I closed my eyes.
Nothing…
I turned around to see the stone floating in thin air. Around me was a shiny see through bubble. I reached out to touch it, excited.
“No!” shouted Khalashaya. “We want to test its strength!”
He came over and put his hand out to the bubble. I focused on imagining the circle around me and imagining it thicker than before; thick, powerful and impenetrable.
His fingers made contact with the bubble. It took all of my strength to infuse power into the bubble but it held. I imagined the bubble as before but added steel to that. My bubble thickened until I could barely see through it and I saw Khalashaya trying to punch through it.
Suddenly I was frightened. How long before I could get out of this? I imagined the circle fading away and it was gone before I had time to blink. I caught my breath and smiled at Khalashaya.
Khalashaya and Woodarch were looking at each other with small smiles on their faces.
“She’s teachable” said Woodarch.
Khalashaya winked at me.
We practiced lots over the next week, barely stopping to eat and sleep. I sensed unspoken urgency and apprehension with regards to the speed in which I learned things so addressed this by putting every sinew of my being into learning. The Gleema left us to it; Gleema Leeh coming to sit on the grass occasionally while we trained. She was the only one of the Gleema that seemed unafraid of the free Falaira after her initial apprehension.
She came to see me occasionally at night when I rested in my chamber; she seemed interested in me and my life and wanted to know about New Earth and the blue seas and burned forests that adorned her. I increasingly felt more and more comfortable talking about Zafiya and the Defenders and her respect for me seemed to grow the more she knew. At first, my responses to her questions were stilted and rehearsed, my initial treatment at the hands of the Gleema holding me back. Then, as I saw more and more of her, I felt myself unfurl slightly and allow myself to think of her as a potential friend.
She also invited me back to her chamber to sit and watch the stars. I had marvelled at the beautiful tapestries she had hung up on the wall. They were of the two suns that lit Deloran, of wild, impenetrable forests and flowers of such beauty that I had to look away from them. She had noted my reaction to them and given me one to put up in my chamber.
It was strange how close to my emotions I seemed to be these days, it unsettled me but I felt on an instinctive level that this was part of the process and to let it happen naturally.
Gleema Leeh was a woman who kept her emotions deep and only revealed what she thought she could afford to reveal - as if she sought to protect herself. I could see the Seniveri in her that Geebani had told me about but she did not reveal much about her heritage when asked.
What she did like to talk about was her love for her family in Seneverin. One night, we were sitting in the garden as I was enjoying a break from training and I decided to make the question/answer sessions more equal.
“Do your family live in the city?” I asked. Unlike the other Gleema, Gleema Leeh did not seen to leave the house at the weekend to break bread with her family. I wondered where and what she did as she was usually unavailable to me at this time.
“I have a sister,” she said, her green eyes guarded. She took a sip of her tea and leant back on the grass, staring at the stars.
I felt it best to wait for her to talk at her own pace; this seemed to be the best approach with Gleema Leeh.
“She lives in the city...I see her occasionally, but we are very different personalities”.
She looked at me and gave me a shy smile.
“You are like her in some ways. I know you must hear it a lot but you look so very much like us, even with human parents.”
She was right, I had heard this a lot. What did they mean when they said it?
“Khalashaya says that I am still a full blooded Falaira,” I said, almost defensively.
Immediately, her hand was on my face in the Falairan way.
“Of course” she said, “I have no doubt about that. Khalashaya...he knows things.”
The fact that Khalashaya knew things did not seem to thrill or displease her particularly but I did notice her pause.
I turned to her and asked the question that had been plaguing me since finding out about the Gleema.
“Why did the Gleema ban magic?”
She looked shocked.
“We do not know”. That shocked me and I had to catch my breath before asking her my next question.
“You don’t know? Then why?”
“One does not need to experience the fire and know its inner working before knowing that it burns and why”.
I did not understand this at all, why have so much naked eviscerating hatred for something and not remember why?
She gave a half smile and looked at me searchingly, as if she were analysing my face, my emotions.
“There is much we all do not know.”
With that, she got up and walked in the direction of the house. I did not follow.
Despite her occasional withdrawal from me, I found myself liking her more and more. She seemed to be the most receptive to the free Falaira and took what seemed to be a genuine interest in my magical development, telling me that it was needed and that we would have to fight the Eurikaya with everything we had.
Gleema Leeh did not form as close a bond with any of the other magical Falaira as they mistrusted the Gleema in general and Gleema Leeh had been told her entire life that magic and magic doers were beyond evil and barbaric. Still, she was present for much of the training and I would often catch her staring into space as if lost in thought. She was an enigma but by far, Khalashaya excluded, the person I liked the most.
I was working extremely hard to improve my natural magic and Khalashaya seemed pleased with me. Our disagreement had not been forgotten but I could not deny the genuine emotion he had felt when telling me our friendship had not changed and that he was keeping things to himself for my own good. I did not like it of course, but could see he was struggling with his obvious dilemma and pressed him no further for information.
