PRELUDE
Welcome visitor! What has brought you to this chamber of wonders? For what reason have you crept unto this treasure trove, so early in the dawn?
No need to answer. I can see by the hunger in your eyes that you are here for the challenge — that you hope to fill your pockets with this hoard. By all means, feel free to examine the jewels, and the coins, and especially the art, here gathered for your pleasure. See how the rubies gleam. Observe where the colours ripple and glitter in the curve of the opals. And as you pace back and forth in astonishment, notice how the piles of gold and silver shimmer like cresting waves on a restless sea.
Yes, this wealth is yours for the taking. But there are rules. One rule, in fact.
You must sit and listen to a story. After an hour has passed, so long as the tale is yet unfinished, you are free to take all that you can carry and go… but if you carry out so much as a single coin from this place, you will never hear its ending.
There is no trick: the story takes much longer than an hour to tell. It is a tale about what it means to belong; a tale about that which we choose for ourselves, and that which is chosen for us; a tale requiring patience and consideration, for the story is richer and more deeply layered than all the wealth spread before you. The tale I will tell you is about worth in all its forms — but in the end, you must decide the worth of the people I speak of, and whether each deserved the price they paid for who they were.
That is the challenge, dear visitor. And fret not, for there is no penalty should you fail to leave before my telling is done. Many before you have left this chamber with their pockets light, though I cannot say the same for their thoughts…
You are disbelieving. Perhaps you are eager to begin? Good. Sit comfortably, and I shall tell you a bittersweet tale of warmth, magic, revenge, and dragons.
Listen, now, to the story of Saphienne:
The Elf Who Would Become a Dragon
or, The Fires of Her Ambition
* * *
CHAPTER 1 – The Frog and the Toad
Long before Saphienne grew into adulthood, five moments defined the woman she would become. To know these is to know her. I shall tell them to you in the order they happened, but do not mistake the telling of them for their relative importance. All mattered in different ways. All will matter, later, when you wonder why she did the things that I shall recount for you.
So:
See Saphienne as she was, the quiet young girl, ten years old. Spring was in the air, and so her hair was the rich brown of the nourishing soil — for like all elves of her kind, her hair changed colour with the seasons. She was pale, like the bark of a birch tree, and slight in build, too small to yet be gangly, too large to be unawkward. Her eyes were also the colour of spring, pale green, but these did not change with the passage of the year, only growing brighter or darker in accordance with her mood.
Which was low, then, and so her eyes were the shadowy green of late evening. She was sat on the edge of a small glade, a glade in which the boyish girls and girlish boys from her village typically played. To see how the young elves laughed and cavorted in the afternoon sunlight, aglow in their fine white clothes, you would think all was idyllic, that their joy was infectious. But Saphienne was not sharing in their joy.
She was, as I said, quiet. Softly spoken, far from outgoing, the adults in her village thought she was sweet but plain, while the other children thought she was boring, too slow to play along. They seldom invited her to join in their games, and when they were obliged to include her she was never given much attention. Not that they were intentionally cruel. To them, she was an afterthought, neither loved nor hated, neither welcomed nor turned away, and never once envied.
This was why she sat on a fallen log and watched as they played their games, not even the book on her lap able to distract her. In those days, she was a precocious reader, and would sneak books out from the small village library that she thought were not intended for her (and that the librarian pretended not to notice her take). What else was there to do, but lose herself in stories of other times and places? To hear of other people, and so live vicariously through them?
Yet the book she had taken that day was not very interesting, and while her curiosity demanded she finish it, in that moment she longed more for company than for escape. Not enough to approach the other children, but certainly enough to watch them, and feel things that no child of her age should ever have to feel.
"Saphienne!"
See now a transformation: at the sound of her name, Saphienne's eyes lit up even brighter than the daytime, her face unguarded and smiling as she twisted around. The book slid off her lap, and she let it fall. Her attention was on the girl who was bounding through the long grass under the trees.
Kylantha was two years younger than Saphienne, nearly a full head shorter, and had none of her meekness. She also stood out, but not because of how she behaved: her hair was always bright blonde, even beyond summertime, and her ears were shorter and less pointed than those of other elves. For this reason she, too, was not invited to play, but that never stopped her from pushing her way in… when she wanted, which was not often. She preferred to spend time with her best friend, her only real friend, the only person with the patience to answer her endless, exhaustive questions.
