Page 13 of The Sapphire Dragon Prince
I made a sound of disagreement. “I had to work hard to become the dragon I am,” I said. “I had to prove myself every day when I was younger, and I still do. But as long as I know whatis right and continue to work for that, not for myself but for the people who depend on me, I know I can be strong.” I shifted to holding his hand again and added, “You are stronger than you think, my Misha.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said in a quiet voice.
“I swear, you are,” I insisted. “I think we’re about to find that out for ourselves.”
Indeed, those words turned out to be truer than I intended them to be. As Misha and I rounded the side of a hill, a vast field stretched out into view in the valley beyond. It wasn’t just a field, it was an orchard filled with trees as far as the eye could see. They were in various stages of growth and bloom. Some were small saplings, some had canopies filled with soft, pink blossoms, and some were full green with barely visible dots of red among the branches.
“Look at that!” Misha said, perking up a bit and picking up his pace. “It looks like a cherry orchard.”
“I think it must be,” I said, smiling broadly and hurrying along the path with him. “Although that looks like far more than a hundred trees.”
“It looks like thousands,” Misha said, light in his eyes again. “How do we find the hundredth tree?”
I shrugged as we started down a gentle slope that led to the orchard. “I suppose we’re about to find out.”
Chapter
Five
Misha
I’d never been on a quest before, let alone one set by someone as magnificent as Queen Gaia. I didn’t know how they were supposed to feel or how I was supposed to conduct myself while searching for the items Queen Gaia had requested Azurus and I retrieve for her. So I wasn’t certain whether I should feel the fluttering sense of anticipation as Azurus and I picked up our pace and headed toward the stretching orchard that filled the valley in front of us or if I should feel dread.
“We should probably be serious about this,” I said, trying to steady my heartbeats as we approached a series of small buildings near the edge of the orchard. “Who knows what we’ll find here or whether whoever tends the orchard will even let us in?”
Azurus grinned at me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “I think you’ll find that in the magical world, things come fairly easily to dragons.”
He was teasing, I knew, but something about his comment made me feel off-center. I was no dragon, and despite being a prince, nothing had ever come easily in my life.
I tried to fight the gloom of that thought. I was on a mission set by a queen. I couldn’t let that inner darkness that lived in my gut pull me down when there was a task to be completed. It required far more energy to do that small thing than it had to walk all the way from Queen Gaia’s throne room.
“Excuse me. You there,” Azurus called out in his rich, bold, alpha voice to a man that stepped out of one of the outbuildings with a large basket in his arms.
The man, who wore the simple clothing and straw hat of a farmer, but who seemed to have authority all the same, started a bit, then turned to us. When he saw us, he smiled and changed directions to meet us.
“Hello and welcome, friends,” he said, holding his basket with one hand and touching the brim of his hat to us with the other. “How might I help you today?”
I had always been wary of strangers, even ones who smiled and appeared friendly. Indeed, in my father’s court, it was the ones who pretended to be friendly who usually swooped in and demanded to take my heat or the heat of one of my brothers. So I took a half step back, trying not to embarrass myself by hiding behind Azurus completely, and glanced up at my fated mate.
Azurus was completely at ease as he addressed the farmer. “My mate and I have been sent on a mission to collect the pit from a cherry on the one hundredth tree,” he said. “If it would be alright with you, and if you can point out which of all these trees is the one hundredth, we’ll pick a cherry and be on our way.”
The farmer laughed, which had the hair on the back of my neck standing up, even though it wasn’t an unkind sound. “If it was as easy a matter as pointing out which tree held whichnumber I would surely help you,” the farmer said. “But this is a magical orchard.”
Azurus’s confident smile faded. “Oh, I see,” he said. “What does that mean?”
The farmer shrugged and pivoted to gesture to the trees. “It means that each tree is planted, grows, flowers, and produces fruit all within a day before completing its purpose and vanishing.”
I frowned in confusion for a moment, then looked past the farmer to see what he meant.
It was obvious as soon as I watched the trees for a few moments. I’d noticed from our approach that the trees were in all phases of growth and flower, but now that we were there in the orchard, I could see the growth happening.
Some of the trees were nothing more than saplings, but I watched as they slowly grew before my eyes. The growth wasn’t as evident if I simply stared at the trees, but if I glanced away and looked back, there was progress, new branches and new leaves. Beyond those trees were taller ones bursting with blooms that seemed to flower before my eyes. Another section had mostly green trees with fruit growing swiftly. Still other trees had circles of baskets around them, and as the cherries ripened, then fell off the trees and straight into the baskets of their own accord. Several attendants were gathering baskets or putting new ones out. At the very end of the orchard, I watched as trees that had delivered all their fruit vanished.
No, they didn’t vanish entirely. It was more like they disintegrated into a dozen tiny saplings, which other attendants gathered up in trays and brought back to the outbuildings.
“You see,” the farmer explained. “It is a constant cycle, an ongoing effort. There is no beginning and no end to the production of fruit, so it is impossible to number the trees and say which is first and which is one hundredth.”
My shoulders sank and my hope for a better life with it. Queen Gaia had set us an impossible task.
