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“Hum little tree tree, grow big and strong. Hum little tree tree, grow your boughs long. Hum little tree tree, drink your roots deep. Hum little tree tree, because you cannot speak.”
Regzrgr-Sune's hands and voice caressed the soil around the roots of a sapling. Cracks between his fingers leaked dark blue blood into the dirt, and his toes dug into the earth like the roots he sang to. There was a griminess there, the secret, sticky, fresh, beautifully alive soul of the ground that none of the others ever saw. Life, Regzrgr had learned, was never like pictures. Life, in its rawest form, made your stomach turn over. Life was slimy and bloody and full of juices, like childbirth or a fresh kill.
Dragons understood this, and so dragons never built cities or houses or farms. Dragons curled up in the rainy muck with a grin on their faces and let their own fire keep them warm. Let the younger races hunker in shelter and be choosy about which sort of life they wrote poems about, but Regzrgr would let a fairy skin him alive before he let the woods and mud become a set of china, shiny, brittle, and kept safe to gather dust.
And that seemed to be what the other races were intent on doing.
While the humans were the most shameless about it, the tree griffins, mermen and fairies hardly did better. Of all the others, Regzrgr thought only the trolls made a decent attempt at appreciating the world as it was. But he kept this opinion to himself, because even among the dragons it was considered bad taste to have fondness for trolls, and Regzrgr liked to think himself a very tasteful individual. For example, the first time he saw a human, a young man wearing a yellow toga with a blue robe over it, he told him that the colors clashed and asked if he didn't have any white at home.
This incident happened when Regzrgr was 500 years old, newly departed from his mother's clutch. While his mother had never let him speak to humans, Regzrgr had always been fascinated by these tall creatures that spoke like fairies, bred like rabbits, and had the longevity of flies. He spent his first 300 years of adulthood roosted in the mountains near a great city of them, watching and puzzling over their ways. They had kings who ruled them and people to help the kings, people who brought wealth and people who took it away, people who begged in the streets and people who ignored them. The farmers toiled in the fields and bred food out of the earth, a practice he found both repulsive and impossibly clever. But the city grew on him, and after a time its people began to regard him as a distant benefactor. Crops always grew better when there was a dragon around to tend to the soil.
But one day, a marauding army swept into the mountain valley. The city fought back, and for a time Regzrgr waged war on their behalf. Here he had his first taste of another's blood, and he found it not overly to his liking. The city defended itself but lost the dragon's protection in the end. He left to find another hobby, one that smelled less of hate and pain.
Regzrgr never adopted a city again, but he did enjoy having little pet areas that he visited. In the jungles of the south he found a clan of fairies that threw the wildest parties, parties that left you laughing, telling what stories you could remember, and bathing for days. His mother introduced him to a population of mermen that told stories so old even the dragon elders didn't know them. He had visited the great tree griffin city, a human town that floated on a lake, and rescued a princess from her uncle that wished to be king. Whatever suited his fancy at the time, really.
And then one day, Regzrgr stumbled upon the land of Delmia. A swarming little country tucked in the basket of a shallow mountain valley, populated by a sample of every race north of the equator. Within it were scattered kingdoms of humans, tree griffins, fairies and trolls, with a human one in the center taking up the largest area. Regzrgr had rarely found himself so thrilled with a discovery. Why settle with one group of people when you can have four?
But in spite of all of his swagger, Regzrgr knew better than to just plop himself down in a woods that four races shared. Such balances of power were so subtle and intricate as to often evade understanding completely, and the appearance of a dragon in the middle of it could send them swinging wildly off to one side or the other. So Regzrgr made his presence slight, irregular, and unbiased. He visited towns only in obscure hours and made sure to visit them equally. He made no promises and no treaties and a point to stay out of the way of people in positions of power.
Or at least that was the idea.
Of course, he didn't spend that much time in Delmia. It was a small land without many natural features of interest, and when the world is your backyard, it's hard to remain content in a valley. But whenever he stopped by, somehow he always wound up in the fairy king's court or a griffin's inaugural ball or a Duke's feast. And at parties everyone's mouth wags, and before long Regzrgr discovered that politics was a delightful game.
On this particular morning, Regzrgr landed in the peasant's fields east of Crick's Hollow. He stood up, brushed off his clothes, and peered around the lumpy landscape. The rim of the sun was just showing in the east. Cut out against it were tiny humps of peasants working in the fields and the distant zig-zag of the local River Town. To the north rose Northill, the feature for which the area was named and home to some rich fussy or other. At its base lay another little town, inventively named Northill Town. Regzrgr deliberated between the two dwellings for a while before finally setting off for Northill Town with a spring in his step.
