A LAND CALLED FAR AWAY
The Story of Sunflower and Memnoch
Father stopped suddenly, with so little warning that Sunflower tripped over himself a little bit trying to prevent a collision. Father swung his massive head around, and settled his gaze on Sunflower, gentle, but firm. “I’ve given you my answer. More than once.”
“But –“ Sunflower began, but of course Father cut him off. They’d been over this argument so many times, Father already knew all of Sunflower’s arguments, and Sunflower Father’s.
“You know what?” Father said, “come with me.”
Father set off walking again, and for a second, Sunflower could only just blink after him. This was a new development in their script, and Sunflower could only guess where they were headed. Deep in his heart, Sunflower allowed a secret hope to bloom. That he had done it. That he had convinced Father –
That he could go to the Coliseum.
Sunflower longed to go to the Coliseum. Ached for it. Dogwood Weyr – Father’s domain, Sunflower’s home – was home to Dogwood Academy, a Coliseum training school that was quickly gaining renown throughout the Viridian Labyrinth, if not all of Sornieth, as a place for young dragons to go before pledging themselves to one of the Deities. Sunflower had no desire to become a student, nor did he wish to Exalt, for he liked his life in Dogwood, his friends, his familiar, lazy summer afternoons swimming in the pool beneath the waterfall, late winter nights telling stories in Iztro’s Tavern. But it was in exactly in that tavern where he’d first met some of the Academy Cadets and heard about the things they’d seen. He was hooked.
He imagined himself fighting Maren in the Kelp Beds. Toridaes in the Mire. There had been rumors lately of new, strange creatures in the Boreal Woods, foxes made of glass and soft, silent Owlynxes.
But Father had always said no. Said that the Academy was for Cadets only, and Father had no more desire for his eldest son to Exalt than Sunflower himself did. So they were stuck in their stalemate, Sunflower pleading and Father remaining firm.
Father stopped in front of the Academy, where a class of very young Cadets, practically babies, was being taught by Wintrow, one of Elders of the Weyr. Wintrow was less teaching them and more keeping them from wandering too far away from the meadow. Even the hatchlings straightened up, though, when they saw Father approaching.
“Hello, Brychon,” Wintrow said. Wintrow had been a member of the weyr since its beginning, and was one of the only dragons to use Father’s given name. “Welcome to our class.”
“Hello, Wintrow,” Father said. “Sunflower and I were just having a walk.” He turned to Sunflower. “Remind me, please, when is the most dangerous time in the Coliseum?”
“Uh…” Sunflower didn’t know. “When you’re injured?”
“No,” Father replied. “Ruby, would you please answer the question?”
He pointed to the youngest Cadet in the meadow, a little Pearlcatcher. She gulped, she’d probably never been spoken to by Father before. “When you first arrive,” she squeaked. “Before your breath is up.”
“Sunflower, what kind of enemies should you attack first?”
He didn’t know. “Mammartees?” he guessed, remembering what the Cadets had said in the tavern about how hard they were to beat.
“Ruby?” Father asked.
Ruby looked between Father and Sunflower, clearly uncomfortable with being caught in the middle. She clutched her little pearl tight against her chest. “The fastest ones. So they don’t get a chance to attack twice.”
“Well done, Ruby. You will do Glademother proud in Her service one day,” Father said, and Sunflower couldn’t take any more of this, his eyes filling with tears. He didn’t care how much of a baby it made him look, he ran out of the meadow, into the woods. He didn’t want to see anyone right now, not Father, not the Cadets, not even his familiar.
Without even realizing why he was doing it, Sunflower found himself attacking a tree. Ripping his claws into the bark felt good. Kicked it a few times for good measure, let out a primal shriek.
“Wow,” he heard a voice behind him say, “If that tree were a Mantarune, you’d have taken it down by now.”
He spun around in a fury, and the dragon before him was not who he was expecting to see. Not that he knew who he was expecting to see, exactly, but she wasn’t it.
He didn’t know her well. Her name was Memnoch, and she had been one of the dragons to found the Academy. She, along with her friends Revenant and Isolde, had joined the weyr in its early days eager to make a name for themselves as Coliseum fighters, and had along the way started the Academy. She was a mage, he remembered. A Coatl, like him.
“You wanna talk about it?” she asked.
“No,” he replied.
