I leaned way over to get a closer look at my reflection, and suddenly there was a splash of water that blinded me for a moment, and something was grappling my arms and shoulders, pulling me down into the water.

The Family that Plays Together

Part 4 of 10

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.

I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.

I handed Dad’s tree over to Mom, and Taylor and I went off to explore. We crossed a high-arched bridge over a stream, and descended a steep zig-zagging staircase into a section of the garden planted in a deep gully. Not many of the trees growing in the bottom of the gully were tall enough to clear the rim of it. There were a lot of plants there that liked shade, and something about it appealed to Taylor’s fox-nature; he asked me to take care of his clothes for him, and turned into a fox and slipped off among the trees and bushes. I followed him as closely as I could, though after a few minutes I found the shady sunken garden oppressive; my snake-nature wanted more direct sunlight, apparently. I thought about telling him I was going up the stairs to the other side of the gully to see what was over there, but I didn’t want to get separated from him, so I tried to stay close.

Not many other people were visiting that section of the garden just then. I’d seen a couple of elves walking hand in hand when we first arrived, but they’d gone up the stairs we’d come down and since then I’d seen nobody but Taylor, and only a glimpse of his tails from time to time. After a while I came to a bench by a wide, calm pool in the stream, and I called out: “Taylor, I’m going to sit here for a while. Let me know when you’re done being a fox.”

I tried sitting on the bench as though I were a human, but it wasn’t very comfortable. I coiled up my tail and rested on it, and sat there looking into the pool. I hadn’t seen any mirrors in Kinuko’s house, and this calm water was the first time I’d gotten a good look at my reflection. My skin was dark, as I think I mentioned before, and my features were like a woman from India or Pakistan — not surprisingly, since if I remembered right our world’s legends about naga came from India. I was young and pretty, or at least I looked like a fairly young human woman, late teens or early twenties — I had no idea how long naga lived or how quickly they aged.

I leaned way over to get a closer look at my reflection, with my hair dangling down on either side of my face, and suddenly there was a splash of water that blinded me for a moment, and something was grappling my arms and shoulders, pulling me down into the water. In a moment my human head and torso were underwater, though it felt like most of my tail was still on land; I uncoiled my tail and tried to lash it around the bench or a tree trunk or something and pull myself out, but I felt more and more of my tail getting pulled under as I struggled to breathe. I’d had no warning to take a deep breath, and I didn’t think I could hold out long. I lashed out with my hands at whatever had hold of me, but the water was muddy and I couldn’t tell if I was doing any damage.

Then I felt someone pulling on my tail, and a moment later it felt like more than one pair of arms pulling. My torso and then my head broke above the surface, and I gasped, drawing in a huge lungful of air, collapsing on the bank for a long moment before I drew myself up to look around.

Taylor, back in humanoid form but still naked, was standing over me, as was a naga, younger and a lot more muscular than Soradhapam, but a few years older than my host Nenikha. “Thanks,” I said. “What was that?” Then I turned and saw, near the other side of the pool, a frog-like head raised just above the surface of the water. A kappa.

“Leslie, Kinuko warned us about those things! Why’d you get so close to it?” Taylor asked.

“I didn’t even see it until it jumped out of the pool and pulled me under,” I protested. “Um, hi — thanks again for saving me.”

“What are you doing here?” the naga burst out. “You could have been killed! I am afraid this may be a terrible diplomatic incident no matter what happens next — whether we report this to the authorities or take private vengeance... Honored kitsune, will you aid me if I attempt to slay that miscreant?”

When he said “Honored kitsune,” I suddenly realized he was switching to the language I’d been speaking with Kinuko, Mom, Dad and Taylor — up to that point he’d been speaking another language, which I hadn’t known I knew until that moment. Taylor gave me a puzzled glance and replied:

“I’m not keen on tackling him in his own element. But nobody tries to drown my little brother and gets away with it. He can’t get out of the pool without going on land or at least wading in the shallow parts of the stream, and then we can grab him... or we could keep him trapped in the pool until reinforcements arrive.”

“I wasn’t trying to drown her,” the kappa said. “Just scare her a little. She shouldn’t have been leaning over the pool like that if she didn’t want to play.”

“Um, what was that about a diplomatic incident?” I asked, holding up my wrist bracelet and tapping it. “The Gray One didn’t say anything about the U.S. having a consulate here or anything...”

