The Heart of Oldra

by Georgina Makalani

  Rhali stood and moved past Cora, then returned with a piece of cloth. She handed it to Teven and he took it without a word, smiling for her and then pushing it into the water.

  Cora slowly sipped at her stew, waiting for something—a response from Teven, or for the chief to reappear. In the silence of the cavern, there was only the sound of water as he slowly washed the dirt from his skin. She tried not to watch him, but there were few places she could look in the small space, and he was set up almost at the end of her sleeping mat. In many ways, he reminded her of Deen, and yet he was so different.

  When she blinked, she could see her father’s body, broken and bruised, and for a moment her mother’s panic rose in the back of her throat. Something about Teven drew her forward, and yet she worried what it meant when she connected him so closely to her father. His broad shoulders were smooth and muscled, but her eyes tracked back to the scar over his chest. Her own hand moved to her mark, and he glanced up at her with weary eyes.

  ‘You should eat,’ she said, holding out her bowl again. But he shook his head and held up a hand.

  Rhali stood behind him then with a brush, very much like Lalina had used on Cora’s hair when she was a child. She remembered the pulling, but the braid was always smooth and neat and tight when her father’s sister did her hair. Rhali bushed quickly through Teven’s hair, the dust filling the air and then settling on his shoulders. He wiped them with the cloth before pushing his head over the water, and Rhali helped him wash it from his hair.

  As he ran his fingers through it, the water trailed down over his shoulders and chest. Cora wanted to help him wipe it away, but he wrung the cloth out and wiped himself. He was still damp, the water glistening in his hair and across his body as Rhali held out a fresh tunic for him.

  As he stood slowly, Cora realised how dirty his trousers were. She stared into her bowl. She had worried that it wouldn’t sit well, but she was starting to feel better, and she realised the bowl was empty when Rhali reached for it.

  She filled it again from the pot, but waited instead of handing it back to Cora. Teven sat on the mat in fresh clothes, his hair still wet, and took the bowl his sister held out to him. A young girl appeared, bowing her head, and then took the dirty water away without a word. Teven sighed, ran a hand through his hair and sipped from the bowl. Rhali gave him a sad smile. He nodded once, and she moved back to her sleeping mat.

  ‘What did he say?’ Teven asked quietly.

  Cora took a moment to realise that he was talking to her, and she looked away when he turned to look at her. ‘Not very much,’ she murmured. ‘I was hoping he would tell me why I’m here, or why I can’t go home.’

  ‘Did you ask directly?’

  ‘He thinks that I am more than I am,’ she said. ‘Everyone thinks I am more than I am.’

  ‘I am sure you are very important, being the daughter of the chief.’

  ‘Where is your family?’ she asked.

  He looked back to the bowl, but didn’t answer.

  ‘I am sorry. It has been a long day.’

  He nodded once. ‘My mother died when I was young,’ he said.

  ‘Did you have to look after yourself and Rhali alone?’

  He looked over to his sister. ‘When her mother died, there was nowhere for her but with me.’

  Cora opened her mouth to ask another question, but he looked up across the fire. She thought she saw the outline of a man on the other side. Teven shook his head, and the figure disappeared.

  ‘Who is the boy?’ she asked.

  He shook his head again. ‘If the chief wants you to know, he will tell you.’

  Cora sighed, snuggling down into the furs. ‘Then I will spend the rest of my life with the two of you, knowing nothing.’

  ‘Maybe you will,’ he said, turning then and surprising her with a smile. ‘Would that be so bad?’

  ‘Not if I get to eat more often.’

  He laughed, and Cora tried not to smile as he ran his fingers through his still-wet hair.

  For the first time since she had fallen, Cora dreamt of Teven. At least she thought it was a dream as she stood directly before him, studying the mark on his chest. It looked as it had that night when he’d changed before the fire, an unevenness of the skin more than a scar. But she knew it had been caused by someone. When he had first shown her, she could see the anger in it, the ferocity of the attack. But that may have been because of his own anger. She couldn’t see the individual knife marks now.

  She was tempted to run her fingers over it, but she held her hand away from it. She could sense the heat beneath it even though she couldn’t see it. There was something inside this man that connected him to her. They were standing in the trees then, the sun warm on her skin, and he still smiled at her.

  She wanted to smile back, but she looked around for the chief instead. She was certain he would be penetrating this dream as he did all the others. He had seen her before she had found them, she realised, remembering his face in the shadows of even her mother’s memories. Had he been there too? Was he part of the darkness she had spoken of? And if that was the case, could she defeat him again as she had then?

  Or was he something else? Cora looked back at Teven to find he was saying something, only she couldn’t understand what it was. She looked closely at his face. It was as though she couldn’t hear him. He was becoming more animated, but she still couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then he froze, as though he saw something beyond her in the trees.

  She didn’t turn and look. She felt the presence and thought she knew what it was. Two bright golden eyes shone in the shadows over his shoulder, and then a face became clear. It was a dragon. Only it didn’t look anything like the dragons she knew. It was smaller, leathery rather than scaly, and it looked at her with a little nervousness.

