The Baby Orc Named Nala

"I’ll tell the tale as it’s been told to me.

Just listen close, and picture purple trees…"

[Cue music:

“The Yegorah Ruins”

on piano, or string quartet:

https://tinyurl.com/YegorahRuinsMusicLoop]

Between the realms of waking life and dreams,

On nights like this, when the Moon is just right,

Should desperate mortals stumble on the path,

Leading up to Mount Fae’s forest peak,

The keenest eye can only hope to catch a glimpse

Of Anima, the Shadow-swimming Dragon.

Once, there had been many dragons in Senn.

And then, in time, their numbers dwindled away,

’Til only five were left alive…

The Five Great Dragons: each a force of nature,

A God that lived among their own descendants,

The living ancestors of the Ugru tribes.

You see, the Ugru —

(The Goblins, the Naga, and Orcs of course,

Are all called Ugru, big or small…)

The Ugru are descended from the dragons.

The very word “Ugru” means “dragon blood.”

Each dragon was the monarch of its tribe:

The goblins looked to Escheron, the wise;

The orcs gave worship to the golden drake,

Who most called Aeon, the Destroyer…

The naga once were heralds of Ng-moy,

The crocodile dragon of the swamps;

The fourth great dragon died when she was young;

And of course, we fae give honor to

Our Anima, the shadow swimming dragon.

So in a way, we fae are cousins to Ugru…

The tale turns when Misos, the Lich and King,

Comes into the picture…

The cruel Misos was a fearful Lich,

Who turned the elements of nature on

His enemies and competitors.

A Lich is one who gave their very soul

To some lone object. Their body dies, but…

So long as this lone object has survived,

The Lich’s spirit lives to terrorize

Another day. A Lich will often take

A host. Misos is such a Lich.

His host is called the King, until he dies,

The point at which the Lich will find a new,

A younger host, to rule the kingdom his,

Forever.

This is Misos, Necromancer King.

But Ugru have a better name for him:

Deathbringer.

Upon receiving crown and sceptor, he,

The King, decided all Ugru must die,

Must be erased.

(A common thing to hear in any human bar, by the way.)

Once made a King, he made the cruelest vow.

He promised to his people. Misos proved

To every nation that he meant it, too.

The Necromancer King erased the Naga,

Wiped them out. This was merely prologue

To the raw destruction this one man,

Would visit on the dragons. All but ours,

Our Anima, were killed, wiped clean, erased.

The proud Naga. From valleys and rivers, from ocean bays and lakes — no more… I knew many proud and gracious Naga before they…

…But I digress. Back to our Anima! The last of all the dragons, our very own Anima. You’re probably wondering why we call him the shadow-swimmer…?

On the night of this story,

He swims and slithers in pools and puddles of shadow,

Threading a path in moonlight’s haunted fringes.

He never leaves this mountainside wood,

This airy place where we, the fae, can flit

Between the solid day, and liquid night.

He slips between the matted shadows like portals,

Piggybacking from one into another,

Diving here, then arching upward there,

Only to dive once more into the shade

Of a silhouetted Oak in full bloom,

Or into folded ferns and ivy brush,

Their purpled leaves all tightly intertwined,

All sweet with dew,

backlit by shy blue crescent light.

The dragon’s shape is hard to reconcile

With words alone; his scales are formless black,

His dragon’s snout is long. His eyes are grey,

But glow like two far stars, too sleepy to shine.

The eyes are slits, swimming in each pearl.

His mouth is like a den of teeth, each fang

A gleaming blade when bared against the fool

That crosses Anima, the Shadow Dragon.

In size, he flexes, growing large or shrinking,

Whichever one will better suit his mood…

…Tonight, he is huge,

His serpentine torso stretching on,

A too-long horror to the catching eyes

Of rodents, fae or otherwise…

The scaly beast has tucked his wings so close,

They disappear into his snake-like body.

An easy sight to miss,

in this half-realm’s half-light.

He flies into the air, out from under the shade

Of some old weeping willow’s stippled glade.

He stops. He sees the glow of distant fire

Illuminate the glade around him.

Half in, half out of shadow, Anima froze,

And gazed upon the blazing town below.

Dark tears like wet paint, fell from both his eyes

In gloopy clumps, making clustered grass.

The dragon wanted to roar, but was afraid,

And didn’t. Fear, and embarrassment

Welled within his throat in place of rage.

He gazed upon the burning town below,

The town of Yegorah, an Ugru place,

A river town of peaceful orcs and goblins.

Anima watched it’s broken peace burn,

A feasting torch in Spring. The rooves

All danced and bellowed, radiating fire.

