“Love is most cherished when it’s lost.”
—Phaeliisthia, Guardian of Uzh
Our meeting with Aunt Ssyii lasted long enough that the shafts of light from up high near the dome angled up the sides of the room, painting the columns with faintly orange light.
We talked more about the future, and I had a monsoon of information about hssen etiquette and living in the Emerald Palace thrust upon me. Most of it blew through, as I bent like a flexible tree into a gale.
Hopefully, I’d remember the important stuff, but I had a year to learn it anyway. Phaeliisthia would be waiting for us across the Hssyri. I wondered how we would get out through the palace, but Aunt Ssyii arranged for some of her personal taaniir, along with Dyni, to take us through the garden to a small, secluded mooring where a small boat waited.
To some, it would have felt like fleeing through a jungle, but to me, the path was too neatly trimmed, and the trees were too symmetrical—too many dead branches trimmed off.
Waiting for us was an aazh. Ssiina probably thought it looked like the one Sire Tyaniis piloted for us in Uzh, but to me it looked… wrong. Aazh, piloted by llessen, people who almost lived on the river and in their small boats, were practical things. Almost living, each one should have been a patchwork of repairs, marred by scratches, and assembled with caring, imperfect hands.
What floated before us was made by some expert craftsperson, with unnecessary flourishes beyond the simple serpent head of Hse’Aazh carved amateurishly on the small, high-pointed prow. Lines of scales ran down the sides, and the whole thing was painted—painted!
The llessen I took rides from and bribed with stolen baubles in Ess’Siijiil would turn their noses up at such a dishonest display. But, it was a boat. And it was far bigger than most, with two spaces for llessen, or taaniir in this case, to sit at the back.
Surprising those escorting us, Tyaniis lowered herself into one position, Dyni in the other.
“Hssen Tyaniis, you do not need to—” the taaniir’s protest was cut off.
“It would be a pity not to lend my strength for my family. I have had practice of late, and Dyni is quite capable of steering.”
The taaniir backed down with a bow. “Understood. Forgive my impropriety, Hssen Tyaniis.”
“You are forgiven.” Our sire turned to us. “Get in quickly. We have precious little time before we are found—and neither I nor my sister wish to untangle that situation.”
Wordlessly, my sisters and I obeyed, sliding on board, one to a side, with Kyrae seated between us, legs wrapped awkwardly around the polished wooden coil sat center in the aazh. The wood’s not even been worn by the scales of countless passengers!
The moment we were settled, Tyaniis curled her lower body over and back before shoving forward with enough power that the big aazh cut a wake, sending small waves up into the lower branches of the overhanging garden bushes.
Dyni steered frantically, her expression set and eyes focused. Nearly scraping branches, we left into the open water through a short, winding stream. All around behind us, the garden ringed a half-moon bay, and the river opened out before us, so wide that the other side was lost behind the line of the world’s curvature.
Once in the Hssyri proper, Ssina and I dipped our tails into the water, giving a small prayer to Jaezotl. Kyrae clambered over my lower body, sticking her legs between two loops of my tail for leverage as she lowered herself partially over the side, touching her fingers into the water.
I held her hair back for her, marveling at how smooth and long it had gotten in just one year.
“Thanks, Issa,” she said as she pulled herself back into the aazh, flicking water from her fingertips at me.
I hissed, flicking my tongue out at her. “That’s how you thank me?”
Kyrae only giggle in response, and the traitorous Ssiina joined in.
Soon, we settled into the newly familiar rhythm of family, with Dyni acting the part of a silent observer. Though, she did ask me several questions regarding what history I had learned from Phaeliisthia. Our sire and bodyguard saw us across the river. What had seemed wide from high in the sky became much wider when we were down in it.
Coming to Ess’Sylantziis, Kyrae and I had spent most of the voyage in the hold of the aazh’kaa we bought passage on. That ship also had the advantage of height. We were down on the river undulating with the small waves of a calm day.
At a point near the middle, we could hardly see either shore—both were thin, dark green strips. However, the top of the Emerald Palace’s spired dome, and the massive shadow of the Grand Temple held out, the latter almost to the far shore.
