Trinka and the Thousand Talismans

by Christy Jones

  Chapter Six

  Into the Fire

  As Trinka walked along the quiet paths among the trees, she felt a surge of… well, peace, from deep within her. She had never felt more at home than among the shady branches, gentle streams, rippling fields, and quiet people of Parthalan.

  Maybe Kolinkar and Tarian will like it so much they’ll decide to live here, Trinka thought as she approached the school. Or maybe they’ll let me stay with Oana’s family, or Ewen’s.

  She could see several students gathered near the school, just on the other side of the stream. She looked about uncertainly, trying to figure out the best way around. The water wasn’t deep, and it looked cool and inviting.

  “Better take off your boots,” Ewen called out as he saw her. “You don’t want to get the goat skin wet.”

  Trinka flushed as she sat on the ground and struggled to pull them off. “It’s kind of disgusting, wearing pieces of dead goat, isn’t it?”

  Ewen only shrugged. “We make our clothes out of dead plants.”

  Trinka could only hope that if she got to live here she would get to wear “dead plant” clothes too—with soft clouds of pale-blue fabric gently gathered into sleeves and swishy pants, drawn in close from knees to ankles. Maybe Oana’s family could even show her how to make those amazing fabric “quilts.”

  With a final tug, Trinka’s foot pulled loose, but the force sent her toppling over backwards, and the edge of her goat-hair skirt flipped up, revealing the gleaming, white folds of her robe underneath.

  “Ooh, what’s that?” one of the girls gasped, as Trinka quickly got to her feet and let her hemline fall back over it.

  By now, almost the whole school had wandered over to see what the others were staring at. Trinka picked up her boots and carefully stepped through the stream. She only wished her face felt as cool as her feet.

  “Show us again,” pleaded Amarine, the girl who had sat to one side of her the day before.

  Embarrassed, Trinka pulled up her Bedrosian sleeve and let her white robe flutter out. Everyone oohed and aahed, and a few of the girls even ventured to touch it. They stared at each other in wonder as they ran their hands along its ethereal silk.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “It’s my uniform from my old school on Ellipsis,” Trinka stammered. “I kept wearing it after I came to Bedrosian to keep the goat-hair from itching.”

  A few of the students giggled while some just continued gazing at her. Trinka turned and found herself staring into the wide brown eyes of Oana, who stood motionless a short distance away. Slowly, Oana stepped forward and stroked the fabric, still clutching Ickle and Fiszbee’s basket tightly, and smiled at Trinka.

  “What’s Ellipsis?” one of the boys asked.

  “It’s another realm,” Trinka explained. “The one I grew up in. Where everything is made of glass and we try to predict the future. I was never very good at it,” she added in case anyone asked her to demonstrate.

  Fionula called everyone inside, and Trinka hurriedly stuffed her feet into her boots and awkwardly made her way toward the door.

  “My, my, how nice to see everyone taking such a thoughtful interest in our visiting student,” Fionula remarked as everyone crowded around Trinka and tried to walk through the door en masse. One by one, the students drifted to their places.

  Just as Trinka was about to go in, she noticed Ewen was still behind her. She smiled and held out her sleeve.

  “Would you like to touch it too?”

  Ewen folded his arms over his chest and set his jaw squarely.

  “You don’t fool me,” he said. “There is no such place.”

  Trinka’s jaw dropped, and she wondered what he could mean by that, when their teacher shooed them inside. Trinka slipped quietly into an empty seat, while Oana quickly thrust Ickle and Fiszbee’s basket under her chair and jumped on top of it before they could escape. Everything Fionula said seemed to make even less sense than the day before. The girls beside her couldn’t stop whispering and smiling at Trinka every time she happened to look their way. Oana gave her a friendly grin every time the two exchanged glances, but, as usual, spent most her time worrying about her pets getting loose. But it was Ewen that Trinka found most disturbing. Unlike yesterday, he never looked toward her at all.

  How can he not believe that Ellipsis really exists? And why would it matter to him? Trinka wondered.

  “And now, let’s get into our share groups,” Fionula announced. The other students began turning their seats into small clusters of threes and fours.

  “Trinka, come join us,” Amarine beckoned. “Please?”

  “We’d love to hear more about Ellipsis,” her friend Nishal added.

