Isle of Wysteria: Throne of Chains

by Aaron Lee Yeager

“I don’t think we even spoke till we escaped Boeth.”

  She tapped her long nails against her cheek. “Getting warmer.”

  A thought occurred to him and his head popped up. “No, you started after Ronesia when I rescued you.”

  “Being protective is attractive too,” she winked. “All girls like a knight in shining armor.”

  “My armor’s not that shiny.”

  Something about the sad way he said it caught her attention. “What’s bothering you, Colenat?”

  Ryin sighed. “I can’t help but think of all the people we lost.”

  “Back on Boeth?”

  “Yeah.”

  They both sobered. A bubble of sadness amidst the festivities around them.

  “There was this one kid, the one who had been working for the Kabal.”

  “The one who convinced the Hatronsians to halt their attack?”

  Ryin spun his straw on the counter. “Yeah. Ellie. The last time I really spoke to her, I told her we weren’t friends. I think I hurt her more than I wanted to.”

  “You were angry.”

  “Yeah, I was. Only now…”

  “You wish you could take it back.”

  “Yeah.” Ryin flicked his straw of the edge of the counter. “She didn’t really care about the Kabal when she joined them. She didn’t really even want to aid them. She was just trying to save her family. Hanner did the same thing, but with him I took his side. With her, I just threw it in her face.”

  Rachael studied him closely. “Why do you think this is bothering you so much?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  Her eyebrows came up knowingly. “I think I see what’s happening here.”

  He crinkled his nose. “What are you talking about?”

  Subtly, she slid her chair away.

  “It doesn’t matter. You’ll get your chance to apologize,” she said, giving him a friendly pat on the back.

  “There’s not much chance of that.”

  “Even still. Just, when you do, remember to let her be mad at you for a while.”

  “Be mad at me?”

  She reached into her purse and set down some money for her drink. “We girls are delicate, you know?”

  She held up her drink in salute, then drained the contents before walking away.

  Chapter Seven

  “Cheers!”

  Akar held up his stein, and the other men clattered theirs against his.

  The five men leaned back, drinking deeply of the thick ale.

  “Ahhh, that was good!” Yarrow grunted, wiping off his chin and slamming his stein down on the table. He had begun to grow out his beard for the first time, but the dark curly hair was filling in bushy patches.

  “Yar, I think something died on your face,” Akar quipped.

  “Really? I think it looks rather dashing.”

  “I feel like you don’t know what the word dashing means,” Hollis chuckled.

  “I feel like you need a haircut, pretty boy.”

  “Do I?”

  Hollis took a moment to primp his long hair and flawlessly beautiful face. “I’ll have you know Lady Lotebush polished and groomed my appearance for years to be her ideal consort. Poise, presentation, etiquette, presence. It’s not something I’d expect a scullery boy to understand.”

  “Hey, now…”

  Akar put out his hand between them. “I would remind you Hollis that we are all brothers now, all equals. The castes the women placed on us have no place here. That was the agreement.”

  Hollis looked embarrassed. “You are right, of course. To continue their tradition is to continue their injustice upon us.”

  He turned to the dark-skinned man. “Yarrow, I apologize for my words. What’s more, I apologize for thinking it in the first place.”

  Yarrow grinned with his bright white teeth. “Bring us another round, and I will accept your apology.”

  “Gladly,” Hollis winked.

  “That’s the spirit,” Akar approved, slapping them both on the shoulder.

  “Here, here!” Willowood shouted.

  As Hollis walked over to the stack of kegs, he passed a table where a group of navy women sat. They watched him wantonly, their eyes aflame with desire.

  Hollis grabbed a fistful of steins and turned around, his long hair fanning in the breeze. His body was as lovely as his face was. A couple of the women gasped audibly when the sun caught him from behind, silhouetting his stunning frame through the light fabric of his shirt. When he noticed them, they blushed and looked away, their ears bright red from having been caught.

  Hollis gave them a sly wink as he came back over and passed out the ale.

  Akar frowned. “Please don’t tell me you’re planning on courting a woman. After all we worked for?”

  Hollis chuckled. “No, I’ve learned my lesson.”

  Cane looked up, his shoulders stooped. “So, why keep your hair long?”

  “Same reason why I maintain my figure and dress so well.”

  “Because you’re vain?” Yarrow quipped as he blew the foam off the top.

  “No…well, yeah, that too.” Hollis glanced back at the blushing women. “Because it makes them want me, and I think it only fair that a woman feel what it’s like to want something she will never have.”

  Akar wiped his crooked nose and raised his stein. “Well said, brother!”

  “Here, here!”

  They clacked their steins and drank anew. Cane coughed a bit at the strength of it.

  A black wisp of smoke floated by, giving little audible clicks as it counted them.

  “You know, I served expensive beverages like this to Lady Buckthorn for two decades,” Willowood mused, looking down into the heady foam. “I never thought I’d drink it myself.”

  “What? You never snuck a sip when no one was watching?” Hollis asked, brushing aside a long strand of red hair.

  “No never. Lady Buckthorn would have killed me.”

  “Not even once?”