“You, young lady, are coming straight back to the embassy. You’ve caused enough trouble...” He’d spoken that other language again. He took a small horn from a bag slung over his shoulder and blew it.

“Um, you’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” I said, unconsciously switching to the language he’d addressed me in. From Taylor’s expression I was pretty sure he didn’t understand us, and I deliberately switched back to the language I shared with him. “Probably my host, I think Kinuko said her name’s Nenikha...” I wasn’t explaining things clearly, I know, but I’d just suffered a near-drowning; cut me some slack.

“Yes, a very plausible alias!” the naga said sarcastically, in the language we shared with Taylor. “To anyone who does not know our language! Well, Miss None-of-your-Business, your safety is my business and I take my business very seriously. You are not getting out of my sight again, unless it is in your suite at the embassy — and be assured I will have guards posted outside your windows this time.”

Just then four more naga came slithering down the banks of the gully. “Seize the kappa,” said the one who’d helped rescue me, and they slithered right into the pool, while the kappa dove underwater. There was a lot of thrashing and splashing, but a minute or two later they’d dragged the kappa out and were threatening to hold him upside down if he didn’t stop struggling. I wasn’t sure why that was such a dire threat, but he immediately subsided and begged them to spare his life.

Meanwhile I was insisting that I wasn’t this Nenikha he was looking for, and telling him all about the Gray One and Mom and Dad and Kinuko but not in any coherent order, and Taylor was pulling his robe on, which I’d left on the bench. “I don’t want to hear any more excuses,” the big naga said, and took me firmly by the arm.

“Hey!” I said, but he was way stronger than me, and he pulled me along across the nearest bridge over the stream and up the other stairs. Taylor followed and tried to force him to let go, but at a command from the big guy, two of the ones who’d subdued the kappa pulled Taylor away and held him. He turned into a fox to slip out of their grasp, dashed a short distance away and changed back.

“Go tell Mom and Dad what happened,” I called out. “And Kinuko. She said the bracelet would let her find me if I got separated.” But by then my captor and I were over the rim of the gully into the next section of the garden, out of sight of Taylor. The other four naga brought up the rear, two of them holding the kappa firmly between them.

“What is this bracelet?” my captor asked. “And what has become of the pearl necklace you were wearing when you left the embassy eight days ago?”

“Um, I think maybe Nenikha used it to pay for her trip to my world. Like I’ve only explained three or four times.”

“No more of this Nenikha foolishness! I am not as gullible as your chaperon. I hope you realize the disgrace she has suffered and will suffer because of your willfulness —”

We were leaving the garden by a different route than Kinuko had led our party in by, and weren’t anywhere near the greenhouses or Tiranella’s oak as far as I could tell. As we came to a gatehouse, my captor broke off his reprimands to tell the park authorities about how the kappa had attacked me.

“Your emperor shall hear of this within the day! This garden is supposed to be safe for distinguished visitors such as Princess Serenikha, but you allow murderous ruffians such as this to lurk in shadowy pools, ready to drown passersby —!”

The kappa protested again that it had only been a bit of harmless roughhousing, and that we had overreacted. The park security guards, or whatever they were, apologized profusely and took the kappa into custody. I tried to tell them that those other naga were kidnapping me, but my captor told them that I was a child by the standards of their people, and had tried to run away; they were taking me home. The security guards didn’t seem inclined to interfere in an affair between naga, and they made no move to help me.

Once we were out of the gardens and into the street, they hustled me into a waiting carriage drawn by four creatures that looked like goats, but were bigger than horses — they were shaggy, and their horns were twisted together so at first glance I thought they might be unicorns, until I saw that at their bases they were separate. There was an older nagini waiting in the carriage, and she hugged me, then exclaimed over my disheveled appearance, and insisted on my taking off my wet sari-camisole and putting on a dry one. The new one she gave me was much fancier, in five different colors, with tassels and sequins.

“Why did you run away and worry us all so?” she scolded.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “it wasn’t me. I’m not who you think I am.” And I tried again to explain. Either I was calmer now that I hadn’t just suffered a near-drowning, or I’d gotten better with practice, or this nagini was just smarter and more open-minded than the big guy who’d rescued and then abducted me, because she grasped the basics of my story right away, and seemed to take it seriously.

