by J. J. Faulks
“What about the myth of Driste and Orea?” he suggested.
It was not a myth that Meila had told often. The children of the village had clamoured for tales filled with heroic deeds and epic battles, and Orleigh herself would join the protest when Meila announced that she would be telling one of the more sentimental stories, but secretly these myths were some of her favourite.
Driste was a hunter, but he was no ordinary hunter. He did not chase after rabbits or deer or boar, and he did not run with a pack of dogs or throw a spear. Driste looked only for the legendary Spryus fish that lived in the stream flowing down from the spring of Mount Crua. When he caught sight of this rare and wonderful creature, he would lower his hands into the water and wait until the fish swam into his grasp. With a tight hold, he would lift the fish from the stream.
Any other hunter would toss the fish to the river bank where it would succumb to its new environment, but Driste had no interest in killing the fish for the Spryus fish was not his prey. What Driste sought after was the precious gemstone that the Spryus fish held in its belly. When the fish died, the gemstone would be digested and lost forever. But, by holding the fish above water for long enough, Driste could coax the Spryus fish into relinquishing its treasure. In exchange, Driste would return the fish to the stream.
Driste was a very special kind of hunter, and the trophy that he sought was priceless.
One day, weeks after his last sighting of a Spryus fish, Driste was lazing in the grass by the stream when he heard a gulching sound coming from the water. Driste scrambled to his feet and peered down into the stream. Gliding through the water was the largest Spryus fish that Driste had ever seen. He waded into the water and positioned himself in the path of the creature, his hands ready to capture it. The fish thrashed and struggled, but Driste held tight, hauling the fish from the water and clutching it to his chest. The fish waited until its last breath before finally giving up its prize.
When the gemstone tumbled from the fish’s mouth, Driste dived into the water to catch it, letting go of the Spryus fish. The fish darted downstream, but Driste did not see for he was too captivated by the glorious gemstone that he now held in his two hands. He had never seen a gemstone so large. It was the size of his fist and it sparkled with shimmers of blue and gold.
Though Driste kept secret the discovery of this mighty gemstone, the goddess Emnei soon heard of its splendour. Emnei, with her heart set on obtaining the gemstone, sent the mountain nymph Orea to spy on Driste and to acquire the treasure.
Orea watched Driste as he hunted by the mountain stream. She was fascinated by the way that he caught the fish and the kindness that he showed the creatures when he released them back into the stream.
“Hello there,” Driste called out one day when Orea was spying on him from the trees that lined the path of the stream. He was looking towards Orea, but Orea had been certain that she was hidden from view. “Come out. I won’t hurt you.”
Holding onto the trunk of the tree, Orea stepped sideways away from her hiding place.
“I’ve seen you watching me,” Driste said. “What’s your name?”
“Orea,” Orea said.
“I’m Driste,” Driste said. “What are you doing here Orea?”
“I was watching you catch the fish,” Orea said. “They are beautiful.”
“They are,” Driste agreed. “Come here and I’ll teach you how to catch them.”
So Driste showed Orea how to spot and catch the Spryus fish. Orea laughed the first time that she lifted one out of the stream. Driste had to steady her hands so that she would not drop it back into the water before it gave up its gemstone.
“I heard that you found a gemstone much bigger than this,” Orea said. “The goddess Emnei would very much like to see it.”
“And keep it too,” Driste said. He smiled and Orea blushed. “No, that gemstone is special. It belongs to the most beautiful woman in this world, so I could never give it to Emnei. But I could give it to you though.”
When Emnei heard of this development she was furious. To punish Orea for her betrayal she tarnished the mountain nymph’s beauty, leaving her as plain as the trout was to the Spryus fish. Orea was horrified when she saw her reflection in the water. She could not bear for Driste to see her that way, but when she failed to visit him at the stream, Driste came to find her.
At first, Driste did not recognise Orea, but when she spoke and when she laughed Driste knew that it must be the woman that he loved.
“I want to give you this,” Driste said, producing the largest gemstone that Orea had ever seen. It caught the light and it glittered like the dawn over the ocean.
Orea shook her head and pushed the gift away. “No,” she said, “I can’t accept it. You said that it belonged to the most beautiful woman in this world, and look at me…”
“I am looking at you,” Driste said, “And I know that this gemstone belongs to you.”
Driste knew that Orea’s beauty was not in the features of her face, but was in the kindness of her heart. No matter what vengeance was inflicted upon her, that beauty would never fade.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The whole estate shook. The cherry trees trembled, blossom raining down over Orleigh and Piprin; the boughs of the orange trees swayed, their fleshy orbs tumbling to the ground and rolling over the patchy grass; and the goats jumped and scattered amidst peals of wild bleats.
“Orleigh!” Teymos’s voice boomed.
It reverberated through her, churning up everything inside, like the fury of Onea whipping into a whirlwind. Piprin clutched her hand, providing her an anchor as much as seeking reassurance.
“It’s Teymos,” Orleigh murmured. She ducked beneath the branches of the cherry trees, pink petals littering her hair, and ran along the path to the front of the estate, Piprin hurrying after her.