  Trinka looked across the room, but Ewen immediately joined the boys sitting next to him without a glance their way.

  “Trinka, please?”

  “Um, okay, but only if Oana can join us,” Trinka agreed.

  Oana got up from her chair with a look of relief, then sat back down as the basket underneath heaved, but it was too late. The sound of chattering and small bodies smacking into branches filled the room.

  “I suppose we can let them get their exercise for now,” Fionula sighed resignedly.

  “Wheee!” Ickle and Fiszbee chortled in response.

  “What kind of pets do you have?” Amarine asked.

  Now here was a question she could answer easily. She pulled the murky green ornament from her pocket. The other girls leaned over to inspect it.

  “Um, it’s very quiet, isn’t it?” Nishal commented.

  At that moment, Grble sprang into shape, his eyes bobbling as he quickly took in his new surroundings. The girls drew back, startled.

  “Who are these humans?” he asked in his low, burbly voice.

  “These are my friends, at my new school,” Trinka explained.

  The girls, feeling bolder now, shook Grble’s long, thin hands, and he seemed pleased with the attention from his new admirers.

  “Awesome!” one of the boys exclaimed, and the other students started to take notice of their strange new visitor.

  “Gracious me,” Fionula declared. “You certainly have brought us a variety of new things to experience from Bedrosian.”

  “Actually, he’s not from Bedrosian,” Trinka stammered, flushing from all the attention. “I found him while I was leaving Ellipsis.”

  “There is no such place as Ellipsis. That filthy creature’s from Apostrophe!” a voice suddenly shouted.

  Everyone turned to see who in the Parthalan School of Peace had raised his voice in such a way. But Trinka already knew. The whole class sat in hushed amazement as the two of them stared at each other. Ewen, his cheeks as red with anger as Trinka’s were from embarrassment, slowly rose to his feet.

  “I tell you, that creature’s from Apostrophe!”

  “So what if he is?” Trinka demanded.

  “So what?” Ewen repeated incredulously. “Don’t you know what Apostrophe did to our people, to our land?”

  Trinka shook her head in surprise.

  “Everyone knows that the people of Apostrophe used to invade Parthalan. They slaughtered everyone in their path and stole our food and water, leaving our people to die. That’s why the mountain passages were sealed off to keep the invaders out forever. Everyone knows that. Everyone from Ampersand, that is!”

  “I told you, I’m not from Ampersand. I’m from Ellipsis,” Trinka insisted.

  “Oh, yeah? Then where did you get this cave creature? Admit it! You’re from Apostrophe too!”

  “I am not!”

  “Children, children,” Fionula interrupted, having at last regained control of her reeling senses. “Ewen…” she began, but he turned and marched out the door. The entire class murmured. The teacher, clearly at a loss for what to do in these unprecedented circumstances, finally managed to say to Trinka, “I think you and I should have a quiet chat.”

  Trinka took Grble’s hand, and followed Fionula to the side of the r
oom.

  “Now, all this about Apostrophe…” she began, shuddering as if the very word were anathema.

  “My mother was from Apostrophe,” Trinka admitted quietly. “But I’ve never been there. I found Grble when I came here on the airships from Ellipsis.”

  “And this… Ellipsis,” she faltered, “is not part of Apostrophe?”

  “No, it’s…” Trinka struggled for the answers that would somehow make everything all right again. “No, it’s not.”

  “Very well,” Fionula answered with a heavy sigh. “You may go back to your seat, and we will finish the school day as if none of these unexpected events ever happened.”

  Trinka slunk back to her seat and didn’t even dare to sneak a glance at Oana. How could her teacher pretend that nothing had happened, when her new friend had just betrayed her in front of the whole school?

  Trinka passed the rest of the day passed in numbness, unable to listen, think, or feel anything. Fionula presented each student with a piece of “canvas”—a thick, rough, colorless fabric hung directly from the schoolroom’s branch walls—and handed out jars full of colored liquid and some oddly shaped sticks. Amarine dipped her stick into a jar of red and began using it to create an image of berries, while Nishal, much to Trinka’s dismay, brushed her canvas with shades of green mixed with yellow, creating a life-size portrait of Grble.

