The Story of Sorrel

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Reyna was the first to stir. She pulled herself groggily upright. Her sleep-dulled senses caused her to teeter a bit until she remembered, with a jolt of fear, that she was two dozen feet off the ground on a branch.

  “Reyna awake,” Losh said. “No forest children. Losh hide Reyna.”

  She nodded numbly. “Thank you, Losh. You are a good friend.”

  “Best friend!” Losh crowed.

  Reyna nudged her brother awake. After a similar startled jump nearly sent him tumbling from the branch, he shook away the shreds of sleep and pieced the world back together with an unwilling and still quite weary mind. One piece didn’t want to fall into place.

  “You’re still here,” he said thickly, eyes on the fairy.

  “Best friend,” the fairy said sternly, as though irritated he’d not been listening.

  “But why?” Reyna asked. “All we did was give you some of that stuff. And we don’t even have any more.”

  Losh opened his little mouth, but he paused. The scattering of words he knew clearly wasn’t enough to articulate his thoughts on the matter.

  “Reyna, Wren. Forest children. Burrow. Place of desert children. Desert children say forest children bad. Reyna, Wren, could be bad.” He swiped his hand. “Not bad. Reyna, Wren, could ask for bad from Losh. Not ask for bad. Reyna, Wren, could do bad to Losh. Not do bad. Reyna, Wren good.”

  He pointed. “Forest children? Big place of forest children? Bad. Reyna, Wren good. Forest children bad. Losh do good, so good forest children know good is better than bad.”

  “You’re rewarding us for not being as bad as the Fennecs said we would be?”

  “Reward! Also thank. Reward and thank.” Losh considered his next words. “And Losh not go far until Reyna and Wren. Reyna and Wren, good reason for go far. Losh stay. Losh help. Best friend.”

  Reyna grinned. “It’s good to have a friend. I… I don’t think we’ve ever had one. And now that you’re here, you can keep us from ever being found.”

  Losh shook his head. “Desert children find Losh someday. Fairies find fairies. If forest children look for fairy, forest children find. Forest children no look for fairy. Desert children look for fairy.”

  “Oh… That could be a problem,” Reyna said.

  Losh nodded. Wren shook his head.

  “No, it won’t be a problem. It doesn’t matter if they can find us or not.” He held tight to the trunk of the tree and leaned aside to look to the northeast. “Because pretty soon, we’ll be somewhere they wouldn’t dare follow.”

  Reyna took a breath. “That’s right, Losh. You might not be so happy to be friends with us when we tell you where we are going.”

  “We’re going to find Boviss,” Wren said.

  Losh blinked at them. “Find Boviss. And? Why bad for Losh?”

  Reyna raised her eyebrows. “You’re not afraid of Boviss?”

  “Why Losh afraid? Fairies very small. Dragon very big. Dragon not care about fairies. Dragon scare bigger things that scare fairies. Dragon good for fairies. Friend of fairies.” He flitted closer as if to whisper a secret. “Not best friend. But friend. Not bad for Losh.”

  Reyna smiled. “I’m glad you’re not afraid of him.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  “Reyna and Wren scared? Why go?”

  “Because of Mama,” Wren said.

  Losh considered this. “Good reason. Best reason, maybe.”

  “Do you know how to find Boviss’s lair?” Reyna asked.

  Losh shook his head.

  “I can find it,” Wren said.

  “You’re sure? We don’t know what a dragon smells like,” Reyna said.

  Wren crossed his arms. “‘Swift and the Special Fruit.’”

  Losh flitted up between their faces. “What that?” he asked.

  “A story Mama tells,” Reyna said.

  “And in that story, Swift is challenged to find a special fruit. It is so special that no one has ever seen it, tasted it, or even smelled it. They knew it was somewhere in the woods because… of a wizard or something. But Swift found it because he knew everyone else was looking for it, and they’d not come close enough to smell it or see it. So even though he didn’t know where to find it, he knew he would be close when he found a place where he didn’t smell anyone else. If no one had been there, then it must have been close to the fruit. Then he sniffed for a smell he’d never found before. What lesson did we learn, Reyna?”

  “You can find a thing if you know all of the places it isn’t,” Reyna said. “But this isn’t like that! We don’t know all of the places Boviss isn’t.”

  “Is Boviss scary?” Wren asked.

  “Very,” Reyna said.

  “Not scary for fairy,” Losh corrected.

  “Why is he scary? Because he’s a hunter, and we’re all prey to him, that’s why. And what does good prey do when a hunter is nearby?”

  “It stays away,” Reyna said, realization dawning.

  “We’re hunting a hunter, so we have to hunt backward. We go where the prey isn’t, and that’s where the hunter is.”

  “We’ve never done something like that,” Reyna said. “Are you sure you can do it?”

  Wren looked at her steadily, no hint of doubt in his eyes. “I know I can.”

  “And what do we do when we get there?”

  He shrugged and dug his claws into the tree, ready to climb down. “That’s your part. I’ll find him. You figure out how to beat him.”

  “Why do I have the hard job?!” she retorted.

  “It’s not my fault you’re the smart one. Now let’s go.”

