The laughter stopped, and Sapphire blinked repeatedly. “Yes, I suppose, like nymphs.”
“But she hasn’t eaten you. Are you different?”
The nymph’s head tilted one way, and then the next as she contemplated the question. “I… feel like I used to be. Perhaps that is why I was chosen to raise her.”
“Raise her? But nymphs have no maternal instincts. They don’t even raise their own young!”
“We are not…maternal. We are guardians. Were…guardians…I think,” Her eye seemed far away. Nothing she was saying was making any sense. None of the lore that I had learned suggested that nymphs had ever been guardians of anything.
“No, you have guardians,” I corrected her. Which reminded me, “Where is your satyr?”
“My satyr?” the nymph echoed absent-mindedly.
I looked around. There was no sign of either a satyr or her host tree. “You don’t have a satyr? How is it that you’re still alive?”
Nymphs had long ago been cursed by the Goddess Hannah. Their livelihoods were bound to their host tree and venturing too far from it would mean their death. And nymphs had a tendency to daydream and wander. Enter their satyrs. Originally intended to plague the nymphs with their affections, they soon became the creature’s saving grace. Each day the nymph would wander, and each day the satyr would chase her back to her tree. Over the years it became like a game to the nymphs, seeing how far they could make it before being chased back. A game they didn’t seem to understand meant life or death.
She tilted her head one way, and then the other, seemingly drifting in and out of her previous cognitive state.
“Someone else said that to me once…A long time ago.”
“She’s remembering something important,” The Darkness warned. She’s not spoken to my grandfather in years, I argued back. She wouldn’t even know how to find him.
The wind picked up, dancing through the branches overhead. Could it be a warning? Or was it simply a dubiously timed shift in the weather?
The nymph looked up, squinting her eyes. “The trees whisper…something.”
I decided to change the subject. “So, what exactly is Mendarbore?” Maybe if I could take her mind off whatever memory was tingling in the back of her mind, I could keep her focus off of who I was and why I was here.
“She is new.” The nymph smiled. “So-few things are new nowadays. She is the first of her kind. Child of the Earth Goddess and a sea creature. A large one, with many arms.”
“A Kraken,” I whispered, wondering at how I had known the name. It wasn’t a well-known creature, at least not among my mother’s people. Her people had traveled across the seas where creatures such as this were nothing more than legends, but once they made their home here, there were few who ever returned to the shoreline. Surely even less than that would make it back to tell tales of such a creature.
The nymph tilted her head again, staring blankly at me. The name was not one she was familiar with.
“There you go drawing attention to yourself again. Foolish girl! Don’t give her a reason to remember you.” The Darkness warned.
“Ahem,” I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Well, thank you for saving me from being eaten. We’ll leave you to your guard work now.” I motioned at the Deyanian to move out.
“You are going to the Darklands,” I couldn’t tell if it was an observation or a warning.
The wind rustled the leaves again.
“Be careful with that one,” the nymph said wistfully. “You know from what line she branches.”
I climbed atop the Deyanian’s back hastily, turning only to be sure she hadn’t followed behind us.
Chapter Three
We rode on another day and a half before I found any food. Completely by mistake, even. My fatigue got the best of me, and I tripped on an exposed root. I threw my hands out to catch myself, but failed, and fell onto the musty forest floor. I opened my eyes and found myself nose-to-gill with one of the largest milk caps I had ever seen.
I bolted upright, plucking the mushroom and its surrounding friends from the ground, not even bothering to protect my hands from staining. Milk caps were best fried with butter, but since I had neither butter nor a frying pan, I did the best I could with hot rocks stacked over hot embers.
It was hardly enough to satisfy me, but I found that riding the Deyanian provided some sense of relief from the ache of my stomach. Perhaps the constant contact exposed me to whatever residual magic her kind held.
It provided another advantage, one that I had not expected. As we traveled together I found that, not only did she seem to realize, intuitively, what I needed; but I began to reciprocate such intuition. It was almost as if we were able to speak to one another.
“Speak to a dumb animal? You must be going mad indeed.” The Darkness scolded me. It seemed agitated by any chance that I might form a friendship. It crept into the spaces between myself and those around me, creating a chasm I feared no one would be able to cross ever again.
And yet she defied it, this creature that had become my travel companion. Over time I began to realize that she was, indeed, trying to communicate with me. At first it was confusing, images flashed before me, created from my own memories. Sometimes things would get confused by differences between our two species. For example, the first few days she conjured the memory of me laying in the grass. I felt its soft blades beneath my hands, was overwhelmed by its aroma, almost as if I was actually back home near the pond. It took two days for me to realize that she was trying to ask if I was hungry. Of course, with little exposure to the human world she wouldn’t know which images to conjure to express such things. The more time we spent together, the easier it was to understand what it was she was trying to tell me. I wasn’t sure if that was because she was getting better at expressing herself, or if my mind was getting better at interpreting it. Either way, it seemed to work better when we were in physical contact, so I had taken to riding more often than walking, or to walking beside her with my hand placed on her neck.
