This unpublished story is my entry to this third round. If you’re a speculative fiction writer with a 2500-word tale to tell, get it in before August 8th!
Aside: This very week I will be launching the paid version of this newsletter, which will (among other things) reprint all of my published fiction. Which is not that much, really. Like, five stories.
As a little boost to the Lunar Awards’ marketing efforts, I include a link to The Sample, which uses AI to determine which newsletters to forward to its subscribers, presumably based on the usual creepy algorithmic tracking of their reading habits.
Big Black Rocks
It turns out George RR Martin was not the first person to use the phrase “dragon glass.” According to Google NGram, it appeared in catalogs as early as 1881, and in poems in The Girl’s Own Reciter around the turn of the last century. These appear to refer to human-made artifacts, however, and not to natural volcanic obsidian, which was how Martin used the word.
Little Giant Peridot
Peridot, or chrysolite, “is one of the few gemstones that occur in only one color”. My Peridot was a character in made-up bedtime stories I told to my child when I was feeling . . . creative? expansive? less exhausted than usual?
I had vague memories of the Jewel Cities from the Black Company books by American author Glen Cook. I’ve since used the mineral trope in naming RPG characters, most often dwarfs. I’m also fascinated by the hypothesis of mineral evolution.
Peridot’s environment was inspired by the Himalayas, which are still rising, getting taller, all the time.
So, without further ado,
The Dragon-Glass Star
by Randall Hayes
Little Giant Peridot
Walkin through the mountains
Pickin up the bridge trolls
And boppin ‘em on the head!
- children’s song of the Makers
Peridot was too big for troll-bopping now. Not that she didn’t still enjoy hitting things (who doesn’t?), or walking. Patrols had been her favorite thing about living with the Makers. Now that she was taller than most of the scrubby trees that grew out of the wind-whipped cliffs, the chain bridges that linked the mountain communities of the Makers wouldn’t hold her weight. At least that was what the elders said.
If she wanted to go walking, she had to climb all the way down to the bottom of a valley, wade through the swift cold river of melt water that was almost always there, and climb back up the other side. Peridot did a lot of walking now, by herself, in between the settlements. Often she claimed to be prospecting for new mineral seams. Sometimes, like today, she carried cargo, things that were likewise too heavy for the bridges or too tempting for the dragons.
Giants were almost from birth solitary creatures. Mating and fighting were their major social activities. Those rare events could last a long time by Maker standards — weeks, or months — and leave the landscape much the worse for wear. This was one of the reasons that Maker settlements were dug into the mountains rather than sticking out of them like trees.
Peridot was never completely alone, though, not in the Giant way, since she carried all her memories of being raised by the Makers. These crowded her head like a dragon’s hoard, piling on top of one another, sliding, clinking, rolling around in shining little avalanches. Moving helped to quiet them, as did standing under a freezing waterfall, letting the roar of pounding water clear her mind.
Today, however, she had a delivery to make. In a pewter box on her back was a ball of spelled glass, black as the night sky between the stars. Placed on the top of the tallest mountain, above the tree line, above the snow line, above the wind line where there was no more air, it would soak in the sun’s light, becoming almost a small sun itself. At least that was what the elders said. They had never been able to test the theory, because they had to breathe.
Peridot unpacked her cargo on the flattest place she could find. She drove spikes into the rock, forming a circle. The spikes rang through her hammer, through her bones, into her ears. Using tongs, she placed the freezing-cold orb into the circle of spikes, oriented to her compass points, and tapped it to life.
Ribbons of light began to snake their way across the black sky, green and blue and more energetic colors, towards and into the orb. They swirled and eddied around Peridot’s limbs until she stepped away.
This was going to make a fine song, one the elders would never hear.
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