way up the mountain.

“I’ll only go for a minute,” Ember told himself. He jumped off the ledge outside his cave, and the wind grabbed him right away. It spun him left, then right, then upside down, and it threw him all the way to the village. He crashed through the top of the clock tower, and the big clock fell out and rolled down the hill, bonging at every bump.

The clock smashed into the apple stand in the middle of the market. Hundreds of apples bounced down the street, and the villagers slipped and slid. Ember rushed down to help, but his tail flattened a whole row of bread tables. “Sorry! Sorry! I’m sorry!” he kept saying.

Then the wind blew a cloud of flour off the flattened tables and right up Ember’s nose. His nostrils tickled. “Oh no,” he said. “Ah… ah… AH-CHOO!” A huge burst of flame shot out of his mouth, and the baker’s roof caught fire.

Ember remembered the rule about sneezing, but too late. He forgot the rule about flapping altogether, and he flapped his wings as hard as he could to blow the flames out. That only made them bigger. They jumped to the barn and the fence. The wind from his wings tore the laundry off the lines and the shingles off the roofs. By noon, almost nothing in the village was left standing.

Everyone got out safely. They stared at Ember through the smoke. “That’s a bad dragon,” a little girl whispered, and Ember heard her. Nobody had ever called him that before. His chin shook, and big hot tears rolled down his face and sizzled on the ground. He walked home up the mountain as slowly as he could.

His mom was waiting on the ledge. She had seen the smoke, and Ember was sure she would roar at him. Instead she looked at him for a long time and said, “Tell me what happened.” So he told her all of it, even the part where he had heard her tell him to stay home and had gone anyway.

“Am I a bad dragon?” he asked in a tiny voice. His mom wrapped her big wing around him. “No,” she said. “You are a nice dragon who made a very bad choice. I make rules because I know what wind and fire can do, and you don’t know yet.”

“I can see you’re sorry,” she said. “But being sorry isn’t the end of it. You broke those things, so now you get to help fix them.” Ember wiped his nose and nodded, and this time he was listening. The next morning, when the wind had died down, the two of them flew to the village together.

Ember stood in front of everyone and said, “I didn’t listen to my mom, and I wrecked your village. I’m very sorry, and I’ll work until it’s all fixed.” The villagers weren’t sure about that. But then he picked up a whole tree trunk in his teeth and carried it to where the barn had stood, and the baker went to get a hammer.

Ember worked all summer. He carried stones, lifted beams, and hung the big clock back on its tower. When he felt a sneeze coming, he turned and aimed it at the pond. With his gentlest flame, he baked bricks for the baker’s new oven, and then he lit it. Soon there was cinnamon bread again, and the little girl started bringing him some. One day she said, “You’re not a bad dragon after all.”

Ember still chases butterflies, and he still forgets things sometimes, because he is still a little dragon. But now, when his mom tells him something in the morning, he stops and looks at her, and then he says, “Okay, Mom,” and means it. And on windy days, you can find him at home on the mountain, safe and sound, waiting for the wind to stop so he can go visit his friends.