"Saphienne! Guess what I have?" Kylantha had her hand behind her back, and she kept facing Saphienne as she sidestepped around the log, nearly tripping.
Saphienne's nose wrinkled, though her smile remained. "Another toad?"
"It was a frog."
"Frogs have smooth, wet skin, remember?"
"It was wet!"
Laughing, Saphienne reached down and scooped up her book as Kylantha sat. "Because you'd dropped it in the pond before you brought it to me, silly."
"I wanted to see it swim." She was pouting.
"I remember. And I remember it had rough skin and shorter back legs, which means it was a toad, not a frog. They're different creatures. I told you this. Frogs aren't toads, and toads aren't frogs."
Thinking on the difference, Kylantha looked down and went quiet. This usually preceded a question, and sure enough, a moment later she lifted her head. "Do you think there are half-frogs?"
Saphienne opened her mouth, then realised she didn't know. "Maybe," she guessed. "I don't know if toads and frogs can make babies together."
"How do they do it, anyway? They don't look like they can kiss."
Saphienne didn't know the answer to that, either, though she was old enough to know that kissing was only part of the process. "I think there's more than kissing. Maybe they skip that part."
"Do frogs think toads are ugly?"
"I mean, they look nearly the same." Saphienne stared up at the boughs overhanging the edge of the clearing, watching them sway back and forth in the breeze. "Toads crawl on land and swim, while frogs mostly swim, and that means frogs aren't as comfortable as toads out of water. Maybe frogs envy toads. Maybe they think they're beautiful."
Kylantha hung on her every word. Then, she smiled to herself. "I think a half-toad would look even prettier to a frog."
Saphienne looked back down. "Why?"
"Because they'd look like a toad, but get along better with the frogs."
That made her giggle. "I don't think they spend much time together."
"Well, they should. They're the same."
Prepared to argue, Saphienne knew she wouldn't win. So she just smiled, and shook her head. "Close enough. But, what do you have, if it isn't a toad?"
Remembering that she was holding something, the younger girl gasped, and she sat up straighter. "You need to close your eyes and hold out your hands."
"…Last time you said that, you gave me a toa–"
"It's not a toad!"
"Is it something else with poisonous skin?"
"Neither of us got sick! And it's not poisonous." She was pouting again, and her brown eyes were wide. "Please, Saphienne?"
She relented. "All right." Setting the book beside herself on the log, Saphienne closed her eyes, and held out her hands.
Kylantha kept her waiting, made sure her eyes were closed before she brought her hand around and gave Saphienne what she'd been hiding. It felt light, and soft, like it was made of fabric, but also wooden.
"You can look now."
Saphienne looked. She was holding a drawstring pouch, made from fine cloth, onto which chips of bark had been tightly sewn in interlocking layers. Shaking it, she realised it had something inside, and when she opened it she saw a single, shining, copper coin.
"Do you like it?"
She took the coin out, held it up to the light. She'd never seen one in person before, but she'd read about them. This one was minted with a crude human face on one side, and when she turned it over she saw it had also been struck with a poor depiction of a tree. "Did you make this?"
"Yes!" Kylantha beamed. "Mother taught me how to stitch, and I've been learning how to make things I'll need."
Saphienne looked down at the pouch, recognising that the needlework was poorer than that of the traditional elven clothing they wore. "I meant the coin."
"Oh, no. Mother gave me that. She said if I was going to have a purse, I should have something to put in it."
"I've never seen one before. Humans use them for trade, don't they?"
"I think so."
"So…" She put the coin back in the pouch, tying it shut. "Why do you need a purse? And why does it have bits of bark on the outside?"
"It's not for me." She was grinning. "It's for you."
Saphienne blinked. "But, why do I need it?"
"So that you have somewhere to keep your coins when we travel."
Slowly, she smiled. "We're going to travel?"
"Of course we are! We're going to see all the things you've read about." Kylantha stood up, spread out her arms, began to spin as she spoke. "As soon as we're grown, we'll go on a journey. We'll go over the mountains — and across the sea. We'll be adventurers! We'll see all the things there are to see, even things that no one's seen before, and you'll write them down in a book of your own." Leaping up onto the log, she wobbled there, arms outstretched for balance. "That's why it's arm– armed– protected on the outside, so no thief can cut it open."
