A Dragonbird in the Fern

by Rueckert, Laura

  Our entrance into their homeland wiped away the guards’ intimidating scowls and smoothed their tense foreheads. A couple of mounted soldiers chased each other in circles around the carriage, the heavy feet of their elephant birds pounding up the dust. Raffar and Aldar laughed and leaned their heads back against the carriage walls and even called out to the others, egging them on to run faster. Relief rolled off of them in waves that soothed even my uneasy soul.

  Almost immediately, Raffar called for a break. Under the shade of giant ferns, we ate a simple lunch of dried fish and fruit left over from Azzaria and drank water from a cool creek. When we were ready to leave again, Raffar asked me a question and Aldar translated. “As in Azzaria, we’ll be traveling more slowly again. His Majesty would like you to meet your new country and citizens. For now, would you walk awhile with him?”

  If it wouldn’t be so unladylike, I would have jumped for joy. Finally, some time out of the carriage.

  Raffar stood and stroked the lower half of Freyad’s mount’s neck. “Or would you prefer to ride an elephant bird?”

  The animal’s long neck bent, and the hard beak pecked at Raffar. He jerked away, but not before being pinched on the top of his shoulder. As the king rubbed the sore spot, Freyad laughed at him and pulled her steed away, cooing and murmuring at it.

  Aldar’s smirk joined Freyad’s. “The bird’s name is Cloverlily, and Freyad just told her she should be gentler with the king.”

  Color flooded Raffar’s cheeks. He regarded me earnestly. “That wouldn’t have happened with Fleetfoot—my own bird.”

  I nodded, doing my best to maintain an earnest expression. Those giant feathered creatures were too unpredictable anyway. “Let’s just walk,” I said.

  Pebbles crunched under my feet as I strolled along the street, Raffar quiet at my side. The road was more or less even, but he swerved off the edge, traipsing through dandelions, running his hand over knee-high fern fronds just off the way. Most of the guards dismounted also, and many threaded fingers through high grasses and ferns like Raffar, greeting the country they hadn’t seen in weeks.

  My husband stopped and grinned at me, pointing to pretty purple flowers low to the ground. I leaned down to sniff at them, and a familiar lavender scent engulfed me. Maybe they were related to a plant back home.

  As I straightened, my coiled hair caught on one of the larger fern fronds. Tattered plant pieces fell to the ground as Raffar helped me untangle the delicate leaves, but my complicated twist was ruined. His voice rumbled, and his eyes strayed to the unruly strands framing my face. The others walked on.

  Back in Azzaria, he’d asked to see my hair down. Now, his eyes begged the same thing.

  My pulse throbbing stupidly for a request so simple, I pulled the jeweled pins out, handing them one by one to Raffar. I waited for his grin, but he just stared, and his eyes were dark and intense, like that time we first met.

  It had been two years ago. Scilla had been in her dressing room, preparing to be presented to the King of Farnskag for the first time. In her richly embroidered silk, she’d been beautiful, elegant, regal: the perfect Azzarian princess. If I were her, I’d have been terrified, but her hands barely shook as the servants fixed her hair and dress. I hung on to every word as she described the delegation’s tattoos and shaved heads so I wouldn’t be surprised.

  Then Zito bounded into the room with a bloodcurdling scream, and Scilla almost tripped over a chair in shock. He roared, throwing imaginary javelins. Lost in his fantasy battle, he shrieked, stabbed, and dodged.

  Little brothers. “Where’s your nurse, Zito?” I asked.

  “Sick!” He somersaulted three times across the floor and squealed when he hit the wall.

  “I’d be sick too if I had to deal with your screeching all the time,” Scilla muttered.

  Zito jumped up, then crouched, ramming an invisible spear into my chest. “Rawrrr!”

  “Stop making fun of them like that! It’s insulting!” Scilla yelled. She snatched a hairbrush from the servant next to her and threw it at Zito. He hopped to the side, and it bounced harmlessly off the wall.

  Our little brother ran past her desk and looking glass and into her bedchamber, where he jumped on her bed, howling in a made-up, guttural language. With a yell, he hunched down and sprang off. An enormous thud made the cosmetics jars tinkle on the vanity.

