Dreams and Shadows (The Aylosian Chronicles Book 1)

by Jeffrey Collyer

  There was an anxious moment amongst the Elahish when a scouting party returned, reporting a skirmish with a small group of city soldiers, but though Aneh was required to heal some minor injuries, no-one had been seriously hurt.

  Most of the time Michael and Aneh spent wandering the nearby forest, Aneh continuing to teach him the names of trees and plants, and of how to discern edible berries from poisonous ones. It was still confusing for him, but he thought he was slowly beginning to absorb some of her words.

  On the third morning, Peran and Ippi appeared in the forest as they ambled through. He again marvelled at the beauty of these enormous animals. He had almost convinced himself that Peran’s claiming of him had been some kind of misunderstanding; that it had not been what it had seemed to Aneh. But the creatures stood before them again now, crouching low so that they could mount.

  Michael followed Aneh’s eager lead, and in no time they were off, the Shosa jogging through the trees. He had never ridden a horse and felt uncertain on the animal’s back, clinging to its long soft fur; but the ride was much smoother than he imagined, and he remained steady on its back. Through the thick soft coat, Michael could feel the Shosa’s muscles, and knew instinctively that they were powerful. Even if he had not seen it kill a Chet’tu with a single bite, he would have known that its strength was beyond anything he had seen in his own world, and he was grateful that it was his friend – his protector even.

  After a short while, they began to rise up an incline, and as the trees started to thin, the two Shosa suddenly increased their pace to a run. Michael stared across at Aneh, hoping she would not see the worry in his eyes, and was surprised to see her sitting up straight, her arms outstretched to feel the wind speed past as much of her body as possible, her long hair blowing fiercely behind her.

  When she turned her face to look at him, her smile grew broader, both her comfort sitting astride the racing Shosa, and her deep love for it, clearly showing.

  Despite their speed, Michael could still feel that the muscles beneath him were holding back, that they were demonstrating just a fraction of their power. But the look from Aneh eased his worry, and while he didn’t feel comfortable enough to expand his body as Aneh had done to feel the wind rush past him, he was able to relax his muscles somewhat.

  He had even begun to enjoy it a little as their two guardians slowed to a walk and then stopped next to some large rocks, allowing Michael and Aneh to climb off easily. As they climbed down from the boulders, Ippi and Peran raced away – this time Michael was sure at a much higher speed than that which they had used to bring them here. As they began to dart amongst the trees, Michael realised they were playing and smiled as they eventually disappeared from view.

  “I can see why you like them so much,” he said, still looking at the place where they had vanished.

  At his comment, Aneh touched his arm, causing a shot of adrenaline to thrill his body as he quickly looked back at her. She was smiling, and she turned to walk further up the hill, letting her hand fall back to her side. He watched her for a few seconds, the pleasant swing of her hips as she climbed ahead of him causing his breathing to increase. Pulling his eyes away he started after her, allowing the mild exertion of the climb to replace the cause of his heightened heart rate as he caught up to her side.

  It wasn’t a long climb before they reached the top of the hill, and they sat next to each other surveying the surrounding forest.

  “Where’s the Stay?” he asked, not able to see the coloured tents in any direction.

  Aneh pointed as she answered, “It is over there, but the hill is not high, and so the trees hide our location.”

  “Is that intentional?” he asked, wondering whether she had used the word deliberately. “That you’re hidden, I mean.”

  “The warriors from Aperocalsa enter the forest from time to time,” she said, shrugging her shoulders as she did so, “and if they could spy us from this hill it would be dangerous for us.”

  Talk of the threat hadn’t dampened her spirits, though, as she happily put her hand into a small sack hanging at her waist to withdraw two hettlesip fruit. Michael thanked her as he took one of them.

  “You haven’t shown me the trees these come from yet,” he accused her. “Worried that I’m going to steal them all?”

  Leaning back on her right arm to angle her body slightly towards him, she gave a mock scowl, lifting one eyebrow. “And you would not steal them all?”

  “Well… maybe.”

  They laughed together, and then continued their happy banter for some time, before Michael turned serious. “You really have a great family,” he said.

  Aneh looked at him questioningly for some time before replying. “When you related your dream, you spoke of the longing for your mother. And when we first met and you stood before the Lora, you said that you did not know her.” Her eyes now held a sadness that Michael knew was for his plight. “Have you never known family?”

  The kindness in her expression gave him the confidence to speak, and he told her of his early abandonment; how he didn’t even know how old he was; of the upbringing by Rob, who paid him as little attention as possible; of the anger he would feel when other children would complain about their parents. He even told her of the instance by the stream when time had seemed to freeze as he had stared at the bee with the flower and he had imagined his mother, now feeling embarrassed when a tear fell from his eye.

  “So, no,” he eventually finished, “to answer your question, I have never known family.” Sighing, he said, “I would do anything to have a family like yours.”

  It had only been a week since they had met, and already Michael had felt able to share more with Aneh than he ever had with anyone else, though he had kept his eyes to the ground as he spoke, still self-conscious of baring his soul.