“Then the princess, when she ran away from us, went to this kitsune woman, and had her soul exchanged with yours? And you were a human in a far-off country before you paid a mage to swap your soul with my Serenikha?”

“That’s basically it,” I said. “Except it’s not just another country, it’s a whole other world, and my parents paid for the trip. I’m just fourteen in my human body — I don’t know what that is in naga years, but back home we’re considered adults when we’re eighteen.”

“Naga live longer than humans, but Serenikha is not much older than you, relatively. She is only a decade away from her majority, but alas, she is not so mature as I hoped she would be by now — as this foolish stunt of hers proves.”

“So you believe me?” I asked eagerly. “Let me go, and in seven more days the Gray One will swap our souls back, and you can take this girl home. Are you her mom?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I am only one of her chaperons during this voyage... But I am afraid we cannot let you return to your family just yet.”

“Why not?”

“In exchanging souls with Serenikha, it seems to me that you have implicitly agreed to undertake her responsibilities during your sojourn in her body. Perhaps she deceived you, or the mage who exchanged your souls, with a false name and story — but that is no matter. We must have a Princess Serenikha, and we must have her right away. We have delayed things as long as we can with the excuse that the princess is indisposed, but we can afford no more delay. You must pretend to be her until she returns to her body. I will coach you on what you need to know, and perhaps our own mage can break the spell and return you to your body and Serenikha to hers some days early...”

“But why can’t it wait, whatever it is, until Serenikha comes back?”

“You were supposed — she was supposed to appear for her third audience with the emperor two days ago. And the betrothal ceremony is only six days from now.”

“I can’t get married,” I said, panicking. “I’m only fourteen! And definitely not to some naga I’ve never even met —”

“He is not a naga,” my chaperon said. “And you shouldn’t have to get married as Serenikha. The wedding will be after you have returned to your own body. But we must have the betrothal as soon as possible, so your uncle can sign the treaty, and we can get the Empire’s help against the garuda.”

That didn’t console me as much as it should have. I knew exactly why Serenikha had run away and gone to the Gray One: she was trying to get out of this arranged marriage. And if so, she must have had some kind of plan for staying in my body and leaving me to marry this guy, whoever he was. I felt a knot in my stomach as the carriage came to a halt and one of the guards who’d captured me opened the door.

“We’ve arrived, my ladies.”

I thought briefly about trying to escape as we got out of the carriage, before they escorted me into the palatial building I later found out was the embassy of the Naga Kingdom. But there were even more naga guards than there’d been at the gardens, and there were human guards too, wearing the same insignia. I followed my chaperon and the guards quietly, hoping that Kinuko would track me down soon, and that she’d be able to get me out of this.

Soon I was locked into a very comfortable cell, a suite of rooms the smallest of which was three or four times bigger than the bedroom Taylor and I had shared at Kinuko’s house. There was a bathroom with a bathtub like a small swimming pool, and a bed long enough for me to stretch out my tail without it trailing onto the floor, and a lot of upholstered furniture that seemed designed for naga, with seats curved just the way a naga’s tail naturally bends when relaxed. There were servants, one nagini a little older than me — than Serenikha — and two human girls about Taylor’s age — Taylor’s real age, not however old her kitsune host was. They offered to draw me a bath, and I thought I’d take them up on that later, but first I wanted to ask them a bunch of questions. They were confused at first, but tried to answer my questions. I explained who I really was, and one of the human girls, whose name was Tiaopai, said she’d heard of the Gray One; her cousin had swapped with an old woman in my world for several days. The nagini, Talarikha, was able to answer a few of my questions about who this Princess Serenikha was and what the arranged marriage and the treaty were about, and I learned more later that evening when my older chaperon returned. But before we’d talked much, there was a peremptory knock at the door and one of the guards asked, “Are you decent, my lady?”

“Yes,” I called out. The door opened and several naga came in: the guard who’d helped rescue me from the kappa, the nagini who’d ridden in the coach with me, and a couple of older naga in fancier clothes. One of them was the oldest I’d yet seen, with skin like crumpled paper and a beard that hung down almost to where his scales began. The nagini dismissed the servants, and slithered over into a corner where she coiled her tail and leaned back on it, silently listening and watching.

“What of this bracelet?” the guard captain asked.