It promised to be a clear day, and Regzrgr enjoyed his walk. The earth beneath his feet was tended, fertile, and swollen with spring seeds. The wind spoke of yesterday's rain and an early summer further west. He worked his way through the fields, giving the farmers wide berth, until he came to the still-slumbering town at the base of the hill. The houses were all made of the red brick typical to the area and became richer the further north and further east you traveled down the curved main street. Regzrgr, turning his back on the white-washed shutters of the better side of the road, headed down towards the slums.
“Annabella, my dove?” He poked his head through the door of bungalow bordered by a pig sty on one end and an 'inn' on the other. “And how is the town beauty this morning?”
A stunted old woman lumbered out from some back room, pushing aside an enormous creeping plant on her way. She had a contract grasped in one withered claw as she beckoned the dragon inside. “Quite well, quite well. I'm surprised to see you here.”
“Well, midsummer's eve is coming up, and I wouldn't miss King Cian's party for the world,” Regzrgr chuckled. “Last year the fairy queen and a royal griffin guard got into a wrestling match. Were you there?”
“No, the Duke of Northill had something for me to do. I'm sorry I missed it.”
“Yes, how are those negotiations going?” Regzrgr flopped into a wicker chair by the door and began teasing a rose bush over.
“Not well.” The witch rolled her eyes. “The Duke is more tight-fisted than a raccoon, and the fairy mob isn't making matters easy for King Cian. You know Crick's road, don't you?”
“Of course I do,” Regzrgr said as he plucked a leaf off the rose bush and began munching on it. “I've never used it, but I've seen it when I'm flying over.”
“Well, then you'll know that it's the only decent road through Crick's Hollow, and going around the thing takes an extra two weeks of travel.” The witch swatted the plant out of Regzrgr's hands. “The Duke takes a toll on all the travelers going through it and makes a fortune that aught to belong to a Duke with lands three times the size of Northill. The fairies have been trying to get a slice of it for years.”
“Wait, but how did they agree to it in the first place?” Regzrgr looked up. “Building the road can't have been easy.”
“The Duke's grandfather bought it from the trolls years ago.” The witch shrugged. “They're the ones who built it, before the fairies came down south through the Hollow. As we got it now, non-fairies can use it during the day, but after nightfall you're risking your own hide.”
“Which makes twilight a legal quagmire, I see,” Regzrgr hummed.
“It's a headache,” the witch said as she plucked a tea kettle off the fire. “Chamomile?”
“If it isn't too much trouble.” Regzrgr stretched his feet out in front of him, wiggling his long, brown toes. “So, what's the local gossip? I've got an hour to kill before the fairies are all tucked in bed.”
“Well, the Duke's child had her eighteenth birthday. You know, the one whose conception party you crashed.”
“Oh yes.” The dragon smiled fondly. “Gentry are so much fun to play with. How's the little pip doing?”
The witch's voice rose to a cackle. “Well, if they were hoping age would dress up her features a little bit, they were wronger than a pregnant mule.” She chuckled to herself as she filled two clay mugs with steaming water. “The Duke had a veil put on her.”
“It's that bad?” Regzrgr eyed the tea. “Is she at least plumping up?”
“Get those ideas out of your head, you tramp.” The witch brought over his cup of tea with a bony, quaking hand. “If you were anything but a dragon and the Duke caught wind, he could have you hung. No, but she's an ugly little thing. She's got a jaw like a chimpanzee, only squarer, her left eye's lower than her right, and she's got a big mole right on the top of her nose.”
“Wow.” Regzrgr blinked. “Now that's something you don't hear about every day. Is she bright at all?”
“Oh, very. Doesn't talk much, though.” The witch's fingers lingered around the tea kettle. “Hardly blame her, the little thing.”
“Yes, I imagine she doesn't get out very often.” Regzrgr took a sip of his tea, his little finger sticking out.
“Oh, none of the gentry ever do.” The witch rolled her eyes. “They go to meetings, balls, and festivals. Beyond that, they stay far away from the likes of peasants. I'd be surprised if little Victoria had ever seen one before.”
“But they're so cute!” Regzrgr chucked as he set his cup down. “With their brown little cloaks and farm tools.”