Every day my magical defence bubble felt stronger and more tangible. I also learned to expand and shrink the bubble to enclose another person within its protection. When doing this to Khalashaya I had failed badly at first.
It was extraordinary to see how much Khalashaya had shaken off his brooding persona in general after reconnecting with Woodarch and the rest of the Free Falaira. Gone was the serious, haunted man with the seemingly frozen face and deathly pallor. He had replaced person with a man who still brooded and was still prone to sudden fits of melancholy but was also quick to laugh and much more free with his self-expression and even humour.
I was used to censoring my every utterance, action and reaction and envied Khalashaya for this intensely. Watching him interact with his friends every day with ease made me want to be that close to him and get to that level of friendliness.
True, we had shared each other’s thoughts and emotions but how much of that had been necessity and how much was genuine liking? I had been much surer of his feelings before the overheard conversation as we were flying over the forest. Now, I was not so certain and almost missed the strange relationship we had enjoyed previous to his meeting up with Woodarch.
Every day we met outside my chamber and breakfasted on the grass outside, sometimes joined by one or two of the Gleema and sometimes just with Woodarch.
We then started the training where Khalashaya, Woodarch or Prenaslavka taught me something and then I spent the morning learning how to do it. We then had some food in the middle of the day, which would consist of something light and would then resume our training for the rest of the day until dinner. I was not the only recipient of the training. Khalashaya had lived on my world for at least two or three twelvemonths before coming home and had learned things he wanted to show the others. I enjoyed watching him teach, his scarred face and
green eyes alight with the delight at being home.
I spent the evenings I wasn’t with Gleema Leeh in my rooms practicing what I had learned or out in the gardens with Khalashaya and the others walking around and appreciating the stunning scenery. I found I could not get used to the moons; each evening leaving me more stunned at their beauty than before. It was like the training was opening me up and making me more receptive to the wonders of the night than I had ever been as well as my emotions.
I stopped walking with a slight stoop to hide my height and tried to hold myself with more confidence.
Occasionally, we ventured into the city and I was, having been used to Zafiya, pleasantly surprised to see the clean, wide streets and orderly dwellings. It was all still so strange to me but I drank it all in and entered into everything with as much fire and spirit as I could muster.
After the two weeks of my training, I was satisfied that I now knew how to explore the city unchallenged by night.
I started creeping out and exploring Glen Fair by putting my cloak overhead and melting into the darkness like I had always done.
The streets were very orderly and clean but the city was like Zafiya in the way that everyone had occupations, whether they were servicing the many shops and cafés or patrolling the streets at night. It was the enigmatic warrior class that did this when the sun went down, with their masks, tunics and daggers.
From a different rooftop every night, I watched interactions between these severed Falaira and the warriors and saw that relations between civilian and order keeper were good, with little evidence of hostility or fear.
The Gleema however, were still very openly suspicious of Khalashaya, Prenaslavka and the rest of the tribe and vice versa but both parties seemed to be trying to put that aside. I often remembered the way they had first treated Khalashaya and myself when we had first arrived on Deloran and shuddered at what the Free Falaira must have gone through in order for there to be such sustained hatred and tension between the two groups.
My early euphoria at mastering the basic elements of self-protection had not abated; in fact, I found myself growing more confident daily as I learned more and found more and more strength than I knew I had.
Woodarch seemed to have lost much of his early aggression towards me as well which only added to the good feeling in our little group.
The only fly in the ointment of course was the underlying tension regarding the Eurikaya. It had not struck again since it had dispatched poor Geebani. His burial had taken place the day after our return as per the custom and I had found myself moved to tears at the untimely death of the servant boy. He and I had had much more in common than anyone knew.
Friendships
One morning, a few weeks into our training, Woodarch met me outside my bedroom alone. I was surprised not to see Khalashaya but hid it and sort of leaned against the wall outside the door as if to wait for him. Woodarch grinned.
“We seem to have got off on the wrong foot”. I looked at him as if to say, “Carry on”. He seemed to get the message.
“Or rather, I got off on the wrong foot with you”.
I nodded, not sure what to say.
“Are you coming?” he said suddenly.
“Are we not waiting?” I began before I was interrupted.
“No, it’s me and you today. Khalashaya has other things to prepare for”. He said this calmly and in his matter of fact way but I did detect a microsecond of a pause between “other” and “things” and my curiously was piqued.
Woodarch smiled again.
“You won’t have time to wonder why so don’t worry Long-Lost!”
He was right. After a light breakfast of toasted bread and nuts we were out in the garden preparing to start training again.
He took off his cloak and threw it over a low wall. I did the same. I was wearing a long dark dress and thick boots so was covered enough to withstand some hard work.
“What are we learning today?” I said.
