Youth's Realm
an excerpt

As the day wore on, Glass proved to be better at riding than Dorem had anticipated him to be. He sat clumsily and made small noises of alarm every time his horse changed speed or stepped down or up, causing him to jerk and sway. However, he hadn’t yet fallen and was becoming resigned to the fact that the horse was determined to ignore him whatever he did. Fortunately, the beast was at least willing to follow along behind Dorem’s mount, otherwise Glass would have likely been carried off into the trees long since and never been seen again. He had done one thing that surprised Dorem. Several hours ago, Glass had politely asked if the horse he was riding had a name, and upon being told that it did not, asked permission to name it. Dorem, rather amused, had granted him permission, and Glass had since been trying to think of a suitable name. Dorem, becoming increasingly more curious, eventually asked him why.
“Bards know the importance of names,” Glass had instructed him earnestly. “A name gives purpose and meaning. For example, my name, in my tongue, is Gullase, which means ‘gods’ or ‘protector of the gods.’ It means that I keep the lore of the gods and other supernatural beings and spirits. This was my purpose from birth. It has given me my path in life.”
Dorem mulled this over. “I wouldn’t like to think that my whole life was determined by my name. I’d feel kind of trapped if I thought that was true.”
“Well, what is the meaning of your name?”
He thought for a moment. He had learned this all once. “Um… ‘Dorem’ is another spelling of a name that means ‘gift.’ The court doctors didn’t think my mother would be able to conceive, so when she had my older brother they called him ‘victory.’ Niko. Then when they had a second child, who was me, they considered it another gift. ‘Takis’ means ‘all holy,’ ‘Artemas’ means ‘safe,’ and ‘Silvanos’ is a word for a wood or forest. They’re all just names that symbolize things that are important to my people in one way or another.”
Glass smiled his tusked smile. “Many of my people would give a great deal to have such an auspicious name as yours.”
“Oh?”
“Your name tells the world that you are a gift from the gods, one who is special, cherished. They will keep you safe and guide you throughout your life. That hardly leads you to feel trapped, does it?”
“Well, no… but what about Silvanos?”
“What is your main interest and skill, Prince Dorem?”
Dorem fell silent as he thought back to the happiest times of his life, camping in the forests under the stars, hearing the whispering of trees all around him, spending his days tracking and chasing the magnificent beasts of the wood.
“That’s just a coincidence,” he said, reddening. “They called me Silvanos because the woods are important to my people, and I learned the ways of the forest at a young age for the same reason.”
“You see?” Glass said with a friendly grin. “Both factors were defined and determined by the same thing. Your name does matter.”
Dorem wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so he fell silent.
“I think I will call my horse Ulydighest,” Glass said eventually in a conversational tone.
“Oh? And what does that mean?” Dorem asked resignedly.
Glass grinned. “It means ‘stubborn horse,’” he said.
Before Dorem could reply, a piercing shriek of terror split the warm afternoon. Dorem reflexively hauled on the reins, turning his horse on two hooves to face the noise and setting off at a canter. Behind him, frustrated grunts and yells and a loud thud signaled Glass’s utter failure to do the same, and also marked the first time he had managed to fall off the horse. Dorem didn’t stop to congratulate him on this achievement, but kept going until he reached, as near as he could tell, the source of the scream.
Glass came puffing up a moment later, dusty and disheveled and leading the newly christened Ulydighest, who looked as smug as it was possible for a horse to look. He peered forward curiously. They had come to a stop near a thicket of low, gnarled, and tangled trees, marking the only nearby point of interest in the endless field of vineyards with the occasional winery building. The scenery had remained unchanged since they had left Curro City earlier that morning.
The screaming had stopped, but they thought they could hear muffled noises which sounded like whimpering, as well as the unmistakable impact of flesh and bone on flesh and bone. Somebody was being beaten up in there. They also thought they heard a low, grating, growling hiss.
The two companions exchanged nervous glances. Glass mouthed “bandits?”
Dorem shook his head. “Not here,” he whispered. “This is a prosperous area. Every landowner and vineyard owner has his own private police force. It’s not worth the risk to a bandit to attack someone here; he’d be pushing up grapes within five minutes.”
They both looked apprehensively back at the stand of trees and gulped. Those hisses and the occasional roar seemed extremely sinister. There could be some nasty beasts on Suthoestre; some monstrosities you found there rivaled the creatures of Inlin. For Dorem it was almost worse; he had cut his teeth on hundreds of different nursery stories that described the horrors that might be waiting in there. If he was alone, he might have been tempted to just quietly turn the horse around and sneak away, alerting the authorities later. But he wasn’t alone. Glass was looking to him expectantly, and he could feel Osael’s reproachful cat eyes boring holes in the back of his neck. With a resigned sigh, he drew his sword and dismounted, preparing to enter the thicket.
He was spared the trouble. There was another brief scream, a loud crash, and someone came hurtling out of the trees. The someone skidded to a dead stop upon seeing Dorem and Glass, and then sprinted around to hide behind Dorem’s horse.
Dorem and Glass stared. The apparition was short and skinny, dark skinned, blue haired, androgynous in the extreme, and very, very scruffy. He had an untucked, wrinkled, too-big shirt which hung down to the knees of his oversized pants, cuffed up to reveal bare and grubby feet. There was a red band tied around his neck, supposedly to simulate a necktie or bolo tie, but given the generally tousled and unkempt look of the individual it didn’t make much difference.
“Don’t just stand there!” he – Dorem would assume it was a he, for now at least – squeaked in a voice that gave no more clue to a definite gender than his face or clothing. “Help me! Please!”
