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It was surreal to wake in the cool scent of the field, with Nara pressed against him. The breeze blew across his skin, reminding him he was alive. There was still no sense of danger. Ellery wondered if there was some moment of pause, as though the Fates had given them a reprieve from the lives they lived.
The world was still and silent around them. He stared up into the blue sky, which in itself seemed unnatural, simply because he couldn’t determine when he had last been able to look around and enjoy such a time.
He blinked as a small cloud rolled slowly into view. Not even in his first life had he the time or space to watch the sky. His time beneath the fire tree was something very different. He had too much time lying beneath the branches to watch them flicker away, but there was little else he could do.
He sighed. Nara moved against him, rolling away, and he instantly missed the warmth of her body against his. She stood, looking out across the grass and away from him, her long white shirt hanging loose around her body to her mid-thigh. He was amazed that her skin was so pale and perfect, so unmarked by all that had gone before. Particularly in the last life, where there had not been any part of her skin undamaged by the forest.
She turned then, leaning down over him, and kissed the top of his head before she hunted around the flattened area they had created for her breeches. She tossed his closer to him. Her sword and belt were a little distance away, and he looked to his other side to find his own sword out of reach. It would take very little effort to end them here, and yet there was no threat. Not even the hum of it at the back of his mind to tease its closeness.
“Do you feel that?” he asked as he watched her hide her legs away and tuck in her shirt.
She shook her head, then turned back to him as though she might feel something. “Nothing,” she whispered.
“No,” he agreed.
She squatted down before him, a boot in her hand. “Not a thing.”
“What do you think it means?” he asked, although he was too afraid to suggest what it could be. Was this the life they had been waiting for?
Nara opened her mouth, a hint of something in her eye, a sparkle. Then she closed it, biting her lip as though to keep whatever idea she might have inside.
He watched her, although he was sure he should be reaching for his sword or getting dressed himself. She pulled on a boot and then looked about for the other. Had they ever had the luxury of such time before? They’d certainly had time, the opportunity for stolen moments—but they were just that, moments. He glanced beyond her across the field and into the distant blue sky, trying to determine if the shadows had changed and how long they might have slept.
Nara didn’t seem hurried to do what she needed to, nor worried by the environment or world they were in. There were moments when she would pause her movements, looking out around them. Ellery wondered if it was a good thing they were hidden in the long grass, not visible to anyone not travelling directly near them. He worried as well. The soft grass did not appear to be a threat, but they had travelled through strange environments before and experienced threats that had not immediately presented as such.
Ellery sighed. How many times had he told himself that very same thing? How often did they think that the world was something other than what it turned out to be? In all the lives they had lived, no matter how long or how short, they hadn’t learnt from that. Or he hadn’t, at least.
“How long can we stay here?” he asked, although he wasn’t sure whether he meant in that very spot or in the life they were living. How long until it became something different?
Nara shook her head as she buckled her belt around her waist. He watched her hands resting on her hips. No movement towards the stones at all. Perhaps she did not need to hold them in this life to hear what they needed to tell her.
He missed them. He had felt the surety of holding them in the last life. And yet, he knew they were where they should be. Nara’s hand didn’t even rest on the handle of her sword, and that too seemed odd. Did she not feel any danger at all?
“Did we help the forest in the last life?” she asked, her focus on something in the distance.
Ellery reluctantly climbed to his feet, holding his breeches in one hand as he stood beside her. The field stretched on beyond their line of sight. Shadows played across it, and Ellery looked up at the increasing number of clouds that were slowly moving in. The sun was still warm and bright, yet he wondered how long until the clouds covered the sky in a grey blanket and blocked it.
“Haven?” Nara prompted, and he looked away from the movement to her staring up at him.
“Was it different? Did it change before we left, or was it an illusion?”
“Was he an illusion?” she asked, her voice too calm.
“I don’t know,” Ellery admitted. “I wanted him to be.”