“Speaking of which, you should get on your way.” The witch brushed aside a curtain of ivy to peer out the window. “The sun's properly up now, and I'm going to have business.”
“Oh, can't I stay?” Regzrgr whined.
“No. You're going to scare people off,” the witch said as she hobbled over to one corner to fetch her stick.
“I promise I'll be good,” he said as his mouth stretched into an enormous grin. His teeth looked like he'd swiped them from a shark.
“Out!” the witch snapped, shaking her stick at him. “I don't want to see another hair of you until nightfall.”
“Oh, don't worry. I'll be back for you this evening, my sweet.” He cast her a wink, threw open the door, and reentered the muddy, cobblestone street.
Northill Town was indeed stirring, and Regzrgr made quick work of escaping its boundaries. He didn't like crowds unless the crowd was focused on him. Nothing made him crankier than strolling down some provincial road and having everyone awkwardly ignore him. Good gravy, you'd think the bright red suit and gorgeous mane of spun-gold hair would tell them that this was someone to pay attention to. But no. They treated him like a member of gentry who would smite them with taxes if they made eye contact. Though he couldn't exactly blame them. Dragons superseded the feudal system that kept their world working orderly—among all the races. Only witches, the traditional ambassadors between the races, enjoyed anything close to the freedom Regzrgr had to move among whatever group he pleased. He could help a farmer tend his field one evening and burst in on the fairy king's council meeting the next. If no one could enforce rules on you, you were above them by default. Regzrgr enjoyed it.
Northill was only a forty minute's walk from the edge of Crick's Hollow, but he took a slight detour to avoid passing through the Mushroom Glades. The scent of bad memories lingered there. Instead he skirted along the edge of the eastern slope of Northill, steeper than the rest, that plunged down into the bed of Crick's Hollow creek. Matted grass coated the side of the hill like the hide of a dormant beast, flickering in the breeze and still clinging jealously to the shadows of dawn. Regzrgr marched over the top of it, whistling through his teeth and composing a song in his head.
By the time he reached Crick's Hollow, the distant churruping of the tree griffins told him that the fairies had indeed tucked in for the night. And good thing too—he didn't know how long it would take for King Cian to hear about the looting he'd joined further north, but he didn't want to be around when he finally did catch word. Regzrgr hadn't been able to help himself—the humans looked like they were having so much fun, and fire had a way of getting him excited. But he doubted this excuse would fly with the king, and he had no desire to threaten his welcome to Cian's midsummer parties.
Regzrgr mused about this incident as he poked his way into the swampy trees. A hop, skip and a jump got him across Crick's Hollow Creek and officially out of the human lands and into the fairy and tree griffin's. Specifically the fairy's, at least until whim declared that he climb an oak.
Upon breaching the canopy, he met a transformed world. Leaves made a green sea-floor below him, and the treetops and sky a patchwork ceiling above. In every tenth or fifteenth sturdy tree a neat but precarious-looking series of wood platforms had been built, all sheltered from the weather by woven, grass fabric tents. On the nearest one, a tree griffin combed through the feathers of her complaining hatchling.
“Good morning!” the dragon said when he pulled his chin up over the side of the platform. “May I humbly introduce myself as Regzrgr-Sune? And might I add what a hale-looking hatchling you have there? His father must be quite a specimen.”
The mother, while keeping a protective wing stretched over her child, blinked with surprise. She was little larger than a dog, sporting the head, forelegs and wings of a rusty eagle, and the hind parts of a panther. Her feathers had been dyed into distinctive patterns around her eyes, and she wore a tasseled, knotted sort of garment around her rear, groin, and tail base. “Oh, why thank you. My name is Illa Farrowfeather, and this is Ib.” After a moment of silence, Illa nudged her fuzzy, gawking offspring with the bend of her wing.
“My name's Ib,” the hatchling promptly recited. “It's nice to meet you, Reg...Reg...”
“Drake will do fine,” Regzrgr said, substituting the honorary term for a dragon.
“And what brings you to this part of the Hollow?” the elder griffin asked politely.
“Oh, just poking around,” Regzrgr said as he lifted the lid of a nearby jar. Illa's tail whipped over and smacked it shut.
“Well, a hunting party left a few minutes ago. There's been an issue with robbers up north and the mob poaching unicorns in the Hollow, and we received word that they're snooping around. I'm sure you can follow their smell if you like that sort of thing.”