Then, screams. Screams began to rip the air,

Up, up the mountainside. Anima forced himself

To listen, unflinching, fangs clenched in a grimace.

But he could do Nothing. You see,

The dragon was afraid the Lich had come,

To finally end the last of dragonkind.

It spelled out certain doom for Anima,

And he was filled with dread, heavy and thick.

As long as Anima remained away,

He wouldn’t be discovered. Couldn’t be.

He’d seen the kind of things this King could do,

And though the dragon’s actions named him Coward,

Wisdom sleeps in fear. The dragon watched.

He felt he could do nothing, so he watched.

The inky tears kept glopping onto grass,

Clumping the stuff into inky bunches. Still…

In time, the fae began to notice him,

They came to be beside him, or nearby.

We fae do strange things in moments of distress:

A few of us shapeshifters came, and looked

Down upon the horrid scene with trembling eyes,

Or nervous hands in the case of the squirrels;

Stomping hooves and bleating from the satyrs;

The ever-children itched their ashy wrists;

One fae-boy cried first tears before the sight,

Then burst into an angry fit of shouts,

The curses peeling off his tongue, peeling

Like smoke and its own shadow off a flame.

Fae rabbits and foxes came to see the scene,

But ran quickly away, the first to feel

The soldiers, racing up the mountain path,

Approaching Mount Fae’s peak.

Six of them,

Elite soldiers in blue robes, arch-Mages,

The kind of mage that kills. They chased

An orcish woman, with a bundle in her arms.

The soldiers pushed their feet into the ground,

Stomping, rushing…

BOOM.

BOOM.

Boom-BOOM went her heart.

They brought a great din along with them:

Their Misos War Robes flitting in the fog

In heavy, whipping flurries as they raced,

Up, up into Anima’s mountainside forest.

The animals and ever-children fled

Into the darkness, leaving little trace,

Noiselessly gone. Anima

Turned to do the same, but then he heard…

A screaming woman, and a crying child.

The Ugru cry was visceral to him,

And made his scales itch with innate rage.

The burning anger made his purpose live —

The dragon dove back into shadow, and,

Without a moment’s hesitation, swam

And slithered toward the soldiers below,

Weaving through the shadows like quick thread.

The dragon’s anger swelled into a wrath,

And (mark me here): the wrath of any fae

Is terrible and haunting to behold.

Meanwhile, down the mountain a little way…

The Ugru woman sprinted through the wood,

With absolute abandon. Her only care,

The bundle in her arms,

a girl not yet a year,

Whose eyes were just like both her mother and her.

She held the bundle with both arms at first,

But as the brush grew treacherous,

The orcish woman was forced to free a hand

To bat away the bramble, for the baby’s sake.

Up, up the mountain, to the forest Peak…

The soldiers started screaming after her.

She didn’t care. She ran with all her might.

The woman’s chest hurt from running,

But she refused to slow, hoping to outstrip

Her attackers. She heard their human voices,

Shattering the night with grunts and shouts,

Terrible words in a language the woman didn’t speak.

The trees began to lurch in place, and moan,

And mist is always heavy near the Peak.

The woman caught her foot and nearly tripped.

Sour desperation, then her legs were shaking,

But the mother kept on running, didn’t stop;

She didn’t look behind, didn’t see —

One mage’s hand clawed and pulled the air.

His hand began to glow — and then, the air

Around the woman changed, and so did she.

She felt her body stiffen like a board midstep.

She fell.

She couldn’t move.

The baby tumbled from its mother’s arms,

Landing hard, and letting out a scream.

The mother heard her baby, every sense

Alive and burning. But she couldn’t move,

And even breathing, pumping blood, were slowed.

The Ugru woman had been petrified,

And nothing worked against the simple curse.

It wasn’t long before the steps of six,

Or maybe seven soldier-mages’ boots

Surrounded her.

The woman’s face was flat

Against the cool, wet grass; she couldn’t see

What terrible expressions her assailants wore,

But there was no real need. She’d seen their faces,

Or faces of their kind for decades now.

She’d seen the way that humans treated orcs.

In times of war or otherwise.

She felt her doom, and started weeping silent tears

From petrified eyes. Her body would not even sob.

The Shadow Dragon didn’t make it in time

To save the Ugru mother, but before the men

Could turn their wrath upon the child,

Anima rose up from a wide tree’s shade,

A snake of darkness looming high.

He covered up the stars and moon.

He spread his wings,

Wide, wide, another patch of doom

On either side. The dragon bared his teeth.

Deep shadows pooled around the mages’ boots.

No longer feeling any kind of fear, the fiend

Looked down upon the Mages, baring his teeth.

