Girl of Myth and Legend

by Giselle Simlett

  ‘With so much magic,’ she begins, ‘you would’ve thought there’d be a way to prolong a Chosen’s life or something.’

  Everyone at the table gives her a quizzical look.

  ‘Whatever do you mean, my Lady?’ says a Throne. ‘Isn’t it natural to live and die? The Imperium may be ahead of the human realm, but it doesn’t wish to go against nature.’

  ‘I meant with the soul-binding,’ she says.

  ‘What of it?’ says a woman, Sersu, I think her name is.

  ‘Y’know, about the whole “taking half of your life away” thing.’

  My body stiffens.

  ‘I just thought maybe someone would’ve been able to, I dunno, stop that from happening,’ she says.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ her father says.

  ‘Y’know. When you make a soul-binding, you have to forfeit half of your life to the kytaen so he has enough energy to protect you.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Sersu asks.

  ‘A soul-binding isn’t like that,’ says O’Sah. ‘You certainly give your soul energy to your kytaen when making the bond, and it will leave you weak, but your energy replenishes. Just as if you went on a long run and ran out of breath, after some rest you’d eventually catch your breath. I apologise, my Lady; I thought I’d explained that to you.’

  She tries not to look in my direction as she acknowledges my untruth. ‘But the other night,’ she says to her father, ‘when I said I didn’t want to die young, you said I had to be brave or whatever about it.’

  ‘Not about the binding. I thought you meant you were afraid of your duty, your responsibilities,’ he says. ‘I thought you were afraid you’d die young because you’re a Pulsar.’ He shakes his head. ‘We told you everything about the soul-binding. You’ve really got to learn to listen, Leonie.’

  She glances at me, gritting her teeth. I stand firm, ready for her to tell Orin of my lie. ‘I-I guess I do,’ she says to him, and my jaw almost drops: why is she trying to protect me, especially after my words last night?

  ‘Then remember this,’ says Orin, ‘a soul-binding will hurt at first—’

  ‘Wait! Hold it! It’ll hurt?’

  ‘Let me finish—’

  ‘You never, ever, ever said it’d hurt!’

  ‘Let me finish,’ he says firmly. ‘After a soul-binding you and your kytaen will experience some pain when you’re away from each other.’

  ‘It’s as if you were linked by string,’ says O’Sah, ‘and the more you pull it, the more your body will hurt. It’s temporary, and it won’t be too painful so long as you stay near one another.’

  ‘How long will this last?’ she asks, glaring at me.

  ‘Less than a week,’ says Orin.

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘A couple of days at most.’

  ‘Couple of minutes would be better.’

  ‘Sadly, I can’t change the way a soul-binding works, Leonie. Now eat up.’

  ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’

  ‘You’ll need energy for the binding,’ I say, hiding my mocking grin behind a façade of a concerned kytaen. ‘A lot of it.’

  She scowls at me, then stands, walking towards the doors.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Orin asks.

  ‘For a walk,’ she snaps.

  ‘Kytaen,’ O’Sah says to me, ‘why are you standing there? Go to her.’

  ‘No,’ she interjects, ‘I want to be alone,’ and she gives me a fleeting glare before walking out of the room.

  I wait a few moments before deciding to return to the arux, but then Orin says, ‘Kytaen. I want to talk to you. Come with me.’

  He leads me outside to the cold’s domain and stares out at the vast, snow-blanketed fields. As I place my hands in my sweater’s pockets, I see the girl’s figure in the distance pulling away from us. Two Thrones follow her, though obviously going unnoticed by her, just like last night when we went to the forest. I wonder what she’d think if she knew they watched her constantly, even if it is at a distance.

  ‘I’ll say this plainly,’ Orin says, ‘Leonie is not only precious to me, but to you, too.’

  ‘Is that so?’ I mutter.

  He must not have heard me, because he continues to talk without rebuke.

  ‘I’m giving her to your care, though trust me when I say I’m more than reluctant.’

  A moment passes.

