“Ye start new by setting things right and clear from the start. You save the world by protecting the world from isself. Clear as day and harsh as oil.”
“And how do you propose you’ll save our world from itself?” Astral asked, genuinely curious.
“I’mma come a knight, yeah,” Dwain declared. He drew a hammer and nails from his trousers waistband and went to work repairing the fence. “None of that energies nonsense, it don’t do nothin’ real or solid, like peace officering do. I’mma serve these lands, proud and true, I will. I swear it.”
“A good knight you will make,” Astral said with a soured tone, more so to appease Dwain’s ego than he actually believed in the boy’s choice of life path. He turned back to Regina, flipping through a dozen or so pages of his tome, and rested a stubby forearm against one side so that the wind wouldn’t cause him to lose his mark.
Regina squinted up at Astral, doing her best to ignore the sounds of hammer crashes. A veil of sombre contemplation fell across her face. “Mister Ages?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Will you … will you teach me magic? Like the kind you used when we were in trouble?”
Astral’s face took a dark turn. His chin then dipped, hiding his eyes beneath the brim of his hat. “No, child. I will not.”
“But what you did was—”
“A terrible thing,” Astral stated in a low voice. “I took away the life of another mammal. What I did was considered a crime against Mother Azna. A bad thing.”
Regina balked at this. “But – but he was going to kill you!”
“So he could have. He almost did, and would have, if not for your help. But that does not negate my own actions, Regina. What I did was still a terrible, terrible thing. If you are to become my apprentice, you must promise me that you will never, ever, take the life of another mammal. All life is precious – even the lives of those who wish to harm you.”
Regina furrowed her brow. “Even – even the canines?”
“Yes,” Astral said with a firm tone. “Especially the canines. It is imperative that an alchemist never pursues the destruction of another life, no matter the species, no matter how evil. Be it mammal, bird, or insect. All life is a gift to us. To kill is to kill a part of your soul. It corrupts you, makes your heart black and impure.”
“But – but what if – what if I have to fight?” Regina asked.
“Fight? Why – why ever would you need to fight, my dear? Well, if you mean what happened in the Keeton Woods, that’s just a matter of common sense. If you fight, you must only ever fight in self defence – and even then, do so without the intent to end life. To end life is to tarnish a part of your very self. Do you understand?”
Regina didn’t. She regarded Astral for a silent time until the sounds of Dwain working away at the fence stole her away from the lesson at-paw. Regina watched as he prepared to sand down a stack of fresh planks leaned up against the edge of the table.
“…Die! Die! … Die!!”
“I have something for you.” Regina blinked, looked back up at Astral, who was struggling to a stand with his book nestled under one arm. “Here, come with me.”
He led Regina back inside the cabin, setting her down at the kitchen table with a cup of water so that he could rummage around the study. Regina watched him all the while, her little footpads dangling inches off the ground as she sipped away in silence. Soon, involuntary thoughts of death and impurity conjured in her thoughts.
“Mister Ages?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Is Dwain’s soul … corrupted?”
“What?”
“Is Dwain’s soul corrupted? You said when a mammal kills another mammal, it makes their soul black and corrupted. That means Dwain, too. He killed that muskrat.”
“Oh, bother. Just a moment, dear – Ah! There you are!” Astral wrestled something out from between some books left neglected on the desk beneath the study’s window sill. He crossed the length of the cabin, back over to Regina. “Here.”
Astral presented to her a large parcel. It was wrapped neatly in burlap, held together with twine tied into a large bow at the top. Whatever it was, it smelled old, and like barn straw. Regina looked up at him. Astral smiled down at her, wore a proud look upon his snout.
Regina blinked, taking the large parcel into her little paws.
“What is it?” she asked.
Astral chuckled. “Open it, and see. Happy birthday.”
