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REGIDOR

Wailing. Long, loud moans. Sobs.

A hiss vibrated in the air. “Sh! Sh! Sh!”

Kale tried to open her eyes. She wanted to protest. It’s not me. I’m not crying. Don’t shush. I want to sleep.


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Crying. Soft, muffled whines. Sobs.

“Blasted, caterwauling beast! Go for a walk.”

Metta sang sweet songs. The melodies soothed Kale’s raw nerves.

The bawling subsided to gentle weeping.


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Shivers racked Kale’s body.

“Ah! That’s the end of it now. She’ll live.” Wizard Fenworth’s voice crackled next to her ear.

Another blanket covered her shaking body. Kind hands wiped perspiration from her brow.

“Get that sniffling, whining creature out of here!”

She smiled. Fenworth was crotchety indeed.


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Kale did not want to open her eyes. She knew she could, but it felt wonderful to just lie on the soft cushions.

I’m in Fenworth’s castle, and I’m safe.

She could smell the woody fragrance of the walls and floor and ceiling. She’d been in this castle before. A tangle of massive, hollow trees composed the wizard’s castle. Large limbs encompassed hallways leading from tree to tree. In each towering tree, rooms stacked one on top of another, each slightly smaller than the one below. Circular stairs carved out of wood spiraled up through each room.

Fenworth owned a world-famous library. More rooms held books than beds. Pillows stuffed in niches and comfortable chairs scattered throughout each room offered abundant places to curl up and read. The beds were either hammocks hanging from the walls or rowboatlike frames made of what looked like gnarled roots. Colorful cushions filled these knobby platforms to the brim.

Kale breathed deeply, relishing the earthy odor and knowing that when she did open her eyes, she was as likely to see a fox or an owl as a person in the room.

Gymn snuggled on the pillow with his chin resting on her shoulder. His healing powers flowed through her. Only a comfortable feeling of laziness kept her in bed. Vaguely wondering how long she’d been ill, she stretched her legs out straight and then rolled onto her side. Gymn shifted with her.

Metta sang. Her voice energized the air in the room. As always, the dragon sang in syllables with no recognizable words. A ripple of music touched Kale as gently as a mother’s loving hand. She could imagine the mother she’d never known stroking her cheek, teasing her to awaken.

Even without lyrics, the cheery melodies echoed through her thoughts, taking away some of her lethargy. She pulled her mind out of a pleasant drifting and puzzled over Metta’s song.

What is that tune?

She remembered one phrase: monkey tree.

And then a few lines:


climbing and jumping and scrambling around.

They flip and flop

and skip and stop,

but ne-ver touch the ground.

Da-dee-da-da

dee-da-dee-da-dee,

orange and purple monkeys in the monkey tree.


What are the words for the da-dee-da-da part?

Kale furrowed her brow and concentrated on her surroundings. Something was not exactly as she expected it to be in Fenworth’s domicile. She shifted slightly on the bedding and sighed.

Someone held her hand. Small fingers lightly clasped her palm. Toopka? No, the hand was too big for the tiny doneel and too small to be Librettowit’s or Wizard Fenworth’s. Too rough to be her friend Leetu Bends’s hand. Too scaly to be Bardon. Scaly?

Kale’s eyes flew open.

A diminutive creature, a little bigger than Toopka, sat beside her on the bed, peering at her with impatience. His trousered legs were crossed, and his pointy toes wiggled restlessly on his bare feet.

He wore a tan linen shirt, open at the neck and showing a pale blue, scaly chest. His chin jutted out a bit more than an o’rant’s, and his wide mouth definitely sported thin reptile lips. His nostrils were slits instead of round holes, and his squarish nose dominated his face. Black oblong pupils slanted across his green eyes, and instead of hairy eyebrows, his face folded in a lizardlike brow. His hairless head and neck were shaped like an o’rant’s but were covered with lustrous blue scales without visible ears. He leaned forward at the waist, staring at her.

Out of his toothy mouth, a bass voice rattled from deep within his chest. “She’s awake.” The creature’s delighted cry sounded like it belonged to a blacksmith.

“Regidor?” Kale asked.

“That’s me. You’ve been asleep forever.” The childlike words in the voice of a grown man made her laugh.