“Okay,” she said, the moved next to him and started kicking the tree, too. When he looked over to her, she said, “it seemed like fun.” Together, in silence, they kicked the tree, but with Memnoch next to him, his humiliation and hurt started to dissipate. After a few minutes, he stopped, curling up on the ground next to the tree. She stopped, too, and leaned against it.
“It’s stupid that Father doesn’t let me go to the Coliseum,” Sunflower said, and Memnoch started laughing. He looked at her, annoyed. “Don’t laugh at me. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“First of all,” she said. “I’m not laughing at you. Second of all, I know exactly what it’s like. That’s my problem, too.”
“Yeah, right,” he said. “You’re a Coliseum teacher.”
“Kid,” she said, even though they were basically the same age, “you really don’t know anything about the Academy, do you? Father disbanded the mage program months ago. Said he decided that mages weren’t effective enough in the Coliseum. I haven’t been back since.”
“But your friends…”
“Oh, they still talk to me sometimes. But they’re so busy and I’m just out here…kicking trees.”
“They don’t make very good opponents,” Sunflower said.
“No,” she agreed. “You know what is, though? Mossy Pohips. They’re these giant beasts that carry a little forest on their backs.”
“Really?” Sunflower asked.
“Really,” she replied. “You can see the dead stumps and everything. I wish I could fight one again.”
“I wish I could fight one for the first time.”
And in the history of dragonkind, there has never been such a complete, simultaneous agreement as when Sunflower and Memnoch caught each other’s eyes. She grabbed his paw in hers, and they were running through the forest, stumbling, laughing in giddy excitement at the forbidden plan ahead of them.
Before too long, they arrived at the boundary between the regular forest and the Blooming Grove. Memnoch put a claw to her mouth to indicate quiet, and the two of them crept through the Grove as silently as they could. She directed them towards the sound of running water. They came out into a clearing where a small stream emptied into a pool and three large cat-like creatures with flowers for manes lay sunning themselves. “Lilium Floron,” Memnoch whispered.
She was quiet for a minute, concentrating, and then suddenly – a large boulder beside the stream was lifted and thrown at the Florons! It connected with one, knocking it back, but not killing it completely. What’s more, the other two Florons stood up, spotting the pair of dragons immediately.
They came towards them, and Sunflower didn’t know what to do. When one got close enough, he lashed out wildly, slashing the Floron on the nose. It looked at him, almost more perplexed than anything, then lashed back, harder and stronger. It wasn’t clear if they would win or lose, but Sunflower had never felt more alive. He felt himself a string finally put on a bow, energy finally being released.
Sunflower helped as best he could, but Memnoch was the real powerhouse of the team. They fought back against the Florons, but it was costly. At times, Sunflower wasn’t sure if they were going to live. But slowly, surely, they wore them down. Finally, the three Florons lay dead, though Sunflower and Memnoch both could barely move. Barely do anything more than lie panting beside the stream.
“We’ll recover here,” Memnoch panted. “And then we’ll –“
And that’s when they heard it. More of a vibration than a sound, a feeling that rattled Sunflower’s teeth in his jaw. He saw it first, not as the creature itself, but as the way the canopy bowed and swayed as it passed through the trunks of the trees. It burst into the little clearing where the two dragons were recovering: massive, lumbering, and yes: a forest on its back.
“Mossy Pohip!” Memnoch yelled, and though Sunflower was exhausted, he had no choice but to get up and run. The Pohip lashed out at them, once, but Sunflower and Memnoch managed to get away, out of reach, until finally – what seemed like a much longer distance, even now when they were sprinting rather than creeping – they passed out of the Blooming Grove and back into the regular forest and Sunflower felt himself being healed by the magic of Sornieth.
They laughed out of relief. Relief to be alive. To not be caught. To have blooded themselves in the Coliseum and seen a terrifying beast. A tale they could not tell anyone, for Father was even scarier than a Mossy Pohip.
And suddenly, everything in Sunflower’s life made sense. Everything, including –
He kissed Memnoch.
And this – oh.
This feeling was even better than the Coliseum. To be alive, right now, to be kissing a beautiful dragon, it was a current running through Sunflower, a buzz throughout his entire body like he’d remained standing outside in the Shifting Expanse during a storm.
When they pulled apart, they were both breathless, but not in the Coliseum sense of the word.
The rest of the summer was as perfect as Sunflower had ever known. The experience grew in his memory until it became a day he had won, a triumphant battle that ended with sweeping the lady off her feet. He and Memnoch stuck close to each other all summer, the two barely apart, always laughing or scheming or kissing.
