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staked?” Hagen’s blushes faded, and his tone was immediately businesslike.
    “I’ve been wanting to see the orchards myself,” Luka put in. “Personally, I’m curious to see how soil this sandy can hold up any kind of tree.”
    “It’s a different soil inland,” Shardas said, banking the oven and setting the glassblowing pipe carefully aside. “Thick, red soil, from the volcanoes that formed the islands.”
    “While you go kick the red dirt around in the orchards,” Velika said, “I believe that I shall go and take a nap!”
    She led the way up the path into the jungle until it forked. Then we all waved as she went off to the left, to the cave she shared with Shardas (which I was still dying to see). We continued on to the right, however, toward the orchards of the dragons.

Peach Trees and Honey Squash
    A re these the birds that you traded to the Moralienin?” I ducked as another red and blue plumed nuisance dove across the path and nearly grazed my head.
    “Yes. There are also smaller green ones,” he said. Then he shook his head vigorously as one of the red-and-blues tried to land on his horns.
    “They’re more annoying than Marta’s monkey,” Luka said, waving both hands over his head to keep them away.
    The birds screeched and continued to dive at us. One of them settled on a nearby branch and began berating us. I stopped in my tracks, however, when it actually called out, “Stupid creatures!”
    “Can they talk?”
    “Yes,” Shardas said curtly, “making them even worse than Marta’s monkey. If you talk to them, they will mimic the words. Unfortunately, most of what they hear are curse words, so please don’t be shocked if they call you ruder things than ‘stupid.’ ”
    We all laughed at that, and I asked about Marta’s monkey, Ruli. She had bought it in Citatie, but the horrid little thing had taken a shine to Feniul’s mate, Ria, and had come to the Far Isles with them. I had been quite relieved, for the tiny black-and-white animal was fond of shredding silk, and the thought of it getting loose in our shop had filled me with terror.
    “Oh, you haven’t seen him yet? He’s around here somewhere,” Shardas assured me. “Velika finds Ruli particularly trying, though, so I believe that Ria is keeping him well away from us. And, by the First Fires, I can’t say that I miss him!”
    The path forked again, sweeping away to our left and our right, and Shardas stopped and pointed at the trees straight ahead. “Here they are,” he said.
    “Here are what?”
    But as I came around Shardas’s massive, golden haunches I saw that the trees in front of us weren’t the usual jungle trees with their frothy leaves atop tall branchless trunks. These were ordinary Feravelan trees, peach and apricot, and I thought I saw apple to one side. They appeared to be nearly as tall as the jungle trees because they were planted on huge mounds of red dirt, and were in clusters rather than the straight lines of an orchard.
    “It’s, er, rather an unusual orchard,” Luka said, giving voice to my thoughts.
    We walked a little ways to the left, and saw other mounds, with paths winding between them. Some of them had trees planted on them; others had melon vines, or beanstalks carefully staked upright. The reasoning behind these circular garden plots finally struck me, and I shook my head at my own foolishness.
    “Of course,” I said aloud. “If you planted the trees in rows a few paces apart, the way we humans do . . .”
    “They would be too close together for us dragons to care for,” Shardas finished.
    “And the mounds probably help with irrigation,” Hagen said knowledgeably.
    He was already moving toward the foremost group of trees, nodding his head in a wise fashion. It was still strange to me to see how much my little brother had changed in the past three years.
    Hagen had a keen mind, and had sat at the head of his age group in our tiny school in Carlieff. He had been a hard worker on our farm