The Dragon Keeper

Her father was not the first to attempt it. Others had failed before him. He was merely more dogged, more determined than those who had previously failed. Some folks said that determination was a good thing. Her mother had once told her that it just meant that their family had lived in poverty for more years than the others who had tried and failed at the same experiment and quickly gone back to hunting and gathering. Their “gardening” took up a good amount of their time and yielded them less than their gathering, but her father persisted in it because he believed that one day it would pay off for them.



“I could see that could be true about your da,” Tats said quietly. “My mother said that everything she cherished had been sacrificed for my father’s dream. Maybe it’s true. I don’t know. When I was little, and he was a gatherer all the time, we lived in four rooms, built so close to a trunk that they scarcely swayed even in storm winds.”



Those were the best houses in the Rain Wilds. The closer one lived to a trunk, the sturdier everything was, and the less wind and rain found them. The trunk markets were closer, and if one went down the trunks, there were taverns and playhouses. It was also true that there was less sunlight close to the trunk, but Thymara had always thought that a body could climb if she had a mind to feel sunlight and wind. The bridges and walkways that spanned the trees near their first home had been stoutly built, their guard walls tightly woven and kept in excellent repair. If she had to climb to find the sunlight, she also had the ability to go down and feel solid earth beneath her feet sometimes. She was never that enthused about those visits to the ground, but her mother had enjoyed them.



“Why didn’t you like the ground? Seems the most natural place to live to me. I miss the ground. I miss just being able to run or walk and not be afraid of falling.”



Thymara shook her head. “I don’t think I could ever trust the ground. Here in the Rain Wilds, if you’re close to the ground, then you’re close to the river. And sooner or later, the river always rises. Sometimes so suddenly that there is no warning. Anything we build on the ground, we know it won’t last. Once, the river rose high enough to flood the old city. That was awful. A lot of workers were trapped and drowned.” The wide relentless river frightened Thymara. She knew that seasonally it rose and flooded and that sometimes there had been sudden floods. The water was mildly acidic at the best of times; after quakes, it sometimes turned a deathly gray-white, and when it ran that color, it could mean a man’s death to fall into it, and those who had boats knew to hoist them from the water until the river returned to its usual color. Every moment she was on the ground, she dreaded that suddenly the river would rush up and devour her. Only when she was in the sturdy trees, high above the vagaries of the river and surrounding swamplands did she feel safe. It was a foolish fear, a child’s fear, but one that many Rain Wilders shared.



Tats dismissed her fears with a shrug. He glanced around at the leafy branches that screened her from their neighbors and from a clear view of either sky above or earth below. “You never seemed poor to me,” he said quietly. “I always thought you had it pretty good, living up here.”



“It’s not so bad, for me. It’s harder for my mother. She was used to a fancier way of life, with parties and pretty clothes and fine things. But there are other things I miss about where we used to live. Maybe it was just the age I was. But back then, down there, I had a lot more friends. When we were little, I guess no one cared so much about claws or nails. We just all played on the landings between levels. My father paid for me to be schooled; he bought my books, even though most of the other children paid by the week to borrow them. People thought he really spoiled me, and it made my mother furious about the wasted money. And we used to go places. I remember that once we traveled way down trunk to a play put on by actors from Jamaillia. I couldn’t understand what it was about, but the costumes were beautiful. Once we went to a grand entertainment, music, and a play, and jugglers and singers! I loved that. The stage was suspended in an opening among several trees, with the platform that supported it and the seating cross-roped and netted for sturdiness. That was the first time I realized just how big a city Trehaug really was. Leaves and branches hid most of the ground below us, but there was one vista of the river, and overhead, through the hole in the canopy, I could see a huge patch of black sky and all sorts of stars. But the lights of thousands of homes twinkled, too, in the trees surrounding us, and the lanternlit walkways reminded me of jeweled necklaces reaching from tree to tree.” Thymara closed her eyes and turned her face up, recalling that sight.