“They change the colors of the leaves and trees depending on what holiday approaches,” Zav said, watching me from behind as I stared all around, “or if a visiting musician or artist or someone of cultural importance is arriving. Sometimes, the trees sing.”
“That’ll be something. Most people have to take drugs to experience that stuff.”
He gazed blandly at me.
Reminded that he’d brought me against my will, I thought about giving him the cold shoulder and walking off in a random direction, but it wasn’t as if I knew where to go or if there was anything out here that would kill me. Though the last thing I wanted was to have my fate dependent on him, I had little choice. Unless an elf taught me how to make my own portals, I was a prisoner here.
My weapons and the bakery bag were at my feet. I strapped on Chopper and Fezzik and picked up the scones, snorting as I imagined my mother’s scathing commentary on how I didn’t have three days’ worth of food and water and an emergency first-aid kit. She wouldn’t even go hiking with less than that.
A wave of panic washed over me as I realized I hadn’t grabbed my inhaler. Whenever I left my apartment, I stuffed it in my pocket, but I hadn’t intended to leave the apartment. Zav had asked me if I needed to take anything, and I’d been too busy being recalcitrant to realize I should pack a bag. I also didn’t have a toothbrush or a clean pair of underwear.
Though disgusted with myself, I struggled for calm. If I collapsed on the ground wheezing, Zav should take me home. Assuming he could figure out what was wrong with me. At no point had I opened up to him about my asthma. Given that I was currently irked with him, I didn’t feel like doing so now. Instead, I would focus on how to get in and out of here as quickly as possible, so I could go back to my life.
“What’s the plan?”
We will fly, Zav spoke into my mind. He’d shifted into his dragon form which took up the entire clearing. The elves protect their villages, and it is not possible to make a portal that pierces the veil and allows you to travel directly to their homes.
“They like to keep out the riffraff, huh?” I walked to Zav’s side.
They defend their territory from would-be assassins and troublemakers, the same as many magical beings do. He levitated me up onto his back and sprang into the air, magic assisting him in rising above the canopy before he had the room to stretch out his wings and flap them.
“Elves have to worry about that too? I thought only dragons were targeted by assassins.” I bit my tongue to keep from adding, For obvious reasons.
Instead, as the damp misty wind swept across my face, I tried to calm my irritation with Zav. It wasn’t right that he’d taken me—and it frustrated me that I would lose my gig with Weber and not be there to help Dimitri find Zoltan—but it was better to make the most of it than sulk. Besides, how many people—how many mongrel humans—got to visit other planets? And maybe I would learn something here, something to keep dragons from hoisting me off my feet and thrusting me through portals.
If you have resources, there is always someone who wants what you have.
“What resources do dragons have? You guys don’t even hoard treasure piles of gold like everyone on Earth thinks you do.”
We claim several worlds as our own. They have prime hunting and breeding grounds.
“What’s a prime breeding ground look like?” I imagined a planet full of beds and sex toys.
Zav glanced back—an impressive feat when he was flying—and I wondered if he sometimes got a few of my stray thoughts, despite his claim that he couldn’t read my mind.
High eyries where you can see enemies coming from miles away while enjoying the view from above the trees while you engage in xylishnar with a female that you respect.
I decided not to ask for a definition of that word.
“So, heights get you excited?” I was doing my best not to look down at the treetops zipping past below. He still hadn’t added a harness or seat belt for me.
Not as much as being fed meat by a desirable female.
“All I’ve got is scones, but since you kidnapped me and we’re not having sex, I guess it doesn’t matter.”
You will experience disorientation and a nip of pain.
“Uh, what? During the sex we’re not having?”
A buzz of electricity zapped me from all sides. I gasped and flattened my belly against his back, afraid we were being attacked.
We have passed through a defensive barrier, Zav said as the sharp pain faded.
“I would have called that more of a blast than a nip.”
Since we are not having sex, you will never know that mating with a dragon is wondrous and unforgettable and would exceed all pleasures you’ve experienced previously in your life.
“I see males are full of themselves throughout your Cosmic Realms.”
Zav banked, startling a flying V of large birds that looked like red turkeys, and something that might be called a city in the trees came into view. Thatched roofs and decks were visible through the canopy. The leaves changed from the earlier blues and purples to oranges and pinks, though the species of trees didn’t seem different.
