I watched him for a few seconds, watching the moonlight on his face that glinted in his black hair. He looked serene, and younger somehow. I found I liked looking at him like this. I looked up at the stars, there were so many, dotting the purple sky. The moons seemed to caress each other above the trees.
“How far away is my world?” I said, looking up at the stars.
He breathed deeply but did not open his eyes, “This is your world” he said quietly, “This is where your blood came from, dust from these stars runs through you.”
I felt chastened for some reason.
“Of course, I know. I mean, I lived on New Earth for my entire life. My mother…”
I was about to reveal a secret and had just censored myself again.
“My family were there. Surely it is natural to consider home to be a place in which you grew up and started remembering things”.
Now it was his turn to look guilty. He opened his eyes and shifted position so that he was on his side and looking directly at me.
“I’m sorry. You do have to start thinking of this place as home too as well. You look so much like us”.
“Do I have your magic?” I said, “If I did not go through The Dream then maybe I do?”
This thought had been plaguing me since we had arrived on Deloran.
“You’re descended from countless generations of human and yet here you are, a fully-fledged Falaira”.
“So I do?”
“I suspect that you do. You can communicate with me in my head and have the dream of the river, so I imagine you have everything else we do. It’s remarkable really”. He broke off and looked me in the eye really intensely.
Silence, I thought of the river dream and remembered how otherworldly and yet familiar it was. I belonged by that river, however frightened I was by it.
“You mentioned when we first met that you are on your own in the dream,” said Khalashaya, his tone becoming more serious. “Is this the case every time you have it? Usually a Falaira will see other Falaira they are close to standing next to them”.
I was almost too shy to ask the next question…but ask it I did.
“Do…do you see me?” I said quickly, stumbling over my words.
He looked at me searchingly, not seeming to know what to tell me. Then he smiled.
“I do”. He suddenly took my hand and a strange feeling of weightlessness hit me like the feeling of not having eaten.
“I saw you before I saw you. If that makes any sense at all”, he said.
Somehow it did. He had seen me before I had seen him.
“That is how I knew to approach you in the library, I had already seen you”.
“I am alone in the dream” I said, feeling almost treacherous for some reason. “It’s just me and the singing. The singing is so loud but beautiful, frightening as well”.
He fell silent; just held my hand softly as if worried about breaking it. His fingers were rough but his touch was gentle.
I sat and watched the glowing flies for a minute, loving the fiery pictures their flights drew in the darkness. The trails they left seemed to remain for a second after they had flown to a different part of the lake. I imagined what it must be like to be one of these strange creatures.
“They are called Fire Spirits” came his deep voice from beside me. Fire spirits, that suited their otherworldly appearance.
I watched them for another minute, it would be easy to fall asleep in this space, watched over by the Fire Spirits and Khalashaya.
“What does the dream feel like to you?” he asked slowly.
“The dream feels so real” I said. “Usually dreams are blurred and strange, but this one is just so minute in its detail, even down to the stick I use to hold myself up and stop my feet from sinking too deep in the mud”.
He looked at me again, his face half in shadow.
"That's because, In a sense, the dream is real. Never are you closer to the great hereafter than when you sleep."
The great hereafter, it was a nice thought.
“Have you had any more of those attacks today?” He said.
Even the memory of the last one made me feel sick to the stomach.
“Yesterday but not today; it’s like I have no strength at all left in my body and I do not know why. This only started the day my father died. I had never had it before”.
“I suspected as much” Khalashaya said gravely.
He fell silent again.
“We’d better get some sleep before tomorrow”.
“Are your friends going to be safe?” I asked.
“Yes” was the simple reply.
"Are the Gleema going to give you back your staff?"
He stood up and brushed grass off his cloak. He gave me a small smile. I had sprung up before he had a chance to offer me his hand.
"They already have".
He walked me back to my bedroom door and smiled at me before he turned and walked away.
It had been a stunning walk in the starlight. Why did I feel so sad?
I took my cloak off and placed it on top of the dresser. A nightdress and a cloth had been laid out for me along with a bowl of warm water and a sponge and a cloth to dry myself with. The water had the scent of flowers. I undressed, washed and then dried myself with the cloth. The nightdress felt nice against my skin; getting into bed felt even nicer.
I dreamt of my mother. She was feeding me porridge and I was a very small child; she put the spoon back into the wooden bowl and suddenly put her hand on my cheek.
"My beautiful little one. I love you so much".
The next minute, we were embracing. For that moment in time, I was cocooned in the warm and safe nest of my mother's love.
I woke up alone and cried for my parents and the love I had lost forever.
The Free Falaira
It took me the best part of thirty seconds before I remembered where I was and our situation the next morning. I opened the curtains and was hit by a thick burst of sunlight.
I dressed and watched Gleema Nikka’s burial from my window. It seemed to be over quite quickly. I did not go onto the balcony because I did not feel comfortable watching, let alone being seen. I felt as if I were intruding upon a private moment but felt compelled to watch at the same time.