  One of the servants left Scilla’s side to take control of Zito, but his energy knew no bounds. He dashed out from under her arm. Scilla’s barely shaking hands turned into definitely shaking hands.

  “Pia, Jiara, help,” Scilla begged. “Please take him away from here. He’s making me nervous.”

  Zito blabbered more throaty nonsense and stuck out his tongue.

  Pia and I shared a look, then I positioned myself so that he’d be able to run by me, and Pia chased him in my direction. Just before he could curve past me, I jumped into his path and caught him under his arms.

  “All right. We’re leaving.” I held his wrists behind his back.

  “Jiara!” he yelled.

  “And don’t let the Farnskagers see him like that,” Scilla called after us as I dragged him from the room. “We’re meeting in Mother’s office. Just keep him away from there.”

  Once out of Scilla’s presence, I gave up trying to control Zito, and instead played along with him. He was quieter that way. We garbled back and forth to each other, skipping down the hall and giggling until we almost fell to the floor. He jerked me down by my hair until I growled at him. He shoved me toward the wall, and I let myself sag against it as if he were the mightiest soldier. I righted myself, and in return, I bumped his back with my hip so that he stumbled to his knees, cackling like a bellowthrush.

  Muted voices drifted down the corridor, but Zito was in no condition to meet up with Mother or Father. And especially not foreign guests. I threw open the door to the Great Hall and forced him inside, with me squeezing in after. I pulled the door shut and whirled around.

  Six bald men in dark tunics, their faces covered with tattoos, stood there in silence along with Mother and some of her advisers. My heart stopped. Apparently, the Farnskager delegation was not in Mother’s office.

  Zito let out a squeal, and I clapped my hand over his mouth while I tried to straighten my posture.

  Mother recovered first. “Please, excuse this interruption.”

  I nodded, especially to the young man standing in front of the others. The king. Cool and confident, regardless of his youth and the gazes resting on him, awaiting his reaction.

  The king smiled at Zito and even knelt down to speak to him. Zito had no idea what the king said, but he garbled back as if they were having a fascinating conversation. The entire party burst out laughing.

  King Raffar rose, patted Zito’s shoulder, and stepped closer to me. Despite my hair hanging down as if it had never seen a comb, his gaze was focused on me like no one else’s ever. His eyes held an astonished eagerness, like a man who had desperately searched for a long-lost treasure only to turn a corner and discover it inches from his grasp. I should have been scared by his foreign appearance and intense stare, but that something in his eyes made me want to come closer. His shoulders rose and fell, and he smiled.

  The king said only one word—one I understood. “Scilla.”

  My heart imploded, and my face burned with shame. By dinnertime, he’d be Scilla’s betrothed. How dare I think of her future husband like that?

  Mother and Serenna and I fell over ourselves to explain the mistake.

  “No, I’m—”

  “—that’s my younger daughter—”

  “This is Princess Jiara.”

  King Raffar blushed and excused himself with a little shrug and eyes that did not meet mine again. “It’s nice to meet you, Jiara,” Serenna translated once he’d finally spoken, his attention on the window behind me.

  And then Mother steered them to her office while I escaped to the flower garden with Zito. Outside of the official engagement cerem
ony, when I’d peered from behind Llandro, I hadn’t seen Raffar again until the week before our wedding.

  But months later, Scilla and I had lain on her bed and giggled about the husbands we’d wed someday. When I told her I didn’t think Raffar looked so bad after all, she laughed and said he’d asked about me once. Then she tickled me and accused me of wanting him for myself. I denied it, because I didn’t even know him. And what kind of a sister would do that?

  Scilla laughed and reminded me of Gio, the wind god, and how he had fallen in love with Flisessa, the goddess of earth. Eons ago, they’d had a whirlwind romance. He’d swept into her heart and her soul until their bodies had merged in a wild marriage night.

  We on earth had paid the price—the worst cyclone to ever hit Azzaria’s northern provinces had devastated those living there.

  Nothing good could come from such passion.

  I’d agreed with Scilla. She was relieved she felt only respect for Raffar, and that I felt only respect for Marro. Our marriages would be perfect, safe, and secure.