Nara sighed and looked away. He had thought over those last moments so many times beneath the fire tree, yet he wasn’t confident in any idea he rested on. The man could not exist, but then neither should they. How could they live as they did?
“Are we alive?” he asked.
Nara turned and threaded her arms around him, pressing herself against him, and he leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
“I feel alive,” she whispered.
“You feel alive to me too,” he returned.
“Do you want to know why we are as we are?” she asked, looking up at him with her golden eyes.
He shook his head, and something sad crossed her face. “Would it make a difference?” he asked. “Would it end?”
“Do you want it to end?”
“Not if each life is like this,” he said. “We thought it the end before, and it wasn’t. I thought I would lose you, and I haven’t.” He ran his hands through her hair, dropping his breeches into the grass at their feet. He had lost her, so many times.
The sun seemed to go out for a moment as a cloud passed between it and them. The shadows were frightening and cold, as though the warmth had been sucked from the air. Nara pulled back from him. He quickly stepped into his breeches and away from her to collect his sword. By the time he turned and pulled it from its sheath, the cloud had passed and the warm sun lit the space.
Nara watched him, her own sword in hand, the other resting on the stones. Her focus was on him alone. When his sword reflected the sunlight, it felt different—he realised in that moment—a little heavier perhaps. Was he getting older and no longer as strong as he had been? They had barely had any chance to rest or eat during their lifetimes. Might that take a toll at some point, even though it hadn’t before?
The sword looked worn. Ellery ran a hand along the solid blade, the etchings clear beneath his fingertips. There were marks on it, chinks in the blade where it might have hit something, scratches across the intricate pattern that wove through the centre of the broad, square blade, and the guard was marked as though it had blocked a thousand blows.
Nara’s sword, still in her hand, also appeared to glow in the sunlight. It wasn’t glowing with magic as it had before; it reflected the sunlight. The golden blade was also not as perfect as it had been. It was not the rusted and cracked sword it had been in the last life. There had been nearly nothing left of it by the end of that life. It too was scratched, small nicks in the blade. There was a hint of something written on it near the handle, but he couldn’t make out the words.
Nara had held a golden sword before, solid, smooth, and perfect. And one with a silver strip down the centre with clear symbols. This was something different. Not very different, but different.
“You haven’t held that sword before,” he said.
She nodded, staring down at it. “It feels different,” she agreed.
It was a relief to hear the words, and he let out the breath he didn’t realise he was holding. She raised her gaze to him.
“Mine too,” he said.
A smile spread across her face. And as the sword dropped down at her side, he reached forward and put his hand to her cheek, running his rough thumb across her perfect skin. Although there were no tears, he could have cried at the relief.
“This life is different,” she said.
He nodded, but he wasn’t sure if that was exactly true. The lives had all been different in some way, in many ways, and yet they hadn’t really noticed those differences. The had been certain that the stones were the same, that the swords were the same, and that they too were the same. That he was certain of, he thought, looking into her golden eyes. Then he reached for her wrist, dropping his sword into the grass and pulling at her sleeves.
A red twist of thread was there. He pulled her into his arms as he searched for his own, to find it very similar, if not the same. In some lives, it didn’t appear to be tied but was a continuous thread around their wrists; and in some lives, he didn’t even search for it. There was something different in this one.
He let her go reluctantly and looked over the thread around his wrist. It was a single thick thread, one that might have been pulled from a blanket, dark and worn. He looked up from his wrist to Nara studying her own. Her fingers played across the thread, her sword back in the sheath at her belt.
“It is the original,” she breathed, her eyes not leaving the thread. He wondered then at the sword. She had not carried a sword in their first life.
He shook his head, trying to focus on why they were there, where they might be in this life and what might be waiting for them. It was a distraction, as so many other things had been. It was part of the game, part of whatever the Fates were doing with them, and he doubted it had anything to do with a curse or Orman. It was a loop they would never escape.