We moved upstream, landing outside of a small village we barely got to see the docks of. The area of our landing had a faint, familiar sunny glow and warmth. Tyaniis raised herself up higher out of the water to see, and barked quiet orders to Dyni, who steered our ship onto a muddy shore.
Phaeliisthia, in her elven guise, walked out from behind a bush, dusting leaves off herself. “The indignity of waiting, crouched in the bush like some amateur hunter!” She flashed a smile, and strode to the edge of the mud, deliberately not taking a step into it. “I daresay it is matched nearly by the thrill of anticipation! You lot look well—all heads present and accounted for on all their respective bodies.”
“My sister—” Tyaniis grunted as she gave one last push, shoving the hull of the aazh up nearly to top edge of the muddy, sloping bank. “—was not going to execute any of us.”
“But she could have.” Phaeliisthia smile.
“Please, Phaeliisthia,” my sire said, suddenly sounding very tired, “not right now, if you would be so kind.”
The dragon serpent lifted her chin, white eyes staring imperiously down. “Alright, Tyaniis. You will get your reprieve—this time. If only because I wish to be away with my students once more.” Her eyes flashed. “That is still the plan, yes?”
“It is,” Tyaniis answered, “and my sister looks like she may aid us in some capacity.”
“Marvelous!” Phaeliisthia turned to us. “Disembark, dears. It is high time we got going.”
Before I left, I slid back and hugged Tyaniis, who stiffened, then hugged me back, almost too tight. “Be well, Issa. Be well, all of you. Unless I have enough luck to be able to see you in Uzh beforehand, when next we meet you will be adults, if not yet in name. Until then, I will work night and day to ensure your future may be what you want it to be.”
“Thanks, Sire,” I replied with an earnest smile, letting Ssiina take her turn hugging Tyaniis.
She whispered similar platitudes, before addressing a surprised Dyni. “Take care of her please, Dyni. She’s not always so strong as she lets on.”
The bodyguard flicked her tongue out, glancing between daughter and sire as if not sure how to respond. Tyaniis gave an affirming nod, and Dyni spoke, bowing low.
“I will, Hssen Ssiina.”
“Thanks!” Ssiina wrapped the surprised Dyni into a quick hug.
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Kyrae took the chance to hug our sire as well. She was tentative at first, but the massive kelaniel pulled her in, almost smothering her against her chest.
“I look forward to continuing to get to know you, Daughter Kyrae, as I catch up with who my Issa has become,” Tyaniis said warmly. She ran a hand through Kyrae’s hair. “You are a lovely young woman and I will ensure that none at the palace, or in the whole of Jii’Kalaga, question your place.”
“T-thank you, S-sire,” Kyrae squeaked.
Tyaniis loosened and Kyrae wriggled free. Our sire bowed her head.
“I love all of you: Ssiina, Kyrae, and Issa. I look forward to when next we may meet.” She named us in order of age—although Kyrae’s was just a guess.
“I love you too, Sire,” I found myself whispering as tears blurred my vision.
Kyrae nodded, and Ssiina repeated what I had said. Together, the three of us left the aazh for the land. Phaeliisthia had her arms crossed, waiting, but she wore a genuine smile. “Your sire may just be changing for the better, you three. Now, before we engage in any more sentimentality, wave your goodbyes and let us away.”
We did so, watching as Tyaniis pulled the ship back into the water, uncaring over her lower body covered in mud. I would have sat there and watched the pair go, had Phaeliisthia not clapped her hands.
“We can talk about your meeting when we are in the air. I have my ways to get messages to your sire as well, so we will communicate later.” She walked off into the bushes, leaving my sisters and I to scramble after her.
Once we were far enough from the shore, Phaeliisthia stopped in a clearing and transformed in a burst of golden light, She tilted low enough for us to get in the palanquin (saddle) and took off, pushing us back into the soft leather with the force generated by her four powerful wings.
“Can we fly lower this time?” Ssiina shouted. “I want to be warm for the trip back ho—to Uzh.”
“I am glad you think of my estate so fondly, Ssiina. And I will fly lower once we are through the clouds and away from prying eyes.”
“But they know where we’re going!” shouted Kyrae, backing our sister up.
