The dragon spread its wings wide and let out an ear-piercing screech. Rienna froze, clutching Xio tightly. It's smaller than I thought a dragon would be, she thought distractedly. In fact, it was only about the size of a panther or jaguar. She couldn’t close her eyes or take them off the monstrosity, though. It was a dark green color with the occasional red-orange stripes and a yellow belly. Its eyes seemed to glow yellow as it glared at the two humans it intended to make its prey.
Rienna suddenly became aware of Rildie pulling her arm. “Come on, Rienna! Quick! Follow me!”
Rienna shook herself out of her daze and ran after Rildie. They charged through bushes and dashed under ferns, propelled by the sound of the dragon chasing after them. Branches scraped against Rienna’s arms as Rildie sharply pulled her left and right until she was suddenly pushed down to the ground and under a fern.
Rildie crawled in beside her and whispered, “Breathe shallowly. Don’t move. Don’t speak.” Her hood had fallen off, and her light brown hair hung wildly right below her shoulders with twigs and leaves knotted in the tangles.
Rienna gulped and nodded. She stayed completely still as the dragon came back into view. It spun around, looking for where they went. Its wingspan was as big as a carriage and its wingbeats were surprisingly silent. It had small horns above its head that curled backward and over its neck. Strangely, it only seemed to have two arms. There were no legs; only two, small arms and claws that looked like they could kill something in one slash.
It made a rumbling clicking noise and flicked its tongue in and out of its mouth. Rienna held her breath as it turned towards where they were hiding. It folded its wings and latched onto a nearby tree with its claws and sat there, waiting.
Xio began purring softly in Rienna’s arms. She looked down in confusion. The kitten’s fur all stood on end, and his ears were pinned back tightly against his head. Yet he was purring.
Rildie saw Rienna’s confusion and tapped her shoulder. She leaned close, and Rildie whispered in her ear. “Some cats purr to comfort themselves,” she said, hardly audible. Even so, the dragon lashed its spiked tail and glared around as if it heard her. Rildie held her finger up to her mouth and turned so she could watch the dragon more easily.
They waited that way for what seemed like both hours and seconds. Time had no meaning to Rienna anymore. All that mattered was that the dragon wouldn’t see them. Rildie whispered something that Rienna couldn’t hear well enough to understand. Suddenly and quietly, she reached her hand up through the foliage and threw something. Whatever it was, probably a twig or rock landed heavily in some kind of berry bush. The dragon launched off its tree and into the bush with a screech.
“Quick!” Rildie whispered, hauling Rienna off the ground with unusual strength for a child her size. They ran softly through the jungle, randomly ducking under branches and vines or crawling under fallen trees and bushes.
They heard a screech behind them. Then another. Then a chorus of screeches as multiple creatures yelled at once. Oh no…
Rienna expected Rildie to pull them under another bush or fern, but instead, she just kept running. Rildie no longer tried to be quiet and tugged Rienna through bushes and over large roots.
Suddenly, Rildie started yelling and whistling almost as loudly as the dragons which Rienna could now see behind them. “What are you doing!” she cried.
Rildie didn’t respond, she just kept whistling and running through the forest and Rienna had no choice but to follow her.
Out of nowhere, they entered a clearing in the jungle. A circle of empty grass with a diameter of around four meters surrounded them, and Rildie stopped running, much to Rienna’s confusion. “Måren has granted us a circle of peace,” Rildie said with a relieved sigh.
“So the dragons can’t come in here?” Rienna asked hopefully.
“Not necessarily… and they’re not-” Rildie started to say as a group of five dragons burst into the clearing. They screeched again and began circling the two girls.
This can’t be how I die.
Rildie closed her eyes and reached into the sky. She began chanting in a strange language that was definitely not Queltan. The air seemed to shift as she continued her incantation and the dragons began to notice. They twirled around, confused as the wind spun through their wings at random angles. Slowly, they all began to drift down to the jungle floor, and as Rildie concluded her chant, they all lay their heads down and began making high-pitched rumbling sounds.
“You… made them fall asleep?” Rienna asked, shocked.
Rildie dropped her hands and approached one of the beasts. “In a circle like this one, members of Islevati can pacify almost any creature.”
“Members of … what?” Rienna asked.
“Islevati,” Rildie said again, gently stroking the top of the dragon’s head. “Eye-el-vah-ti. It’s from an ancient language that most do not speak anymore.”
Rienna warily stepped closer to one of the dragons. “And you are an Eyel-vati?” she asked.
“Yes,” Rildie said, not offering any more information.
“And… you can wield magic?” Rienna asked slowly.
Rildie stood up and faced her. “Måren will tell you what she thinks you can know.” She crossed the clearing to stand in front of Rienna. “Come with me, we are close.”