  When he looked up he saw that Aneh’s eyes were wet, and she looked at him with both pity and kindness, before leaning forward and wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug. Awkwardly returning her hold, they stayed like that for a full minute or longer, before she pulled away.

  She continued to look at him as she spoke, “You have spoken so openly of yourself Michael, and I am ashamed not to have returned such a gift in kind.”

  “No, it’s okay,” he protested. “You’ve done so much for me; more than I could ever say.”

  But she interrupted, “And now there is something which I must tell you.”

  It was Aneh’s turn to now look apprehensive, and forgetting his own recent tale he smiled to try to reassure her. “It’s okay,” he said, “You can tell me anything, but I really don’t mind if you don’t want to.”

  “I should have spoken of it sooner. I am sorry.” Her eyes briefly dropped to the ground before returning to his. “I must tell you of my dream.”

  CHAPTER NINE:

  Soul Weaving

  A man will believe that to be strong he must be independent of all around him; that he must rise above all who would challenge his freedom. In believing thus, he surely will fail in his life’s purpose. For mortality’s walk is not to rise above, but to rise with. It is not to be sovereign of our soul, but to willingly give our hearts to another, to be chained in love. It is the paradox of life that a man’s strength only truly comes when his soul is freely bound to another. He must come to desire to abase himself for her glory, and she likewise to willingly diminish herself for his grandeur. Then both souls will be exalted together in eternal splendour.

  From the Wisdom of Ashael

  ***

  He lay awake that night thinking about the things Aneh had told him. It was exhilarating. It was disconcerting. It was frightening. It made Lohka’s statement that his was more than a dream more… tangible. Aneh must have told her mother about her own dream. When enough hints had then been displayed, she needed to know of Michael’s. And at that point she then knew the two visions were related.

  Aneh’s dream hadn’t been entirely like his own, but there were similarities that went well
beyond coincidence. For starters, she had seen the Woodland Star. It wasn’t in a gate at first as his own vision had been, but instead the pattern had been made by two trees, a set of branches from each making the unusual triangle shape, only for the wind to blow the two sets together so that they overlapped perfectly. She had also seen the sword, the Woodland Star again appearing towards the top of the shining blade.

  What had been most intriguing, however, was the pommel of the sword. He had noticed the faces that adorned it; seen that on one side there were the profiles of two female faces – one young and one old – and on the other the same again but with male faces. But he hadn’t examined them closely.

  Aneh, however, had spent time in her dream inspecting the faces, and the revelation she had made to him that morning had been startling. For the young man’s face she had seen distinctly within the pommel was Michael’s.

  It had stunned him when she had said it. He had felt foolish as he had opened his mouth several times to say something, and then closed it again, no words willing to exit his throat. Eventually all he had managed to say was, “What does it mean?”

  She had no answer for him, of course. She was as puzzled by it as he. Aneh had experienced her own dream months ago, or as she had put it, “Many moons past.” But the images had stayed in her mind as if she had only just awoken from it.

  Her recognition of him had been almost instant. Aneh was certain as she stared at him while he dressed behind the large bushes on that first day they met that his had been the face in her dream. But what it meant, neither she nor her mother knew. At first, they had worried that he was a threat to them – after all his face had been on a sword. But after the first meeting with the Lora, when Lohka had determined that he had spoken the truth, the two women were certain that he posed no threat, and that his image on the sword had meant something else.

  “But I could still be a threat without knowing it,” he had said to her.

  That’s when she had told him the final part of the dream that she shared; the part that had excited him the most. “The face of the young woman,” she had said, “was mine.”

  Aneh’s face had been on one side of the sword, and his had been on the other. He couldn’t be certain that it had been the same in his own dream, or course, but every other detail of the sword that Aneh had described was a perfect match of the one in his own dream. The faces also had to be the same.

  And that had to mean that he and Aneh were linked in some way, didn’t it?

  That’s what Aneh and her mother had thought, and it is why Lohka had ensured that enough of her daughter’s duties in the Stay had been eased so that she could spend as much time as possible with him. They wanted to work out what the connection was – why they both appeared on the same sword in Aneh’s vision.

  They had no clue that Michael had seen the same things in his own dream until he had told it to Aneh as they rode their Shosa side-by-side for the first time. And while Aneh insisted that she had not told her mother about his revelations, something about Aneh’s behaviour had alerted her mother, and Lohka had guessed. She had asked. And being a Sooth Weaver, Aneh was unable to hide the truth from her; though she hadn’t given her any details Aneh reassured him.

  Michael had suggested that they tell the Lora, that if any doubt lingered about him surely this would give a final reassurance, but Aneh’s mother had advised against it. Despite it all, Michael’s face was on the sword. And regardless of whether Aneh’s also appeared, that fact alone would give some members of the Lora new reason to oppose him. For now, she said, it needed to remain secret.

  They had spent the rest of the day lying on their backs on the hill, trying to identify what the connection might be, but they hadn’t come up with anything useful. Their Shosa seemed to know when they needed to get back to the Stay, turning up just as they arose, and carrying them back through the forest.

  While pondering, he eventually fell asleep again, his final waking thoughts on the beautiful shape of the Woodland Star.