“Pray your last, poor fools!” the Dragon roared!

And without waiting, Anima plunged both claws

Down into the shadows…

…All around the mages, Snakes

Made of scaly darkness, a hundred of them,

Leapt up and coiled around each blood stained hand!

Each mage’s throat! The hundred shadow snakes

Snapped at the faces of the mages, robed in blue!

They were cobras of the fae, shadow creatures,

Unkillable by bow or blade that’s made

In any realm but ours, the shadow-place.

The fae cobras strangled out the life

Of every screaming soldier. Each was pulled,

Down, down into the endless shadow realm,

Where no one has to hear their screams,

Or see the way the fae snakes begin their feast.

The glade was empty once again, and peaceful.

But then, the sound of screams came back to Anima.

The dragon drew his claws up from the ground.

The Ugru woman lay still and limp,

Her skin and golden robe both speckled with blood.

Before resuming size, the dragon’s grief

Returned in one great wave. Beneath grief’s weight,

The dragon wept beneath the willow tree.

And then he heard the baby cry, and turned,

To see the baby’s scaly, lidded eyes,

Glistening with tears in the spare moonlight.

Anima dropped to the ground,

His serpentine body parting the grass,

Like damp curtains off a window.

His scales scraped against the ground, hissing…

The sound of danger to a sneaking fox,

But just another sound of family

To any Ugru ear.

The dragon inspected the girl, coiling around

The crying thing. To his surprise, she stopped,

When she and Anima locked eyes.

The baby’s dampened cheeks reflected light.

She had that look of total curiosity,

That only tiny, tiny children seem to know.

Her curious expression made her look

A little fae to Anima; he told her so aloud.

She giggled. For a moment, grief could be

Forgotten, and something like a smile

Touched the shadow’s lips.

Another scream tore up the mountainside;

Anima’s head snapped up like a whip.

He saw the mother’s body, and felt a wave of sorrow.

“Terrible, wretched things, humans,” the Dragon said to the child.

“Not to worry. I will protect you.”

She lay there, wrapped in golden cloth,

A single beam of light, held in the heart

Of a winged shadow. And back, behind them both,

The leafy purple trees swayed and hissed,

Their melody a tune the wind could sing,

A lullaby…

…But in the distance, flames

Were playing death’s incessant, roaring march.

The mages wouldn’t leave until each voice

Had finally been made forever still.

“They haven’t enough power to fight me, here,”

The dragon said, as much to steel himself

As anything. He looked upon the babe.

The dragon spread his wings of Shadow,

And folded the child in creasing darkness.

He looked upon the scene a final time,

Before the two of them dissolved

Into the aching night.

In time, the screaming stopped. But the fire

Remained long after morning came.

Three days it burned, and ashes, even still

Today, lay over the ruin like a film,

The greasy residue a grim reminder…

Of Misos and his wrathful human vow.

They never scribble Yegorah on maps,

Nor does the land get called another name.

The page just lays there, blank in that town’s space,

Just one more place the King has won, and then erased.

~ ~ ~

The raspy old chameleon fell silent. The moonlight cast a thin, blue-ish halo around his purple shape. The weeping willow even seemed to cease its sway. For a moment, the silence hung in the air.

Then, the audience shattered the air with their applause.

Six or seven fae, each wearing a different shape, all started to hoot and holler and stomp and chirp and huff and pound their hooves on the ground. You could tell that they were fae by their color: each one was purple all over, different shades of purple.

The fae are really shapeshifters. Some choose a shape and live in that one shape forever. Vaerna was one such fae; he rarely left the form of a purple chameleon. The everchildren were another example, preferring to think of themselves as humans. Even so, each fae possesses the ability to change into any shape they choose, as quick as a snapping finger or a rustling leaf.

An outsider might see a strange and joyful lot of playful fools and pranksters, maybe sometimes sages, or boisterous innocents… Or maybe they might see a band of purple animals and kids, howling obnoxiously into the night. But even so, a few things would be clear, even to an outsider…

They all seemed somehow young and old at once; the lot of them were old and close-knit friends; and every one of them loved the old chameleon’s story.

“You always tell the best stories, Vaerna!” a satyr said to the chameleon.

“The saddest stories,” sniffled someone else, an everchild girl.

“Another please! Another!”

A wave of compliments and jokes followed like a wave, and suddenly the glade became a very boisterous place to be.

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself!” a grumpy looking everchild boy said, through itchy wet eyes.. “It’s only a story! Anyone can tell a story.”

“Anyone but you, Milo!” And then everyone laughed except for Milo. Not that he took it hard for long.