  Oana, free from worry about Ickle and Fiszbee as they still zoomed about the ceiling, looked happier than Trinka had ever seen her at school. Her canvas soon glowed with a brilliant blue sky, radiant golden fields, and sparkling streams of water that rivaled the beauty of the landscape itself.

  Trinka stared at her own canvas, which remained as blank as an empty exam jar. It reflected how she felt right now, at least…

  “Ooh, what are you painting?” Ickle hovered about her shoulder.

  “Looks like you could use some pink!” Fiszbee cheered gleefully.

  Before Trinka could react, the two of them splashed down into the jars and began pelting themselves into the canvas, creating sunbursts of fuchsia, citrine, and cyan overlapping in a wild, screaming mess.

  “Very, um, contemporary use of color,” Fionula remarked absently as she made the rounds of her inspection.

  Oana hurriedly stood directly in front of her painting, and the teacher passed it by without so much as a glance.

  “Well,” Fionula announced finally. “As this is an unusual day in more ways than one, you shall be dismissed early to attend the council meeting with your parents or your… people.” She waved a hand vaguely at Trinka.

  “You’re really good at painting—you should have let everyone see it,” Trinka told Oana as they lined up at the door.

  “I’m not good at anything,” Oana’s hair fell ever more forward over her downcast eyes.

  “Everyone’s good at something,” Trinka insisted, then realized that was just what Ewen said. She swallowed hard. “And you’re good at lots of things. You can make bread and read, and you’re a good friend and sister.”

  As the students stepped into the warm, dappled sun, Trinka felt her pale skin go even whiter.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t find Grble,” Trinka said quietly. Her fingers traced the edges of her pocket again and again, but each time it was just as empty.

  “You don’t think he would just wander off, do you?” Oana asked, her deep brown eyes growing worried.

  “No, Grble doesn’t like to do anything by himself. Besides, he was hiding in my pocket, and I would have felt him transform.”

  Urgently, they peered among the tall grasses, behind trees, and even checked the stream for that familiar glint of green.

  “You don’t think Ewen would have…” Oana’s voice stopped and she bit her lip, as if she couldn’t bring herself to even think the terrible thoughts that would finish that sentence.

  The schoolhouse door swung open, and Fionula peered out over them.

  “Why are you girls still here?” she asked sternly.

  “We’re looking for Grble,” Oana murmured.

  “My pet,” Trinka added.

  Fionula’s face looked blank for a moment, then suddenly paled in recognition.

  “Oh. Oh,” she repeated faintly. “Well, I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually.”

  “We’ve looked everywhere,” Oana worried aloud.

  “We thought Ewen…” Trinka, like Oana, stopped in mid-sentence. Could she really accuse Fionula’s best student of having something to do with Grble’s sudden disappearance? “Might have seen him,” she finished lamely.

  “An excellent idea. Why don’t you girls run along and ask him.”

  Just then, Oana’s basket burst open, and Ickle and Fiszbee escaped through the open door into the school once again.

  Fionula sighed. “I’ll leave you two to gather them up and close the door after you leave. It’s been a most unusual day.” She started down the path, still muttering to herself and shaking her head.

  “I’ll help you look for Grble while we’re here,” Oana assured Trinka.

  “Thanks.”

  Oana hesitated. “I, um, I wanted to know if you would take Ickle and Fiszbee for me.”

  “Take them? Oana, I’ll get Grble back. I’m not trying to replace him.”

  Oana shook her head. “It’s not that, it’s that I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Keep them. You know all the trouble they get into.” Oana winced as a crash signaled that the fast-flying fluffballs had just knocked over a row of chairs. “And then I get in trouble, and my mom thinks that’s why I’m not doing well in school. I spend all day just trying to keep control of them.”

  “Do you ever get control of them?”

  “Well, I have whistles for them.” She held up two small pink and gold sticks around her neck. “But they never listen.”

  Trinka dodged a whirr of pink just in time to be bowled over by a flash of yellow. She crashed into Oana and sent both of them sprawling to the floor.

  “Oops,” Ickle buzzed, stopping in midair to hover over them.

  “Whoopsie-oops, whoopsie-oops, we knocked them down,” Fiszbee chattered, bouncing up and down vigorously.