Regina gasped, her tail thumping the side of the chair with excitement. She tore into the present without a moment’s hesitation. To her little surprise, a hard leather backing appeared through the shreds of burlap. Illegible runes, as brilliant as rubies, glistened across Regina’s claws. She blinked, confused, brushed away whatever was left of the wrapping to find a large tome now resting in her lap.
“Here. Look. I think you’ll be quite happy with this,” Astral said. He swooped in to tilt the cover back for Regina. He flipped through some of the pages. Regina barely noticed the dense walls of runes she couldn’t read anyway, for with most every page, her little skunk eyes feasted upon paw-crafted diagrams of flowers – detailed visual instructions of how to trim and prepare different types of vegetation – brief little teases here and there that passed before her eyes. But with each turn of the page came a feeling of excitement, curiosity within her.
“Here. You remember this flower, don’t you?
Regina gazed upon a detailed drawing of Iilif Lylac – one of the most rarest flowers in all of Galheist. She’d seen it maybe one other time in her whole little life – chasing through the moors with papa, long ago.
“It’s a lilac.”
“That’s right,” said Astral. “You showed me this image – and this book – some time ago. Avalon Husk, it’s called. A book of botany and medicine. It’s yours.”
“But I don’t know how to read,” Regina said. “And I already know all about how to garden, and about plants, and weeds, and things like that.”
“That’s true. You are already an adequate gardener,” Astral said. “But if you wish to truly know the secrets of nature’s essences, you must come to learn to read, my dear. You will find the whole wide world within books – art and histories gleaned from lost eras; an understanding of how things are made and utilized – the psychology of the social hive, and the deeper workings of how anger feeds the need for change. My gift to you is far greater than a deeper knowledge in horticulture.”
Regina blinked up at Astral, confused.
He continued: “Regina, today you are eight years old. What I offer you, as you near adulthood, is a powerful tool – the ability to read. The world is in reading. Reading is knowledge. And knowledge is power. Do you understand?”
“I think so…” Regina thought about it for a moment. “If I learn to read, I can learn all sorts of things, and become smarter.”
“Good girl. Give me a hug.”
Regina threw her arms around Astral, and he held her close for a time. When their embrace broke, Astral left her to consume the pictures of her new book, the sounds of his hoofs scuffing across the floorboards. “Tell me, Regina, do you know why mammals speak? Why when we speak, we are able to understand each other?”
Regina looked up, watched as he plucked a thin leather booklet off the mantel above the fireplace. She shook her head, no.
Astral smiled at her.
“Mother Azna willed us the ability to speak,” he said with a wink. “But not always were we able to understand, you see.”
Astral dusted off the book’s front cover and returned to the kitchen, settling into the chair at the table, beside Regina. He opened the thin book, licked a hoof point and leafed through a few pages.
“Put away your present a moment, this is important. Ahh – here we are. As it is, the history of our language dates back centuries, you see. Even further than before the rule of the canines, if you would believe it, little one. Ah yes.”
“What is that?” Regina pointed at the little tome in h
is hands.
Astral smiled at her. “This? Oh, why it’s a lesson book, my dear.”
“A lesson book? What for?”
He chuckled. “For you, Regina. Before you can understand the art of reading, it is imperative that you first understand the power of language. The power of the mammal’s tongue, of Sa’suiden.” He winked again. “Only when you master the universal language, can you then master the world.”
21. Secret Memories
Canines had devastated Altus Village. That’s what the children had told him, and that’s what he had seen through their memories. But it was impossible.
Astral shook the nagging thought away.
It was late – near dawn. He patted back a yawn, hobbling through the kitchen that night to make some tea. He hadn’t slept well, having instead kept himself aloft with deep thoughts and further research into the nature of canines.
Astral found his pipe laying neglected on the countertop. There was still a bit of duskroot left in it. He put the pipe to his lips and lit it, puffing sweet-tasting herb down his lungs while filling the kettle with water from the well bucket, left over from supper that night.
The canines no longer mattered, he decided, and prepared some loose leaf pekoe into his favourite tin cup.
