by Tracy Lane
Her father looked at her then, blue eyes twinkling in the dim glow of the lanterns flickering on either side of the cavernous barn. “And until then?” he asked, a crooked smile filling his handsome face. “Should the extra bleaters sleep in your room?” He chuckled dryly before adding, “But no, where would all your books sleep then?!”
She blushed and turned away. Her father had never been much of a reader, and couldn’t understand how Aurora could want to read books when not in school, let alone spend every spare cent of her allowance on them.
Suddenly he cleared his throat and tossed off his gloves. Her eyes widened; he never quit his chores before they were through. “Where are you going, father?”
He shook his head as he approached her. “An old army friend just moved into town after leaving the service,” he explained. “He’s a carpenter by trade. I’m hoping he can help build me a new bleater pen before frost season hits us in full.”
Aurora stood by the door, an idea forming behind her placid smile. “But what about your chores?” she asked innocently, gazing around the dusty barn with wide eyes as if it looked worse than it actually did.
But he was too smart to fall for her little games. He tucked her under the chin, fingers smelling like bitter root. “That’s what daughters are for, Aurora.”
“Or!” she shouted, following after him, smoke rising from the cabin as her mother stood in the warmly lit kitchen, preparing breakfast for the two of them. “I could go into town for you. I’ll be needing new clothes for when I go back to my learning, and need to barter some in town anyway.”
Her father looked skeptical but he was standing still, one glove still on, so there was hope at least. “I could ask about your friend in town?” she added hopefully, feeling his resistance crumble.
2
Aurora guided her steed through the woods halfway between the family farm and the nearest town. It was still early morning and her chores were done and her belly was full of hogs tooth bacon; a fair start to the day if ever there was one.
Beneath her long, and still growing legs, the six hooves of her sturdy steed, Boer, ground into the damp earth as around them bower trees towered above, half-shielding the morning sun with their orange and yellow leaves.
Aurora shifted in her creaky saddle and straightened the bundle of old clothes on her lap. She had been meaning to get into town for ages, but between her chores and reading and exploring the Valley with her friends before curfew, the early days of frost season just seemed to slip away and here she was, only a few weeks from going back to her Learning Place.
The forest thinned and the town of Balrog emerged, charming, quaint and quite bustling by the time she rode Boer through the heavy double gate that marked the only entrance into and out of town. The rest of the charming village was protected by a high wall, patrolled day and night by armed sentries.
A small fountain gurgled in the town square and children sat in groups of two and three, eating fresh sweet buns from the baker or sipping on sweet gourds from the fresh grocer. A blacksmith toiled in his workshop, working the bellows as hot coals turned hotter steel into weapons for the Royal Guard.
Six-legged steeds in their thick frost season coats clattered across cobblestone streets as Aurora nodded pleasantly to the shopkeepers just opening their doors or already selling their wares.
She stopped for a sweet gourd just before the dressmakers stall, watching as the grocer grabbed the vibrant green melon and, with a single tap of her butcher knife, sliced off the thick top to reveal the sweet, fleshy meat beneath.
Sliding it across the sticky cutting board, Aurora gripped the fat, thick end of the gourd with both hands and tipped it gently to her lips, where fresh, sweet orange liquid from inside gushed inside her mouth, filling it with a vaguely citrusy burst.
She thanked the shopkeeper and slid over two small, square coins before sharing some of the sweet gourd juice with Boer, who snuffled and neighed and whinnied and stamped his two front hooves in appreciation, making Aurora wish she had thought to buy one for each of them.
When the gourd was empty Aurora washed her sticky hands in the fountain and then grabbed her pile of old clothes from the back of Boer’s saddle. Tying the steed up to the hitching post outside of Madame Grimelda’s Thread Emporium, Aurora stepped inside the quaint, faintly musty store to barter for fresh clothes for the frost season semester of Learning.
