by Colin Tabor
It threatened to become an obsession.
I could see him, handsome and wealthy, but at the same time gentle and loving - a Heletian merchant prince.
He would be my hero, standing alongside me through the travails of life, living for me as I did for him. Together, as best friends, partners, and lovers - nothing less than a true couple. We would be inseparable…
Soon enough, bored with my mother’s lessons, the daydreams became an escape. More and more, when I wasn’t lost in a lotus inspired haze or taking lessons, I sought them out at my bedroom’s loft window, most especially at the end of the day.
In contrast, in the waking morning, when the grip of the lotus ran at its weakest ebb, my head often grew heavy with pain. At such times I felt trapped by a destiny promising comfort, but no excitement, where I could see a lingering lifetime only to be mercifully ended by the hand of Death.
Such bleak moods only fed my hunger for lotus.
I dreamt of a sacred union, of two souls joined by all things honourable in a partnership heralded by angels. It would be so beautiful that even the gods would weep. In time, with the passing of many happy seasons, children and prosperity would strengthen our most important gift to each other - our love…
I knew it was just a fantasy, but I couldn’t get enough of it.
I was being enslaved.
To my surprise, a respite surfaced in the strangest place; my sleep.
It began a little over a week out from my coming-of-age. At first it was just an image, like a glimpse of a distant land. It wasn’t until after its first few visits that I realised how much I needed it - something to counter my growing dependence on the lotus.
Every night this new dream came stronger and longer. It pushed aside stubborn scenes of handsome husbands, breathless kisses, and naked, sweat-covered shame. It ran like a vision, as if I flew free with the birds, seeing me glide high above a green and beautiful land.
Without the passion and lust of the lotus dreams it might sound like a bore, but it stirred something deep within. It gave a sense of life, hope, and liberation: It was of freedom.
Within its sleeping caress, I dove down into steep mountain valleys and soared up by rugged, snow-dusted peaks. Eventually, that landscape gave way to a rock-lined sound where the sea spilled in. Behind that coast rolled green hills that grew in height and grandeur, and not much farther back, a shadowed canyon cradled in their midst.
A sanctuary.
The canyon was warm, lush with life, and full of water’s song. Little streams trickled down tier after tier of the canyon’s moss-covered sides, falling lazily to its mist-shrouded and fern-forested bottom.
But the lotus always fought to reassert itself…
And out from that mist-veiled fern forest stepped my naked husband, his olive skin glistening, while the curve of his muscles caught the overhead sun. With a cock of his eye and a strong hand, he beckoned me, demanding that I come and make love to him…
Even my sanctuary could be violated.
My mother kept increasing the dosage, determined that I fall for the first man presented to me. She knew I could be rebellious and feared my initial reluctance. She wanted me nice and agreeable.
Amidst all this my headaches continued. At first I thought it was the lotus causing them, yet in the end I realised that the stronger doses actually worked to quell their pain.
After our courting, when finally he came to propose, the question would be asked with flowers - red roses.
I’d always said; the first man bold enough to give me such a gift of scandalously coloured blooms would be welcome to my hand, for surely anyone so daring would have already won my heart!
Such daydreams were best had sitting at my bedroom window oblivious to the household and the crowded streets below. It was on one such afternoon that I found myself settled in and looking out at the maze of moss-covered rooftops, the whole vista still damp from a long morning of showers.
The soft green ridges reminded me of the rolling hills of my dream sanctuary as the afternoon sun peeked between clouds to highlight them with passing shafts of gold. Beyond that living mosaic climbed the sides of the steep valley we lived in; the Cassaro, Ossard’s cradle, and whose exhausted silver mines had given the city life.
The ancient range made the surrounding Northcountry difficult to farm. All about us, its granite pushed through the thin soil to loom rugged and stark.
The Northcountry was a treeless place.
The pine forests that had once veiled so many of its hills and mountain slopes had succumbed to a blight over a century past, and its few survivors long since been felled. The city’s symbol, its famed rose-tree, was also gone. Thickets of it had once lined the gullies and riverbanks along the valley-floor, but the same blight had also stolen it away.
Such a history saw the present slopes and valley-floor given over to pasture and crops, or where too boggy or steep, abandoned to herbal brush and a hardy oleander. The latter had spread without invitation many years ago, growing its long branches full of thin and poisonous leaves. The shrub’s one blessing came in its bright pink blooms, while pretty, they were also deadly. It was certainly no rose-tree.
But all that lay to the sides of my view and the inland depths behind, in the distance spread something else; the Northern Sea.
The port crowded the far side of the city. There, the sea’s deep blue drew a dark line between the mossed roofline of Ossard and the cloud-streaked sky above. In one place, partially hidden by a set of church towers, it glittered golden as it reflected the late afternoon sun.
A soft breeze tugged at my blonde hair, soothing in its caress. The sun also worked to seduce me as it set my pale skin aglow with its warm and sweet kiss. And all of it combined to make me sleepy.