“Hm...” Regzrgr stroked his chin. “That might be interesting. Thank you, fair maiden.” He rose, bowed, and patted Ib on the head. And another bound placed him back on the ground.
Sure enough, his nose quickly caught the scent of the hunting party, and he followed it with a sort of detached interest. Robbers and the fairy mob, very mundane sorts of things. But if nothing else, he felt inclined to investigate for the sake of the unicorns.
But as he traveled further into the woods, an odd sound met his ears. Fighting, but not with weapons. It sounded like several races yelling at each other, and all in different tongues. Ooh. Now that sounded interesting. And in a matter of minutes he reached the scene of the problem.
A small band of tree griffins were clustered in the lowest branches of a cedar, shrieking at the band of fairies bellow them. The fairies, levitated magically a foot above the ground, stared off into the distance with distasteful expressions and made the occasional sneering, sarcastic comment. Off to the side, three trolls shifted from foot to foot, bark-skinned, huddled, hunched and seeming to intrude with their size. One thunked his club on the ground and grunted as Regzrgr approached. At least one of each race had some sort of injury on them, though it was difficult to tell with the trolls.
“What's going on?” The dragon asked curiously as he brought himself level with the group. A twinge of irritation entered his voice as another scent caught his nose. “And why didn't you stop the poachers?”
“We would have,” the leader of the griffin troop snapped. “Only Frogswallow and his idiots here were snooping around in the brush and ruined our ambush!”
“Ruined your ambush? Ha!” The fairy leader, defined from the rest by the red patch on his chest, scoffed. “In your ignorance, you simply assumed that we were the mob and attacked us instead!”
“If your king would simply stamp out the mob it wouldn't be a problem!” the griffin squawked. “None of you help get rid of it, you might as well be in it!”
“Of course you would think that way,” Frogswallow sniffed.
“And what's that supposed to--?!”
“Now now!” Regzrgr stepped between the two parties, holding out his hands. “Let's not point claws here. Frogswallow, Elvick.” He shot a stern glance at the fairy and griffin leaders. “You were both trying to catch the poachers, yes? This is all just a little misunderstanding. A laque de communicacion, as I like to say.” Regzrgr often made up foreign words, just for fun. “Now, where have the poachers run off to while you have been discussing the finer points of each other's races?”
Silence greeted his question, broken only by the sniffing of a few griffins into the wind. Regzrgr sighed. “You know, there must be a better way to run all this.” He caught another whiff of unicorn blood, and his irritation increased. “Don't you have councils to negotiate with each other?”
“Yes,” said Frogswallow delicately. “But it's a very political organization.”
“They never get anything done,” Elvick interjected, rustling his feathers. “As far as unicorn poaching goes, the first one who sees it is supposed to do something about it.”
“Which obviously works wonderfully.” Regzrgr scanned through the trees, thinking. “I wonder if...hm...” Slowly, the dragon grinned.
“Is there something you request, Drake?” Frogswallow asked.
“Why not bypass the politics entirely?” Regzrgr said, throwing his arms wide. “Power to the gray people! Get your own council together, meet once every two months, get things done that your kingdoms only argue about. You share the same forest, after all. You aught to be cooperating. Why, just last year you had the exact same problem with the Crick road fire. You didn't coordinate, both parties tried to put out the same area, and half the forest was nearly scorched.”
The thoughtful, dubious, and angry expressions were split about a third of the way each through both the fairies and the griffins. The trolls just stood in the back, ignored and grunting a little to each other. “And how would this citizen's council be run?” a griffin asked.
“Easy,” Regzrgr said with a smile. “I'll be the leader.”
“You?” All three races jerked to attention at this. “But you're--”
“A dragon, exactly.” Regzrgr polished his nails casually on his suit. “I don't have any stake in all of this. I can speak all of your languages and understand them in turn. I can negotiate over the heads of your kings. And it would be a terrible amount of fun.”
The wood was quiet for a minute or two before Elvick said, “We'll have to discuss it.” And with a squawk, the troop of griffins took dusty, flapping flight back into the treetops.
“We too will need time to consider it,” Frogswallow said. He made a point of bowing gracefully to Regzrgr, and all of his soldiers did the same. “It has been an honor, Drake. Shall we meet back at the next full moon?”
“That would be a pleasure,” Regzrgr said, returning the bow with many added hand-flourishing. “I shall wait with anticipation.”
Frogswallow nodded, and with a gesture the fairies too melted back into the woods.