  ‘We lived in a place like this before we came here,’ he says, ‘but there was a willow tree with a swing attached to it, right there, in front of the cottage. No one ever went on it—well, for a long time no one did—but every time I think back to that swing, it reminds me of how much I wronged Leonie.’

  I think about her, how brimming with life she is, and when I compare her to Orin, he is her antonym. Though I don’t know their past together, I can tell that their clashing personalities would have caused disruption.

  ‘You… you didn’t want the Imperium to know of her. But why? Why go to such extreme lengths to protect her?’ I ask, knowing I won’t receive an answer.

  The sunlight breaks through the dark clouds, making the horizon glow in yellow and blue and white.

  ‘Because she is hope.’

  I look at him, surprised that he answered. He wears an unhappy expression.

  ‘When she was growing up, she was never a person, a personality. She had no dreams or aspirations. She was as I raised her to be. Then she changed. Never once since then has she been afraid to show her pain, to acknowledge its existence. Many people are afraid to face their pain. They either let it out or let it take them over. But that girl, she accepts pain, she embraces it, accepts its role in her life, and uses it as a strength. I got so used to it… until that one day.

  ‘There was only one day when she didn’t cry, the day she needed to cry the most. She was sitting on the willow tree swing. She’d lost something immensely important, irreplacea-ble, and she didn’t shed a tear. It was unnatural, wrong, especially for her. That was also the day that I first held her in my arms, begged her to cry, scream, wail, anything, anything other than this nothing, this resignation.’ He hangs his head. ‘It was too late, but that was also the day I realised how much I loved her. Everything changed after that. I made sure of it.

  ‘I don’t honour you with the past from any liking towards you, but, for the sake of my daughter, I’ll trust you with her story and then you might better protect her.’

  ‘I don’t need to know her story to protect her,’ I mention.

  ‘There’s more than just protecting someone physically, kytaen. Our hearts are more fragile than our bodies.’

  I don’t say anything in rebuke. I want to know her past, and offending him may make him change his mind.

  ‘She was raised in Australia,’ he tells me. ‘Her… her mother and I raised her there, and for a while we were happy. For a while, yes, I’m sure we were.’ His eyes darken. ‘Then her mother left. Leonie was too young to understand. She thought she’d done something wrong, though I doubt she’d remember that feeling now. Leonie was only four when her mother left, and she’s never been that interested in her growing up. I moved to England with Leonie shortly after. You might wonder why I didn’t return to the Imperium. I knew she was Chosen, of course, being able to see the future, though the Imperium itself didn’t—they didn’t know she existed. But I also knew that Leonie’s path couldn’t begin there; it had to begin in the human realm. If she were brought up in Duwyn, others might’ve influenced her. That’s why I had to persevere. That’s why I had to find a safe place to bring her up, to teach her how to be a soldier.’

  ‘A soldier?’ I say.

  ‘She had to be if she was going to control her magic,’ he says, ‘if she was going to live with it. She is a Pulsar, the last of them. She needed to make a difference.’ Though there’s truth in his words, I also sense there is more he’s not telling me.

  ‘Why not tell her about the Imperium, though? It put her at a disadvantage,’ I say.

  ‘Or a
t an advantage. I wanted her to know nothing of them so she didn’t conform entirely to their ways. She had to be different from them, above them and beyond.’

  I don’t quite understand his logic, but keep quiet as he continues.

  ‘I tutored her at home. It wasn’t because I was afraid of her magic manifesting in public—I had a vague idea of when it would—but because I didn’t want her socialising with powerless ones too much; I didn’t want her to be weakened by them—that was the kind of man I was. She had to be fearless, like the soldier she was going to become. I didn’t want her to be burdened by feelings; I wanted her to just be. That way she would become incorruptible, not a being of light or darkness, not someone who could be controlled by the Imperium—she would belong only to herself.

  ‘For a while she was like that: emotionless, imperishable. I was proud of her, and because of that I never realised or even considered that really… really she was suffering. Really, instead of making her stronger, I was breaking her.’