Madame Grimelda was a tiny woman with a gray bun of coarse hair piled high atop her head. She greeted Aurora by name and asked of her parents’ health and well-being.
Balrog was a small, thriving community in the kingdom of Wrenthe, and since the land was rich and fertile, and the neighbors friendly, few residents ever ventured far from the Valley it inhabited. Like all small villages, everyone knew everyone else, or so it seemed.
“What brings you in today?” the old woman asked, greedily eyeing the clothes Aurora set on the crowded front counter and, no doubt, mentally calculating their worth – and how to keep that fact from her valued customer.
“Well,” Aurora began cautiously, more than up to the intense negotiations that were sure to follow, “the Frost semester is right around the corner, and I wanted a few new clothes for when I go back to Learning.”
Madame Grimelda eyed her shrewdly. “Of course, of course, you do dear. And just look how you’ve grown since last we bartered! You’re nearly a woman now, eh? Almost sixteen, I’d say–”
“Almost seventeen,” Aurora was quick to correct, already eyeing a bright orange jacket hanging from a wicker mannequin in the display window, but trying not to let the old woman know.
Madame Grimelda nodded appreciably and approached the jacket anyway. “This would look very mature for your return to Learning,” she said. “I assume your boyfriend would love it???”
Aurora blushed, a rare show of weakness. “No, no boyfriend… yet.”
Madame Grimelda cackled knowingly and leaned in across the counter with a conspiratorial wink. “That would all change if you showed up on the first day of Learning wearing this beauty.”
Aurora had to admit, Conner Griffith might look at her differently if she walked into school wearing the high-collared jacket with the tapered, narrow waist. Nearly twenty minutes later, the jacket was on her back, and several other new outfits were nestled in one of Madame Grimelda’s trademark green and gold bags.
“Always a pleasure,” the old woman said, tallying the stack of clothes Aurora had brought in; far bigger, Aurora noted, than what she was bringing out of the store with her. Still, with what she still had in her closet back home, and a few minutes each morning, she could make the new clothes last another season, maybe more.
“Say hello to your father for me,” the old woman said as Aurora opened the door to leave.
“That reminds me,” Aurora said, turning around with the drawstring bag of clothes slung over her left shoulder. “My father said an old friend of his, Lutheran, moved into the area recently. A craftsman, he was hoping this man might help him build an addition to our barn. Might you have heard of him?”
The old woman’s eyes lit up. “It just so happens,” said Madame Grimelda, “he was in here not three days ago, bartering a whole bag of fresh-shorn cotton from his Bleaters for a leather tool apron.”
Aurora was ecstatic. New clothes and Lutheran’s address? Her father would be ecstatic! “Can you tell me where he lives?” she gushed, leaning in for the answer.
The old woman wrinkled her nose. “He said he’d bought the old Corinthian farmstead, out past Wandering Woods. Do you recall where that is?”
Aurora nodded tentatively, not looking forward to the journey. “The one past the Crystal Waterfall?”
“That’s the one!”
3
Wandering Woods was a dark and twisted place, with gnarled trees that shut out the daylight and strange, exotic animals that made even stranger sounds as they hid among the dark and gnarled trees. A giant Hooter with four wings watched her from a high br
anch, yellow eyes gleaming in the sudden darkness.
Boer was hinky, treading lightly with his six thick hooves as Aurora guided him on by tugging gently on his braided mane. “There boy,” she said, “just a little farther.”
But even she blanched at the lie; it was many miles to the Crystal Falls, and all of them through the Wandering Woods. “Trust me,” she added in a wavering voice, “I don’t want to be in here any longer than you do!”
Soon the path grew too thick for Boer to navigate alone and she reined him in, slipping from his saddle to plant her feet on the soft, misty ground. She slid a long blade from her saddle sheath and cautiously led the nervous steed by the guide rope, hacking away thick, gnarled, thorny branches in advance of their faltering progress.
