Utgard was an isolated place in more ways than strictly by dint of its location, which was the very image of isolation. They had almost no contact with the local wizarding communities, such as they were. And no contact with the muggles at all, naturally. They didn't even have any regular contact with Takoda's little tribe of magical Indians outside of Takoda himself, who was the very image of an outlier, an exception to the rule. That meant that they had been forced to become self-sufficient, and self-sustaining.
Not an easy thing to do in these parts. The land was not ideal for farming as the soil was not up to snuff. The landscape wasn't exactly ideal either. The Ettins made do however and every house had a large vegetable garden that the inhabitants were charged with maintaining. Most also maintained some form of animal, be it poultry or pigs, or something else. There were also a few fields outside the village that supplied crops. None of that even covered half of what Utgard needed to feed its inhabitants. Some of that need was covered by meats supplied by Chiron's herd of wood bison, but the rest had to come from old fashion hunting and foraging.
I suspected that this was the reason the village was so small, even after being around for over two hundred years, and being populated with beings that were admittedly fertile well into their second century with no sign of abating. There should have been thousands of them by now. But it became obvious by the first week in Utgard that they had no way of sustaining that kind of population growth. Things were strained already. Thus accepting the Deer Women into Utgard was not a good move on their parts, they simply didn't have the resources to sustain such an explosive influx of new mouths to feed.
Things would probably have become really dicey really quickly; in fact, several of the villages had started to voice concerns about their food stores for the coming winter. The Deer Women heard about it, of course, and proceeded to unveil an ability I really should have realized they had.
Everything is obvious in hindsight, they say. I really should have wondered how they had managed to feed over fifty people just by what amount they could grow in that small cave complex. It really shouldn't have been possible... unless they had some way to compensate. They had to have some way of making stuff grow down there, and they did. It wasn't exactly Swamp Thing's "burst out of the ground and attack people" level of plant growth. It wasn't even that type of ability, I think. it just appeared that way when they applied it to plants. The way it worked actually reminded me a bit of the Ember, in that they infused a part of their own energy into something. The difference was that where the Ember seemed to be more geared towards altering the properties of inorganic matter, the power of the Deer Women seemed to work by promoting growth in organic beings. It was more of a healing ability than anything else. Which was how it manifested if they used it on anything from the animal kingdom, which they had demonstrated when one of the Ettins had tried to chop his foot off. The deep wound had healed in two days without any complication and had not even left a scar.
To me, that looked like a textbook case of outright regeneration. Which could be both good and bad. I initially had a bit of a nagging concern that it might accelerate someone's aging as a side effect, and had brought it up with Dyani at my first opportunity. She didn't have a clear answer for me but had told me that she hadn't seen anything that would suggest it, and she would know, the Beast's attention had not been gentle or short, and those it favored, herself included, had been healed more than most. It had mollified me somewhat, at least enough to rank it as a low priority issue. Besides, considering how long Ettins lived it wasn't too concerning, they had more than a few years to spare before it became an issue.
So while the Deer women couldn't make plants burst out of the ground instantly they could make an apple tree bear fruit if you gave them a couple of days. It was also revealed that their... feces... had rather powerful growth-enhancing qualities. I'll be honest, it squicked me out a bit, but the Utgardians were all for it, they already used their own as fertilizer already, along with what the got from their animals, so it didn't seem at all strange to them.
Ew.
I know it was juvenile, and a bit stupid. It really isn't any difference between human shit and the shit of anything else, and it's not like it makes any difference to the plant. But it's just... better if I didn't dwell on it. Better just focus on how impressive it was, and it was. By my modest estimation, with the help of the Deer Women, Utgard would likely be able to harvest a full crop every week easily. They would probably be able to shave a day off that once their new tenants started to poop in their fields.
I shuddered. I was so glad I wouldn't have to get used to that.
---
When my second week at Utgard was coming to a close I thought it was high time to see how my little fairy experiment was coming along. It should be ready to hatch any day now, it might have done so already. I dug around in my pockets until I found what I was looking for, one of those compact foldable makeup mirrors that girls used to use before they could use their phones for things like that. I'd bought a set of two and put the same enchantment on it that was one the mirror that Sirius would one day give to Harry, or would have given to Harry anyway. God knows what changes I would cause in the coming years. I just hoped they were for the better.
"Paddy!" I called to the mirror.
It wasn't more than a few moments before the face of the aforementioned elf faded into view on the surface of the mirror. "Hello, sir. I had a feeling I would be hearing from you."
"Paddy. How are things at Hogwarts?" I asked.
"Quiet, as you would expect with the children gone." Paddy drawled with his assumed Oxford accent. "I trust you are having a good time galavanting around the Colonies."
"Sure, seen the sights, met interesting people, slew a rampaging monster, rescued the women it held captive, and helped them find a new home," I told my faithful servant and friend in a flippant tone of voice.
Paddy, to his credit, merely raised an eyebrow before nodding shallowly. "Very good, sir. I'm glad you are making use of your time off. I trust you will call if you should need any assistance."
"Of course!" I agreed. "Now, hows my little fairy doing, has it hatched yet?"
"Not as yet, sir," Paddy answered before he hesitating for a moment.
"What it is, Paddy?" I asked in concern.