  Willowood looked away.

  Hollis grinned mischievously. “You did, didn’t you?”

  Willowood glanced around, as if to check and see if anyone was watching. “Maybe once or twice.”

  Akar slapped the older man on the shoulder. “Ahh, I knew it! I knew you weren’t as square as you feigned.”

  “Careful, that hurt!”

  The men all laughed deeply. Even Cane managed a hearty smile. It was so refreshing to speak their minds without reservation. To laugh when they felt like laughing, to eat when they felt like eating, to sleep when they felt like sleeping. For the first time in their lives, they felt truly alive.

  Yarrow grabbed a breadstick and pointed it at Willowood. “Speaking of which, you have a birthday coming up, don’t you, old man?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  Cane sat up straight, his eyes brightening. “That’s right, he’s turning thirty.”

  “Is he really? Well, this calls for a feast!”

  Willowood shook his head. “No, I don’t want any big fuss.”

  “Well, why not? The women always celebrated their birthdays.”

  Willowood leaned in and spoke cautiously. “Because. It makes it feel like you’re celebrating my funeral.”

  A grim pallor fell over the table.

  “He’s right.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  Akar shook his head. “No, you’re looking at it the wrong way. This is a celebration. The stillness no longer has any hold on us. Who knows how long we’ll live now?”

  “You don’t know that,” Willowood whispered. “Those Wysterian leeches drew on us every day for our whole lives. We may be free from their parasitical magic, but who knows how long we have left? We could drop any day.”

&n
bsp; The other men grew quiet at the thought of it.

  Akar stood up, trying to dispel the gloom. “But have we? Has anyone come down with the stillness since we left?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  Akar smiled. “Then we are truly free of them.”

  Hollis looked up, concerned. “But are we?”

  “Yes, we are. We may die tomorrow, or we may die in ninety years, same as anybody.”

  They brightened up a little at this.

  Cane sat up straight. “Which is all the more reason to feast now while we still can,” he suggested timidly.

  Yarrow smiled. “Well said.”

  “I agree,” Hollis added.

  Willowood sighed. “All right,” he relented. “But no singing. I can’t stand to hear those Wysterian songs.”

  “Then we’ll sing the songs of another land,” Hollis suggested, motioning to the navy personnel about. “There are plenty here who could teach us.”

  Akar shook his head. “No, that would just be trading one foreign culture for another foreign culture. It would belong to us no more than the songs of the women did.”

  “Well, what do you propose?”

  Akar’s eyes lit up. “We will make our own songs.”

  “Oh, I like that,” Yarrow said, taking a bite of bread.

  Hollis clucked his tongue approvingly. “Akar, you may have been a miner, but you have a poet’s heart. You would have made a fine consort.”

  Akar raised an eyebrow.

  Hollis rolled his blue eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  A young Wysterian boy skipped over, an armful of scrolls in his arms.

  “Is this your schoolwork, son?” Willowood asked, looking it over approvingly.

  “Yes, father.”

  Willowood took his time to look over the letters carefully. He didn’t recognize half of them himself, but that didn’t stop him from taking pride in the boy’s work.

  “Well done, Kudzu,” Willowood praised, giving the child a warm hug.

  The boy hugged him back. “Can I go play now?”

  Tears welled up in Willowood’s eyes. “Yes, yes you may. Play with your friends until dinnertime, when I come to fetch you.”

  “Yay!”

  The men all looked on with soft eyes as the young boy skipped away happily.

  “Wow, to play at his age,” Cane wondered aloud.

  “He lives a life so different from the one we lived.”

  “But that was the goal, wasn’t it? To leave a better life for our children then we had?”

  “Yes, it was,” Akar said proudly.

  Willowood leaned on his crutch and wiped his eyes. “He was four when we left. Now already six.”

  “Has it really been that long?”

  “If we hadn’t left, he would have started working in the fields last spring,” Yarrow realized.

  Willowood nodded. “It warms my old heart to look on him. To know that he will grow up not knowing the sting of the lash, or the pain of an empty belly, nor the…disgrace…of living as property. When I look at him, my heart feels full. It makes all our sacrifices seem worthwhile somehow.”

  Akar raised his stein one last time. “Let us honor again those that fell, they are the heroes that won our freedom.”

  “Aye,” the others said somberly. “To those that fell.”

  The five men slowly clacked their steins together.

  * * *

  There was a screech of rusted metal as the heavy jail cell door opened, spilling light into the tiny concrete cell.

  Iris Bursage shielded her eyes, the sun painful after living in the dark for so long.

  It took some time for her eyes to work again. She saw the tall form of Lady Buckthorn standing over her. Her posture was stooped, her eyes tired. So different she looked without her armor, it took Iris a while to recognize her.

  “I bear bad news,” she said, the once proud cadence gone from her voice. She looked diminished. She looked tired. “Your mother has passed away.”

  Iris looked down, her heart filled with mixed feelings at the news. “I know,” she managed to say. “I could feel it.”

  “Her funeral is about to begin, I thought you might like to attend.”

  Iris furrowed her brow, wondering if she had heard her right. “I thought it was my mother’s wish that I stay in here forever.”