A light mist seemed to ooze from the moss covered ground, covering their feet up to the knees and making Aurora tighten the collar of her new school jacket. It was pretty, but stiff and far from warm, a jacket made to look good, not feel good.
She cursed herself for making such an unwise choice in clothing, but warmed herself with the thought of impressing Conner Griffith on the first day back to Learning.
Aurora tucked a strand of raven-black hair behind one ear and narrowed her eyes, wishing she’d thought to bring a lantern. Then again, it was bright daylight above and beyond the forest. It was only inside the sheltering trees and thick, black leaves of the Wandering Wood that night seemed to have fallen, despite the early hour.
A branch creaked, there, to the left. No, to the right? Aurora held the blade higher as Boer’s nostrils flared with alarm. The four-winged owl hooted, as did several of his neighbors on neighboring branches, big yellow eyes glowing in the dark.
More leaves rustled in the high, dark brush. It was more than just her imagination playing tricks on her; something was coming. Fast. The leaves rustled, the bushes shook and Aurora let out a little shriek as they parted to reveal a Nayer, an animal about half the size of a Steed and with only four legs.
Its eyes were big, its gray lips peeled back to reveal big, yellow teeth. It was heading straight for Aurora, trotting along on its little gray legs, barreling right at her.
“Whoa!” she shouted, waving the blade in front of her to slow the little Nayer’s progress. “Whoa, boy!” The Nayer slowed to a trot, head whipping around as if something might be chasing it.
“There, there,” she said, using the same hushed tones she’d used to gently prod Boer into the forest an hour or so earlier. “Here, come here boy…”
The Nayer was standoffish, but at a standstill. It had no markings, no brand, no saddle or harness. Local farmers used the little gray beasts when a horse was too much, but a human not enough.
They were good for tilling smaller plots of land or toting sacks of barley wheat to the marketplace. Even Aurora used one to help when it was time to harvest her acre of garden and haul thick bushels of gourds and root vegetables back to the cabin.
She wondered where the little fella had come from, where it was going and what might be chasing it. “There, there,” she said, while grabbing a rope from her saddle back and looping it loosely around the Nayer’s thick neck. She knotted the rope, with plenty of slack, to Boer’s saddle so the beast of burden couldn’t run away again.
She thought maybe it might be her father’s friend Lutheran’s Nayer. Or, if not, maybe another local farmer had lost his beast. Either way, she didn’t have time to stop now and hunt for the critter’s owner.
If the old seamstress was right and Lutheran did live near the Crystal Falls, it would be another hour or more to get there, make contact, and then another few hours to make her way back to town. The days were short this time of year, the planet’s two moons rising earlier and earlier each day.
The last place on Synurgus she wanted to be was stuck in Wandering Woods in the dark! “Come on you two,” she grunted, leading Boer by the reins and, trailing a few yards back, the little Nayer struggled along at the end of his short tether.
They hobbled along, a dreadfully slow trio, as the woods grew thicker, not thinner; darker, not lighter. At one point Aurora thought she heard the cascading sound of Crystal Falls just ahead in the distance, but now that sound had long since been replaced by Boer’s constant whinnying and the neighing of the little gray Nayer.
Aurora shushed them both but understood their fear. The blade grew dull cutting though the thick shrub until she came upon a small clearing that seemed decidedly out of place. Its grass was green, wildflowers bloomed and instead of crooked trees and towering branches, a sheer cliff wall stood where none towered only moments earlier.
She knew of no cliffs in the Wandering Wood, nothing but trees and more trees, darkness and more darkness. But as she inched closer, the beasts behind her trundling along at her back, Aurora could see that this was no regular cliff.
It sparkled, for one, like the stream that ran along their farmland when the sun hit it just right, or the odd crystals her father found every so often while plowing the fields.
For another, the closer she got, Aurora could see… into it. But no, that wasn’t right, either. The flat land expanded, the grass grew greener with every footstep, and as Aurora neared the towering cliff she noted that it was not a mountain at all but a series of tall, towering buildings, sparkling, crystal buildings all collected in a town built into the sheer cliff wall.