What of the birthmark upon little Regina’s back, though? There was a story of such a thing, the moon star. What was that damned thing he’d read so long ago?
He cursed a failing memory and hung the kettle over the fireplace, on his way back to the desk where all of his research was laid out that night. Astral lit some candles and settled upon his stool to resume his work, puffing away off his pipe. The crackles and snaps of the roaring fireplace faded into distant folds as runes of worlds of long-since-passed conjured up in his mind’s eye off the pages of the open tomes and scrolls that blanketed the table.
The Aznain Faith.
Astral snorted alert when the thought struck his memory alight. The Aznain Faith. There was a legend, within the lore of the Aznain faith – he remembered now. The legend of the moon star. It and the stories of the Goddess Mother Azna were tied – where they not?
But, how? Astral clenched his teeth round the stem of his pipe. The book was somewhere in this study. He glanced about the cluttered study, pushed his stool away from the desk, determined now to find it. The book of the Aznain faith – that which built the foundation of the wheda’s revolution over the tyranny of the Canine Empire – the damnable thing had to be here. Somewhere.
A muffled cry sounded from beyond the kitchen.
Astral froze where he sat. Gyrating teeth ground down against his pipe’s stem. He waited in semi-paralyzed silence for the sound to repeat itself – not convinced by his old and ailing porcine ears. Moments passed, and no aftermath occurred. Astral relaxed his shoulders. He went back to his research, completely forgetting such stuff of moon stars and mother goddesses.
But Astral’s heart tightened with innate knowing.
Something was wrong.
He pushed out of his stool, hoofs making audible clacks against the hardwood when he landed. He shuffled through the kitchen and around the table, towards the bedroom, where the door stood ajar. Pure darkness seeped across the floor from within.
Astral slid partway into the bedroom to survey the situation. The children were fast asleep in bed, snuggled cheek-to-cheek beneath the thick duvet blanket. A small, sad, smile parted the old wizard’s lips as he watched them, let his ears perk to the quiet waves of their heavy breaths in slumber.
The wider world had proven its harsh realities to Dwain and Regina. To be faced with the threats of death and destruction once again, and despite such, to achieve the long journey to Keeto Town they’d both yearned for – only to learn what both of them had already seemed, and wanted to refuse, to know. The bitterness of the world’s sour honesty would remain with the children, forever.
Well – most of the bitterness, anyway. Dwain wouldn’t remember much, just the agony of loss and injustice from their experience at the Fallen Alder – but the subconscious tendrils from the experience of the earlier ambush would remain with him as he grew, as his personality became moulded by overall worldliness.
Astral sighed. He regretted taking the memories away from Dwain. But at the time, there simply was no other choice…
That’s the excuse I tell myself, anyway.
Regina stirred, brow furrowed. She frowned and shook her head, burying her face against her arm. “…no…! …please…” At that moment, Dwain instinctively drew her under his chin, held her firm without even waking to do so. She pushed away from him though, and uttered a sleepy whimper. “…dwain … no don’t … don’t leave me…”
Astral drew forward. Noiselessly, he crossed the room, sidling up alongside Regina’s side of the bed. She rolled onto her back, snuggling into her tail.
Astral raked matted headfur out of her eyes. The poor thing … she’s been through so much. The both of them have.
Slowly he drew his hoof away from Regina. A sudden urge to see her thoughts, what she was dreaming of, came to him. But his personal vows to only ever use magic in times of need sounded like a bell in the darkness. Astral hesitated.
This could be a time of need. She is in distress.
He swallowed hard, brought a hoof back towards Regina, and aligned his touch a few centimetres away from the centre of her forehead. Astral thought of how afraid she’d been when he’d wished to do this to her the other day, to look into her memories. She was going to throw rocks at me!
Her reaction at the time was almost justifiable. Endearing, in a way. But she was asleep now. Asleep, and haunted by thoughts she could not brave against. A nightmare.
