Chapter 1
The bustling city of Kanto spreads along the north shore of Lake Ottar, a body of fresh water so large it reaches the horizon. Elegant guild halls with carved marble columns line Guild Avenue, the longest road in the country. It runs up from the dockyards, splitting the city in half as it passes through downtown workshops, warehouses, and six-story tenements.
Uptown, it chauffeurs executives between private residence compounds, then continues through dense suburbs until buildings grow scarce. Scattered barns and quilt squares of corn and grazing land eventually peter out as Guild fades to a dirt track shaded by pines.
At a long wooden table hemmed in by coworkers, Lil turned away from the window and tried to concentrate on the tall columns of sums in her account book. She was a humble clerk, from a family of bookkeepers, who never stopped to question how their routine addition, subtraction, and record-keeping supported the complicated architecture of Guild Masters, judges, parliamentarians, and owners who decreed, based on birth, who would be a peasant, laborer, executive, magic-worker, or discarded wretch.
On all of Soluna, most Soluns never gave it a thought. When Lil asked her parents why she had to become a respected, steady, boring, boring, boring bean counter, they flashed empty palms and smiled. No fight in them at all.
“Hey, Tunda.”
But the younger girl, who often bumped leftie Lil’s elbow, ignored her. Keener.
“Tunda, what do you want to do after work?”
“Eat and go to bed, silly.”
“But it’s spring. Steal an hour. The toolippas are blooming.”
“Shh. The supervisor is making wolf eyes at us.”
When she turned sixteen, the toolippas had opened for Lil, but they hadn’t worked for Tunda yet. Maybe they never would. For the past two years, Lil had searched for every blossom during their brief season. Their tall green stalks liked to hide among the grasses, but the brilliant red flowers, shaped like cups, gave them away.
If the right person approached softly, the petals peeled back revealing a shimmering sphere through which you could see Earth and watch humans.
The things she had seen these past two years, laying in the grass staring into the big toolippa in the garden outside the Law Guild Hall. Lil dreamed of crossing through the portal like heroes of legend, but as dull as life could be in Kanto, Lil wouldn’t abandon her family. Old tales warned that fools who went through toolippas seldom returned, and the few that did came back older and sadder, forever out of synch with their peers.
Chapter 2:
The sun bleached color out of the crowd and salty sweat beaded her lip as Lil weaved her way to the coliseum. Jostled by woefully underwashed folk, she searched for Gem, who was tall, but not enough to stand out in this crowd. Thousands of gamblers and gawkers paid a hefty entrance fee to the coliseum, but Lil had spent her childhood hanging out with Gem and her trainer family.
The guard at the door asked after her little sister and waved Lil through the trainer’s entrance into the complex of halls and rooms hidden from spectators. Lil went straight to Gem’s family area. The entrance was secure inside, but their halls and training rooms extended beyond the coliseum walls into an enclosure as large as a Guild Hall. It took a lot of space to house dragons.
Jockeys and trainers were too intent on preparing to notice Lil, but they would have stopped her dead if she tried the stable door. If Gem was with the dragons, Lil would have to wait.
Maybe she was in the arena? Retracing her steps to the main corridor, Lil peeked through one of the small, unglazed windows that gave a view of the arena from underneath the stands. From ground level, Lil saw every tuft of fur and ring of chain mail on the competitors parading past.
To tantalize gamblers, leather-clad trainers and creatures strutted around the enormous ring of sand. Lil admired the sphynx’s white wings and leonine teeth as they swanned past. Minotaurs repelled her with carrion breath, but she adored the trio of gamboling baby water dragons. The littlest capered, fell, and piddled on the hot sand.
Trolls and goat men swaggered past exuding barnyard odors. Giants in leather and chain armor flexed their muscles to raise a roar from the crowd.
It was a spectacle, but she’d seen it all before. Where was Gem?
As a kid, Lil had begged Gem’s family to let her apprentice with them, as if that would do any good. The law was absolute. Professions descended along family lines. Once a bean counter, always a bean counter, and Lil’s fascination with dragons had faded. She still thought they were the most powerful and beautiful creatures in all of Soluna, but in the intervening years, Lil had discovered something better.
She caressed the velvet bag tied to her belt. Wait until Gem saw this.
The last place to check was the infirmary, a hanger built off the far side of the dragon stables. There was a direct entrance from the shadowy inner hallway that encircled the coliseum and Lil went through the door into daylight. The hanger roof only covered half its length to allow dragons air access.
Wearing leather overalls and pants, Gem sat on a stool with a scaly silver dragon’s paw in her lap. She was muscular in a wiry way with short, straight black hair, a broad smooth face, and high cheekbones like her siblings. The dragon was a racing beast, all muscle and bone, in length about twice her size. Gem’s pliers hovered above a pillion that had been driven into the dragon’s flank. The dragon snorted puffs of black smoke and flames blazed in its eyes.
In a voice soft as soft as chick fuzz, Gem reassured the animal. “This will hurt a bit, but not for long. Don’t worry, Buddy, I’ve got ya.”
With a swift motion, she clamped onto the spike sticking out from the dragon’s side and wrenched it free. “See? Much better.”
A thin stream of green liquid leaked from the wound. Gem cleaned the area and taped gauze over it. It was cheating to race a dragon with stirrups or pillions, but jockeys tried many tricks to get an edge. Inspection happened before races, so they hid the devices beneath their dragon’s mail and encouraged them to fly straight home after the event. If the cheat went undiscovered, they stood to win a fortune.
Gem stood beside her patient, stroking the side of its face and making it purr with a rumbling that vibrated the floor. It preened into her hand, marking her like a cat.
“Whose dragon is that?”
“Mine.”
“Liar.”
“I took it off your cheating granny.”
“Your mother!”
“Bean counter!”
That did it. Lil launched herself at Gem and they tussled on the sandy floor, the dragon looking on quizzically.
Gem came up laughing. “You are such an idiot!”
“But I’m fun.”
“For a bean counter.”
“Watch it. But I have better things to do than argue.”
Her body language must have given it away because Gem’s eyes went to the purse on Lil’s belt.
“Did you get it?’
“Oh, yes.”
“Can you show me?”
“Not in front of the dragon. Meet me, usual place, when can you get away?’
“I’ll be half an hour.”
Thanks for reading.
The idea of this newsletter is to do some creative work every week and share it. Instead of writing about creativity, this week I decided to share the first chapters of my story-in-progress.
If you like, use the portal image to inspire your own work.
Feel free to share what you’ve been working on or comment on the story.
Have a creative week!
Maaja