“Teymos?” she called out as she turned the corner.
Teymos thundered across the lawn, his heavy footsteps stirring up disgruntled honks as the geese ruffled their wings and scooted free from his path. He pivoted towards her voice, and his wild eyes fell on her.
“Thank the Creator that you’re safe!” he breathed, his strides softening as he neared her and Piprin. He grasped her arms and lowered himself so that his eyes were level with hers. “I was so worried about you. Nestra told me that you had gone into the Great Forest.”
“We did,” she said, trying to wriggle her arms free. “But we came back.”
Still clutching her, he asked, “And you’re all right?” His eyes raked over her, searching her head to toe for injury.
“I’m fine,” she said, her tone sharp, the words blunt.
Teymos’s lips twitched and he nodded, his arms falling back to his sides. The relief that had consumed his features faded, leaving behind the faintest glimmer of uncertainty. His eyes darted beyond her, falling on Piprin. “Who’s this?”
She looked over her shoulder, reaching out for Piprin’s hand and pulling him a step forward. “This is Piprin,” she said. “He’s a friend—my closest friend—from my village.”
Teymos frowned, his hand rising to touch his chin. “But how did he get here?”
Orleigh shook her head, dismissing his question. It didn’t matter how Piprin got there. What mattered was: “He was with me the night of the fire, only he didn’t die and nor did anyone else.” The words lashed from her mouth, their bitterness stinging her tongue.
Teymos’s face fell, and like the breaking of dawn, the darkness of uncertainty gave way to the glow of realisation. “You know?” He cleared his throat. “Beighlen told you?”
Her eyes narrowed and she gave a single, slow nod. Yes, she knew everything.
“How could you let me believe that the people I loved were dead?” She spat the question word by word, landing so heavily on ‘dead’ that it rang out through the courtyard. She added with a hiss,
“And don’t you dare tell me that you were trying to protect me.”
“I was trying to protect you,” Teymos said. He took a step closer, his hand reaching for her shoulder, but she jumped back and his hand fell away, empty fingers closing on the space between them.
“I’m fed up of hearing that excuse,” she said, swiping the air as if to strike down the excuse and reveal it for the platitude that it was. “You don’t protect someone by lying to them, you protect them by arming them with the truth.”
“You were a child,” Teymos said, raising his voice in a way that made ‘child’ sound like a curse. “You were too young to understand the truth.”
She shook her head. No one could be too young for the truth. “Then perhaps you should have tried explaining it to me,” she said, pausing half a beat before adding, “Or is the truth just something that you lock away and visit from time to time, like my mother’s belongings?”
They plunged into silence. Teymos paled, his lips parted.
“I know about the hidden room,” she said, her nostrils flaring, heat surging to her cheeks. “I know that the woman in that story was my mother and that the god was you. I know that you sent Nestra to witness my birth, to try and save my mother.” Her voice cracked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I failed!” Teymos shouted. Bolts of lightning streaked through his eyes and a tremor surged through the ground beneath their feet.
Orleigh stumbled and toppled onto Piprin. He caught hold of her, steadying them both until the tremor passed.
“What?” she asked Teymos. “What do you mean you failed?”
“I promised to protect her and she died,” Teymos said. He held his forehead in his hand, his voice softening to a harsh whisper. “Your mother died because of me.”
Orleigh shook her head. “She died because it was written in the Script. There’s nothing you could have done to change that.”
Teymos scowled, his gaze scorching the ground. “I never should have taken her to the Sanctuary.” His eyes slipped shut, a twist of pain contorting his face. When they opened again they were dull, like a faded bruise. “What good is it being the mighty Earth God if you can’t protect the one that you love?”
“But you couldn’t have known what would happen,” she said.
“I knew the consequences of dabbling with fate.”
Orleigh stepped closer, dipping into his gaze. “What did my mother see in the Sanctuary?” she asked, like trying to coax a child from behind its mother’s skirts. “What fate was she trying to escape?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “She never told me.”
“Could it have been to do with me?”
He stared at her, his gaze hardening. “What do you mean?”
“She was already expecting me when she left the Land of Gods,” she said. “The animals in the Great Forest, they didn’t attack me. When I lost the vial of Nestra’s blood they didn’t attack me, but they attacked Piprin because he’s a mortal and I’m a demigod.”
The rush of words petered out and she stood before Teymos, her palms hanging open by her sides, exposed.
“It’s true,” Piprin chimed. “Orleigh healed me and Beighlen.”
Teymos frowned, his face paler than ever, and he shook his head as if he were trying to shake off a bad dream. “But…but that would make you my…my—?”
“Your daughter,” Orleigh said.
Like the toll of a bell, the word hung in the air, its hollowness expanding into the silence.
“I didn’t know,” Teymos muttered. “All this time and I didn’t know.” He covered his mouth with his hand, fingers damming a torrent of thoughts from flowing off his tongue. His eyes darted about, still chasing through that same bad dream.
“Would it have mattered?” Orleigh asked. “Would it have been any different?”