He knew what he was now. Not a Coliseum fighter, but a member of Dogwood Weyr all the same. Memnoch’s mate. She was funny, and sarcastic, and sharp, and beautiful and every second Sunflower spent with her was better than any second that had come before.
So he was in high spirits as summer turned to fall. As the day came upon them, the day that Dogwood Weyr had been preparing for. The day it would send all of the recruits it had been training to Glademother, for what some were saying was a fight against Arcane. They were holding a Ceremony, a party, both to honor the young recruits, so bright and full of talent, who were leaving, but leading lights of the Weyr as well.
Wintrow had decided to go. One of the oldest dragons in the Weyr, with three kids and even a granddaughter, had told his wife and children that it was time for him to pledge himself to something greater. Revenant, one of Memnoch’s friends and founder of the Academy, was leaving now that the Academy was established. Vestrit, Froggy, all members of the Weyr who had been there since the beginning.
As Sunflower prepared for the party, he looked for Memnoch so they could go together. She’d want to say goodbye to Revenant, especially, celebrate her friend’s hard work and devotion. But Memnoch was nowhere to be found in any of her usual haunts, and no one had seen her.
He didn’t find her at the party, either, while all of those who were remaining in the Weyr milled around waiting for the recruits to come out. Where could she be?
And then Father got up in front of the crowd. Spoke of all Dogwood Weyr had done. Spoke of their collective love for Glademother, the kindest and most nurturing of deities. The cadets came out first, and Father blessed them, one by one, until it was time for the Weyr’s senior members to answer the call. Wintrow, Revenant, Vestrit, Froggy, and –
Memnoch.
“No!” Sunflower shouted, as he saw her emerge from her robes. “No!” Tears filling his eyes, he ran from the party, into the trees, until, whether entirely by accident or not, he found himself at the same tree where he had first spoke to her.
“Don’t go fighting trees without me,” he heard her say, and spun around.
“How could you?” he demanded. “How could you leave me?”
She was silent for a long time. “This is always what I wanted, Sunflower.”
“You should be here!”
“This summer, believe me. It’s been the best summer of my life. If anyone could have made me stay, it’s you, but…”
“But what?” he asked.
“This is why I came to Dogwood. Not to be shut outside of an Academy I helped create. To learn to fight. So I could serve Glademother. It’s what all this is for.”
“Father said mages aren’t useful in the Coliseum.”
“Glademother accepts all. I want to go to her.”
“I hate her,” Sunflower said, surprised as the words were coming out of his mouth by his blasphemy.
“I hope you’ll take those words back someday,” she said, caressing his cheek. “I love you.”
And then she was gone. Sunflower couldn’t bring himself to go back to the party, and by the time he lifted himself up from beneath his tree, the recruits had left. Dogwood Weyr, which before had been filled to the brim with young students, was quiet. Felt older.
As fall passed into winter, and winter to spring, Sunflower nurtured a dark coal of anger in his heart. Stoked it every day. But as the winter snows melted, he felt it lessen. Every day, just a little, until one day he found himself going the full day without thinking of Memnoch or his abandonment by her.
And it was like Father knew, for the next day, Father came to him.
“We’re going to begin accepting new hatchings for recruits again,” Father said. “With Wintrow gone, I was wondering if you wanted to be the one who looked after them.”
Sunflower was tempted to say no. But it would be something to fill his days, a way to contribute. “Yes,” he said, and before too long, the first hatchling was brought. First one, then three more, then two, and soon his life was filled with them. Wrangling hatchlings, keeping them in line, tending to their minor scratches and scrapes and listening to their imaginative stories. Father had seen something in Sunflower, realized that this was work he would take to like a Water dragon to the Sea of a Thousand Currents.
For the first time since that summer, he was truly happy.
And one day, Dogwood’s merchant Symbol rolled into town, back from the Auction House, a wagon full of goods and gold. Everyone gathered to see what Symbol had brought, and while Symbol’s son, Armagan, unloaded the goods, Symbol himself helped a dragon from the cabin. A beautiful young Coatl, striped in orange and black.
“This is Nutmeg,” Symbol said. “She wanted to join us.”
She was shy, her eyes mostly cast down at the ground. But then she lifted them, a quick little dart, and Sunflower caught her gaze.
And this – oh.