“Oh, do they now?” Phaeliisthia teased.
“Are you not taking us to Uzh?” Ssiina asked.
“Oh, I am, but there is a place I promised to take you all first!”
Next to me, Kyrae’s eyes went wide. “Now!?”
“Yes, ‘now.’ I am already flying, we are a good portion of the way there from Uzh, and I wish to see what sort of callers I have waiting at the estate when we disappear for a week.”
“Poor Zinniz,” I whispered.
Phaeliisthia’s laughter rumbled like thunder underneath us. “Oh, he knows.”
Ssiina started to shiver as we passed through the first low-hanging cloud. “Does our sire know?”
“Not knowing will not hurt her,” the dragon serpent replied cattily, voice echoing.
I snickered.
“Issa!” Ssiina protested.
“What?! I’m sure it’s fine!”
“Kyrae!” our hssen-raised sister turned to the elf among us for support.
Kyrae shook her head. “This is where I want to go most in the world? Why would I say no?”
Ssiina fluttered her eyes in shock, tongue flicking out only to zip back inside her mouth when she tasted the cold air. “Y-you! I will tell sire all about this!”
“Me too!” Kyrae clapped back. “I’m sure she’ll miss being there though…”
“Hssss! I can sssee why you two are sisters!”
“You’re our sister two!” I said.
A smile broke across Ssiina’s face. “Oh, fine! I guess I’ll just have to ‘sneak out’ again. And here I was trying to be the responsible older sister.”
“That’s more like it!” I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “That’s the Ssiina who snuck out to meet me!”
My sister blushed, and Kyrae joined in. “I’m just here for warmth!”
“You warm yourself!” I hissed indignantly.
“Yeah, but you two are still warm and you’re big, so scooch apart and let me between you before you coil up.
I rolled my eyes but did as she asked, and together the three of us formed a pile and hunkered down for the long flight. Just as the cold was getting to my nose, a dome of golden light flickered into being above us, and warmth suffused into me.
“You could do this?!” Ssiina roared, breaking decorum against Phaeliisthia.
“Watch your tone, child,” the dragon serpent rumbled back.
Ssina clamped her mouth shut. “M-my apologies, Phaeliisthia.”
“Did you do this just to mess with our sire?” I asked.
Phaeliisthia’s chuckling turned to full-blown laughter, rocking the saddle under us like a ship in rough water. We didn’t get a clear answer.
***
We saw the Sekalln Mountains before we dropped through the clouds. Like the teeth of a great beast, a row of jagged, white-capped peaks rose toward the firmament. Phaeliisthia took us down, and my sisters and I grouped up near the edge of the saddle, watching through the slight haze of Phaeliisthia’s warming spell. The morning sun glinted off the mountains like firelight off glass.
Kyrae held onto both Ssiina and myself, just in case, and the two of us kept our tails coiled around where we’d been resting since the night prior. As we entered the clouds, I took the moment to ask a question.
“What’s on top of the mountains? Is it rock? Gemstones?”
“Snow,” Ssiina replied.
Phaeliisthia sighed with a great whoosh of air. “I know I have mentioned snow in my studies—and how did you not find it in all your reading of my scrolls?”
“I didn’t know what the glyph I was reading was. I thought it was wordplay or something. Is it really just ‘frozen water?’”
“Yes, Sister,” Ssina said, rubbing my hair affectionately. “It’s nice to get to be the big sister a little longer.”
“I’m bigger than you!” I retorted.
“Not older.”
Kyrae shushed us. “We’re coming out of the clouds.”
Ssiina and I shared a look, then quieted down. As much fun as this adventure was going to be for all of us, this was Kyrae’s day. Somewhere below us was the source of the Greatriver, lifeblood of the Greatwood and the elves alike.
The snow-capped peaks broadened out, big piles of snow sitting where two met. Below the great piles, bare rock quickly dotted with green, then filled in. The jungle stuck like bulbous scales to the sharp spires of rock and steep slopes alike, its own smaller clouds and fogs clinging around it.
Phaeliisthia banked, and our vision dipped lower, into narrow valleys and precipitous drops. Then she leveled again, and we faced a massive snow-pile between two equally impressive peaks. This one dipped lower than the others, and, impossibly, the jungle rose to meet it—green against stark white.