It was so simple and yet I could not help but feel pain at the difference between this and how my mother had been treated before and after her death.
This burial of a woman I had only met briefly affected me deeply, because its beauty and serenity as she was laid into her grave like precious cargo was in such contrast to the pyre my mother had gone to.
I spent so much time trying not to think about my mother that thoughts and memories that crept in unbidden still had the power to grip me in their painful vice and transport me right back to that horrible night in Zafiya where my mother was murdered.
The morning after her death saw the corpse cart make its morning round. Residents of my street usually put a black cloth over the gate in the night if a female or a baby under the age of a year in their household had died in the night. The driver of the cart then knew to make a call.
I had watched my father carry my mother’s body out to meet the cart, lay her inside and then tip the driver. No emotion showed on his face at all. Then, my mother had been taken away forever. I could do no more for her. I could not have saved her, and yet the guilt was ever present that I had done nothing because of my fear.
Khalashaya came to get me as I was finishing a breakfast of porridge and apples and I went with him silently. He led me out into the garden and round to the left of the house where I hadn’t been. He asked me if I was well and remarked that I was quiet. I had no wish to discuss it just then and so replied that all was well.
Geebani had delivered my breakfast and bowed before attempting to leave but I had asked him to stay and sit down. The awe in his eyes made me uncomfortable but he intrigued me with his accent that was unlike even Khalashaya’s guttural sharp brogue and his hai
r that was even darker than mine. I thought back to the short conversation we had enjoyed before he had needed to perform his duties around the rest of the house.
“How long have you worked in the house?” I asked him, not being able to stop myself from taking a bite out of one of the apples. Fruit was a delicacy on New Earth and I could not quite believe that I had not one but two apples to myself.
“Three cycles” he said with a smile, “I came from Seniveri with Gleema Leeh. We travelled here at the same time when she achieved her rank. I have been her servant since we were children”.
He paused before speaking again.
“She likes you, Gleema Leeh I mean, I believe she would like to have you as a friend”. The way he said it made it sound as if this would be a great honour. I supposed it would be.
I smiled as if to demonstrate that I understood the significance of this.
“Are we very different to the people on the blue planet?”
I nodded, emotion and apple rendering me unable to speak for a few seconds.
“How big is the house?” I asked, remembering how big it had seemed when we were taken to our trial.
He thought for a second.
“There are four floors - three I clean and look after the other is out of bounds”.
From what I had discovered about the Gleema, it would not be too much of a stretch of the imagination to think they probably did their most secret planning and work up there.
I was jolted back to the present as Khalashaya slowed his pace and I slowed my speed to match his.
As we reached where Khalashaya was taking me, I smothered a gasp as I saw a large bird; it was of the same kind that had flown us from the forest after our capture, possibly the same bird.
The grass poked through my shoes as I walked over to the bird and tried not to show the fear that bubbled up inside me. It was gigantic, a combination of fiery orange feathers and black claws. Its eyes were bright amber and regarded me with a cool interest.
I felt myself freeze with fear but forced myself to walk up the steps and onto the wooden platform where four warriors and Gleema Leeh were sitting. Gleema Leeh held out a hand to me and I took it gratefully. I was glad that Gleema Leeh was with us, her green eyes met mine and I felt that indescribable feeling again, something that made me wary of her and yet drew me in. Geebani has said she liked me but I was unsure as to why this would be, though it did please me. I had been liked by few people in my life because I was invisible to them.
I sat down beside Gleema Leeh and saw that there were two chords of rope either side of me. One of the warriors came to me and tied them across my lap and I felt the familiar lurch that told me we were flying before I knew it.
I suddenly felt a feeling of immense weakness that was nothing to do with my fear of heights. Khalashaya must have felt me slump against him because his arm went around me quickly as he looked down into my face.
It was like I was being weighed down by the bird, as if it were tied to me and dragging me down through the sky and towards the ground many hundreds of feet below. I tried to speak, to tell Khalashaya to hold me upright, to hide my condition from the others. I knew not why, only that broadcasting my sudden bouts of weakness would bring danger to me or someone close.
It lasted around ten minutes and then I started to regain movement in my fingers and toes and then throughout the rest of my body. Luckily it was dark in the conveyance so, apart from an odd look from Gleema Leeh, the fact that Khalashaya’s arms were around me for ten minutes did not seem to arouse much in the way of attention.
He smelt...nice, though I prayed to the Lord to forgive me for the thought; I caught a soft clean scent through his thick cloak. I looked up at him, feeling my neck follow my command and heaved a sigh of relief. He looked down at me, his green eyes betraying nothing but his arms still holding me tightly. I could not tell if he was angry with me for this or not.
We lurched to the right and I felt my stomach clench.
I shifted awkwardly, trying to stop my breakfast from resurfacing.
Gleema Leeh smiled across at me and I sat up.