  Lady Buckthorn nodded. “It was. You defied her in front of everyone; you stood up for the men. Your sentence was proportional to the crime.”

  Iris looked around. “Has something changed?”

  Lady Buckthorn looked up at the punishing noonday sun, the slouching trees dying around them. “I guess…it just doesn’t seem important anymore…”

  She turned away and walked off, leaving the cell door open. “With her passing, you become the head of your house…or at least what’s left of it.”

  Iris followed her as they descended in silence down the staircase of living wood into the caves beneath the forest. In her youth, she had loved this place. The fire algae that coated the walls and ceiling gave off beautiful points of dim blue light. During the rainy season, when clean filtered water dripped down from fissures in the bedrock above, it felt like a cool rain in a cloudless, starry night sky.

  Now there was no light, the algae hibernating and crusted over during the dry season, the placid rock walls dry and brown. Where once had been life, now all was decay. A place of dried mucus and rank air. Even the pearl of Milia, a vessel as wide as a man, intricately carved from a single enormous freshwater pearl, continually overflowing with pure water, now contained little more than a muddy layer of grease at the bottom.

  Seeing her reflection in the grime, Iris was ashamed of her filthy and disheveled appearance, until she saw the others.

  The matrons stood around the edge of the underground river, now little more than a stream in muddy banks. They had abandoned the ornate and lavish hairstyles she had always known, instead wearing their hair in simple pony tails or cutting it short altogether to reduce maintenance. Their gowns were torn and faded, bare thread pulling apart at the seams in places. Some wore shawls to cover up their sunburned skin.

  Their faces were gaunt, the air of confidence stripped from them. They swayed slightly from side to side like dry reeds in the breeze.

  Iris arrived at the semi-circle and felt panic rising up in her heart. She thought she had prepared herself for this moment, but now that it was here, she hesitated.

  She felt a reassuring hand on her arm, and turned to face Delphinium Oleander.

  “I’m glad you could be here,” the young woman wheezed through sickly lips.

  “Me, too.”

  Iris took her bandaged hand, but regretted doing so when Delphinium winced. Iris looked down and was surprised to see an infected cut beneath the bandages. Normally, such things were easily healed by her tree, but those days were gone now.

  Iris took a deep breath and looked down at her mother’s body, lying serenely amid a layer of wild petunias. She recognized them instantly from the color. Her family’s lands east of Snapdragon had a colony of them living on the foothills. In her youth, she had taught many of them to sing, although her duties had prevented her from visiting them in some time.

  For a moment, she marveled that so many of the flowers had consented to be plucked to honor someone as cold and bitter as her mother, but she shrank away from that thought almost instantly.

  Now was not the time to dishonor the dead; now was the time to accept the river of life, and the river of death, the two currents on which all Wysteria floated.

  Delphinium Oleander coughed painfully, and handed her mother the crackling silver candle.

  The haggard High Priestess held it up for all to see. “We are all born from Milia, and when we are called, we all return to her.”

  All the
women turned to the west, where the river trickled in from amid the roots of the giant trees.

  “The flow of life brings us to this place, gives us a mother, gives us a name.”

  The women all turned to the east, where the river slowly faded away into the still darkness.

  “The flow of death returns us to the Great Mother, who waits for all women with open arms.”

  The High Priestess set the candle into Madam Bursage’s wrinkled hands.

  “We stand at the banks of both rivers, and we give thanks for the time given to us.”

  “The time in Milia’s grace,” the woman chanted in response.

  “Though her paths are not always understood, the destination is eternal and unchanging.”

  Iris, and the other women of the Bursage house, stepped down into the mud, floating the casket out into the middle, where the current was still strong enough to bear it.

  High Priestess Oleander held up her staff. “The cycle of the seasons lives within us all. The energetic spring of childhood, the bold and flowering summer of youth, the active accomplishments and preparations of autumn, and the serene contemplation and satisfaction of winter.”

  “We give thanks for each season,” the women chanted back. Several of them struggled with the words.

  Oleander paused, reluctant to speak the next part of the ceremony. “Upon us is the burden of trust. We must confide in her wisdom, and her glory. We live to serve her, we live for her, we live though her.”

  Iris and the others released the casket. It floated slowly down the river.

  “This is Milia’s will,” Oleander forced herself to say.

  “This is Milia’s will,” the women chanted in return.

  Iris moved her lips and spoke the words, but in her heart, she no longer believed it.

  As the casket slowly faded away into the darkness, the crackle of the candle finally winked out. And there was a terrible wooden groan from outside. A splintering shriek that sent shivers through all who heard it.

  The ground trembled, the entire cave shaking. Bits of dirt and rock pelted the funeral guests.

  Without orders, they scurried out of the cave as one. When they reached the surface, they found a terrifying sight. A Nallorn tree of the Lotebush Family lay sprawled across the meadow, her enormous trunk shorn at the base. The houses that had been part of her branches and trunks were pulverized from the impact of the fall. All around, branches and stems torn free from her neighbors during the fall rained down, splintering rocks and scattering terrified animals.