The travelers exchanged another glance. “What’s the problem?” Dorem asked.
“I’m being attacked! There’s a purple alligator trying to rip my leg off and a tiny pixie that keeps beating me about the head!”
“Right,” Dorem drawled. “Been having a nice night of wine tasting, have we?”
“It’s true, I swear!” There was pleading in his big green eyes.
Once again, Dorem’s retort was cut short. With another almighty crash, something else sprinted out of the thicket. Dorem’s jaw dropped open, eyes popping out of their sockets as he goggled at the sight.
It was big. It was mean-looking. It was tough, leathery, and slung low to the ground. One red-brown eye had been gouged out, and the other glared malevolently at the ankles of the world above a wide mouth full of craggy teeth. It was an alligator, all right, because dragons weren’t nearly that ugly.
It was also, unmistakably, unambiguously, purple.
Dorem swallowed. He moistened his lips and turned to apologize to the kid, but just then something barely missed his ear as it whizzed by his head. Dorem hit the ground, thinking someone was shooting at him. After a moment failed to bring another arrow, he hazarded a glance upward and groaned.
The poor kid was yelling again, flailing his arms madly in a futile attempt to fend off his attacker. The assailant in question was three inches tall, had wings, and glowed a bright green. It was making a shrill, petulant chattering noise as it whizzed through the air, smacking him in various places on his head, neck, and shoulders. Glass was on his knees on the ground, feverishly unscrewing the lid of a jar from his pack.
Dorem sensed movement and smelled the odor of rotting carrion. He glanced to his left and saw the alligator lumbering ponderously but surprisingly quickly in the direction of the blue-haired kid’s ankles. Dorem heaved himself off the ground and leapt onto the foul-tempered reptile’s back, wrapping his hands around its snout and holding on for dear life as it snorted and thrashed. Closer to the scene of the action, Glass had succeeded in getting the lid off. He swept the jar through the air and yelled in triumph as it scooped up the pixie. Quick as a flash he slammed the lid on, screwing it tight.
The blue-haired kid, who had fallen to his knees, heaved a sigh of relief and climbed back to his feet. “Thank you both so much,” he said sincerely. “I accidentally almost stepped on her, and the next thing I knew she had called her alligator and set it on me. That was a bit of a nasty shock, I can tell you.”
Glass smiled weakly and held the jar up to the light, examining his catch incredulously. Now that the frenzy was somewhat past, they could make out that the pixie’s shrill chattering was in fact a furious diatribe detailing the horrible tortures she was going to carry out on all of them and their next of kin. Glass, long ears twitching as he winced in the face of her strident torrent of speech, looked her sternly in the eye.
“Silence,” he said, in a commanding voice. Runes etched on the glass of the jar flared with a pale blue light. Much to her own surprise, the pixie shut up.
“Now,” Glass said, the relief in his tone unmistakable, “would you do us all the great favor of calling off your purple companion there?”
The pixie folded her arms, plunked down on the floor of the jar, and shook her head vigorously. She was clearly sulking. Glass sighed.
“I could command you to do it, you know,” he said wearily. “You would obey whether you wanted to or not. I am attempting to be a gentleman here. Now, please, would you give me the honor of remaining a gentleman and kindly grant my request?”
She tilted her head to one side and appeared to be thinking it over. “Let me out and we’ll talk,” she said. Her voice was high, sweet, and surprisingly clear for such a small creature.
“You promise you will not attack again or attempt to run away once you are free?”
The pixie raised a hand. “On my honor as a Chl.”
“I know what that means,” Glass said sharply. She pouted.
“Fine. I swear in the name of the Great Lord Tul-Otat, Weaver of the Hammocks,” she intoned.
“Good enough.” Glass lifted the lid and she zipped out. “Now call it off, please?”
The pixie clapped her hands sharply and pointed. “Boshub! Heel! Now!”
The alligator immediately stopped rolling and trying to snap, which was a great relief to Dorem. He dropped off and the beast waddled smugly over to its mistress, who dropped down and pulled a coil of thread out of her pocket, attaching it to a loop on the alligator’s collar, which Dorem hadn’t noticed before. Having done so, she soared up to Glass and Dorem’s eye height once more, maintaining a firm hold on the impromptu leash. Dorem had to suppress a laugh. If the alligator had wanted to, it could have snapped the thin filament and lumbered off to freedom without a second thought.
“Now,” Glass said, stowing the jar once more into his backpack. “What’s this all about?”
The story came out slowly, with both participants in the drama interrupting one another frequently and protesting at the other’s interpretation of things. The impression that Dorem and Glass eventually received was that the boy, whose name turned out to be Tanka, had been following Dorem and Glass for reasons he seemed to sheepish to divulge and had chosen the stand of trees as a good place to watch them from. Eyes on his mark, he had failed to notice the pixie where she was snoozing on the ground and bumped her with her foot. Wyx, the pixie, had instantly come awake screaming bloody murder and yelled for Boshub, who had been hiding nearby with surprising effectiveness for a bright purple giant lizard. Tanka, still bewildered and disoriented, hadn’t realized what in the world was going on until Wyx flew into his face and began beating him about the head with her tiny fists and, at the same moment, Boshub had fastened his teeth into Tanka’s pant leg. It was lucky for him that his clothes were too loose, because Boshub’s jaws could crush bone with a single snap, Wyx informed them all smugly. At that point, Tanka had made a snap decision and decided it would be prudent to yell for help, and that was where Dorem and Glass had come in.