“Do you miss home?” I asked her one day. I had worked out that, although she could not speak, she could understand spoken language just fine.
The image she projected back to me was not one I was ready for.
It was a memory from when I was very small. It was evening, and mother sat by the fire in her rocking chair, mending a quilt she held in her lap. Outside, I could hear the rain hitting the clay shingles of our home. Suddenly the clash of thunder shook the house. Across the house, I bolted out of bed, running for her. She dropped what she was doing to wrap me up in her arms, whispering reassurance as she kissed the top of my head and rocked me back to sleep.
The force of emotions evoked from the memory caught me off guard. I hadn’t prepared myself for such a strong expression of the feeling of home. No, it was more than just home. The feeling was more specific than that.
My heart fell to my stomach as I realized what she was telling me. All this time I’d been leaning on her, trusting her presence to keep me safe and sane, but she was just a child herself.
“You miss your mother?” She nodded affirmation.
I was embarrassed to admit that the thought that she would have a family had not occurred to me. Back home, animals were beasts of burden, bred and sold to serve the needs of man. We raised them, cared for them, even named them sometimes, but I had never seen livestock kept in family groups.
That brought to mind another thing that I had overlooked.
“Do you have a name?”
This time the images overlapped with one another. Laying under the sky on a starry night, the campfire blazing beside me. In my mind, the flames lifted up into the night air, overlapping the stars until they became one.
“What is the end of one day, if not the beginning of another? Again, the voice that manifested in my mind was familiar, yet foreign. Like a memory that belonged to someone else. And then it came to me. New star.
“Nova
?” She snorted enthusiastically, pleased.
“Well, Nova,” I said, happy to call her by name, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
Scene after scene flashed through my mind, overlapping one another. Our first night on our own, wild animals calling in the background, the gaping mouth of the tree creature Mendarbore, my conversation with the nymph. Darkness. Cold. Loneliness.
“Trouble,” the mind-pictures folded themselves into one word.
“Yes,” I agreed, “Trouble, indeed.”
***
We wandered aimlessly another day, or maybe it was two. They were all starting to bleed together. Sunrise, sunset. More hunger. And then one day the sun didn’t rise. Or rather, we couldn’t see it through the fog. Storm clouds rolled in above us, blotting out the light and making it even more impossible to measure time. Rain began to fall, lightly at first, then more fiercely until my clothes were soaked all the way through.
“We need to find shelter,” I said to Nova. She blinked her eyes against the rain and nodded in agreement. The image of a fire-lit cavern filled my mind.
“Well why didn’t you say so before this all started?” I demanded. “Your lot may be just fine in the rain, but I’m soaked-through and freezing!”
She only snorted in response.
“I am not being dramatic!”
The cavern was large and, much to my disappointment, did not come with a pre-lit fire. I had half-hoped that Nova had friends around here somewhere, and that those friends had a fire. The surrounding forest was too damp to burn properly now.
I reached into my bag, knowing what needed to be done, but dreading it just the same. The black button eyes of Luka’s rabbit stared blankly back at me. I wondered about him now, for the first time in what felt like forever. I wondered if he ever thought about me. I would not blame him if he didn’t. After all, I had done quite a good job of shutting him out, even before we’d been forced to flee. Ruddy awful friend I was.
“And a traitor to the crown to boot,” The Darkness reminded me. As if I needed reminding. “He probably counts himself lucky that he no longer had an association with you. He’d be a pariah at best, having a friend who committed treason. Beheaded at the worst.”
Perhaps in a way, my cruelty had saved him.
“Don’t go trying to play the hero in this, little lass,” The Darkness scolded. “You’d no noble intention when you shut the boy out. And after all that he had done for you, too. Probably broke his little heart that one. He was sweet on you.”
The hell he was! I shot back. Moments like this reminded me, no matter how it may masquerade as my own, the voice of the Darkness did not belong to me.
“Then who do I belong to, poppet? What creation could I be if not your own?”
I did not answer this time, mostly because I did not know. Instead, I pulled out my knife, using the tip of the blade to loosen a stitch near the bottom of the stuffed rabbit. I reasoned to myself that I could always patch it up again at a later date. Still, I cringed as the blade tore out the stitching, like I was slicing through the threads of my own childhood.
I stuffed the cattail fluff between the wood that I had gathered. The fire sprung to life, warming my bones, but not my heavy heart.
***
A scraping sound tore me from my dreams. The last smoke of the cooling embers from the fire dissipated in the air. I sat up, careful not to wake Nova, who was snoring beside me. She’d taken to sleeping right up against me as the weather had turned. Whether it was for survival or emotional comfort I was not certain, nor was I complaining. It was nice to think that, even in the darkest of hours, at least I had one friend left in the world.
I looked about as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, glad that I had inherited my father’s ability to see in low-light. The cover of the cave walls made it a bit more challenging, but eventually my vision returned.
So did the noise. Screee! The sound made me flinch. I covered my ears, but it did little good to protect me from feeling as if lightning were rattling my bones.
Nova’s ears flicked back and forth. She’d heard it as well. We held our breaths, waiting to see if it was just some sort of fluke.