I’d come here to daydream and endure a headache that had struck me earlier in the day. Its lancing pain had faded, but a muffled buzzing in my ears warned that it hadn’t finished with me yet. The aches had haunted me for weeks now, at first soft and barely noticed in the morning, but recently they’d worsened to grow rough and breathtaking. My mother had been concerned at the news, overly so, but she’d always been prone to fretting.
I closed my eyes to let the sun comfort me.
A mistake.
With the distraction of my vision gone, I became aware of just how wrong things felt.
The buzz in my head gained clarity as it cleared into a chorus of whispered voices. I couldn’t make sense of them, there were too many.
Was I imagining them?
While I couldn’t understand them, the longer I listened the more certain I became. Soft and busy, like the hum of a distant crowd, it came from nowhere, yet everywhere.
What was happening to me?
And then, as if that question was the key to unlocking a door, images flashed through my mind in glaring white and blinding blue, all against a void of the deepest black. They were of flames, leaping sparks and billowing smoke, and at the heart of it loomed a forest of stakes with people bound to them. Those poor souls struggled against their bonds and screamed, but the inferno feasted on them nonetheless. In a stark moment of horror, I realised that the elementals fuelling it planned on doing so for eternity.
I was watching a witch burning, something from the past that the poor souls had been unable to escape even in death. It was of Ossard’s riots, or more correctly, of the incident that had triggered them; The Burnings.
The vision left me shaken, but also different.
The tang of blood came to my tongue - my own!
Why was I bleeding?
The voices declared, “Magic!”
What?
They chorused again, “The coming of magic!”
No, not for me!
And my breath caught as I shivered.
I didn’t want it, not to be burdened by the Witches’Kiss!
And then my headache subsided, the pressure binding it suddenly released.
My mind cleared only for it to succumb to a new
sensation, it eerie, like a flow of iced water cascading into my core. Its brutal chill came as such a shock that I cried out as my eyes sprang open.
And the vista before me held such clarity it was as if every other time I’d looked out of my window it had only been for a glance.
Now I could see everything.
Everything!
Across the city, wherever I looked, I could see people walking, talking, working, loving, and so much more. It was as if I stood out there with every one of them. I discovered, to a degree, I could even sample their feelings and thoughts.
I turned in wonder from the city to watch the chores of a lone fishing boat crew far out in the sound. I took all of it in effortlessly and in beguiling detail, as three men cleared their nets while seven seagulls circled above them.
I could see everything!
That’s when I noticed the sparks.
They rained down past my window to flare with an intensity that hurt to watch. It left me in no doubt, I wasn’t supposed to see them, no one was; they were black.
Only one kind of spark could hold such a hue. I knew that from Sef’s tales; they were of the celestial.
Magic!
The sparks stretched off in a narrow trail as they headed across the street towards Newbank’s slums. I leaned forward in my chair, mesmerised. About me, the air grew cool and expectant.
It was magic, but not of me.
Someone else was casting.
The wind sounded, it heavy with the whipping of cloth. A moment later, a tall and ragged form with arms outstretched glided past. The robed caster followed the extending trail of sparks, their brilliance fading with his passage.
I supposed him to be a forbidden cultist or perhaps an outlawed mage.
The dark figure coasted on until he began descending towards a faraway alley lined with rundown tenements. Several balconies jutted out from those grimy three level buildings, all but one of them empty.
A boy with only a few years behind him and a crop of messy red hair stood there looking up. Surprisingly, the child could see him, but even at his tender age he sensed something was wrong.
I watched with growing fear.
The alleyway grew dark with the cultist’s arrival, the light sapped away by some damning spell. The figure wore a hood, but I could tell by the strong jaw and a solid frame that it was a man, probably Heletian.
He landed.
This was no persecuted cabalist, a scholar of magic, instead it was a man who’d sold his soul to the diabolical, seeking favour in return.
Without a word, he offered his hand.
I held my breath.
The child looked up to the cultist, and then reached out to take it.
My vision, so strangely clear, marked the boy in the spoiled colours of death. I knew his fate, as though I’d be there when his blood was drained.
Under the weight of that feeling, the paralysing fear that had taken me finally released its grip. I stood and screamed, “Get away from him!”
The cultist’s head snapped about, even though he was surely too distant to hear. His eyes sparkled coldly. He wasn’t afraid, not of a Flet girl standing at a window too many streets away.
As if entranced, the child took his hand.
The cultist grinned.
It set me to tears.
The cultist and boy began to drift up, the two hand-in-hand. They followed a rising path of flaring sparks that trailed off towards the heart of the city.
I heard a scream and looked back to the balcony. The boy’s mother, oblivious to her son above, looked to the street below.
With a thick voice, I yelled, “He’s above you! He’s taking him!” but she couldn’t hear me. I was just too far away.
She rushed for the stairs.
My excellent vision faded, returning to the mundane. Sobbing, I dropped my tear soaked face into my hands.
Caught in my own grief, I didn’t hear the hurried footfalls on the stairs leading to my room. The door burst open behind me. My mother charged in, Sef, of course, was right behind her. They’d heard my yelling.
