The Dragon Tree Saga

Chapter 1: Rain-Slayer

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Even now, they rarely returned. Many of the Hillfolk believed they never would again. It had been generations since the last red flood, the killbirth flow, and without it…

The raging red water brings birth out of slaughter

Ice-melt meets sea-boil, recedes and leaves the red soil

That frees youth from aging roots

Of the dragon-balm trees…

Every child knew the song, written ages ago by Lloyd-Zander, Prince of the Sea Realm, the first and most famous bhar’d of all time. Every child learned the lesson of the song: without the red flood, the dragon-balm would not bloom, and without those intoxicating flowers, the dragons would not return.

Many had begun to believe gone were the days of the red flood. They had never seen dragons. It was not so hard to give up hope of their ever returning.

Whispers began that the stories were myths.

“The floods come every year. Never seen a red one…”

“The ice melts from Ten Mountains in the seedling moon. A red flood? I think not…”

For some, the songs and tales were old-fashioned superstitions. Nothing more.

Rain-Slayer did not doubt the tales. She knew every song by heart. Her first words, she was told, were sung on the knee of the Go-to-Flames, the bhar’d who came to celebrate her third-turn.

At only fifteen turns, she was already the only villager, and maybe the only one in Midhills, who had read all the records of red floods kept and collected by the Scribes there. She had traveled alone to their library all the way in Keephill to do it.

She had gone without permission and without telling anyone except her closest friend, Kills-with-Stones. He told his parents, as she knew he would, but they made no effort to stop her, as she also knew they would not.

She journeyed alone - except for Morrigan, of course, who trotted alongside her everywhere she went - for a whole quarter moon along the herding paths to Keephill, the largest village and unofficial capital ‘city’ of Midhills. There she did not visit Story-Teller or the Head Women’s Hill or even the sprawling agora, a marketplace boasting all of the wares and foodstuffs from every village in the region. Instead, she went immediately to the grand library and asked the Scribes there to show her the collected records of red floods.

She loved reading, her dog lazing at her feet, the old records written by Scribes now long dead, in their objective, often dry detail. They documented their observations, made comparisons, and suggested hypotheses to test cause-and-effect. They proposed possibilities and made recommendations. Their conclusions were exciting. They tried to understand the world around them. Their wonder and admiration for the natural world could not be constrained by the rules of precision with which they were trained to write. Some Scribes reveled as much in the study of language as they did of the natural world:

"Then all eyes, of mortal and faerí, of gogmagog in Ten Mountains and even dwellers should they emerge from their caverns, scour the skies for the coming of the dragons, large and small, sleek and hulking, armored and naked, black, gold, green and white, and somewhere, all but invisible, a great crystal queen, hidden among the thunder..."

She loved reading the records, and she loved the songs more, written by traveling bhar’ds who took the works of Scribes and turned them into rhyming melodies they sang and shared with villagers throughout the Hills.

She often hummed or sang the songs to herself as she went about her day. Kills-with-Stones always asked her to sing for him.

She protested. “Oh, you know I can’t sing. Not like, like, any of the bhar’ds…”

Her friend wouldn’t have it, and pressed her, “Oh please. Yes, you can. You know it. And who knows when a bhar’d might come back through the village? Go-to-Flames has not been here in many full moons and maybe it shall be many more before we see him again. Do you want to make me wait that long?”

Go-to-Flames… of all the adults in her life who watched over her and taught her so many things, Rain-Slayer loved him the best. She dreamed of traveling all the Realms as he did someday, a bhar’d, too, singing and teaching children the lessons of the moons, the fields, the hunt, and the floods, especially the red flood.

But for now, she had her village and she had her best friend, Ever-Laughs… No, Kills-with-Stones. She was having a hard time thinking of him by his new name, his hunting-name. He had just earned it, one full moon after she had earned hers. He would always be Ever-Laughs, his nine-turn name, at least a little bit. Whatever she called him, Ever-Laughs or Kills-with-Stones or whatever name he earned in the future, he always made her smile, and he always made her sing.

“Please, sing the one that Go-to-Flames always does when he visits… What’s it called again?” he begged. They were resting on the west side of their favorite hill after skinning and cleaning the deer they had hunted at dawn.

Rain-Slayer knew the song, and she knew her friend also knew it. It was one of his tricks. If he could make her say the name of the song, she couldn’t resist singing it.

“Hm. Enough with you, Ever—” She almost did it again. “Uh, Kills-with. You know the song. Everyone does…”

She didn’t want to say it. She was content to hum along and sing to herself when she was working, but to sing to anyone else was nerve wracking, even this boy who was like her brother.

Kills-with-Stones wasn’t having it. “Yes. What? I know. It’s called, um…?” He was baiting her.

And she bit. “Oh, alright! The song is called ‘Drown Me in the Red’, you fool…”

She began to sing with a voice her friend was sure the faeri would envy in their secret Realm far-away, east of Easthills.

Drown me in the red flood,

Drown me in the red…

Shed no tears,

Chill not your blood,

Bring down no grief,

Just drown, just drown, just drown me in the red flood,

Just drown me in the red flood, drown me in the red…

Then from close by, maybe just the other side of their hill, came a baritone voice in perfect harmony with Rain-Slayer’s…

Bring back the killbirth flow

For you know

The dragon-trees soon will bud…

So drown me in the red flood…

The children turned toward the voice and the man who owned it cresting the hilltop. It couldn’t be…

It was. Go-to-Flames! Go-to-Flames was back, here, in Fishkill Village!