“You will learn plenty” he said, with a mysterious grin, “However; I would like to be the one that learns today”.
That confused me; I was expecting him to attack me with something monstrous.
He laughed.
“He said you would expect the worst from being alone with me. I told him not to worry. I think you can more than look after yourself, am I right?”
I nodded.
“Let’s just…talk for a while before we start any magical training today”. He sat down on the low wall and beckoned me to join him. I sat beside him feeling strangely vulnerable. I had never been alone with Woodarch before and was apprehensive to say the least. He was right though, I was more than capable of taking care of myself.
“What would you like to talk about?” I said, hoping I had injected enough nonchalance into my voice.
“You,” he said.
I gave him what I hoped was a nonchalant smile and nodded my consent. What did he want to know that Khalashaya hadn’t already told him?
“Did you always know you were not really part of the Blue Planet?”
“New Earth you mean”.
He nodded.
I thought about it. I had always known I was not like the other women who were too afraid to break the rules. The condemned women of Zafiya like Herena were more kindred to me than the never seen, never heard wives and daughters of the city.
However that was a personality thing and not something I could immediately attribute to being of human parents but not being human.
I had always known I was different. I looked different from everyone else. I was taller, skinnier and much more startling looking with my black hair, slightly pointed ears and very white skin. I had never enjoyed looking the way I did and felt it inhibited my nighttime outings in the ancient city. I would stoop to hide my height even in my home around my father.
As well as this, I had always been different as a person. I could sense things just from touching objects and could often pick up bits and pieces of thoughts, this had always been normal to me. I knew it was not normal in general. I had sometimes made things happen without meaning to, plates smashing, goblets clattering to the floor, that sort of thing. I had suppressed my fear of this so successfully that I had almost forgotten completely before my whole strange little life had been turned upside down.
I had often wondered at the fact that - apart from being followed home by Khalashaya – no one had ever approached me on the street when I had been out and about. I had wished so hard to be invisible to the Defenders that I may well have got my wish. After all, I had learned so much magic in the last few days. Maybe there was some instinct there as well.
A cough from Woodarch reminded me I hadn’t answered his question.
“No, I never felt like I was…not human. I did always feel different though. I thought differently and have always been able to do things that other people cannot”.
“Such as?”
“Feelings, I pick up feelings from touching people and objects. That’s how I knew something was wrong even before I found my father…dead”. I almost choked on the world “dead”, it was still so painful.
“You really miss your father. Even though he hit you”.
I was angry with him for bringing this up as if he had even the slightest idea of the bond between by father and I.
“He did it once. He loved me, he was worried I would be discovered and killed.”, I said, trying to keep my anger at his judgement inside.
I looked away, trying to keep myself from shouting.
“But he still hurt you. He still conspired in the system that hunted down and killed millions of women just for not being men – for speaking their minds, refusing to be slaves”.
“What choice did he have?” I hissed. “The one time he rebelled, they came and murdered my mother and ravaged me.”
This conversation was irrelevant to our goal.
“I think you’ll find it all relates to what we’re trying to do here,” he said, clearly readi
ng my thoughts again.
It made me so angry the way he assumed the level of intimacy that Khalashaya had with me. Not intimacy in the marriage way of course but the intimacy gained from our shared thoughts and stories. Khalashaya had travelled to a different universe to save me from the Eurikaya. Woodarch did not deserve to be sitting there, reading my thoughts like a book and I told him so.
“You think I have no right?” he said.
“I think that you should ask my permission before you access my private thoughts in that way. I have extended that courtesy to you”.
“Have you now?” he said sarcastically, I then remembered eavesdropping during his conversation with Khalashaya and flushed.
He stood up and grabbed his cloak. I followed suit and walked after him as he started to move towards the lake. I caught him up just as I saw the vast expanse of water approach. It glittered in the morning sun and made me feel happier all of a sudden though I knew not why. I was feeling very tired though and slightly weak of body all of a sudden. I decided not to mention this.
“So” he said. “We’ll leave the subject of your family alone for now”.
He laid his cloak onto the grass and sat upon it, crossing his legs like a child.
“Good. When I want to tell you about them I will”.
I sat down beside him.
“Tell me about the dream. Khalashaya tells me you have the dream but are alone in it”.
Was there nothing about me he had NOT told Woodarch?
“We’re brothers in arms Auriana. He does not have to tell me. I sense the thoughts, feelings and moods that emanate from him like you see stars in the sky. He is my brother and I am his”.
“And you can sense mine?” I asked.
“I sense that you do not want to shut me out as much as you think you do”.
“I have…sensed a loosening in your hatred these past few weeks and have thought about you more positively as a result. Do not mistake that for friendship Woodarch. I overheard some of your conversation on the bird. I know you and Khalashaya were discussing something about me that I do not yet know”.
He looked down, and then away.
The Long Lost Page 16