  I imagine a young girl with short copper hair standing stiffly as she looks at a swing on a willow tree. It invites her to play on it, to have fun, but she can only stare at it, not knowing what it is, that whatever it is, there is no place for her on it.

  ‘She was fourteen? Yes, she was fourteen when her life changed,’ he says. ‘Her friend was named Abigail DeWit, an American girl whose mother married a Scotsman. I didn’t know how or when the girls met, just the implications during their friendship and the aftermath. They had a lot of things in common: a family that didn’t give them the attention they deserved, that they needed. They were alone in this world. She’s always been alone, Leonie. Always. Because of me.’

  ‘I don’t want to be lonely anymore. I’m tired of it.’ Her words said under the stars.

  He takes a breath of cold air. ‘Abigail was her first friend, the sort of friend you share all your thoughts with, that you make innocent promises to die with. For each other, they made life bearable. Leonie laughed when she wanted to, said what she wanted, refused to live the way I wanted her to—which frightened me, because I didn’t know this girl—and I started to see my vision crumble. There were times when she cried like a child, and other times she was angry, happy, oh, happy most of the time, and there was so much laughter. For the first time in her life, she had something to live for, someone to take her out of her misery, and she loved it.’

  I imagine the girl with copper hair stepping towards the inviting swing, taking hold of the ropes with hesitation, slowly sitting on the seat, rocking back and forth, and a small smile creeps onto her lips.

  ‘Then it ended. When Abigail left, Leonie’s happiness had no path, and her laughter had no ears to reach. She was utterly abandoned. That one joy, the person who taught her how to smile, had left her behind. Nothing was as cruel as that.’

  No, nothing is crueller than that. I know that well.

  ‘She forsook her heart, for a time. She was the soldier I’d wanted, only… only then I didn’t want her. It’s not that I thought I had raised her wrongly, or that I was selfish in how I brought her up, because even now I think she would have been exquisite. But now that she’d discovered emotion, laughter and love, I didn’t want her to be without it. So on the day I couldn’t stand seeing her so dead, so broken, I took her in my arms. I wanted her to return, the true her. I wanted her back. For a while, she couldn’t come back.’

  Again, I imagine the little girl with the copper hair, but this time, the ropes of the swing snap and she falls… and no one comes to help her to her feet again.

  ‘I know the colours of sorrow, Korren.’

  ‘Just when she was at her very worst,’ he continues, ‘when it seemed like she couldn’t even move up off the floor, she looked up at me, and she said, “When we’re at the bottom of the pit, what else can we do but try to climb out? Again and again, without fail, we must.” They were her words exactly, and I’ve always remembered them. How, at such a young age, could she find the strength to say those words, let alone live by them? But she did. She soon smiled and laughed and demanded to go to school. She wanted to live, to be normal, to just be a teenager. How I felt about it…’ He sighs. ‘How I felt didn’t matter. If it would make her happy, then I could let her go. For her sake I tried to be a better father. I didn’t lose my values and I still hold to them: she needs to be a soldier, one that even the Imperium can’t chain. Maybe it’s not in the way I wanted, but I can only hope she’ll retain some of the sternness I taught her.’

  ‘To fight for neither good nor evil,’ I say. ‘Like a living embodiment of Duwyn.’

  He nods. ‘Eventually, I enrolled her in the school nearby, and I think she enjoyed it. She seemed happy, anyway. She made friends. She could laugh again. She was the type of person that could draw everyone in, like a bright candle. She forgot Abigail.’

  He smiles. ‘When I explained that she was Chosen, she was shocked, of course. I told her of her responsibilities, of what she had to become. I thought it would change her, but as I stared into her eyes, she was unflinching. What she is doesn’t determine who she is. That was the feeling emanating from her that day. In my mind, she’d never looked so noble.

  ‘I told you this because all the pieces are coming together now, and things are about to happen that will test her strength. I want her to be able to face them. I know she’ll be frightened, but I’ve always wanted her to be the kind of girl who believes in her capabilities. She’ll be a legend. She’ll do wonderful things. Definitely. And you, you’re going to be with her on this journey. There’ll be times when I can’t be by her side, and it’s your voice she’ll need to hear to remind her to be strong.’