Saphienne was grinning now as she looked up at her. "I'm only ten. It'll be ninety years before I'm an adult, ninety-two for you. That's forever."
"Well, we can prepare! I'll learn to fight, so you won't need to worry." Standing more firmly, she brought her hand against her chest. "I'll be a knight! I'll protect you, with my sword, and my song."
"And what should I become?" Saphienne asked, shifting her legs so that she half-knelt on the log.
Swaying, nearly losing her balance, Kylantha sat back down with a hollow thump. "You can be whatever you want to be. I won't mind."
"Even a thief?"
The younger girl scowled. "As long as you give it back."
* * *
Playing with the other children was of no interest to Kylantha — she wanted to explore instead. "We should go up to the lake!"
Saphienne was intimidated by the prospect. "But it's really far away, and we're not grown enough to go on our own," she said. "We might get into trouble–"
"It's just water." Kylantha was unfazed. "Lots of water. It's not dangerous — where did you think I got the frog from?"
"…It was a toad…"
"Same thing," she sniffed. "No one will notice we're gone. And who cares if we get into trouble, anyway? What's the worst they'll do?"
Especially back then, Saphienne had a tendency to take things literally. "Our mothers will care… and they could shout at us…"
"Mother likes when I explore." Kylantha's smile was as bright as her hair. "And who cares about shouting? Words don't matter, not really. Don't you want to see the lake? The toads might still be spawning."
Though she was unconvinced, Saphienne had never been taken to see the lake, and she desperately wanted to… but she was, at that time, a rigidly obedient child. "Can't we do something else?"
"Like what?" Kylantha shifted closer to her on the log. "Do you have a better idea?"
"We could go to the library–"
"Enough books!" Kylantha rolled her eyes, snatched the book from Saphienne's hand, and held it away from her. "Today is for exploring."
Saphienne could easily have taken the book back, if she had more confidence. Instead, she wilted slightly, then turned her mind to other ideas. "We could play hide and seek?"
"That's not exploring."
"We could go to your house? Or a shrine–"
"Boring…" Kylantha mimed a yawn. "Let's go somewhere we haven't been. Somewhere no one expects us to go…"
"Where?" Saphienne was struggling to understand what Kylantha wanted. "And what will we do, when we get there?"
"I want to see things we haven't seen before." Her eyes held an insistent plea. "We need to practice for when we travel."
That made sense to Saphienne. Her uncertainty fell away as she held Kylantha's gaze, replaced by resolve to please her friend, and the smile that grew on her lips held a measure of the other girl's bold mischief. "Then," she said, "I know somewhere we could go… somewhere that no one's told us we can't go…"
Beside her, Kylantha pouted. "But, where's the fun in–"
"We can go to the wizard's house."
After her shock wore off, Kylantha reflected Saphienne's smile.
* * *
Neither child understood the degree to which wizardry shaped both their lives, and Saphienne had not even the slightest premonition of how greatly magic would matter to her personally in later years. Though they had grown up surrounded by enchantments and magical wonders, all was commonplace to them, and so they only recognised what was unusually grand, like when the local wizard would celebrate the new year by making fantastic colours stream across the sky.
"Master Almon," Kylantha whispered to Saphienne, mildly disappointed by what she saw. "That's him… I think."
Saphienne peered through the bushes in which they were poorly hiding, oblivious to the fact that her white clothes made her stand out amidst the spring foliage. The adult elf who had just exited the tall, towering tree across the grove seemed an imposing man, dressed in vivid blue robes that were so heavy they looked like they could smother her — yet offered no impediment to his stride.
He walked away from the watching children, setting out into the village… only to pause, his back toward them.
"What's he doing?" Kylantha was cheek-to-cheek with Saphienne.
With a wave of his hand, the wizard poured sapphire sparkles from his fingertips, flickering sparks that leapt on the air and coalesced into a bolt of lightning that staked the ground before him with a thunderous boom — there to shimmer and twitch as it hardened and cooled into fine, fire-blackened wood, still yet burning with tawny embers.