"While the fairly has yet to hatch, there has been a rather strange development, perhaps I should just show you." He answered before his face disappeared and the image blurred in an eye-watering manner for a few moments before refocusing on something new.
It was the cocoon. But it was changed. It was bigger, maybe twenty percent one bigger then it had been when I found it. I was fairly sure that cocoons weren't supposed to grow. It was silk for Christ's sake! Silk doesn't grow! It had lost that prismatic sheen too, the one that made it shimmer like a rainbow when the light hit it, now, instead, it was a uniform cobalt blue, and it was glowing! Not brightly, but still strong enough that it was noticeable in full daylight. A glow that pulsed slowly like a heartbeat.
"Well," I said, momentarily at a loss of words. "At least it's alive?"
"That it is."
"Well, damn," I said as I scratched at my beard absently as I tried to think what this could mean. Honestly, I'd expected it to die. And if not that, then to not change noticeably. This looked to be something far more radical. At least from the outside, I amended to myself. No sense in getting excited because it's glowing. Lost of things glow, don't mean nothing. Or it could mean everything. Had I created a monster? Would Hogwarts be overrun with monster fairies? Knowing magic, that was a posibility.
"Do you wish me to leave it be, or do you think it would be prudent to relocate it to somewhere else?" Paddy asked.
That felt like it was leading up to something. "You have something in mind?"
"The Arboretum you and Miss Vablatsky located in the Room of Requirement perhaps?" Paddy suggested.
I considered it for a moment. I wasn't sure that it was a good idea. I still didn't know what that plant was, or how valuable it might be, and I didn't want whatever came out of that cocoon to trash it, or eat it. God knows what that would do. But, it wasn't like I had somewhere better to stick it, and I felt that it might be a bad idea to leave the cocoon in the open, just in case whatever popped out of it was dangerous. The Arboretum was sturdy enough, being Ember infused Dwarven work, and it was completely sealed against the outside world. Whatever emerged would probably not be able to force an exit, at least not through physical means.
It would be safer.
I gave Paddy a nod. "Move it to the Arboretum, and keep a close watch over it, and contact me when it hatches."
"Very good, sir," Paddy responded with a note of satisfaction in his voice. I smiled to myself. It was always good to encourage him when he tried to assert his own opinion. I wanted to get him into the habit of doing that, when it was appropriate, of course. "Would there be anything else, sir?"
I shook my head negatively. "Not unless you have anything else to report."
"Not that I'm aware."
"Goodbye then, Paddy."
"Goodbye, sir." He said with a mild smile before his image faded away.
I clicked the compact shut and stored it away before leaning back in the chair I was sitting in and sighed. I felt a sudden urge to rush back to Hogwarts to look over this recent development personally. I wanted to be there when that thing hatched. I shook myself and pushed that thought away and got up. I couldn't just up and leave here just like that, I still had work to do.
I exited my room, which was in the village keep. Hymir had generously offered me and Takoda rooms there during our stay, something we had both accepted. Takoda had stayed here before of course, during all of his many visits to Utgard.
I'd, of course, gotten to hear the story how that came about if you can call it a story. Takoda was apparently something of a wanderer and had never felt all that comfortable being cooped up in his small village, which didn't number more than fifty. The English name for his tribe was the Blackfoot, which was a name I recognized. Though I was surprised to find that it had no connection to the normal, non-magical, Blackfoot that inhabited the area just west of Utgard. Apparently, there was some serious bad blood there stemming from the fact that the non-magical shamans had driven out their magical brethren long ago, due to a combination of jealousy and fear of losing their power over their respective tribes should it become obvious that they had no magical powers of their own. It had apparently been easy to do since there weren't many shamans that had actual magic, the birthrate of magical children being far lower amongst the Native Americans then what you would find amongst Europeans.
They weren't alone in that. In my research into different magical cultures, I'd noticed that the further out from central Europe you got the lower the general birthrate of magical children became, with squibs being far more common. I'd initially been really excited about that, did that mean that there was something special about Europe, something there that encouraged magical births? I dismissed that theory rather quickly though when I found that the introduction of European magical blood in foreign people caused an upsurge of magical births. That had become abundantly clear in modern times during Britain's occupation of India. A lot of English wizards had followed the muggles over and settled there, mingling with the native population, causing a sharp upturn in magical births there.
The same thing had happened in America, though in a far more limited fashion due to the open hostilities on the muggle side. The people on the magical side hadn't shared that hostility, but just the same, they didn't much interact either. But there had been some and as a result, the birthrate had increased. This had been noted by the various magical tribes and there had been some effort in getting some new blood into the tribe on a limited basis, to strengthen it. I'd been surprised to find that Takoda was the product of one such union. He didn't look it.
But he had been different. He never was content to just sit in one place for any length of time. He was more at home wandering around, exploring, examining and poking his nose into whatever he could find. As he grew older he started to range farther and farther from his home, exploring the countryside and interacting with the creatures he found there. Most of them magical.
And then he'd happened upon Utgard, quite by accident. He had Hymir had formed a bond, and now almost he spent more time here than in his actual village. And that was that.
Not much of a story, but somewhat informative.
I felt my stomach twist and then issue a loud gurgling cry.
"Alright, alright, let's find some grub in the village," I told it, while patting it reassuringly as I walked off to do just that