She ran to me looking for any sign of what was wrong. Finally, as only a mother can, she took me into her arms.
Grateful, I took my hands away from my face.
Her supportive sounds died as her eyes filled with horror.
Behind her, Sef took a step back in surprise.
What was wrong?
She reached for my cheeks with hesitant hands. “Oh Juvela!” With trembling fingers she wiped at my tears - they came away bloodied. She whispered, “Just like your grandmother!”
And that is how it began.
2
The Mint Ladies
I tried to forget the dark happenings of the previous week by losing myself in the preparations for my coming-of-age.
It didn’t work.
Nothing relieved the sense of guilt that haunted me. I just kept seeing that poor boy’s innocent but deathly face.
I’d witnessed one of the child thefts, and the true nature of the crime; its link to magic was as much a problem as the abduction itself. Simply, I’d seen something I should’ve been blind to. To report it would incriminate myself.
The Inquisition might be forbidden to enter Ossard, but the Church could easily arrange my arrest and send me to them. I had to be careful. Such an arrest and consequent journey to the Holy City of Baimiopia wouldn’t end well, particularly for a young woman, and even more so for a lonely Flet.
Mother demanded that I say nothing - and damn the stolen boy!
As a reward for my grudging agreement, she finally offered to explain something else; my bloody tears were a sign of my own awakening. She then made me vow never to speak of it again.
It was a vow I couldn’t keep.
Two days later, I asked her about what she’d said regarding my grandmother. She snapped at me and reminded me of my vow. Her anger came fiery and quick, but it wasn’t built of fury, instead it was founded on terror.
I am not and never have been stupid, even for a girl forced to suffer an education of little more than grooming, appropriate conversation, and how to smile without showing too much red lip or teeth. I suspected that my long-dead grandmother had also held an affinity for the forbidden arts, but confirming that wasn’t going to be easy. Certainly, it was something that would take time, and that meant it would have to wait until after my traditional outing for my coming-of-age.
Ossard crowded at the Cassaro River’s mouth, the river’s waters passing through the city after snaking along the valley that stretched out to the east. Its chill flow ran for days through the rugged Northcountry, marked on its way by rapids, waterfalls, and a wild and icy source up amongst the interior’s snow-capped peaks.
Those mountains rose up not just inland, but all about the Northcountry. They were dotted with exhausted silver mines - the same mines that had long ago fuelled the city’s growth. Today, they hosted the miners’ graves, along with gangs of bandits, and a thick spread of impoverished farming hamlets.
Once the Northcountry had built Ossard, now it fed it.
And just as the land had once brought riches to the city, now the sea likewise delivered. Its deep grey waters, Ossard’s lifeline, brought food, trade, and on occasion even refugees.
The Flets, my people…
My family and I are descendants of refugees, from the thousands upon thousands who fled a war waged against our people by the Lae Velsanans two centuries before. Those dark days, Def Turtung, The Killing, lay behind our people, but far from forgotten.
We Flets are proud survivors of such catastrophe. In truth, if such calamities were omitted from our history little else would remain.
Today, the Flets of Ossard met passing Lae Velsanans with animosity and distrust, but preferably not at all. In such a climate, violence between our two peoples wasn’t unknown.
Myself, I’d never seen any blood spilt in the feud, but for that matter I’d never even seen a Lae Velsanan in the flesh. I’d been
told that they looked like us, but stood taller, leaner, and, it was grudgingly admitted, finer. I found it hard to picture such beings as Flet-hating beasts.
Since arriving in Ossard, our family’s bloodline had mixed on occasion with our more numerous Heletian hosts, but our roots remained obvious - as they did for one third of the city. My family, with its blonde and blue-eyed Flet heritage, had never been able to climb above the rank of a relatively successful mercantile family, even with a good portion of luck. As I grew older, I realised that my birth had marked the end of that good fortune.
My mother had suffered a terrible labour delivering me, something that had threatened her life, savaged her health, and brought bloody ruin to her womb. My parents needed sons, not a solitary daughter. Even before I’d taken my first breath I’d failed them.
Despite the disappointment of having only one child, and a daughter at that, our household was still full of love.
Our family stood as one of the most successful within the Flet community, we had not only wealth, but also respect - being generous benefactors to the Flet Guild. Due to our family’s well-known civic nature, we even shared some goodwill from the Heletians, but in the end, to them at least, we were still Flets.
Growing up in a place where one’s people are victimised can be a cruel experience, but also builds character. As my coming of age approached, and with the lotus warming me to the idea, I became determined to catch a man’s eye that would help my parents. Simply, I had to marry a Heletian, specifically the son of a powerful family or a wealthy widower.
In Ossard, coming of age happened on a young man or woman’s seventeenth birthday - a year late compared to most Heletian League states. As with so many things, Ossard was slightly out of step with the rest of the League, partly due to its Flets, but also because of its isolation. Regardless, when the day came I was ready.