My senses picked up magical beings and magical items—a lot of them. Far more than I’d ever encountered in one place and also more densely concentrated. It made all the artifacts in Weber’s mansion seem like a few sparse trinkets in comparison.
Several elves came into view on a large platform built between and around a copse of ancient trees with massive trunks. The trunks of some of those trees were as wide as my apartment building and had windows and doors in them. They appeared to have been created by magic, making it seem that the trees had grown that way, rather than been carved out with tools.
Some of the elves carried swords or bows—the weapons as magical as everything else around them—but none of them raised them as they watched Zav’s approach. As we arrowed in for a landing, I wondered if they would raise those weapons toward me, a half-human mongrel presuming to fly uninvited into their city.
My nerves twinged as I remembered that Zav’s plan was to convince these people to teach me simply because it would please him, and lesser species should want to please dragons. It was hard for me to imagine anyone, even the father I’d never met, wanting to be forced to teach me because a dragon said so.
I wished I’d thought to bring a gift to offer the elves. Some cool piece of art from Earth. Anything that might show them I wanted to be friends and wasn’t some interloper angling to get something from them. Maybe they liked scones.
The elves backed away, making room for Zav to alight on their platform.
Note the lack of furniture impediments on elven landing pads, he spoke into my mind.
For the forty-seventh time, our rooftop deck is not a landing pad.
All of the elves, tall lean beings with blond or pale-brown hair, wore simple clothing that reminded me of the wardrobes from the old Davy Crockett shows, though headbands made from braided twigs and vines seemed trendier than coonskin caps. The elves did something between a flowing bow and a curtsy to Zav—I’d seen Freysha make that gesture before but hadn’t realized it was a gender-neutral greeting—and one stepped forward and spoke in his lilting language.
I hesitated before reaching for my translation charm, not wanting to listen to Zav be pompous or the elves call me a mongrel, but common sense overrode the hesitation. It would be foolish not to learn everything I could about what I was getting into.
“…are not welcome in our world,” the elf was saying, looking not at Zav but at me.
What had been the word preceding that? Half-blood mongrels?
I have claimed Valmeyjar Thorvald as my mate, Zav replied telepathically. She goes where I go, and a dragon goes where he wishes.
For a fraction of a second, I’d been pleased that he remembered my full name, but since that was followed by him being as diplomatic as a thorn in the foot, the feeling faded.
She is the daughter of your king and requires tutelage in the magic of your kind, he added.
“A half-breed cannot learn the magic of our kind,” the elf said, sounding affronted at the mere suggestion. “A rock could sooner learn the magic of a dragon.”
Zav’s eyes flared. A rock could more likely learn the magic of a dragon than a pompous elf.
I thumped my forehead to his scales, then slid off and raised my hands toward the elves in what I hoped was a diplomatic gesture. I was still holding the scone bag and felt silly, but I forced a warm smile and pretended being called a rock didn’t hurt my feelings.
“Hey, guys. As my dragon ally here said, I’m Val, and I came to introduce myself to Eireth and to see if I’m actually related to him. And also to warn him that an elf chick is wandering around on Earth pretending to be his niece.”
Zav eyed me, perhaps not approving of this detour from his straightforward approach, but he chimed in with, Anyasha-sulin is her name.
The elves looked at each other, but I struggled to read the expressions on their faces. It wasn’t so much that they were masking their emotions as that there was an alienness to their facial gestures. Not surprisingly, they reminded me of Freysha, but back in Willard’s office, she’d been the quirky weird one—her and Gondo. Here, I was the one out of place. Even Zav seemed to fit in, as if he were far closer to being a part of their world than I was.
A female elf in the back of the group trotted through one of the doors in the tree trunk and disappeared upward, as if there were some kind of vacuum lift tube in there. Maybe there was. The tree hummed with magic, like everything else here.
“She will see if the king is home and deigns to speak with a half-blood.” The one who’d anointed himself speaker seemed particularly affronted by the idea of my mixed blood standing on his platform.
Rain started to fall as we stood around, the elves managing to turn their backs to me without including Zav in the gesture. He remained in his dragon form. That surprised me. I had assumed he would change into an elven version of his human form and had been curious to see what he would look like with Spock ears.