  “Sooorrry,” they proclaimed in unison, flashing identical glittering smiles, then rushed off to chase each other around the ceiling.

  Oana sniffled as she and Trinka got to their feet. “I know you’d take good care of them, Trinka. And if I have to let them go, I don’t know what would happen to them. They might not survive on their own.”

  And I don’t know if I’d survive if I do take them, Trinka thought.

  “Please.” Oana’s teary, brown eyes grew soulfully wide, and Ickle and Fiszbee stopped racing around the room to hover innocently above her shoulders.

  Trinka’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Well, I suppose I could take them for a while,” she agreed.

  “Gooood!” The two pets flew gleefully over to Trinka and began snuggling into her reluctant arms.

  Oana smiled broadly for the first time since Trinka had seen her. She reached forward and dropped the pink and gold whistles around Trinka’s neck.

  “Thanks, Trinka. I know they’ll have a good time with you.”

  “Oh yessss!” Fiszbee exclaimed, catapulting toward the ceiling.

  “An excellent time!” Ickle agreed, bouncing enthusiastically into Fiszbee. The two were spinning themselves in circles when a sharp whistle blast sounded through the classroom.

  “Oh no!” Ickle cried out as he was suddenly carried backward through the air. “The master squeaks!” Without another word, he was sucked into the small, pink whistle. Meanwhile, Fiszbee had begun flying even faster. “Aaaaah! Fiszbee doesn’t want to go to sleeeeep!” he babbled. “Ah, naptime at last,” he murmured softly, as his yellow fuzz slipped into the charm.

  Trinka looked into Oana’s shocked face. “What? They’re okay in there, aren’t they?”

  “Well, yeah. They can stay in there for
ages. It’s just,” her eyes opened even wider. “You actually got them in there!”

  The two of them headed toward the council meeting, still checking the path along the way, and arrived to find Ewen leaning on the door frame. He smiled, but not with the sympathetic, friendly grin that he had shared with them just the day before. Trinka wanted to ask him a thousand questions―what had happened to him? Why was he acting like this? But only one came forward.

  “Where’s Grble?”

  Ewen’s smile turned into a smirk of satisfaction as he folded his arms in front of him with a look of extreme superiority.

  “He’s gone. Back where he belongs. In the burning fires of Apostrophe!”

  Trinka’s jaw dropped.

  “You didn’t really think I’d let him stay here, knowing he’s from the world of our enemy?”

  “Even if he was, he never did anything to you, and he’s Trinka’s friend,” Oana retorted sharply, and Trinka threw her a surprised look.

  “I know,” Ewen’s eyes narrowed. “And if you’re really from Apostrophe, we’ll send you away too.”

  With that, he turned around and marched inside.

  Trinka and Oana stood stunned, but before they could do anything, Kolinkar and Tarian exited, looking grim but calm.

  “Come on, Trinka, we’re going home,” Kolinkar said briskly.

  “And where would home be―Apostrophe?” The tall, menacing form of Renwick appeared, blocking the golden sunlight and looking just as hostile as when she had first bumped into him at Habba and Wynn’s house. A crescendo of outraged voices swelled behind him.

  “Aha, I see you have the very student who dared to bring a creature from the caves of Apostrophe to one of the Parthalan schools of peace.” His light-blue eyes glittered with hatred. “I have already invoked the ancient curse and expelled the cave creature from our lands.”

  “He wasn’t from Apostrophe. I found him on the airships,” Trinka protested hotly.

  “Ah, but you’re wrong. We have the most simple proof. The expulsion curse worked. If the creature had not been from Apostrophe, he would have remained here. The same is true of you,” he turned his gaze to Kolinkar and Trinka. “If you are from Apostrophe, the curse shall banish you instantly. If not,” he smiled with feigned benevolence. “No harm shall befall you.”

  “Not without a hearing from the full council of Bedrosian,” Tarian answered calmly.

  “If you are hoping your father will save your foreigner of a husband, you are wasting your time.” Renwick spoke softly, threateningly. “As leader of the east, I can invoke the curse at any time, without approval from anyone. Tarian, I’m only doing this to protect you.” His hand found its way onto her arm.

  Arabis appeared out of nowhere, barking and snarling. Renwick fell back as Kolinkar’s rockhound lunged at him, forcing him against the wall and keeping him there with a low rumble in his throat and with bared, jagged teeth.