The old naga took my hand, and looked carefully at the gold bracelet Kinuko had given me. “Yes, there is a strong enchantment on it. It will take at least an hour to remove it. But that is not the question you should be asking.”

“What should we ask?” the other naga asked, who seemed to be about as old as the chaperon nagini.

“Is she who she appears to be? And the answer is no. Her aura is strange, more like a male human than anything else. I think the tale that Bhavalikha told us is true, and we should hear it from this nagini’s own lips.”

The other naga, who seemed to be in charge, asked me: “Tell us, child. Who are you and how came you to be in Serenikha’s body?”

I told the story again. Then, after a brief discussion, the guy in charge said to the long-bearded naga — another mage like the Gray One, I soon discovered — “Remove the tracking spell on her bracelet. And then see if you can remove the enchantment that keeps her and Serenikha in the wrong bodies.”

“No,” I cried, “Mom and Dad will be worried, they won’t be able to find me!” But they ignored me. The guard captain and the guy who seemed to be in charge left the room, and the long-bearded naga said something in a language I didn’t know, and suddenly I couldn’t move or speak. He glanced at my chaperon, who was still quietly resting on her coiled tail, and ordered her to be quiet and still — though she hadn’t said a word or moved since she came in — and started studying my bracelet again.

After a few minutes his paralyzing spell started to wear off, and I squirmed until my hand pulled free of his. He looked startled, like he’d expected the spell to last longer, and he cast it again; I froze again, and he continued studying the bracelet. Rinse and repeat; the paralyzing spell seemed to wear off quicker each time, and finally he left. I hoped he hadn’t been able to break the enchantment on the bracelet, but how could I tell? It still seemed to be stuck to my arm, anyway; that was a good sign.

After that I was exhausted. The chaperon, Bhavalikha, asked me how I was feeling, and I told her; she summoned the servants and ordered them to draw me a bath, and I relaxed in the hot water for a while, asking the servants a lot more questions while they scrubbed my back. A little while after I got out and put on another of those sari-camisoles, a softer one without the tassels and sequins, Bhavalikha came back in and told me more of what was going on. Between her and the servants, this is what I learned.

The Naga Kingdom was situated on a small continent or large island in the ocean east of the continent this city was on the coast of. They shared that island with several other kingdoms, including their neighbor and long-time enemy, the Garuda Kingdom — which had recently conquered several of the smaller kingdoms and started calling itself the Garuda Empire.

The garuda were a kind of bird-people — from the pictures in a book Bhavalikha showed me, they looked kind of like Hawkman from the Justice League — and enemies of the naga from way back. Once they told me some about them, I started vaguely remembering things I’d read about the garuda in mythology books back on Earth, though they weren’t as familiar to me as the naga or kitsune, who featured in a lot of the video games I played over at Daniel’s house. (If I’d played video games with kappa in them — or if Kinuko’s warnings had been less vague — I might not have gotten pulled under and almost drowned, and maybe none of this would have happened. But the naga embassy security guards probably would have found me anyway.)

Princess Serenikha’s father, the Naga King, decided to ask the Dragon Emperor for an alliance against the Garuda Empire, and he sent Serenikha here along with a proposal for her to marry one of the Dragon Emperor’s sons. Apparently the royal families of these countries are cool with interspecies sex; I could have inferred that by the way Kinuko told me a human had married a dragon back when this dynasty was founded. The problem was, the ambassador from the Garuda Empire was apparently also proposing a royal marriage between one of the Dragon Emperor’s daughters and a garuda prince. So far the naga had thought they were being more persuasive and that the Dragon Emperor would ally himself with them against the garuda, but he hadn’t committed himself yet. And Serenikha’s disappearance, and their cover story that she was sick, wasn’t helping them cement this alliance.

Once I’d heard a few horror stories about what the garuda armies had done to innocent naga in the border villages, I started to think that maybe Serenikha was kind of selfish to run off and hike in the sequoia forests of California while her country’s enemies got the jump on them diplomatically. But Mom and Dad had taught me about wartime propaganda, and I wondered what horror stories the garuda might be telling about the naga, and whether there was any truth to either version. And I didn’t like the idea of these arranged marriages. Why couldn’t the grown-ups just negotiate the treaties by themselves without messing up these princes‘ and princesses’ lives?

I fell asleep that night mulling over that, and worrying about Mom and Dad and Taylor.

Three of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.