  She reached out a hand towards the dragon, and it opened its mouth. Cora was hit with dragonlight. Before she could react, it pushed through her chest, and she felt the same burning sensation she had felt when she’d reached for Teven’s chest. Only it was very hot—too hot—and she was sure she was burning.

  When she reached out for Teven, he was gone. Another man stood where he had, another man she didn’t know. A man with green-flecked eyes.

  She sat up quickly, groaning at the movement and blinking into the dim light of the cavern. She glanced around, but no one else seemed to be awake or moving. There was no sign of the chief amongst the shadows. He seemed to see it all, so would he have seen this dream too? Would he know what it meant?

  Someone snored, and she realised Teven was sleeping directly beside her. He had pushed the covers back, exposing his bare chest. She wondered if he might have had the same dream, experienced the same heat of dragonlight she had felt. As though sensing her eyes on him, he shivered and rolled onto his back. She reached forward but hesitated. She didn’t know whether there was something beneath the scar or not. Had someone tried hard to destroy a mark?

  She sat up quickly then. Without pausing, she held her hand above his chest. It wasn’t as hot as it had been before, yet she knew with certainty that there was something calling to her beneath the skin. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and the feeling grew. Just as she placed her hand on the scar, a hot, sharp pain shot through and up her arm. Then a warm hand closed around her wrist and lifted her hand. She opened her eyes to find Teven staring at her.

  ‘Do you think you can heal it?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d been thinking when she put her hand on him; she just knew she had to. ‘I can feel something beneath it.’

  ‘There is nothing there. It is a scar from a burn.’

  She opened her mouth and then closed it. She knew that wasn’t true, and she could still feel the heat burning into her palm before he released her arm and pushed her away.

  ‘There was an accident, not long after I was born,’ he said softly, sitting up and leaning in closer to her. ‘It was a long time ago, and no one has
been able to heal it.’

  ‘Have you tried?’ she asked.

  He smiled at her as he shook his head. ‘I am no healer,’ he said.

  Cora looked at the scar on his chest. ‘I want to go into the trees,’ she whispered.

  He looked around, glancing through the flames before he gave the slightest nod. If she hadn’t been looking at him so closely, she would have missed it.

  Chapter 10

  The sun was starting to light the sky as Cora leaned into the stick at the opening of the cavern. She had been inside for so many days. But as keen as she was to get far away, she knew that if she left them now, she would never learn any more. She glanced over her shoulder; no one else was moving around the cavern. If they were awake, she wasn’t aware of it.

  She had yet to learn who these people were, and, she knew very few of those she had met. The chief may never tell her exactly who he was or how he had come to be here. There must still be Keetar somewhere in the world who hadn’t travelled with Sarn all those years ago, when he had come looking for her mother and a way to stop the shadows very few had believed existed.

  So many had died, and yet she didn’t know if those Keetar had simply stayed away or fought the others. There was still so much of her own history she didn’t fully understand. Her part in helping her mother destroy the shadows was one of them. She shivered at the idea of the dragonlight. It had burned right through her in her dream, and she could still feel the pain at the point where it had hit her skin. Cora wondered how her mother had survived when all the dragons had focused their dragonlight on her.

  Teven stood out in the open, but he looked around nervously as he waved his hand to indicate that she step out into the cool air. Leaning heavily on the stick, she stepped forward as he turned his back and walked towards the trees. He was lost to her in only a few steps, and she wondered if this was a good idea.

  She tried to move faster. How long would it take the chief to notice that she was gone and work out where she was, and with whom? What would this cost Teven?

  As she hit the shadows of the tree line, she could see him standing further inside the dim light of the trees. He waited until she reached him, and then they walked together into the woods.

  ‘You aren’t scared,’ she said after a little while, pausing by a tree. Her leg ached, and her hand hurt from the rough edge of the stick.

  ‘Neither are you,’ he noted as she rubbed her hand. ‘I could shape that for you,’ he offered.

  She looked at the stick and nodded. ‘You carve as well?’

  ‘I do what I can.’

  She couldn’t read his face in the dim light beneath the canopy, and she wasn’t sure what he meant.

  ‘You wanted to go into the trees. Now we are there.’

  She looked around her at the trees stretching on into the distance. There was no hint of movement, no golden eyes.

  ‘Can you call them?’

  ‘The chief?’

  ‘The dragons,’ she said.

  ‘There are no dragons.’ He turned and continued further into the trees, not waiting for her.

  ‘Then why does no one but you come into the trees?’

  He continued at the same quick pace as she fell behind. She longed for her bow, sure that she would feel better with it in her hand. But without arrows, it was no use. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. She couldn’t feel any dragons around her, so she reached out. Mostly to Dra, but also to any dragon who might hear her.

  No one answered. Teven continued to walk away from her, working his way between the large trees. They didn’t have the high roots of her trees, ones she had climbed on as a child and sat on as an adult. The world was no longer her own, and she wondered if she would ever be able to return to what she knew.

  When she felt she couldn’t walk any further, a small clearing opened up and the trees gave way to the sun. She staggered out onto the patch of grass and, looking to the sky with her eyes closed, she savoured the warmth. Then she looked down at her hands. Perhaps the warm sun was the reason she could not transition. She looked around her and noticed that Teven remained in the shade of the trees.