Aiming for an area of lower density along a flat-ish rock shelf, Phaeliisthia descended. Lumps of green soon turned into trees. Smaller than I expected, they nevertheless had a gnarled, aged look to them. Sparse groundcover and underbrush clung to the smaller gaps in the rock where the trees could not, and just below the shelf, soil gathered deep enough for a dense tangle to form.
Phaeliisthia tipped, and my sisters and I half-spilled, half-slithered onto a patch of rock covered in soft moss. The cold hit me immediately, but for the time being, the warmth of Phaeliisthia’s spell lingered, and my lower body was shielded from the punishing chill of the ground below. Moments later, a glow surrounded her, and our tutor retook her elf-like form.
Straightening her outfit, she beckoned. “We will hike to the base of the glacier. While some would point to a spring as the source, the main channel and bulk of the starting water for the Greatriver comes from the glacier behind me.” Without waiting for us, she turned and started to walk away.
Kyrae rushed after her, a wide eager smile on her face that forced a similar grin to appear on mine.
“Glacier.” I rolled the word around on my tongue as we walked and slithered through a wonderland of rocks, moss, and short trees. “Why is it not just ‘big frozen water’ or ‘pile of frozen water?’”
“Because a glacier is much more than that.” Phaeliisthia pointed between some loose rocks. “Watch your step here, Kyrae.”
My elven sister skipped over the rough spot without issue.
“Are there glaciers north of here, across the Emerald Mountains—by the Spring of All Life?” I slid over the rocks, barely noticing their sharpness through my scales. They’ve gotten a lot tougher of late.
Behind me, Ssiina slithered across just fine.
“There are.” Phaeliisthia answered, turning us around a particularly thick cluster of trees. “Some you can see from the temple there.”
I nodded.
Ahead of me, Kyrae kept pace with Phaeliisthia, almost running ahead of her when the glacier came into view. Immediately, I felt small—tiny even. Insignificant.
What had looked like a pile of snow from the sky was so large that Phaeliisthia in her true form would stand before it like an ant would to her. Snow, frozen into a shining, rock-like solid, took on a blue hue, practically glowing in the morning light.
It rose like a cliff, taller than even the Grand Temple, and far, far wider. Before it lay a huge placid pool, so still that it reflected the face of the glacier—doubling its apparent size. From the front edge of the pool, a small stream crashed over rocks and tumbled away down into the misty jungle.
Ssiina slithered up and over my tail when I stopped suddenly. She looked up from her vigil against sharp rocks on the ground, and her jaw fell open, mirroring my own.
“It’s beautiful,” Kyrae gushed. She ran forward, peering into the pool, before she took off one mitten and stuck her hand into the stream, shivering when the cold water hit her fingers. “What’s the glacier’s name?”
“It doesn’t have one,” Phaeliisthia responded. “Do you think it needs to?”
“I think we should—”
Kyrae cut me off. “No. I think it’s best to leave it unnamed.”
“How very elven of you,” Phaeliisthia said proudly. “The glacier feeds the river with melting snow. As we are at the start of summer, the pool before it is large, and the flow into the Greatriver starts with that stream. She pointed to the tiny river no wider than Kyrae was tall.
“So that’s the Greatriver?” Ssiina asked, moving closer, but not daring to touch the frigid water that tumbled and burbled over rocks.
Kyrae shook her head. “It becomes the Greatriver. This is why names are rarely enough.”
“Did you read that in Phaeliisthia’s library?” I followed Kyrae’s example and stuck my bare hand in. The mistake was worth it for the smile my sister gave me.
“I did. It’s important for me to learn bits of what I can of elven culture. Maybe I’ll remember more about my early life too. You and Ssiina and Sire are my family now, but I still want to know.”
I flicked the water at her.
She jolted and blinked up at me with surprise and a little anger.
“We’ll find out, Kyrae—all of us together. You don’t need to do it alone, and you should enjoy today. Don’t get wrapped up in the past.”
My elven sister smirked. “Fine. You’re right, Issa. I’d splash you back, but I worry you’d freeze.”
END OF VOLUME 1