“But it’s not just a story,” Vaerna said. “It’s the story of our own Nala.”

The satyr perked and asked, “Where is Nala, anyway?”

“You mean they really killed her mother?”

The fae grew quiet. It had been the everchild girl. She looked up at Vaerna on his branch, who locked both darting eyes on her.

“The humans really…?”

Vaerna opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself. He nodded solemnly.

The everchild girl began to cry. The other fae all crowded around her, cooing and shush-ing, trying to comfort the girl.

“Don’t cry!” the satyr said.

“Shh! Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay…”

“Friends should never cry,” Milo complained as kindly as he could. This of course made her cry harder, and she buried her face in her ashy hands.

All the while, nobody noticed the looming figure who leaned against the willow on the edge of the glade, listening discreetly from its shadow.

The figure sniffled, and wiped wet tears from her eyes with a scaly finger. Her maroon skin seemed to disappear into the shadow, along with her black robe, hemmed in silver.

The rolling murmur of the fae became boisterous again, and the creatures began to play. Nala watched from a distance as the fae and fae-fauna wrestled and played tag in the moonlight. Their sadness from the story had been short-lived, an interlude between games. Nala’s sadness, on the other hand, stuck around.

The full moon bore brightly down onto the clearing, and washed the fae in wan light. The moon was like an eye tonight. Or perhaps a pearl. Plump, full moon, wearing a halo in the mist.

The young Ugru woman imagined for a moment: Anima arriving out of the darkness. Then her mind sketched in the dragon’s shadowy scales, and his concerned face met her gaze. In her imagination, Anima asked Nala what was wrong, and she told him everything. Even things she couldn’t put in words.

But he wasn’t going to come. Not tonight. It was a full moon. He saved shadow-swimming for sliver moon nights, or no moon at all. He would not cross into this realm tonight.

She cursed herself. She cursed her softness, all softness…

Why did the story make her cry tonight? Nala had heard this story before, of course. Her story. She’d heard it many times, all through the years as she’d grown up here in the Aerie Forest of Mount Fae. First from Ica, when Nala was just a girl. Then it became a kind of standard story for the fae. In fact, she’d heard this very version from the chameleon, Vaerna, and requested it herself from time to time.

But tonight, it affected her in a new way. An unpleasant way. The story strangled her, and drew out tears. Again, she wiped the scales around her eyes and tried to stop crying. She berated herself.

Something inside her changed. Nala’s grief boiled over into something new, something terrible. An anger that seemed to overwhelm her. She thought of the mages, of her mother broken on the forest floor… She imagined what the Necromancer King looked like, and fantasized about… about…

For the first time, Nala wanted to taste revenge. She imagined she was… She thought of what it was to kill.

The fae must have felt the young orc’s energy change, because in that moment, they all stopped in the middle of what they were doing, and looked in Nala’s direction. Even Vaerna.

For a moment, each face was frozen. Though they were all wearing different shapes, each face suddenly shared a roundness, a softness, and each put on wide and fearful eyes. The children and animals who lived and played in feral shadows, forever, undying, were placid creatures. They peered out at the orc’s silhouette in fear, not knowing who it was at first.

But even when they saw that it was Nala, the fae remained alert. These were her friends, of course, and none of them held her in contempt, or bore her any ill will, but…

In that moment, she just seemed so tall. Powerful. Dangerous. In her stillness, Nala looked like a predator. She felt like one, too. She was one. Nala felt the fullness of her lineage, the rage made famous in The Ugriad, and so many other dragonsongs.

“Nala?” Vaerna said. “You scared us! …Is that you, Nala?”

Nala took a step toward them, into the light. The fae all flinched, as if one creature, each sinking back into a crouch. Most prepared their legs to run.

Nala’s stomach dropped. She had frightened her friends, and didn’t know how to set them at ease. She tried to let go of the vengeful feeling, to push the rage away and breathe herself back to normal…but it stuck to her like a tick.

Nala put up a hand, and said, “Sorry, I… I was just listening. I’m not going to hurt you… I’d never hurt you. Don’t you know that?”

No one said anything. No one moved.

“I see,” Nala said. She turned around and muttered, “Sorry,” too quietly to hear.

“Nala?” Vaerna said.

But he spoke too late. Nala had already disappeared into a shadow, and with her went the atmosphere of fear. The tension of the glade melted. In its place, the fae were left with an edgy silence, and that’s how it stayed.

Eventually, one by one, they too left the moonlit glade for shadows of their own. The full moon cast its blue-ish hue through the willow, stippling the ground with its light. And once again, the purple springtime clearing was just as still as a weary winter tomb.

~ ~ ~