  “Call off your beast!” Renwick rasped. “Or I’ll invoke the curse now!”

  “Oh, it won’t work on him, he’s definitely not from Apostrophe,” Kolinkar replied coolly.

  He took his wife’s hand and gently escorted her down the path. Trinka followed, and Arabis stopped growling and trotted happily after them.

  Kolinkar laughed. “What timing. Did you see the look on his face? Some fearless warrior. Arabis, I thought we left you at Habba’s!” Arabis bounded joyfully ahead of them with his tongue hanging out, shedding little bits of rock all over the soft green grass. “He must have walked halfway across Bedrosian to find us.”

  Tarian laughed too. “When two belong together, no distance can keep them apart.”

  “Where is Apostrophe, anyway?” Trinka found herself asking aloud.

  “Not far from here,” Tarian answered. “It’s just on the other side of those mountains.” She pointed to the barren hills beyond the forest. “That’s why the people from the east are so scared of it―they always bore the brunt of the attacks.”

  If it’s not far, maybe Grble could find his way back too, Trinka thought. After all, we belong together.

  “The ancient people sealed off Ampersand when they made the curse, so that no one from Apostrophe could ever cross those mountains again,” Tarian continued, and Trinka felt her hope flicker out as quickly as it had been kindled. They reached the tent and slipped under the goat-hair flap.

  “Can you believe what happened at the council today?” Kolinkar started.

  “It’s because of Ewen.” Trinka could no longer hold back the tears, as her words spurted out in hiccups. “He saw my robe at school today and I told him I was from Ellipsis and he said there was no such place. And then when he saw Grble…”

  “Is he that thing you found in the airship?”

  “He’s not a thing,” Trinka protested. “He has feelings.”

  “Of course he does,” Tarian soothed.

  “I just want to get Grble back and go home.” Trinka stopped abruptly. But where was home? She knew she didn’t want to go back to Ellipsis. She was grateful to have found her brother, but she wasn’t going to wait for some council to throw her out of another realm.

  “Well, there won’t be school tomorrow, that’s for sure,” Kolinkar said.

  “Maybe you’ll feel better if you spend the day playing with Oana,” Tarian suggested.

  No school. Spend the day playing with Oana. Just yesterday, Trinka would have jumped for joy to hear those words. But with Grble gone and Ewen… Trinka crumpled onto the blankets and hid her face, knowing they could probably tell she was crying anyway. She heard her brother and sister-in-law slip outside and begin talking in what they probably thought were confidential voices.

  “You know, she’s taking this really hard.”

  “Who? Trinka?”

  Tarian sighed with mock exasperation. “Yes, Trinka. Who else?”

  “I wouldn’t worry. She can go to Brace anytime she wants to.”

  “Do you think that would be the best thing for her?”

  “Well, I don’t know. She never seemed to like it here much, even before today, I mean Brace isn’t a bad place, you know. And she and Dad are really close. She probably misses him more than anybody.”

  Trinka thought for a moment about how much she did miss Bram. She slipped her hand beneath her dress into the folds of her robes, and felt the cold familiar glass between her fingers. But the vial from Annelise couldn’t solve anything this time. It wasn’t powerful enough to bring Kolinkar and Tarian with her, and how could she be happy knowing that she had left them in trouble on Ampersand, struggling with a problem she’d started, while Grble was off alone somewhere in Apostrophe?

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t even be surprised if she’s gone by morning,” Kolinkar mused aloud.

  “What are we going to do in the morning?”

  “Eat breakfast?” he answered hopefully.

  “Oh, Kar, I wish you’d take this seriously.”

  “I am taking this seriously. Trinka and I aren’t from Apostrophe. We’ve never even been there. Besides, even if we do end up in Apostrophe, you could come find me, and we could eventually escape to Brace, or Ellipsis. They may be airheads but they don’t care where you’re from as long as you can hallucinate your way around a crystal.”

  “But you said you hated living on Ellipsis, Kar, and you love Bedrosian.”

  “Not as much as I love you. Honestly, Tarian, I don’t care what place we live in―Ampersand, Apostrophe, Brace, Ellipsis―even if we have to create a whole new realm from scratch just to accept us, we’re going to stay together. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  “Be careful,” Tarian answered. “Take Arabis with you.”