  Now Raffar and I stood together on Farnskager ground. This far north, the temperature was cool—more like almost spring than early summer. The forest scent hung heavy like a mist. As Raffar accepted the final pin from my hair, my heart danced at the fire in his eyes. In a low voice, he murmured a short phrase, but Aldar was speaking to one of the guards and couldn’t translate, so I didn’t know what. Raffar slipped the pins into a pocket in his tunic. He reached down and plucked one of purple flowers and passed it to me. With one hand, he motioned to continue on.

  __________

  After a half hour’s walk, we climbed into the carriage and the elephant birds pulled us along at a breakneck pace. The driver pushed them to hurry. It felt like the ferns had just begun to blur, and then we slowed down again. When the dust cloud cleared, Raffar leaned out his window and muttered low, reverent-sounding words.

  I looked to Aldar. Dipping his head to the window, he said, “White Mother.”

  I craned my neck to see around my husband. A huge rock formation stood a couple minutes’ walk away. It was as tall as a five-story house and shaped like an immense haystack made of sparkling, white rock. Seven smaller haystack monoliths surrounded it.

  Three guards next to the carriage dismounted and made for the rocks.

  “Can I go see it?” I asked.

  Aldar’s gaze flicked to Raffar, who raised a hand to the shard in his ear and closed his eyes. Aldar shook his head at me, just barely, and spoke softly, “It would be best not to. We know the Azzarians do not share our belief in the Watchers. Ours is a simpler faith. A deep connection to the world around us. Just because we don’t have your divine interactions and complicated rituals does not mean the Watchers are not important to us”—he pointed to his chest—“here, inside. Your presence at White Mother would be seen as ridicule.”

  I bowed my head. “That wasn’t how I—”

  “I know you don’t mean it that way.” Aldar’s smile was weak, but understanding. “But for us, it is not just a big sparkling rock to gawk at.” He whispered to Raffar, who creased his brows and nodded. The two men disembarked.

  With strong hands holding back Cloverlily’s reins, Freyad paraded around the carriage and stopped at the window. “Skriin Jiara,” she said in greeting. Skriin was queen, I understood that much.

  I slid over to Raffar’s seat and smiled at her. She cocked her head in a questioning way. If only I had the vocabulary to ask for her thoughts. Following a brief lift of her chin, she nodded and continued circling the carriage. A few other guards remained with me while the rest headed for White Mother. When they arrived, they leaned forward in their typical greeting.

  But no . . . it wasn’t their normal greeting. Instead of reaching out with the left arm only, they reached out with both, and they seemed to actually touch foreheads to the rock, instead of remaining a breath away, as they did with people. It reminded me of when Raffar and the others had touched their foreheads to my bracelets. A few moments passed, and one by one, the soldiers returned to the group. The guards who had remained with me took their leave, until everyone in our party had visited the monoliths.

  Everyone except me. Despite being hidden away in the carriage, I felt as if I were on a pedestal under an immense spotlight with a ringmaster blaring, “Jiara does not revere White Mother!”

  When Raffar left the formation and headed toward me in the carriage again, his eyes met mine. It seemed there was a sad question in them for me. I looked to the floor and slid back to my own seat as he climbed in. He spoke, that low rumble I could almost feel in my chest. But Aldar wasn’t there yet, so his words were a mystery. It was exactly how I’d expected once it was clear Pia wouldn’t be coming with me.

  Raffar ran a finger over the shard in his earlobe then inclined his head to the haystack monolith. A Watcher. I nodded.

  The sadness didn’t leave his face.

  A few uncomfortable moments later, the carriage lurched with Aldar’s weight on the step. “Queen Jiara, we’re less than an hour from the next village. It’s time to begin meeting your new people.”

  Chapter 11

  Five days later, I was certain I’d met the entire country already. We’d stopped at two or three villages each day. Our travel route must have been advertised, because representatives from other villages often came to pay their respects. I’d repeated the gakh, the traditional greeting, so often my neck and shoulders twinged each time I leaned forward. Everywhere we went, women and girls fingered my long hair as if it belonged to Farnskag and not to me. I’d learned the phrases I’m happy to be here and So pleased to meet you and, of course, with all of the feasts and performances in our honor, thank you, thank you, thank you.