Our hopes were met with the rumble of a low growl.
“Did you hear that?” my voice squeaked more than I would have liked.
The sound grew closer. Suddenly the storm did not look so threatening. I began to back away slowly. Nova followed my example.
“Not so fast, young one,” The voice vibrated off the stone walls so forcefully that I could not tell whether it was that, or the thunder roaring outside that caused the walls to shake.
My eyes darted to the exit, trying to calculate how long it would take me to reach it. Too long.
“No use running,” the voice laughed. A monstrous figure rose from the shadows, accompanied by the sound of chain-mail clanking.
No. Not chain mail. Scales.
“Foolish girl,” The Darkness chided angrily. “Dead girl, more than likely. What have you done?”
How could I have been such an idiot?
The beast approached us, letting loose a stream of flame into the air. Its light bounced off her armor, blinding me. I stumbled back, trying to regain my bearings.
We had stumbled into the lair of a dragon.
Chapter Four
“Come closer, then. Let me see you in the light,” The beast let loose another stream of flame, bringing my meager fire back to life.
Fear made my mind go blank, but my survival instinct kicked in. I knew better than to argue with something that could swallow me whole. I stepped closer until the warmth of the fire was hot on my face. Nova followed suite.
“What a funny little creature,” the dragon’s head poked out from the shadows and I gasped in spite of myself. She was beautiful.
“And this one.” Her emerald eyes blinked rapidly as she appraised us both. “Tasty looking horse. Perhaps I shall eat her?”
“You will do nothing of the sort!” I shouted, waving a finger at her the way I had seen the children back home do when scolding the street dogs. A ridiculous reaction, given the circumstances. The dragon agreed, and her lips curled upward, revealing a set of sparkling, spear-like teeth. I swallowed hard, bracing myself against my inevitable end, but it did not come. Instead, I was met with a low chortle. The dragon was laughing!
“She’s a spitfire! More guts than the likes of you, it seems.” As the creature turned her head over her shoulder, I thought again of running, but my legs would not move. I felt my own pulse beating like drums in my ears as I wiped my sweaty palms. The dragon had called me brave, but I was frozen by fear.
“Youthful idiocy often masquerades as bravery,” a voice answered. Its owner stepped out of the shadows, smirking. His wheat colored hair was pulled back, revealing his pointed ears. An elf!
His eyes danced impishly in the firelight’s glow as he approached. Eyes that I had seen before, on someone else’s face. So familiar…but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
“I told you she would come,” he said to the dragon.
“You are lucky she did,” the dragon replied. "I've half a mind to fry you up, just for the trouble of it all."
"Now, now, Fiora. We both know you better than that. You've never had a taste for bipeds.”
What is with these beasts and special diets? Apparently, a diet of strictly quadrupeds was more common than I’d thought.
“A promise she made to someone a long time ago,” the elf said, as if he had read my mind. “The only way they’d let him keep her.” His explanation was met with a hiss.
“Tread carefully,” she warned him. “Your status will not protect you from death, only consumption.”
Fiora turned her attentions my way once more. "You've got something that belongs to me." She leaned forward until the heat from her breath rushed over me. I braced myself against what I was sure would be an unpleasant smell and was surprised it was more like my woo
d stove back home that any beast's breath.
The thought made my heart drop, and for the first time in a long time I realized exactly how homesick I really was.
“Can you miss a thing that never truly was?” The Darkness countered.
Yes. I whispered in my mind. Yes, it seems I can.
“What does The Darkness say to you, child?”
“W-what?” I stuttered, snapped back to reality by Fiora’s voice.
“It speaks to you now, does it not? The voice that is yours, but not yours.” She tilted her head, leaning in even closer than before.
A jolt of pain rushed over my body as she approached, and a high screech pierced my being. I fell to my knees, my hands covering my ears in an attempt to block it out, but it was no use. The sound did not have an outside source. It was the Darkness’ reaction to Fiora.
“Get back!” The voice of the elf was muted and far away. The noise had stopped, but it had taken with it some of my ability to hear. I looked up at my captors, their figures blurred and flickered before my eyes as if I was looking at their reflection on the surface of a pond.
No. Like I was looking from beneath the surface. I felt myself sink farther and farther away from them. They spoke amongst themselves, their voices nothing but wordless whispers in the distance.
The velvety touch of Nova’s muzzle against my cheek was the last thing I felt before the world went dark.
***
When I opened my eyes, I was laying in the grass by the pond. White, puffy clouds danced across the sky. The same clouds that had given me the vision of the poisoned satyr. Had it all been a dream? I sat up, half-expecting to see Luka come bounding through the tall grass. Instead I was met with the shadow of a woman dancing in the distance. Her violet hair fell down to her ankles, surrounding her body as she spun out of the cover of the woods. I looked on, mesmerized by her dance as she bounded further and further from the trees.
Too far! My mind screamed. “Go Back!” but when I opened my mouth to warn the nymph, no sound came out. I stared on in horror as she fell to the ground. Without her satyr to chase her to safety, the nymph had wandered too far from her host tree. She had danced to her death.
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