“We’re just going to leave the dragons there?” Rienna said, glancing back at the creatures as they walked out of the clearing.
Rildie pushed past a low-hanging branch. “Yes. Also, they’re not dragons.”
“They’re not?” They were reptiles with horns and wings, surely that meant they were dragons, right?
Rildie sighed. “No. They were wyrvens. Not nearly as powerful as dragons. Or as big.” She looked back at Rienna. “Also, they only have one set of arms. No legs. Didn’t you notice?”
Rienna frowned. “I guess I just assumed that because they were reptiles with wings they were dragons,” she said resentfully.
Rildie didn’t respond.
They didn’t walk much further before Rildie stopped in front of a giant tree that looked as thick as a small room. She grabbed a vine that hung down from one of its branches and tugged it a few times, as though testing its strength.
“Please don’t tell me we’re going to climb that vine like a rope,” Rienna said. “I can’t climb ropes.”
“We’re not climbing the vine,” Rildie said, rolling her eyes. She waited a moment then pulled the vine again, this time impatiently.
Rienna jumped back as a ladder made of vines and branches fell just behind the vine that Rildie had pulled. Looking up, she couldn’t see the branch it was connected to. It climbed high into the branches of the tree and was eventually obscured by leaves and the branches of neighboring trees. It looked too unstable for Rienna’s liking.
“Please don’t tell me we’re climbing that ladder,” Rienna echoed.
“We’re climbing the ladder.”
“What if I fall off?!”
Rildie reached up and grabbed the first rung of the ladder. “That would be bad.”
“Exactly!” Rienna said, moving so she was standing under the ladder and Rildie.
“So don’t fall off.”
Rienna sighed, Rildie was very uncooperative. She put Xio on her shoulder and finally started climbing the ladder once Rildie got five rungs away. It was sturdier than she expected, she had to admit, but still pretty nerve-racking, especially as they climbed higher and higher up the tree.
She managed to get to the top without falling, but after climbing around the mountain, running away from wyrvens, and now climbing a ladder a hundred feet into the sky, she was tired, sore, and unwilling to go much further. Also, her shoulders were pretty scratched up from Xio clinging to them.
Rildie stood on the thick branch that the ladder was tied to and offered her hand to Rienna as she got to the top. Besides her was a man and woman in leather clothes. Once Rienna stood on the branch, they began slowly gathering the ladder and wrapping it around the branch.
Something pricked Rienna in the middle of her back, causing her to stumble. Fortunately, the branch was giant, so she didn’t fall off. She sat down and quickly took off her bag and opened it. “I’m so sorry, Xia,” she said, opening the top of the bag. She had totally forgotten to open the bag again after the wyrvens had been enchanted to sleep. In fact, she was surprised that Xia hadn’t let her know sooner. She picked up Xia and put her on the branch carefully.
Xia glared at her and began grooming her extremely ruffled fur.
Rienna looked into the bag to see if the food was okay. Some bread was pretty smooshed, and the water pouch had spilled some, but otherwise, the food seemed fine. Except that there was only one piece of salted meat left.
“Xia! Did you eat some of our food?!” Rienna accused pointedly.
Xia didn’t acknowledge her and just continued to groom herself in silence.
Well… I guess that explains why she didn’t protest being in the bag that much, Rienna thought. Maybe she was eating our food even before we encountered the dra-… wyrvens. She wondered what a real dragon looked like if what they had encountered weren’t. She was pretty sure that she wouldn’t be able to avoid being eaten like with the wyrvens.
“Don’t sit down yet,” Rildie chided cheerfully. “We still have to get into the main village.”
“No. I can… Not… go any… further,” Rienna said breathlessly. She was going to sit here until her birthday if it meant she would get some rest.
Rildie crossed her arms. “Listen. Måren’s meeting house is the closest building to here. If you just suck it up and walk a little bit more, you can sit in a chair instead of a tree branch.”
Rienna glared up at Rildie, refusing to move. Except her sore legs were only becoming more sore by sitting on the hard ground. “Fine,” she finally said, standing up and closing her backpack. “Lead away.”
The two adults stayed where they were and just looked at them strangely as they walked toward the trunk of the tree. The two cats trailed at their feet, and Rienna staggered after Rildie, flinching whenever she looked down. She wasn’t that scared of heights, but even she was a little anxious about how high above the ground they were. Fortunately, the farther they went, the more the branch they were on seemed to flatten out. It seemed to Rienna that people must have sanded the wood down to make the tree branch more like wooden flooring.
At the spot where the branch extruded from the tree, a flat flooring began to wind around it, sloping upwards to connect with other branches as it continued its way around the tree. It didn’t look as if it was made of cut-up or processed wood, instead, it looked like it grew out of the tree itself and had since been sanded down to be as flat as the rest of the branches had been made. There were even some branches beginning to grow out of the ramp.