  Chapter 10

  Sorrel had learned, much to her chagrin, that while Boviss was a sound sleeper, he was not a still sleeper. He rolled over, sometimes quite suddenly, every few hours. Worse, his tail would sweep and swing as he slept. Aside from the endless cascade of gold that clattered and kept her awake, it wasn’t so much of a problem. But today, she was chained to his tail. If she stayed clear of the sweep of the tail, there wasn’t enough slack on the chain and she would be heaved aside during the sweeps. So she was forced to remain at the fringe of this mound of gold and watch the motions of the tail like a hawk lest he smash her to paste while he slept. It was a harrowing, exhausting experience… but perhaps fate had been kind in subjecting her to it.

  In his boasting, Boviss had claimed there was more gold trapped between his scales than most creatures would ever see. It was quite so. But there were other things trapped there as well. Years of battle may have turned away the blades of thousands of attackers, but some bit deeper than perhaps even he knew. As Sorrel peered in the darkness, she saw something embedded deep between two scales near the tip of his tail. It wasn’t gold or silver. The metal was too dull. When the hazardous limb swept toward her and splashed a scattering of gold at her, she risked inching closer. She’d become quite accustomed to the gloom of the lair when the lights overhead darkened. The very chain that bound her, for all its problems, glowed enough to give shape to her surroundings. And in its glow, she saw that the thing embedded in the tail was a stout, broad arrowhead. If it had bitten deep enough into his tail to remain there for however many years it had, it must have been of supernatural construction.

  The tail swept away. To protect her hand, she wrapped as much of her tattered clothing around it as she could, and waited. When the tail swept back, she grasped the broken shaft and pulled with all her strength. He started to sweep his tail away again. It dragged her along a bit before the arrowhead finally popped free. Sorrel spilled onto the gold and had to roll desperately aside to avoid being crushed as the tail flopped back down. Her heart hammered in her chest, but not because she’d nearly been killed. This was it. She might have a chance to escape her bonds.

  She turned the arrowhead over in her hands. It was definitely a piece of dwarven enchantment. Sorrel hated magic of any sort. That hatred had only grown in the days she’d been kept here by the blasted enchantment on her restraints. But she knew full we
ll that most times the only way to beat magic was with more magic. Something here would be able to cut the chain. She just had to find it. The problem was that he was never foolish enough to give her even a moment without his watchful gaze while she was near enough to reach the weapons. Even if he left his back turned long enough for her to grab one, none was small enough to hide until she could put it to use. But now she had one, and it was small enough to hide.

  Sorrel huddled down and split her attention between dodging the tail and working at the chain. She dragged the little arrowhead in slow, firm strokes across a chain link near her neck. She used the utmost of care, not just to keep the motions as silent as she could manage, but to ensure the scraping of the tool always found the same spot. After what seemed like ages, she gave her near-numb fingers a break and ran a claw along the link. Her claw clicked against an insignificant little groove that she was certain wasn’t there before. It was tiny, but it wasn’t nothing. This would work. All it would take was time and care.

  She’d done more with less.

  #

  Reyna, Wren, and Losh’s travels had taken them quite far. After a few hours of fumbling and stumbling, Wren had gotten the knack of ignoring his instincts and seeking out the places where nothing worth hunting could be found. Since then, they’d been moving steadily northward. Their journey had taken them into the night and out again. The sky was rosy with dawn.

  Whoever had made the map that Hask and Kell had shown them had been on the right track. It would seem the northernmost of the three mountains labeled as Boviss’s lair was the place the beast truly called home.

  Each step forward filled the twins with a bit more anxiety, but not always the anxiety that seemed proper.

  “Wren?” Reyna said, after her thoughts had stewed for as long as she could stand.

  He grunted in reply, unwilling to take his nose from the task.

  “Did you think it would be this way?”

  He glanced over his shoulder with a questioning look.

  “Other malthropes. Did you ever think about what it would be like if we found some?”

  “All the time,” he said. “I didn’t ever think it would happen, though.”

  “I did. I always did. Everyone else has a place. Why wouldn’t we have a place? But I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect the first malthropes we found to lock us up and tear us apart. I didn’t expect them to fight each other.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing.” Wren raised his head to trace his eyes up along the stark gray of the mountain. “The climbing will get harder from here on.”

  “How could it be a good thing?”

  “It means we’re not so different. It’s the same thing all the other creatures do. Maybe it means we’re the same.”

  “I don’t want to be the same if that’s what it means,” Reyna said.

  “Flower!” Losh blurted and darted toward a cluster of ice-blue blooms clinging to the face of the mountain so he could drink the flowers’ nectar.

  They scampered up to a ledge and surveyed their surroundings. The mountains were rising out of the forest now. They were far enough from the Gall that they no longer had to worry much about hiding, and there wasn’t much sense trying to hide if Boviss showed up. They were trying to find him, and there would be no getting away from him besides. It was liberating to stand tall again, unafraid of being pursued for the time being.

  From this vantage, they could see over the tops of the trees. The sun peeked up over the mountains, pouring its golden light over the landscape below.