  As he speaks, something replays in my mind: ‘We wanted to be like that, too. But in the end… even though we believed that… it wasn’t enough, was it?’

  I recall how the faint breeze softly carried her copper coils as her gaze rested upon me. How her eyes were shadowed by something, by a profound sorrow.

  ‘What happened to Abigail?’ I ask.

  He looks at me, hesitant. ‘Abigail? She… she killed herself in front of Leonie.’

  _________________

  I can imagine the girl, alone and lonely. I can almost see Abigail, their meeting, their scepticism of each other, their caution. I can envisage a slow friendship building from mistrust, until it becomes something valuable, important, precious. Like a bird, the girl was set free from her cage and soared with such grace. She was probably very happy.

  Then blood streaks across those contended memories, and something breaks, shatters, until each memory turns bitter.

  ‘She could laugh again… she forgot Abigail.’ So she got over Abigail’s death?

  ‘That’s what that place meant to us.’ The absence of joy in her eyes, the way her voice was just above a whisper as if breaking…

  No. She never got over Abigail’s death. To remember is to hurt. I know that all too well. She probably did many things to forget her friend, like changing her personality, pushing herself to make friends, moulding herself into someone approachable, forcing herself to hate every weakness in her, to burn them until they were gone.

  ‘How… could she find the strength to say those words, let alone live by them?’

  No, she didn’t find the strength, though she still tries to, and she’s still trying to live by those words now, but she can’t believe in them, because, when Abigail left this world, everything she believed in was stained with blood. And that girl…

  That girl was probably very lonely.

  From the moment I met her there has been a pull between us, though I tried to deny it. Now I know what it is that we share: a lost feeling that haunts us, and loneliness, an unfathomable lostness. We know what it is to be utterly forsaken. Both of us have believed in something, in someone, only for that belief to splinter into nothing but dust.

  The girl Orin knew was false. The girl who went to school and made friends was a mirage. The girl I know is a mystery. And the girl Abigail
knew? Was that her true self, or was she lost even then?

  ‘Thank you, for telling me this,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, well,’ Orin begins, ‘I know how essential you’ll be to her.’ He turns towards me. ‘I’m not a good person, I’m not a good father and my ambitions are selfish and greedy, but I do love her, and I want to know I’m leaving her in good hands.’

  I’m not sure if he wants me to confirm that he is leaving her in good hands. I couldn’t, even if he wanted me to; I have no faith in my ability to protect anyone, not anymore.

  ‘I know how she treats you is different,’ he says, ‘but don’t think anything of it. She’ll understand what you are once she gets to the Imperium, and then she’ll stop embarrassing herself, treating you like she does.’

  Again, there’s that pang in my chest. I clench my fists. I have to stop reacting this way at the thought of her treating me like every other keeper ever has. When we get to the Imperium, and if she does stop acting as if I’m her friend, then it’s a good thing. It’s the right thing. Besides, after what I said to her last night, I don’t think I have anything to worry about.

  ‘You’re a tool,’ says Orin. ‘Nothing more. I don’t want your desires for equality—because I know you have them—to jeopardise her life. Never forget what you are.’

  ‘If you trust me so little,’ I say, ‘why not send me back to Aris?’

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ He smiles, his eyes nar-rowed. ‘I would send you back, and I probably could. Except that, though I don’t exactly know how or why, it’s you she needs by her side. I’ve seen it, as foggy a vision as it was. No other kytaen will do.’

  ‘And what if I—?’

  A flash of crimson. A Throne grabs Orin from behind and throws him. Two more come and pull him onto his feet.

  His face is pale, eyes wide. ‘Wh-what’s going on?’ he says.

  ‘Orin Woodville, you’ve been charged with treason for the concealment of a Pulsar you would have known about years before due to the nature of your magic,’ declares the Throne.

  ‘What? Th-that’s not right. I was pardoned for that! O’Sah told me himself!’