High, tall buildings carved of stone, with magnificent architecture and staggering columns supporting towering arches. But these were no ordinary buildings; they were built of sheer crystal, see-through and sparkling. It was frosted at the edges, the bottom and the top, but everywhere else she could see right into them.
People walked, in flowing garnet robes with gold accents that would make Madame Grimelda green with envy. The men had long, silver hair and thick beards. They looked distant beyond the crystal walls, and beyond the few structures facing her seemed to lay an entire city built of clear stone!
Aurora wondered, idly, if this was the fabled city of mages from which all magic on the planet of Synurgus came. She’d heard rumors about the mages of old, the ancient ones who practiced both light and dark magic to keep towns like Balrog safe from those who would invade and plunder it wholesale.
But her parents were humble folk, not wise in the ways of magic or the mages who alone could practice it. She stared up at the towering city, with its multiple levels and miniature people walking and sitting in their splendid robes, being served by the Doing class in their all-white servants’ garb, pouring wine or tea from silver pitchers into gold chalices, a world of riches beyond Aurora’s wildest imaginings.
She turned, if only for a moment, to check on her animals and saw them, heads bowed, as if in reverence. Then she knew why: a white light was shining, brighter and brighter, forcing her to shield her eyes…
4
When at last Aurora opened them, a man was standing there. He was tall, towering at least a head above her. His maroon robe was heavy and cascaded down to the soft, fine grass that covered the ground at their feet. His silver hair flowed around his head, shimmering and waving, and yet the air around them was still and calm.
Indeed, the forest itself – once full of the foreign shrieks of howlers and beaters and savagers and scowlers – had grown hush and the air heavy, as if this man had sucked all the energy and life from the very atmosphere itself.
He held a crystal staff, sparkly and shimmering like the walls of the towering buildings behind him. Aurora felt the reins in her hand tighten as Boer and the Nayer tensed at the man’s sudden presence.
The man noticed, casting his gaze from the animals back to Aurora. He had wise, gentle eyes, dark and green like the finest of emeralds. “Your beasts have nothing to fear, child,” he said, voice soft and deep. “No one here will do them harm.”
Her voice cracked as she joked, “Tell them that.”
The man merely nodded. Then he looked at her beasts, smiled, paused and, moments later, the reins went slack in her hand. When she
turned to Boer, his face was placid and downturned; same with the little Nayer, who now nibbled contentedly from the grass beneath his four tiny hooves.
She turned back to the man. “H-h-how did you do that?” she stammered.
“I just did what you asked me to,” he said with a cryptic smile on his ancient face. “I told them not to be afraid.”
“B-b-but only mages can speak to the animals,” she pointed out, a hitch catching in her throat.
He merely smiled and shrugged, shoulders broad beneath the heavy material of his long, rich robe.
When it was clear he would offer no further explanation, she asked: “Who… who are you?”
He cocked his head, silvery hair dancing in the non-existent breeze as it swirled around his face like a shimmering halo. “Who do you think I am?”
Aurora held her tongue until she had to confess, “I’m… not sure.”
He shook his head, as if disappointed. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes, all too eager to tell him. “I was looking for a friend of my father’s when this Nayer came out of nowhere. I guess she threw me off direction, for now I’m lost…”
He nodded, studying the small beast. “And do you… see… anything behind me, child?”
She chuckled. “Just a mountain that isn’t supposed to be there, and walls that sparkle and I can see through….”
The air had grown heavy again and when she looked up at him from describing the walls, he wore a grave face.
“Is that… where you come from?” she asked. “Is… is that where you live?
The moment passed and he smiled again, holding out his crystal staff toward her. “Would you like to visit?”
“Oh, yes, sometime when I’m in less of a hurry…” she gushed, looking behind him to the towering walls and the little people who must live behind them.