“Brava Sol Devos ... Brava Sol Vey ... Brava … Mey’rhosso…” Astral felt a chill as Mana Energy left his body. The space before Regina’s striped forehead rippled. A translucent blue-shelled orb, pushed partway out of her skull, filling the dark bedroom with a dim, bluish glow.
Astral stared deeply into the memory as Regina continued to sleep. The old wizard saw, through his own point of view, a memory now a week old:
He was riding Phalanx through the woods when the smell of death – the smell of a hedgehog – wafted into his snout. Astral guided Phalanx to a trot, in order to follow the intermingled scents.
And then there, hidden so well that only the keenest of eyes could see, Astral found something hidden, laying in some huckleberry bushes by the side of the road, directly ahead. Fear overwhelmed Astral then. He dismounted Phalanx to searched the bushes – only to find a battered and unconscious little hedgehog, no older than a child near adulthood.
Dwain.
His Life Energy was thin, Mana Energy completely spent. Astral could sense this off Dwain’s aura in an instant.
In that very moment, Regina whimpered. Astral – Astral in the present tense, that is – flicked his gaze past the memory orb, down at Regina. She nestled her cheek against her tail again and fell silent.
Astral looked back down into the memory orb and saw himself pull Dwain’s little body into his arms. In the memory, Astral touched a hoof to Dwain’s forehead and saw all that there was to see of Dwain’s past, of the massacre in Altus Village, of his journey with Regina, and where he’d left her, hopeful that she’d find a way, all on her own. Astral learned all there was to learn of Dwain’s plight – knew all that there was to know.
And that’s when Regina had known.
Why Dwain had left her sleeping in the culvert. Why he’d gone so far, without drive, nor desire to find help nor food. Only to curl up into the shadows. Only to fade away and become one with the forest…
The memory faded then. Astral furrowed his brow, bothered deeply by what he’d seen – how he’d seen it. Regina must have absorbed the memory when he’d drawn her essence into his mind’s eye. It was so obvious. And it was a secret between he and Dwain that she was never meant to know – that’s how Dwain had wanted it. When he lied to her when they were reunited, that’s how he ha
d wanted it…
Astral dipped his chin. A grave decision was to be made now.
Arcana should only be used in rare instances. In times of darkness – when all other options have been used up. Or are simply unavailable.
Like when death is near, and far too early.
“Forgive me, Regina,” he murmured. “But this shall be a pain you will never know again. As Mother Azna nurtures these lands and those who inhabit them, it is an alchemical healer who acts as her direct paw in matters of mending the wounds and spirits of those who seek solace. Respite has come, and you will find your peace. This is my pledge to you, little one.”
Then, without another word, Astral Ages drew the memory completely from Regina’s mind, and swallowed it down until nothing of it remained.
~ Part Two ~
The Wind Chapter
22. The Changing of the Seasons
Early morning rays stretched cross-fence shadows across dewy blades of grass, that shook and danced by the touch of an everlasting, howling, wind. The gate up to the Hollow rattled on golden hinges, kept firm to its frame only by the power of a large hook-and-eye that restrained the wind’s attempts to knock it wide open.
Up the hill and along the dirt path towards the cabin, a cassowary crop guardian stared with glass eyes into the deep of the forest, having been since turned around in its spot to keep guard against thieves and crows of the unknown beyond the glow of recently-stained perimeter fences.
A small barn that resembled a castle for only the most kingly of mules took root where a once vulnerable and lopsided hooded stall attempted to survive rains, snows, and hellacious storms driven by the scrutiny of the Goddess.
Adjacent to the barn slept a single-story cabin, whose windows showed only darkness from within. Walls made of planked sycamore stood tall, varnished, and proud. A roof and porch overhang made of sturdy overlapping stone slates protected those who lived inside from invisible giants and the threat of flaming arrowhead.
A mid-pitched hum cleaved the morning air. Several shadows appeared over the treetops, eclipsing the Hollow for but a slow minute. They belonged to great ships that could swim through both the sea and the clouds.
The Book of Wind: Page 16