Stunned, the girls froze in place…
Only for the wizard to nonchalantly lift his walking stick, and casually stroll on.
Kylantha was subdued. "…Maybe we should go back."
Saphienne, however, was still emboldened: she pushed through the bushes, making a beeline for the doorstep. "You said you wanted to go somewhere new…"
"We did," Kylantha pleaded, following after the older girl. "And that was– I've never seen anything like that before! So we're done–"
"No, we're not." Saphienne quickened her pace. "We haven't been in his house. We have to see our journey through!"
"But he's not home–"
"So?" She rounded on Kylantha with a wicked smile, copying her voice. "That means he won't notice we're there. And who cares if we get into trouble, anyway? What's the worst he'll do?"
Her teasing made the younger girl blush, which in turn made her clench her fists and stand a little taller. Still, she smiled broadly. "Maybe he'll turn you into a toad."
"Or you into a frog."
That cut through Kylantha's bravado, and her eyes widened in thought. "…Do you think he could?"
"Only one way to find out…"
Yet, they slowed when they crossed between the flowerbeds that flanked the door.
Saphienne gently shoved Kylantha forward. "You first!"
"No, you!" Kylantha pushed back. "This was your idea!"
"You're the one who wanted to go somewhere new!"
"I wanted to go to the lake! …I'm not going in." She folded her arms.
"Well…" Saphienne folded her arms too. "…One of us has to. Or it doesn't count."
They stared at each other, at an impasse.
Then Kylantha suddenly grinned. "I know what we'll do." She thrust out her hand in demand. "Give me the coin!"
Puzzled, but trusting her friend, Saphienne withdrew the pouch and fished out the copper disc. "What are you doing?"
"Just watch." Kylantha took the coin, balancing it upon her fingers, only to flick it into the air. "Heads!"
The metal glinted where it fell among the flowers — tree-side up.
"…Oh." Kylantha paled. "I called it wrong. That means I lose."
"It does?" Saphienne bent down, retrieving the coin with a frown.
"Yes," the younger girl nodded, already steeling herself. "You choose what you want to happen, then call which side the coin will land. If it lands the way you called, you win… or else…"
She bounded up to the step, gripped the door handle, and–
…Discovered it was locked.
Wordlessly, they faced each other.
And then the two burst into great guffaws of childish laughter, all their fear and tension dispersed like night mists in the dawn. They were still giggling as they ran away — though Kylantha darted back to the flowerbeds, stooping to carefully uproot a blooming hyacinth from its rightful place in the front garden, before she sprinted after Saphienne.
The casual vandalism worried the older girl. "Why'd you do that?"
"To show my mother." She grinned, full of play as she caught up. "Don't worry! It's just a flower. I'm not a thief…"
Appeased, Saphienne offered her hand — and was dragged along after Kylantha as she raced away. "…So long as you put it back!"
* * *
All of this was happy prelude to the first moment.
One year and half again later, in the autumn, when Saphienne's hair was red and she had begun to notice other changes creeping in, she was surprised by shouting. She was lost among the shelves of the library, usually so tranquil, when she heard the sound of the door crashing open, adult voices from outside calling after running feet.
"Saphienne! Saphienne!"
Kylantha nearly ran into her as Saphienne emerged from the end of the row, and then she did collide with her, throwing her arms around the taller girl with a muffled wail that only became louder as she cried.
"Kylantha!" Saphienne held her, caught between shocked white and an uncertain blush. "Kylantha, what's wrong? Are you hurt?"
But she only cried and cried, and clung more tightly, her grief too great for words. They stayed like that as the librarian led a man to where they were standing, a man that Saphienne did not recognise, dressed in dull brown leathers and draped with a cloak that was patterned like the forest. He did not interrupt, not at first, waiting until the wailing turned to sobbing, and only then did he crouch down, his voice gentle but firm.
"Finish your goodbyes, girl."
As softly as he spoke, suddenly Saphienne felt very cold. "Goodbye?" She pulled Kylantha tighter against herself.
But Kylantha drew back far enough to look up, her face red, nose running. She swallowed, and her usually vibrant voice was hoarse, broken.
"Saphienne…" She struggled to speak. "Saphienne… they're taking me away…"
End of Chapter 1