  “Look at it…” Wren murmured, eyes taking in the glorious view. “It’s all here. You can see it all from here. Forest. Desert. I see snow, up to the north. This is it. This is the world. Anything you might want, right here. And our people, too. This is what we were looking for. We crossed an ocean. We journeyed up from the south. This is it. This is the place.”

  “And it’s filled with the same stuff we were running from. Plus a big dragon,” Reyna said.

  Wren stared at the land. “Of course it is. Because we have to earn it.”

  “Earn it?”

  “Do we get a meal just for finding a deer? No. We have to chase it. We have to corner it. We have to wrestle it to the ground. We have to earn it.” He stood. “This place is perfect. It’s everything we want. We found it. Now we have to earn it.” He turned to her. “The bigger the prize, the bigger the fight. And this is the biggest prize of them all. It’s worth it, isn’t it?”

  She nodded and stood beside him. “It is. It really is. All of it. The place. The people. If we want this to be our home, if we want to stop searching and stop running, we’re going to have to fight all these fights. We’re going to have to get the Reds and the Fennecs to stop their fighting. We’re going to have to do something about Boviss. We’re going to have to do it all.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Are you sure I’m the smart one?”

  Wren sampled the breeze. “You better be the smart one. Because if that smell isn’t Boviss, I don’t know what is. And I sure don’t know what we’re going to do about him yet.”

  He shielded his eyes. “We’ve got half a mountain to climb. You’ve got until then to come up with a plan that would make Swift proud.”

  Reyna spotted the shadow-shrouded peak that Wren had set his eyes upon. “I’ll think of something,” she said with a resolute gleam in her eye.

  #

  Sorrel’s time with Boviss had been unpleasant, but not intolerable. Even eating just the crumbs off his plate, she was better fed as his personal pet than she’d been for years on her own. He had little regard for her safety, constantly flailing her about whenever he had her hooked to his tail, but she was quick to learn his whims and anticipate when she’d have to brace herself. There were only two things about this place that had been truly trying.

  The first was the knowledge that somewhere out there her children were forced to do without her. She’d taught them as well as she could, but this was a strange new place with things she’d never anticipated. She didn’t know what had become of them, and she would not have a proper moment of sleep until she saw their faces again.

  Her other source of difficulty was a sad necessity. In her desire to keep Boviss from having a taste of her, Sorrel had awakened a taste for her praise in him. And like so many other things in his life, Boviss was not content until he had overindulged himself.

  “Have you lost your tongue, Child of the Forest Across the Sea?” Boviss rumbled.

  He, and thus she, had taken their place at the mouth of his lair. He gazed over a vista that encompassed half the continent. As he did, he enjoyed the adulation that Sorrel had become quite adept at delivering despite the lack of sincerity.

  “It is simply that you have taken my breath away. That is all,” Sorrel said. “You, who are so great. I have never seen a dragon so great as you.”

  “Certainly not. A beast that can become an elder dragon is born but once in a generation. And that is a dragon’s generation. The world may only have seen three of my kind since it was born. Before me, there was my mother.”

  “And her mother before her?” Sorrel suggested.

  “No. Before her was a creature from what you have called Tressor. A place where humans and dragons have linked their fates.”

  “The place of Dragon Riders. I have heard of this place.”

  “Many thousands of years ago. Many, many thousands of years ago, there was an elder dragon there. She was the largest. The oldest. Our legends say she was hatched of the world itself, that it was her fires that boiled away enough of the sea for the creatures of land to take their places. And she fell to my mother. And my mother fell to me.”

  “You killed your own mother?” Sorrel said.

  “There is room for only one elder. Had I not killed her, she would have killed me. And I would have deserved it for not rising to the challenge,” he said.

  “I suppose it must have been trickery, oh great Boviss.”

  “Trickery…” he fume
d. “Do you believe I could not conquer her with my might alone?”

  “Surely a battle with one of your size would have churned the mountains to gravel.”

  “Such flowery language. Even you could not believe that.”

  “Then the battle was a swift one? Your mother was feeble?”

  He rumbled with a tremor of anger. “Have you grown weary of your time here? Are you longing for the escape of death? My mother was every bit as mighty as I. My skill with my claws and my flame, and my cunning, brought me the victory that day, and only after a struggle that lasted weeks.”

  “But you show no scratch. No scar of that day. How could such a battle be one without a wound?”

  “That day, I was as near as this world is ever likely to bring me to death,” he said. He held his foreleg toward her. “Look upon me. If you do not see the scar of that day, then your vision has failed you.”

  She peered at the offered leg. It was subtle, but it was there. The untold centuries since the battle had faded the scar and hidden it between rows of healthy scales, but a deep white split some of his armor.

  “I see. Truly the battle must have been one for the ages.”

  “It is a battle the likes of which this world will never see again.”

  “Oh? What, then, of your own young? Won’t they rise to challenge you?”

  “There shall be no young. I shall reign as elder for as many days as this world has left.” He turned to her. “You see, now, how wise your kind have been to choose me as their patron.”

  “And you, who are so great, who are so mighty and can never be vanquished, why limit your land only to what you see here? Why should your domain have borders?”

  “My land has no borders. The world is my domain.”