A New Home: Tales of the Kingdom of Nogal, #2

By Taylor Gaines

The land of the Kingdom of Selagon is fading, and the Princess is tasked with finding new land to settle her people. But in her journey she finds others, with a different goal in mind. This is book two in the series "Tales of the Kingdom of Nogal". Read book one, "The Little Kingdom", to catch up on all of the history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Taylor Gaines
• Release date: Aug 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393940371

Taylor Gaines

Taylor Gaines lives in Catonsville, MD, with his wife, also named Taylor. He writes fairy stories for fun on his train rides to work.

Book preview

Introductory Note

Irecently discovered this second story in the chronicles of the history of Nogal, pulled from the land of Faërie. J.R.R. Tolkien described this perilous land in his essay On Fairy Stories , and I pulled from many of the themes he described in my retelling of the first one. But, in this second one, I was drawn to a theme which did not know what to do with at an earlier time, a subset of the theme of Escape, one of the gifts given to us in the telling and retelling of fairy stories:

And lastly, there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this—which might be called the genuine escapist, or (I would say) fugitive spirit...Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness. But our stories cannot be expected to rise above our common level. They often do. Few lessons are taught more clearly in them than the burden of that kind of immortality, or rather endless serial living, to which the fugitive would fly. For the fairy-story is specially apt to teach such things, of old and still today. Death is the theme that most inspired George MacDonald.

And Tolkien, too, touched well on this theme in his stories Leaf by Niggle and Smith of Wootton Major, and in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. And now this story is touched by death, as well.

A New Home

Once there was a little kingdom called Selagon built upon the shoulders of the mountains, peering over the vast world like a watchman. To the west there lay the neighboring Kingdom of Nogal, though it had been bereft of a king for seven generations and was governed and protected by the rulers of Selagon. The same mountains where perched the towers and villages of Selagon encircled all of Nogal like a rocky crown. In the center of Nogal, like the bald spot on a king’s head, were low green pastures and the villages of those who still remained in the valley, farming and living as their ancestors did. Shining in the middle of these fields was a great lake fed by many rivers falling down from the mountains. A curiosity, the ruins of the old castle of Nogal rose from a green hill by the lake, oft overlooked and regarded as little more than a rocky peak to the hill. It was also green, grown over with vines and moss and no one entered it by reason of whispered rumors of a curse. Even more curiously, the head a dragon poked out of the waters of the lake, and steam rose from its scales like a constantly burning chimney, and no one ever overlooked it.

Three important things had happened at the same time. The dragon arrived and was condemned to the lake, Nogal lost its king, and the Kingdom of Selagon was founded in the mountains. Seven generations passed and divide these events from the way things were, to the way they were after. It still got confused in the history books and around campfires whether the loss of the king caused the other events, or whether the sinking of the dragon and the building of Selagon were caused by some other, forgotten common cause. But regardless, all three events happened around the same time, though that tale has been told elsewhere.

The dragon was fuming mad at all times, raging against the icy waters which submerged him and imprisoned him to spend his days watching the free people of Nogal, When first he entered the waters, his muscles and flame were quenched and hardened like tempered steel, and only his eyes could roll slowly around in their orbits, searing with hatred. The citizens of Nogal, for their part, did all they could to keep him trapped, floating ice from the mountains downriver to the lake during the winter, and watching and willing clouds at the edges of the sky to come and rain during drought. They had no long-term plan, but, as previously said, they lived as their ancestors did.

To the east of Selagon, the ring of mountains sloped down to the fertile plains of the Kingdom of Greensward. This land laid much lower than did the Kingdom of Nogal; the rocky crown of Nogal rose higher than all of the nearby land (and, therefore, Selagon was higher still.) Some might ask how Selagon survived as a people in the high rocky mountain stronghold. Try as they might, it was hard to grow much food in the rocky, rain-depleted soil, and the neighbors in Nogal were less than productive without a true king. Instead, they mined deep and deeper into the mountains and traded the gold and jewels they found with Greensward for food and other goods. It was a good arrangement for both kingdoms.

Naught could be seen from the rocky towers of Selagon beyond Nogal to the west and the broad lands of Greensward to the east, and not to the north or to the south. And few rulers or citizens of Selagon ever traveled beyond these lands for they were content with their lot and sought not treasure, nor adventure, nor war. But high above Selagon, above the peaks of the tallest mountains, circled an eagle, who could see these lands and beyond.

He floated with outstretched wings on a warm pillow of air which rose up from the ground below. Away to the north, the land strained to the horizon with spidery webs of rivers and forest and rocky hills. It was a true wilderness. To the east, beyond the pastures of Greensward grew a range of grey mountains. To the south in the distance lay the silent, shining sea. And not even the eagle could see to the west over the nearby mountains of Nogal.

Though the eagle appeared as a speck in the blue sky, he could see a girl far below him on the ground, on the eastern slopes of the Selagon. She was fifteen years old with dark red wavy hair, and in one hand she held a whistle carved from bone, and in the other a silver-scaled fish. Her name was Tazalie.

Flox! she called up to the eagle, though her voice was lost less than halfway up. Attack! she called, and she put her lips to the whistle and blew two clear, resonant bursts on it. This the eagle did hear and plunged into a screaming dive. Flox fell faster and faster, tightening his body into a lightning bolt and cutting through the air. Tazalie waited eagerly, watching the speck grow larger and larger. When she could see the bit of red on the ribbon she had tied around his neck, she took the fish, held limply by its tail, and flung it end over end as high as she could. The wings of Flox opened wide and he turned in the air, baring his talons to the ground. Just as the fish began to accelerate on its fall back to the earth, the eagle struck it as though with an arrow and glided smoothly past Tazalie down the mountainside, buffeting her with a gust of wind as he passed. Flox slowed and looped around back to Tazalie, alighting on the outstretched bone whistle with a gentleness not displayed in his dive. He stared at Tazalie, twisting his head side to side, and when she gave the signal he was waiting for, he tore into the fish with his beak.

Good work, Flox, she said to her eagle. She smoothed his feathers down his head and back as he ate. He carefully walked down the bone whistle onto her arm, and she held the half-eaten fish for him as he readjusted. What do you think, did you see any storm clouds coming this way? Tazalie asked as she looked up to the clear blue sky.

All of her fifteen years she had known a world where it did not rain much, though according to her parents, it was not always so. Their lives depended on the rain—the crops they grew in the mountains and in the plains below needed water, as did the mountain lakes where they fished. More pressing than those, however, was always the thoughts of the dragon in the lake whose wrath was constrained only by the cool waters washing over it. Some years were really quite scary for the citizens of Nogal, and they