Teymos’s eyes jumped to hers. “Of course it would,” he said, his tone questioning how she could ask such a thing. “I’ve seen you grow up, but I’ve missed out on every part of your childhood. I can never get that time back, I can never see my daughter become the young woman stood before me now.”
His hand extended into the gap, palm trembling beneath the weight of his offering. They could start again. Father and daughter. God and demigod. Friendship, opportunity, togetherness. All hers to accept. Her fingers brushed against his palm. Hands that had welcomed her, hands that had stolen her, hands that had torn apart her home. She snatched her hand away.
“Nor can the man who my mother chose to be my father,” she said.
“Ormoss,” he sighed and the bridge between them crumbled.
“Ormoss,” she said. She crossed her arms over her chest, fists hiding beneath her elbows.
His eyes fell to the ground. “She loved him too, and that hurt more than her leaving ever could. My heart was broken, but she gave hers to another man.”
“So you wanted to punish him? By taking me away?”
“No,” he said. “I brought you here because you needed protecting, because there were people in your village who would do you harm.” He glanced at Piprin.
“And there were people in my village who cared for me and would have protected me, but you never gave them the chance.”
“I couldn’t take that risk.” He shook his head, grave-faced, as though unable even to contemplate such a thought. “You were Alea’s daughter, I had to keep you safe.”
“I was Ormoss’s daughter too, but you took me away from him. And from Meila, who did everything for me, treated me just as she did her own children.”
Thunderclouds descended over Teymos’s face and he cast aside her comment with a dismissive hand. “Ormoss didn’t deserve you. He was too lost in the past to see your future slipping through his fingers. There’s nothing that I could have done to him that would have compared to the punishment of Alea’s death. Her dying broke me, but it shattered him.”
“He might not have been my father, but my mother chose him, not you.” She jabbed her finger at him. “You say that you loved her, then why didn’t you respect her decision?”
“I did!” he shouted. “I let her go. I let her marry Ormoss. But she wasn’t alive to see what had become of him, what would become of you.” He slumped into a sullen pause before muttering, “The dead can’t make decisions.”
Her heart dropped, an emptiness pouring into her chest. “Then don’t pretend that you were doing this for her, or for me. You were doing it for yourself!” Her finger shook as it lunged for him again. “My mother must have had a reason to return to the Land of Mortals, to choose to raise me with Ormoss. I have a responsibility to him and to the village.”
The faint trace of a smile strained his lips, full of pity. “You can’t heal him, Orleigh,” he said. “Wounds of the flesh are very different from wounds of the mind.”
“I can still try,” she said. She jutted her chin out, folding her arms. “I want to go back to the Land of Mortals. I want to go home.”
Teymos’s shoulders slumped forward, his chest collapsing like a sail losing the wind. “I thought this was your home,” he said. His arms branched out, reaching for the estate around them.
“I had nowhere else to go! Even Amphion’s lion would find a home in its cage if it had no other shelter,” she said. “I thought you were my guardian but you were nothing more than my jailer.”
The vines are for your protection, he had said. They had held her on the estate, keeping her away from the Great Forest and the animals, or did they keep her away from the Land of Mortals and the truth? Their net of safety twisted into a hunter’s snare.
“You lied to me!” she shouted, her voice cracking, its fragility fuelling the anger that raged inside. “You lied about everything! The fire, my village, my family, my mother. You kept me here with only you and books for company, and then when you finally allow me to have a friend, you tell him t
o lie to me too.”
The outburst crashed into Teymos, but he stood strong, like a boulder bearing the brunt of breaking waves. “I never meant to hurt you,” he said, his voice as steady as his stance. “I just wanted to keep you safe.”
“I am not my mother,” she said, spitting like a cat. “Whatever guilt you feel for indulging her curiosity cannot be purged by hiding me from the world.”
“It was never my intention to keep you here forever. Just until you were old enough, ready enough to face the world.”
“And when would that be? How could I ever be ready to face the world when I knew nothing about it, except what I read in books?”
Teymos paused. “I don’t know.” he said, and he frowned as if he had lost something that had been in his grasp only moments before. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough,” she said. Hot tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked them back, a furious swipe of her arm ridding her cheek of the droplet that squeezed through.
She continued, “You’ve robbed me of my identity. You’ve robbed me of my mother. Everyone knew her, everyone except me. All the roles she played: friend, partner, wife. And what is she to me? A stranger—” she shook her head: that wasn’t true. “No, less than a stranger.” Her mind wrestled for the right words. “She’s like a shadow in the darkness.”
Teymos swallowed, the clunk audible in the silence. “I can’t bring her back, Orleigh,” he said, his voice filled with the exhausted certainty of someone who had tried. “I can’t change what has already been done.”
She scowled. “And you can’t expect me to forgive you.”
“Not today,” Teymos agreed. He gave a defeated shrug. “But maybe one day.”
“I’m an immortal and my days are limitless,” she quipped. Anything was possible, one day.
Teymos recoiled from her barb, as if she had loosed an arrow and it had bedded itself in his chest. But having found its target, the arrow turned itself on her, its tip laced with his pain. Her chest ached and then numbed as the poison spread.