  “Are you kidding? I can’t leave him anywhere if I try.” Trinka heard the sound of a kiss, then the gravelly grating of Arabis bounding after his master.

  “Trinka,” Tarian whispered as she crept into the tent and knelt in the blankets beside her, “I have
something for you.”

  Trinka accepted the small bundle and felt something wriggling underneath the cloth.

  “Not another pet,” she said aloud before she could stop herself.

  Tarian smiled and lifted the edge of the cloth so that Trinka could peek. She half expected to see a tiny version of Arabis, but inside were two sandals with long, white wings!

  “They’re called talaria,” Tarian whispered. “My grandmother gave them to me when I was about your age.”

  She smiled again with a warmth that seemed to fill the room, but Trinka still couldn’t stop staring at the sandals in her hands. The wings began fluttering more quietly, and almost became still, when Tarian gently covered them again.

  “You have to keep them warm to keep their wings fresh,” she explained. “They’re pretty easy to use, it just takes getting used to.”

  “What do I have to do?” Trinka asked.

  “You just put them on, and when it gets hot enough, they’ll fly.”

  “Fly?”

  “So you can have fun tomorrow,” Tarian answered, but before Trinka could respond, they were interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a rockhound barking ferociously.

  Tarian jumped up and flew from the tent as if she were wearing the winged sandals herself. Trinka kept up as best she could as they dashed through the forest and into a clearing.

  A horrible sight met their eyes.

  Two men at the edge of the trees held a thick, twisted rope around Arabis’s neck, restraining him from lunging forward. Renwick stood several paces away, glaring at Kolinkar. If the look from his hate-filled eyes could expel people from Ampersand, Trinka thought, they’d all be gone by now.

  “…you’re making a big mistake,” Kolinkar tried to reason with him. “This isn’t just about us. Think how many generations of your people have longed for peace, have worked their whole lives for what we have now.”

  “Part of having peace is being willing to fight for it,” Renwick snarled. “There can be no peace in the land when we are being invaded.” He emphasized the last word, then finally noticed Tarian and Trinka. “Ah, how touching. I see your wife has come to say goodbye to you, and your sister to join you.”

  In his hand, he held out a staff of lumpy yellow rock with a cluster of putrid crystals at the top.

  “For the last time, we’re not from Apostrophe.”

  Renwick’s eyes narrowed malevolently. “You have the blood in your veins, and any who support Apostrophe can be cursed away as well.” He raised the staff and lowered the crystal toward Kolinkar.

  The men pulled the rope on Arabis’s throat tighter, and he emitted a high pitched yelp.

  Trinka panicked. This was all her fault. She had to do something. Fast. As she wiped her sweaty hands on the top of her skirt, her hand brushed the herder’s horn still dangling from her belt. She seized it and blew with all her might. A long, triumphant note erupted, echoing through the forest.

  The men holding Arabis looked baffled, until they were bowled over by a stampede of furry bodies as the four enormous cart goats came running at the sound of the horn’s call. Arabis tore free of the rope and plowed straight into Renwick, knocking him over as he bounded toward Tarian and Kolinkar, overjoyed to be free.

  Renwick’s staff smashed to the ground, releasing a cloud of yellow dust that choked the air with its noxious fumes. The crystals melted into a pool of blood-red liquid, as if the staff had an open wound. Everyone coughed and gasped.

  The ancient curse had been broken.

  But through the cloud of dust, Trinka saw Renwick grasp the last unsmashed shard and point it mercilessly toward her brother.

  Without thinking, Trinka jumped in front of him.

  The cloud left Kolinkar and concentrated around her, its fine particles burning against her skin as it swirled closer and closer. She tasted acid on her tongue and felt herself being swept up into it just as the last of the staff crumbled away, leaving Renwick with nothing but a handful of caustic yellow dust. The accursed cloud gripped her tighter, and she saw the beautiful, green forests of Parthalan fading from her eyes.

  Apostrophe. Ever since her mother had disappeared, it had been the last place she would ever want to go.

  ‘     Apostrophe     ‘

  “When things look like they are falling apart, they are actually falling into place.”

  - Iyanla Vanzant