“You do not travel well?” She said, clearly unsure as to how to react to my discomfort.
“I have never travelled” I replied.
Her mouth formed a surprised “O” but she didn’t probe me further.
I had not trusted myself to look outside the wooden conveyance but I imagined we were extremely high up. Small birds flew at our height; one flew in, flapping wildly before the booted foot of a warrior sent it on its way.
We were silent then for around half an hour except for the occasional cry from our transport and a muttered utterance from one of the warriors. I still found it hard to come to terms with the fact that they were females, that females could walk and talk like men and there was no punishment. They seemed to rule, I had not seen a single man with any authority since my arrival on Deloran.
I was reminded again of Geebani and his role as a servant to the women of the house. The way the Gleema had treated Khalashaya was reminiscent of the way Defenders on New Earth treated women; like he was nothing. The anger this thought gave me fizzed in my stomach and I knew that I would not trust these strange women until they had earned it.
“Tell us” said one of the warriors, a blonde with the now familiar slanted eyes and slightly pointed ears of the Falaira, “Tell us of the Blue Planet”.
“I have not seen much of it, I must confess” I said, “But the city I live in is large with many winding lanes, large buildings and churches and the rain burns my shoes”.
I was suddenly filled with images of home, of Herena and the many other ladies I had helped out of pain, of darkening streets laced with danger, of rain burned boots I had hidden underneath my window seat, and of my father slapping me. I felt tears burn my eyes like the rain had once burnt my feet, like the branding iron had once burnt the small of my back after my mother had been murdered.
“Are other Falaira there?” said the blonde warrior, seemingly oblivious to my feelings.
I had never seen anyone who looked even vaguely like me. My mother had kept my black hair long to hide my ears even when I was tiny and had encouraged me to keep my head down whenever Defenders visited father, as my unusual features had incited the odd question. I had looked nothing like my parents, not in height, hair colour, eyes or build. My mother had been very slender like me but not tall and broad shouldered as I was.
I shook my head.
“No, I have never seen anyone that looks like me…that looks like us”. I felt rather than saw Khalashaya smile at the reference to “us”, at my identifying myself with these Falaira. I looked up at him quickly and tried to convey with my look that it was the Falaira I was identifying myself with, not this group of Gleema and soldiers. He narrowed his eyes for a second and then smiled again.
I was reminded of the time Khalashaya had first revealed his face to me, just before he had told me I was in mortal danger. What if I had believed him then? What would have happened? Would father have died? Would Gleema Nikka?
My stomach flipped and I realised we were moving downwards.
Khalashaya smiled at me. “You’re about to meet some other magical people”.
We clattered to the ground sooner than I expected and I found my bonds untied. Khalashaya took my arm and I ignored my dizziness and half walked, half tripped out of the conveyance.
The journey had lasted for around two hours as the morning sun was now higher in the sky. A group of four warriors grappled with the ropes around the bird and managed to tether it to a tree. It protested with those fearsome claws grappling against the rope for a second but a command from one of the them calmed it immediately. It then proceeded to take a mouthful of leaves from the top of the nearest tree and chew happily. Clearly this bird was unlike those on New Earth with regards to its eating habits.
“They eat anything and everything” said the soothing calm voice of Gleema Leeh who put an arm through mine. “There is no
need to be afraid, she is happy and well looked after. It was her mate that brought you to us the first time”.
Her mention of the first time meant that I did not reply to this but carried on looking at the bird. However, she was in a position of power that meant I could not be openly antagonistic.
We were in a smallish clearing and surrounded by thick tall trees. I was surprised by the strong smell they gave off, such a fresh tangy smell that I had never experienced before.
Khalashaya walked up to us and breathed deeply. “This is more like it, the wild smell of home”, he said looking around.
“They should be here by now”, he said in my head, his face betraying nothing except the happiness he had expressed a second before.
“Did you warn them to meet you away from their camp?” I asked.
“Yes” came the short reply. “They have transported some people, supplies and shelter here for us”.
I thought that they must be very powerful indeed to have done this so quickly. The thought germinated in my stomach and grew roots of nervous anxiety that made me breathe deeply deliberately in order to dissipate them.
I looked around at the forest. The trees were as thick as six men and thick, so tightly packed together that it was like they were barging into each other or part of the same homogenous growth. I had never seen anything like it in my burnt ancient city.
“Where are they?” Gleema Leeh said softly, her tone as calm as usual and betraying nothing.
Khalashaya did not answer.
Then I heard a long slow whistle coming from the trees that pierced through the thickness and made my ears hurt.
A man appeared before us so suddenly that the warriors were unprepared. They then seemed to regroup; starting to converge upon the man warily.
His hair was a dark blonde and his face was covered in thick golden stubble that only seemed to highlight the brightness of his slanted green eyes. He was dressed in a red tunic over tight trousers and wore a thick black cloak. His face was hard to read. His eyes narrowed at the sight of the warriors.
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