Gymn and Metta spread their wings and took to the air. They flew into the space above her head and did an acrobatic dance. She listened in on the jumble of excitement in their minds. To her, it was as if they were both speaking at once. Their thoughts bubbled with anticipation. The two tiny dragons zoomed out the open window, intent on telling the others that she was awake.

“Fenworth’s mad,” said Regidor. “But that’s all right. He’s always grouchy. Librettowit brought you through the gateway, and Fenworth fixed you. I’ve been playing with Gymn and Metta. Toopka taught me to play marbles. I taught her the letters I know. I know all of them. She doesn’t know how to read yet, and she’s old. We’re friends now.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Forever.”

“Oh yes, you said that before.”

“But now you’re awake, and we can be friends. We’re going to learn to be wizards together, if Fenworth doesn’t throw me to the mordakleeps first.”

Kale sat up and looked at Regidor’s hand still resting lightly in her own. Four fingers and a thumb. Narrow nails that just missed being claws.

So this is a meech dragon.

She looked into his friendly, eager face. “Wizard Fenworth won’t throw you to the mordakleeps,” she assured the young creature. “He doesn’t like mordakleeps.”

“I know.” Regidor shrugged narrow shoulders. “When he says that, I go climb in the branches. Later he makes tea and daggarts. He makes good daggarts. And nordy rolls. I like nordy rolls.”

“I don’t remember Wizard Fenworth cooking much.”

“I know.” The dragon shrugged again. “That’s because Dar was here. I know all about Dar and the quest for the meech egg. The meech egg was me. And Wizard Risto. Risto is bad. And Librettowit burns things, because he reads instead of stirring. I’m going to learn to cook. I can already make tea. If you bring Fenworth a cup of tea when he’s cranky, he says, ‘Thank you.’ He does it to model good behavior. Librettowit says they have to model good behavior. I have to do good behavior but not model it, because there is no one to watch me modeling. Except now maybe I will model good behavior for Toopka.”

“You don’t have to model good behavior for me.” Toopka entered the room and bounced onto the bed, scooting up close to Kale’s other side and glaring at the meech dragon. “I have excellent manners for a street urchin. Bardon said so.”

Regidor shook his head. “He was just being nice.”

“Was not!”

“Was so!

Kale sat up. “Enough foolish arguing.”

The two stopped glaring at each other and turned frowning faces to her. For a moment she frowned back at them, not because of their quarreling, but because she had just heard herself sounding exactly like Mistress Meiger, the woman who had overseen her life as a slave.

A light tap on the door drew their attention. Bardon stuck his head around the wooden frame, and when he saw her sitting up, he came in.

“You’re looking better.” He stopped at the foot of the bed, towering over them. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes!” said Toopka, springing to her feet and dancing among the cushions that made Kale’s bed.

Kale and Regidor laughed, but Bardon scowled at the little doneel. “I was speaking to Kale.”

Toopka turned her expressive face to Kale. Her ears twitched. “You’re hungry too, aren’t you? I can go to the kitchen and bring you a tray. There’s all sorts of wonderful food in the pantry.”

With a gloating smile, Regidor waved a finger at her. “Fenworth told you to stay out of the pantry.”

Toopka addressed her adversary, her small fists propped on her hips. “That was to keep me from having too many snacks. Getting food for Kale is different.”

Regidor let go of Kale’s hand and swung his legs toward the floor. She stared at his tail. It protruded from a slit in his neatly sewn trousers and seemed much too big for the meech dragon’s small frame.

With a swish of the awkward tail, Regidor knocked several cushions to the floor as he scooted off the bed. Stepping over them, he headed for the door.

“You’d drop the tray,” he said over his shoulder to Toopka. “You’re way too puny to carry a big tray. I’ll help you.”

Toopka scrambled to catch up, sprinting over the covers and leaping off the end of the bed. As they reached the door, she slipped her hand into the meech dragon’s. With her head tilted, she grinned at him. “Do you smell nordy rolls too?”

“Yes, and Librettowit said there is parnot jelly in the top cupboard.”

“The top? How we gonna get it?”

“You leave that to me. It will take ingenuity.”

The two friends turned the corner into the hall.