Emily, in the Valley of the Vanishing River

If this was one of those silly Japanese isekai novels I used to love to read after I retired, this would be my cheat: I remember all my chemistry and all the mineralogical engineering I used in my 40-year career processing minerals up and down North and South America or teaching it in Australia. I graduated in 1972 from Columbia University with a degree in mineralogical engineering. It was one of the only schools in the western hemisphere which offered that degree.

There was something special and gratifying about taking a rock and making something from it. I blame growing up as a nerd in a family full of nerds. My dad got into nuclear engineering on the ground floor in the Manhattan Project and my mother was a physician. Every kid in my big family went into science or engineering. As children, we came close to blowing up the neighborhood just outside of Idaho Falls with all our stupid experiments. My father would come home from his job at the National Reactor Testing Station and just laugh as he placated the local Bonneville County Sheriff's Deputies once again.

The day I was almost beaten to death eight years ago was the day I remembered my previous life. When the wound fever broke and I regained my wits, I had all my memories of 71 years on a world called Earth which had no magic.

In this bronze age world, those born female with no magic were worthless. I was born as the lowest of the low, a Coyn slave in a place ruled by huge silver-haired magic users. I had a life filled with foul-smelling filthy tasks as a girl, to be followed by death in a mine or a brothel as a young adult. After that, assuming I survived into middle age, there would be more latrine emptying and excrement shoveling, capped by an early miserable death with no medical or palliative care.

If this was karma, then what horrible thing had I done in my previous life to deserve this? I didn't think I was a bad person on the planet Earth. Somehow I just didn't see how divorce, no kids, and a fulfilling career would rate this sort of torture in my new life.

I was mulling over karma while coming down the mountain with two fabulous quartz crystals, a bag of smaller ones, and some very pretty tourmaline. I detoured to visit the hot springs, thinking a soak would be so nice right now, given a sore neck and sore muscles from the first serious rock extraction day of the new year. I had even packed a soft chamois hide as a towel when I left my home this morning. It was still chilly enough out that the cold air and hot water combination was really enjoyable. I had paved a path and built a bench of smoothed amphibolite blocks in the hot spring to sit on so soaking was quite pleasant.

I hung my clothes on a branch so I could get back into them quickly when I got out. Then I stepped into the water for a bit of enjoyment, floating on my back and letting all the tension soak away. That is until the sound of something large in the nearby trees started coming my way. I leapt naked out of the hot spring and nocked my bow, wishing I had my knife and throwing spikes within reach.

What emerged from the trees was that giant griffin with the monster lady on his back. She smiled at me: "I think I should have said something before we got here, to warn you. I saw you soaking from the above and it looked so nice, I was wondering if I might join you."

The griffin's opening remark was even worse. He lowered his head to look at me more closely, which was somewhat disconcerting given my state of undress.

"Are you eating enough? I can see all your ribs, young lady."

Giving the griffin a face that should have conveyed my exasperation, I unnocked the arrow and hung the bow on a branch. Then I hopped back into the water before I got too cold. It was also embarrassing to be caught without any clothes on. If I could speak, I would have had much to say about people and their griffins who were aerial voyeurs.

I had not seen her standing up before. She really was a monster, more than twice my height and then some. I was reminded of the race of giants from the Thomas Covenant books I read in my previous life, or maybe the Twilight Giants from the Forgotten Realms series. This world was like living in a fairy tale or fantasy novel.

As it was, I had to work hard not to watch the monster lady get undressed and climb into the hot pool. It was rather depressing. She wasn't thin like a model but she wasn't fat. The gal had some serious muscle tone. She also had womanly curves in all the right places. If this was Earth, she'd be a supermodel.

Her size made all that beauty into something scary looking and I was scared. I admit that. If she wanted to do anything to me, physically or magically, I would not be able to defend myself. A force majeure just invited herself to soak in my hot spring and there was no way to escape her.

So here I was, trapped in my own hot spring at the mercy of a giant magical monster woman. If she found me once, then she could find me again. I would need to find a new place to live, assuming I wasn't abducted today.

"Oh, this is so nice. I want one of my own." The water surge she made when entering the pool sent water spilling over the bank and onto the ground, soaking both my clothes and hers. She didn't even notice, which annoyed me.

"Frankly, I don't understand the attraction," the griffin plunked down at the edge of the pool and dragged one huge talon through the water slowly, watching the ripples he made.

"You're too well insulated," she snickered. "But speaking of what you just said," she paused and looked at me. "Asgotl's is right. You are too thin. Are you really eating enough? Hey," she flicked some water at me, "don't give me that annoyed look."

"My darling mistress," the griffin flicked some water at her with a claw, "you are not going to get any answers out of her other than her making faces."

She ignored the griffin. "I have a question for you. If I arranged it, no obligations or payback required, would you be interested in seeing if your speech problem could be fixed? I know a healer who is very good with the kind of head injury you received. The difficult part is that it does take several months to relearn how to talk."

I'm not sure what she was really after. I did not want anything to do with anyone on the other side of the volcanic rift valley, even if it meant talking again. I shook my head no and worried that if she couldn't tempt me, she might take me by force. If that was the case, I wouldn't make it easy for this unwelcome guest.