Leaving his sword where it was, he searched out his boots, amazed at how far their clothing had spread around the small clearing they had created in the grass. He pulled them on and then his jacket. All the while Nara didn’t move, her focus on the thread around her wrist.
It was harder to buckle the sheath across his back than it should have been, and he wondered if the buckles too were aged. He straightened himself out, then bent and picked up Nara’s waistcoat as he moved towards her. He took her arm and threaded it through an opening in the leather to slip the garment around her shoulders.
She looked at him then as though just realising he was there. He stooped and picked up his sword, sliding it into the sheath across his back, then ran his fingers through his hair and scrubbed at the rough beard.
Nara reached out and put her hand to his wrist, running her fingers gently over the thread, barely touching it as though in fear it might break.
It was familiar. As though he had worn this one before, it appeared too like the first life. They had all been similar in some way before the last life, with the silk that didn’t collect any of the muck that had clung to them.
“What is it?” he asked Nara as she searched again beyond the field. There was nothing, just as there hadn’t been when he had found himself standing in the grass and looking around. There was nothing but more fields beyond, not even trees in the distance. But as a cloud moved over where he was looking, the empty green shifted and seemed to reveal something else in the shadows.
“I know this place,” Nara said, and he sensed fear when she turned to him.
Ellery dragged his eyes from the vision before him, trying to determine just what it was that he could see. But there was nothing there when the clouds cleared.
“That way,” she said, holding up a hand and indicating the world behind them, although she seemed reluctant to turn and take it in.
Ellery had looked out that way, and there had been nothing there. He reached out and put his hand around the thread on Nara’s wrist, then looked at the world behind her. There was a gentle slope to the ground on which they stood, and he couldn’t quite see over the field. He didn’t want to leave her, but he wasn’t sure if she would follow should he search out what might be beyond the field.
He released his hold and strode forward, working his way through the soft, tall stalks, running his fingers through them and enjoying the sweet scent that surrounded him. When he reached the top of the small hill, he looked out over the world that unfolded before him and realised he hadn’t fully appreciated his position.
He too had been here. The gravel road that cut through the fields below was just as it had been, the fields on either side of the road at a slightly lower level. A brilliant blue river cut through the various greens of the fields further across the valley. It was breathtaking.
There in the middle of the beauty was a large, square, grey building that—despite the people moving about it—appeared to have no soul at all. A manor house he had visited so many lifetimes ago he couldn’t count them. One that had changed his life and his death so completely—and yet it appeared exactly the same. As did the fields around it. Although he didn’t remember them being so green or so beautiful.
Nara’s hand slipped into his and held tight. He glanced down at her as she looked over the world before her.
“How often would you have come up here?” he asked, his voice soft in case it echoed over the world beyond. He wasn’t sure what would happen if anyone discovered they were there.
“Rarely. I was never allowed to leave the house. Father thought I might be influenced by something or someone. Or at least that was the reason I told myself.”
She had said something similar when he had first met her, standing in that dusty, worn-out library, about how she didn’t or couldn’t leave.
“The servants?” he queried.
“Either did not speak to me or avoided me.” She looked back towards the manor house, and he wondered if the lives she had lived since that first one had been any better.
“Do you think it is a different time?” he wondered aloud.
“It looks the same,” she said, watching what appeared to be a woman run along the path and around the house. Ellery thought of the expanse of gravel on the other side and the dungeons beneath, with their damp straw and cold metal bars and moist stone walls.
He took a step forward. Nara tugged at his arm and then, squeezing his hand, she followed.
“I don’t know if I want it to be the same or different. Another time, another family.”
“Do you miss yours?” he asked.
“I miss Wren. I barely remember Mother other than her illness. And despite the faces we have seen, I don’t want to see Father again.”
Ellery wondered just who would be living in the manor below. As they got closer, watching workmen in the fields, it certainly didn’t appear any different to all those lifetimes ago.