“Did… the tree grow like this?” Rienna asked as they made their way around the tree trunk and into the crown. There weren't even any branches in their way, or stubs where branches may have been cut off.
“Yes. Måren enchanted this tree when it was only a sapling,” Rildie said with a smile.
They reached a point on the ramp where they could look down and see the branch with the ladder and the two adults. “When it was a sapling? But that must have been centuries ago!”
“The tree grew a little faster due to its enchantment, but, yes; this tree is almost four hundred years old,” Rildie explained.
Woah… Rienna looked at the tree with new eyes. She knew that some trees could live for a long time, but none of the trees in her family’s apple orchard were estimated to be older than sixty years, and her family had taken care of the orchard for generations!
“We’re almost to the crossing point,” Rildie said after a moment.
Rienna looked up: They were headed towards a small gap in a thick, otherwise impenetrable, foliage. She couldn’t help but wonder what about the tree was changed by the enchantment other than how it grows. Did it have some form of conscience? What were its root systems like? Were they also designed with people in mind, or were they just like any other tree roots of its species?
So many questions filled her mind, but as she passed the barrier of leaves and branches, they all seemed to fade away and be replaced with wonder. Branches and twigs intertwined together and shot copious amounts of leaves beneath them to create a barrier of visibility. The intertwined wood grew far past the wooden path they were on, and into neighboring trees. It was cleverly constructed -or grown as the case may be,- so that light could still pass through the branches and to the leaves below, but also so that what lay beyond the skirt of leaves was invisible to someone standing below.
And what lay above the leaves… it was astonishing. The shelf walkway they were on ended in a flat circle around the tree, but at evenly spaced intervals, large wooden pathways branched off into other trees that Rienna now realized were similarly enchanted. Other, smaller and less well-kept pathways sloped up, sideways, and even under the main roadways when they could, to obviously less public areas. The roadways connected between trees and melded together so that the canopy became one tree with multiple trunks and root systems.
Then there was the sky. They had traveled so high off the ground that sunlight flowed along the roads and cleared the air of lingering moisture. It was warm but no longer humid, and the shade they stood in was more refreshing than the darkness on the jungle floor where the air stood still and hung so thickly that it was uncomfortable. Everything seemed cleaner and nicer than it had felt at the base of the tree.
“Woah…” Rienna finally said.
Rildie nodded. “We are in our equivalent of a central plaza. Don’t worry, Måren’s meeting room is just across that bridge.”
“Okay…” Rienna said, dazed. She followed Rildie over a main wood pathway and to a tree that had many bright flowers growing on it. The branches of the tree arched over the end of the pathway and weaved together to form some sort of house. When she passed under the arch, sweet floral scents filled her senses and a feeling of ease washed over her. By the time they all walked into the building, she was no longer worried about Måren and whether or not she was trustworthy. Anyone who could create such a beautiful place couldn’t be that bad.
The inside of the building was cozy. Soft moss hung delicately from the boughs and small white flowers lined the edges of doorways. Bare branches grew down from the leafy, moss-covered ceiling and twisted into hollow spheres with soft yellow lights. A dense and short moss covered the floor in a carpet-like fashion, while furniture grew from the tree itself, leaving Rienna wondering what people did if they wanted to redecorate.
They stopped in the first room in the house. There was a round wooden table in the center with four stools growing around it. Each stool had a green cushion that didn’t appear to be connected to or grown from the tree. Overhead, a chandelier with five glowing orbs grew from the ceiling right above the table. There were two passageways that led into other rooms. There were no actual doors, so Rienna could easily look into them. From what she could see, the neighboring rooms were a kitchen and a room that could’ve been a bedroom or a living room.
Rildie pulled a thin strand of vine and a bell rang lightly through the house. “Sit on one of the chairs. Måren should be here soon.”
“Are you leaving?” Rienna asked as Rilide turned back towards the entrance.
Rildie looked back at her. “I’ll be waiting just outside; Måren prefers privacy when meeting someone for the first time.” Before Rienna could respond, Rildie was already walking out the door. Well, there was no door, but there would’ve been had it been a normal house.
Rienna sat on a stool and Xio and Xia each chose one as well. She ‘prefers privacy when meeting someone for the first time?’ That’s a little odd, she thought as she turned her focus to the table. It was a nice table, though it was at an odd distance from the stool to Rienna. Once again, she wondered why anyone would decide to grow furniture out of the house itself if it meant you couldn’t move your own chair.
Rienna’s head grew heavy with fatigue. She refused to fall asleep, but finally, she decided to rest her head on the table. She began slowly tracing the grain of the wood and waited for Måren to show up.
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