Regzrgr grinned as the last of their tiny backs vanished. This would be fun.
The next full moon rose behind a bank of inky clouds, bringing a warm breeze with it. Frogswallow, Elvick, and a handful of their friends waited silently. They had given up trying to make small talk about a half hour ago. The griffins all sat in the same cedar, and the fairies had settled twenty feet off, emitting a faint, convenient glow. The moon had reached its zenith nearly an hour ago.
One of the fairies suddenly looked up, his eyes pinched together. “It's about time,” he muttered. A bright streak had just appeared in the sky. It slowly drew closer, the griffin's ears flicking with the high-pitched whistling it gave off. And then it was screaming overhead, a train-sized bullet of red that shrank to a pinprick an instant before it crashed through the canopy and landed two hundred feet away with a 'whump.'
A minute later Regzrgr appeared, shuffling his hair into order and beaming at them all. “Lovely night, isn't it?”
The group met his comment with sullen silence. “Well, I think it is,” Regzrgr huffed as he sat down on the ground between the two clusters. “Now, first thing's first. We need a name.”
“The best names are derived from meaning. I suggest we postpone naming ourselves until we have a clearer idea what we're about,” Frogswallow said.
“Fair enough,” Regzrgr smiled, rocking back and forth on his rear. “A location, then? We certainly don't want to sit out here in the cold. Some refreshments would be nice.”
One of the griffins nodded in agreement, also yawning. “Especially if we're going to be up at this hour. Could we at least hold these at dusk?”
“Dusk? What say you?” Regzrgr asked, turning towards Frogswallow.
“We have our daily oaths to the king at dusk,” Frogswallow said. “No.”
“Really?” Regzrgr looked interested. “What rank are you?”
“A lieutenant,” Frogswallow sniffed.
“Well, that's not too spotty. A few more ranks and no one cares if you take your oaths daily. Anyway, what about dawn?”
Everyone present nodded silently, and the dragon clapped his hands. “Wonderful! I can provide refreshments easily enough, even a little clubhouse! It should all be ready next time around.”
“And what about policy, Drake?” Elvick asked. “As much as I know we all want a little clubhouse.”
“Policy? Okay, we can start with the unicorns.” Regzrgr's tone solemned almost imperceptibly. “The poaching's still been going on, I know. The mob seems to have taken over most of it, but the—oh, why hello there.”
The fairies and the griffins turned with surprise to see what didn't arrive for another minute or so. Three trolls, two males and a female, rustled their way in through the undergrowth. The one in front, who was also wearing the largest earrings, grunted a few times.
“Oh, yes, we did invite you, didn't we...” Regzrgr stroked his chin while the two other groups hunched together. The dragon shrugged. “Can any of you speak Fey?”
The female in the back raised one club-like arm. “Then I don't have a problem with it.” Regzrgr beamed at Frogswallow and Elvick.
Frogswallow spoke first, ever so slowly. All parties present knew that once Regzrgr had said something, even something as non-threatening as 'I don't have a problem with it,' there was no disagreeing. “I suppose we don't either, then.” He cleared his throat with a sound like a trumpet being tuned, and asked, “How shall we address you?”
The female pointed one gray finger at the troll with large earrings. “Braker.” Next the bald one. “Rikner.” And finally herself. “Rijha.”
“Braker, Rikner, Rijha, it is wonderful to make your acquaintance.” Regzrgr bowed to them all and kissed the hand of Rijha. All of the griffins cringed backwards as one. “So, now that we're all here, shall we begin?”
Silence met his words. The fairies looked like they wished they hadn't come, and the griffins couldn't stop sending looks of disgust and offense at the trolls. The trolls just sat and stared at Regzrgr with faces as expressive as mud.
“Well then, if no one else wants to talk...” Regzrgr let out a shrill whistle between his teeth. “Let me remind you what brings us here.”
A soft crunching met their ears as a small, white animal emerged through the trees. It had dainty, cloven hooves, long ears, and a crooked horn poking out between them like an index finger. It wandered fearlessly over to the female troll, stumbling a little on the way. The animal proceeded to rub slowly up and down against her arm, making a half purring, half whinnying noise.
“I found this one two days ago,” Regzrgr said, watching the beast casually. “She had fallen onto her back and couldn't get right side up again. I reached her a minute or so before poachers would have.”
While Rijha patted the unicorn, the fairies and griffins continued to be completely silent. Finally, Frogswallow spoke, “How does everyone feel about working with the humans?”