  ***

  When he awoke the next morning it was to the sound of bustle outside. He quickly pulled on his clothes and went to see what the noise was all about, still bleary-eyed. The sun was bright and he had to cover his eyes initially until the final tendrils of sleep had been cut.

  In the time he had spent with the Elahish, he had never seen a day like it. People were busy rushing everywhere. Banners and flags, and a host of other decorative items had been placed on virtually every tent, and at every intersection. Even without the new adornments, the tents were colourful, but they were nothing compared with the kaleidoscope of bright reds and yellows, greens and blues and everything in between that was now displayed.

  He made his way to the tent of Aneh’s family as was now his custom, finding just Aneh and her mother there. Kasha and their father were preparing, they told him.

  “For what?” he asked.

  Aneh’s look was excited as she said, “For the Entwining. It is today!”

  They quickly showed him where the food was and allowed him to feed himself, both then saying they were off to prepare themselves. Before they did though, Aneh gave him a long strip of bright blue cloth, departing without a word as to what he was supposed to do with it. He tried to call after her to ask about it, but she was talking excitedly to her mother and didn’t hear.

  So after that, he ate and then did his best to clear up after himself before wandering out. There was a steady stream of people going to and from the river – men and women to their different areas – and he remembered that he hadn’t bathed in a while, so he went and collected his soap, then wandered over to the river with the other men headed in that direction. Seeing the people generally trying to look their best today, he was pleased that he had gone to Bilah for his shirt to be repaired following the incident with the Chet’tu.

  As he returned, he looked for evidence of what the other men were wearing to look for clues as to what he was supposed to do with the piece of cloth Aneh had given him. Others had similar small items of blue, but there didn’t seem to be any pattern he could discern as to how they were worn. Some had tied their strips of cloth around their heads, like a bandana; others had them tied loosely around their necks; while others still had longer strips tied like a sash around their waist or draped over their shoulder. The only similarity was that all of the coloured cloth was blue.

  The women also had coloured strips of cloth, but theirs were green. Again there was no uniformity, although most had them tied in intricate patterns through their hair.

  Michael didn’t like the idea of wearing a bandana, or having it tied around his neck. And it wasn’t long enough to use as a sash, so he ended up tying it around his right upper arm. It took an age to do, because he was doing it one-handed, of course, but he was happy enough that the result didn’t make him look too different from the others.

  By then he heard music ringing out from various parts of the Stay and decided to take a stroll to see what was going on. Before he arrived at the source of the music he came across open tents offering food, and others with games, which some of the children had already commenced playing.

  Having only recently eaten, he bypassed the food, but as he got closer to the music the atmosphere seemed to change. The partying died away, and while the faces he saw were still joyous, they seemed to be focussed inward, as if the music was touching their souls. Indeed, it wasn’t long before Michael felt the same way: the sounds emanating from nearby could only be described as heavenly. The harmonies were exquisite, every note seeming to strike a different part of his being with the most perfect timbre. He couldn’t place the musical instruments that were relatively quiet in the background, but their notes altered just enough to create the perfect underlying mood of beauty in the piece.

  As he rounded another tent, he realised he had finally come to the music’s source, and was astonished to see through the small crowd only Kasha. He couldn’t quite believe it at first, but as he concentrated he was sure that
the harmonies were all coming from her single mouth: her voice simultaneously both sweet and rich. He couldn’t tell where the background sounds were coming from, but he stood transfixed with the others who had preceded him there.

  When she finished the song, there was a brief silence before the small crowd cheered, and other musicians started playing their strange-looking instruments: sounding more like the folk tunes he might have expected from the scene. They were talented, for certain, but there was surely nothing that could match Kasha’s performance: In any world.

  As soon as he caught her eye, she came running over to him. “So, what do you think of my Weaving?” she asked.

  Michael looked at her, mouth agape for a moment before answering, “That’s your Weaving? Singing?”

  She nodded with a huge smile, and Michael continued, “It was… well, I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. It was just amazing, Kasha.”

  She looked delighted at his response and then grabbed him by the arm, pulling him after her to show him the various things on display, and occasionally stopping to introduce him to some of her friends. Many of the musicians were just that – talented musicians. But there were a handful who, like Kasha, had a Weaving that was musical in some way, and Michael could find no words to describe the sounds they were able to create: like entire choirs, or orchestras all on their own; able to find the perfect tones, rhythms, and harmonies to match the mood of the crowd before them.

  Kasha made him sample some small items from the Food Weavers. He thought his stomach would never be the same again; that his taste buds wouldn’t ever find another morsel to fancy after the flavours that they created in his mouth.

  There were artists: Weavers who had moulded wood, or stone, or other materials to create craftsmanship of unparalleled beauty. Any one of the items displayed Michael knew he could spend a full day or more examining. He only had time to briefly look at one item before Kasha pulled him on yet again. This was an object maybe a foot tall made of small branches, and interspersed with bright crystals. It looked like a hawk of some description if examined from one angle, but like a man’s face from another, and from still another perspective like a tall mountain. But it was not just the images that drew Michael into the piece.