I got out of the pool and dried myself off. I can't say I was happy that my pants at the bottom of the clothes pile were wet, but I dressed quickly with my back to her, feeling the same sort of modesty violation of a high school girls locker room. She kept talking while I got into my clothes.

"You also have badly set bones in your arm and one of your hands. I can fix those myself, though they would need to be splinted for about a half a rotation," she dangled a new bait. I wasn't biting, despite the extreme temptation in this case. My right arm was weak and it did limit what I could do physically. I compensated using all the tricks of physics like levers and pulleys and using my lower body strength as much as possible. Regardless, weak is weak.

I eyed her clothes and hefted the pile. I was surprised at how heavy they were, never realizing before how much fabric it takes to clothe an extra-large person. As I passed trees, I stuck items on lower branches, at a level where tall people were not accustomed to looking. Most people do not watch the area around their feet while walking. I hung a pair of underdrawers here, and an over-the-knee legging there, randomly placing clothes until the pile was gone. It might slow her down to collect her clothes.

The griffin had turned his head to watch, and when I noticed that he was looking at me, I swear he winked.

"Asgotl, she's taking my clothes!"

"Yes, it certainly looks that way." He began to leisurely preen his front talons.

"Well, stop her!"

"I'm sorry. Did you say something?"

For an enslaved griffin, he certainly was mouthy.

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General Bobbo, army assembly camp in the Surdos Valley

Heldfirk wasn't old enough to go to war but for the last two years, Imstay brought the Prince to the assembly camp for his army. In his estimation, the sooner the boy was introduced to the world of men, the better. Even his difficult wife approved of exposing the boy to the realities of a military camp. While he was in the camp, Heldfirk was protected from the queen's meddling.

He did not object when she took over managing the exchequer, almost 16 years ago. He found collecting taxes was boring and budgeting was unpleasant. Aylem was good at it. She even invented a new way to use numbers and trained the clerks in it. He admired her for that, he once admitted to me.

He didn't admire her soft-heartedness, especially toward the Coyn. Coyn were essentially very intelligent and trainable livestock. He said he understood why she was soft, given her origins. Regardless, he thought it wasn't a good quality for a person with so much power. A ruler had to be hard and ruthless, and she wasn't. This was why men were kings. Most women were not suited to rule.

Surrounded by his mother's family, I knew I would never have a chance to change his mind about Coyn. It was a shame too since he was otherwise a very smart man. I also could not fault the man for his love of family, though it prevented him from seeing their corruption. A low-born man such as myself would only get smacked into oblivion if I tried to reveal how badly they dragged his reputation down.

Heldfirk had Aylem's dark purple eyes but otherwise resembled his father. Imstay loved both his children deeply but he was especially fond of his boy. He would take his son with him everywhere at the camp, showing the prince off to the men. At night, he ate with his son and his generals in his camp pavilion. They discussed everything, but especially war, politics, and the art of governing. The third night in camp, Heldfirk was allowed to introduce a very different topic.

"So then the Coyn took out a little stick, maybe half the length of my thumb. When she touched it to a stone, it made fire instantly," the boy was regaling his father's staff with the story of when he and Opo'aba were lost in the blizzard. "Mother said the Coyn did not use fire magic."

"Maybe the stone was a magic tool," I suggested.

"Now that's a good thought, Bobbo," Imstay nodded. "What sort of stone was it, Heldfirk?" Someone might have discovered how to magic a charm gem into making fire.

"It was just a brown rock like the ones in the river," Heldfirk replied, flattered with all the attention he was getting.

"Maybe the stick was the magic tool," I proposed.

"I don't see how," Imstay frowned. The King's magic was formidable and he knew much about the creation of magic tools, most of which were built around a charm gem and brought to life through prayers to Tiki or Landa.

"Did your mother say why she left the Coyn behind?" Imstay asked. "A Coyn who can make fire without magic would be valuable to the kingdom."

"Mother said it had no master so it was a free Coyn and she let it go," Heldfirk replied.

"There was no charm gem on the hand?"

"No."

"Son, would you know this Coyn if you saw it again?" Imstay asked, just a little excited over instant fire without magic. Lower-caste Cosm often lacked enough magic to start fires, so instant fire would be a great help for a marching army. I knew him well enough to know that he wanted this Coyn's instant fire. He probably wanted from the very first time he heard of it from Heldfirk, right after the rescue of his children.

"It was funny," Heldfirk commented. "Mother's griffin ate all the Coyn's bear meat, so mother left some food behind to make up for it."

"That was generous," Imstay smiled at his son. It was obvious that the King wanted to find this Coyn. Hunting bear meat suggested she was pioneering in one of the northern mountain valleys. It would be only a matter of time before the king's scouts found her.

"What did this Coyn look like, son?" Imstay asked.

"She was really small, maybe seven hands high, and really thin. She had ugly brown hair, brown eyes and she couldn't talk."

"It was mute?" Imstay was surprised. Such a quality might make it easier to find.

Imstay later told me that he had dispatched ten scouts to search from the Great Cracks north of the Fire Pot, whose black lava flows covered the unlivable plains, and all the way south to Uldlip, where Sea Coyn traded every year since before records were kept. Their orders were to find, disable and capture the maker of instant fire.

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