  And despite my attempts at being friendly, the whispers, the furtive glances I couldn’t interpret, made my ears burn. Were they angry? Disgusted at my foreignness? Or merely curious?

  In every village, I’d studied the facial tattoos of each bald person I’d seen. Most were adorned with the hybrid figure. Several had the leaf, but nowhere did I see the simple, thick-lined border as in the commander’s drawing back home.

  The carriage rattled along the bumpy dirt road past long stretches of farmland.

  Aldar scooted to the edge of his seat, leaned toward the window. “Only a few minutes and we’ll reach Baaldarstad.”

  Baaldarstad. The capital of Farnskag. Raffar’s home.

  The birds strained at the reins as they sniffed the air, and the guards crowed about seeing family and friends after weeks on the road. Raffar raised a hand and called out the window, and the guards on individual birds raced off. He laughed and waved, urging them on.

  Eyes sparkling, Aldar said, “He gave them permission to go see their families. We have nothing to fear so close to home.”

  The first houses came into view. They were like in the other Farnskager villages we’d passed. Modest and rectangular, with one section for the families, and another for tools and farm animals. Most houses had steep thatched or wood-shingled roofs. The larger houses were crowned with finials at the peak above the door in the shape of a leaf, an eagle, ox horns, or a simple X. Little pens full of goats and chickens dotted the yards, along with small vegetable gardens and trees heavy with young, exotic fruits like apples and pears.

  Farnskager buildings were simpler than those in Azzaria. Less decorated, lacking tiled roofs and spires. But the walls seemed thicker and more stable than our houses. They’d have to be here, in the north, where it grew so cold in the winter that it snowed.

  An anticipatory chill crawled over my skin. I was going to live where it snowed. I pushed that image from my mind. The idea of such an extreme winter was too much.

  As we rode into town, the houses were constructed of more cleanly cut lumber, fit expertly together. Yards grew smaller, and there was no longer any room for animals, but most everyone kept a small garden. Huge trees grew everywhere, so tall they were twice the height of Azzaria’s tallest four-story buildin
gs.

  Raffar gestured out the window as we passed a stone and wood manor several times larger than the biggest house I’d seen. Unlike the other buildings, it had two stories. The roof was made of wooden shingles instead of thatch. Hybrid figures snaked along the roofline and reached all the way to the top of the house on either side. Above the door was a hybrid figure finial centered at the peak of the roofline. Red feathers had been strung onto the figure and fluttered in the wind.

  Raffar gestured to it. “Our home.”

  But we didn’t stop in front of it. The manor was surrounded by a huge park, and evergreen trees towered over the house on all sides. Probably thirty elephant birds wandered a penned-in area on the right side of the property. Would we stop there? To have servants take care of the animals that had traveled so far? As I tried to imagine myself in that home, surrounded by the pines and the carvings and the elephant birds, the carriage turned away, down the street.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The main square,” Aldar said. “Just like with the other stops. Every Farnskager town has a square that belongs to the community, and we must greet the town first.”

  A short way down the road, the rumble of hundreds of voices filled the air. We turned the corner, and the carriage came to a smooth stop at the foot of the crowded square. More adults and children than could fit in the houses of the town milled around, some of them embracing the guards who had returned only moments before.

  I smoothed my zintella dress and my too-long hair. With a smile, Raffar held out his hand. I inhaled a deep breath, took his hand, and followed him out of the carriage.

  Children waved fern fronds, and the townspeople cried, “Villku, villku!” Welcome, I remembered from the other cities.

  The sun filtered through the leafy trees, and birds chirped and sang overhead. I held back from squinting against the glaring rays of light so the first glimpse of their new queen wouldn’t be a sour face.

  The townspeople gathered closer as we stood in front of a large building as wide as the royal manor, but only one story. Even more care had been taken with the decorations here. Every inch was made of stone and polished wood—the hard one Aldar had referred to as ironfern wood. Patterns stained into the side looked like twisting vines. Intricate carvings ran the entire height at each corner and all along the roofline. At the