  ‘Are you going to leave me out here? Give me a chance to find my way home?’ He shook his head as she moved back into the shade. ‘Why did you bring me?’

  ‘You asked me to.’

  ‘I have been asking since you found me.’

  He looked away then, and a cool breeze covered her skin. She breathed a sigh of relief as it washed over her, then focused on Teven standing open mouthed and staring at her.

  ‘Are you going to tell me that I didn’t ask loud enough?’

  He shook his head slowly and stepped towards her. ‘What are you?’ he breathed.

  She looked down, relieved that finally something was as it should be and her transition skill had returned. Teven reached out to touch her, and she tried not to focus on his fingers working over her hand and arm, then her face and neck. As they trailed towards her mark, the transition melted and his fingers felt like fire across her skin.

  She took a shaky step backwards and promptly fell down. If he had been able to grab her, he might have saved her. If she had been transitioned, the fall would only have hurt her pride. As it was her leg burned, her butt ached and her elbow stung.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as the transition moved over her skin. She smiled. It had been so long since she’d been herself, and it had been even longer since she’d felt the transition take place. She let it slip before pulling it immediately back around her.

  ‘What is that?’ he asked, squatting down in front of her.

  ‘It is my transition. My armour.’

  ‘Armour?’

  ‘It keeps me safe.’

  ‘It didn’t when you fell.’

  ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘I wasn’t wearing it then.’

  ‘You put it on?’

  ‘It is me,’ she said, holding out her hand. As he ran his fingers over the ice, she let it go. Then she took his hand in hers and transitioned again.

  A noise of wonder escaped from him as he squeezed her hand. Then he tapped on it. Holding his hand, she pulled herself back to her feet. She felt stronger with the ice surrounding her, and her leg didn’t seem to ache as much. She wasn’t sure if that was due to the cold or the support it provided. She could move as easily as she did without the ice surrounding her, and yet she felt stronger.

  ‘Is it cold?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, but it keeps me warm and dry.’

  ‘It is amazing. Why didn’t you do this before?’

  ‘I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough, or well enough.’ She walked back out into the sun, which no longer felt as warm as it had before. She let it slip, enjoying the heat of the sunshine. Then she turned back to him.

  ‘Your leg is better,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you like the sun?’ she asked. ‘If I don’t melt, neither will you.’

  ‘He can’t find me in the trees.’

  ‘Who can’t?’ she asked, stepping towards him.

  ‘Can you teach me the ice?’

  ‘To transition?’ He nodded once. ‘I don’t know. My mother learnt, but then she was...’

  He waited, but she just shook her head.

  ‘Why aren’t you worried that he will find me?’

  ‘He already did,’ Teven said. ‘There is very little respite from the man, but he can’t reach me here.’

  ‘Who is he to you?’

  ‘Teach me,’ he said. It sounded far more like a command from the chief than a request.

  ‘I can try,’ she said slowly. Her mother had come from a different world and learnt the skill, although she was Oldra. And Cora had no idea how the teaching had taken place. ‘Imagine yourself very cold,’ she said, taking his hands in hers. ‘That cold surrounds you, covers you.’

  He squeezed his eyes closed but remained as he was. After several minutes in the same position, he sighed and pulled his hands from hers. ‘I can’t,’ he m
urmured.

  ‘Can you find the cold?’

  ‘Not holding your hand.’ He turned his back on her and started walking away.

  Cora stood just where she was. She was tired. Her leg might have appreciated the cold, but the long walk through the trees had taken its toll, and she ached. She didn’t want to lose Teven in the trees, but she wasn’t ready to walk back to the small, dark cavern. She looked back to the sunlight and then in the direction he had gone. She was alone.

  Looking into the trees around her, Cora thought of Darring. He had also come from a land like her mother’s. If not the same place, it was similar. He didn’t have the sight her mother had, nor the healing ability, and he too had learnt to transition. Cora pulled the ice tight around her and sighed with relief.

  She tried to remember learning the skill for herself, but it had been simple. Her mother was holding her hand, and then she was ice. She closed her eyes and imagined the snowflakes moving slowly around her during flicker flight. The fine detail of each one, how she could feel each small branching ice molecule as it landed on her skin. She looked around again, but there was still no sign of Teven.

  She sat slowly and leaned against a tree, her leg still stiff and awkward. She closed her eyes and transitioned, breathing slowly. Maybe she had some more skills than she had realised. She imagined her mother, young and new to the Penna. It wasn’t difficult; she had dreamed of her so many times before. She sat in the Ancient’s cavern, Arminel standing over her and Wyndha before her.

  Cora smiled at the vision of the woman. She knew her from stories as well as if she had lived with the woman herself. The older woman smiled at her and held out a hand. Cora placed it in hers, then realised it was her mother’s hand. As the Ancient transitioned, Cora felt the shift in her skin, felt the ice form as though she could see it within the skin. If she’d had decent healing ability, she expected she would see inside the body in such a way as her mother did. Now in her mother’s memories, she could see how the transition worked and cause the shift in her own skin.