Traversing the Plains of Caludros seemed never-ending, the landscape unchanging, and both their moods growing increasingly introspective. As evening fell, Elthwen and Gamba found themselves surrounded by the towering trees of The Virneryth, the deepest, darkest wood in all of Lothria. An abundance of trees—ash, oak, birch, and bracklethorne, enormous in height and girth—grew more imposing the farther they ventured into the Old Forest’s depths. The air grew cooler as well, with long, twisting shadows cast by the setting sun. Elthwen shuddered with uncertainty.
“How far is it to the other side?” She led Banarel by his bridle, as they trod the uneven landscape, wary of dips and rises in their path.
Using his staff to aid his passage, Gamba hobbled to the top of a slope. He glanced right and left, appearing to search for something. He rubbed his head, his face pale, eyes puffy as he blinked at her. “Did you speak?”
She raised her voice over the evening sounds of birds, bats, insects, and wind whistling in the treetops. “How long before we are out of this forest?”
“Two days…possibly three. The wood is vast.” He labored to breathe, his face pale, eyes puffy.
“You look exhausted.” Guiding Banarel by his lead, she scrambled to reach the knoll on which he stood and caught his arm, wrapping hers around it. “Shouldn’t we rest a while?”
“Bah!” He shook her off and continued down the hill into a wide clearing. He stopped and turned, surveying the surroundings. “This looks familiar. Perhaps it is here.”
“What is here?” She led Banarel down the incline, his tail swishing.
“I seem to recall this particular arrangement.” He paused, a hand to his chin. “There were huts in a clearing like this. But it’s been so long….” Gamba inhaled deeply of the damp forest scent, of moss and fern and leaf soil. “Ahhh! I’d forgotten how this place invigorates.” He turned again. “There…over there. It’s gone wild with undergrowth, but I’m certain it was there.” He limped off, apparently following his nose. She followed closely.
“What are you looking for?”
He paid her no mind, spiking the next incline with his staff as he pulled himself to the summit. Holding himself upright with effort, he inhaled deeply, a sense of serenity settling over his drooping form. “See, Ellath?” He extended a hand over the scene below. “The site of my ethenhurn, where I received Glaer so many years ago. It was here my brinnad bestowed on me the name I now bear…Eryth Rhanthir…‘Forest Wanderer.’” The ghost of a smile twitching over his lips, he closed his eyes. “It was here I joined with your grandmother….” For a short while, he reveled in his memories. “Ahhh…Ailfan! So beautiful and sweet…and young. Both of us…. A lifetime ago.”
Hard as it was to imagine Gamba young and vigorous, not to mention with a woman—even it were her own grandmother—Elthwen shook off the notion. Something in the vista caught her attention in a way she could not have envisioned.
A circle of standing stones marked the center of the clearing, now overgrown with coarse, tall grass and bracken, their once smooth white surfaces now pitted and covered with rings of lichen. Surrounding the clearing, mighty oaks, hundreds—maybe even thousands—of years old stood sentinel, their majestic height casting the scene in almost total darkness. Were it not for the early spring scarcity of leaves, smatterings of daylight would have been blocked out completely. Instead, the ebbing glow sparkled in luminous pinpoints, changing and wavering with the breeze.
For centuries her people had come to this sacred place for their ceremonies and rituals, to mark important life events. They received corraths and ghalthric names. They danced and sang. They begat future generations to carry on their traditions and beliefs. All of that now seemed in danger of being swallowed up by events of the past…and the events that had drawn her and Gamba from home and into this ancient grove.
“And there….” He indicated with his staff, the array of huts bunched along the circle’s perimeter. They too had fallen victim of the years. Sprigs of oak and bracklethorne sprouted through caved-in roofs of bark and willow branches. Thick ivy vines and clusters of parasitic viscum twined through the crumbling walls of the structures. “We’ll stay here for the night. There’s a small stream close by….” He gestured past the opposite side of the circle from where the sound of rushing water could be heard. “Behind those shelters.”
At the far edge of the clearing, they set out their blankets and built a small fire. Gamba “planted” his staff in the soft forest ground in the center of their camp. Glaer glowed softly over their circle, as if she were smiling, setting up her protective boundary. After Elthwen led Banarel to the stream and urged him to drink his fill, she hobbled him close by for the night amid a patch of new green shrubs and sprouts, and removed his saddle. When she rejoined Gamba by the fire, he was simmering mushrooms in an improvised bark pot for their supper. Crouching on his haunches, he winked as she settled beside him and hugged herself against the falling chill.
“I believe we shall both sleep well tonight, eh, Ellath?”
Too many worries ran rampant in her mind; too many fears told her this night would not be unlike any of the others thus far. “You seem worn out, Gamba.”
He clapped a hand over one of hers. “It’s been quite a day.”
“Do you think that little Skaddock child is with his people?”
“It is not their way to abandon their own.”
* * *
They each took a turn washing in the stream, then ate with little said, Gamba barely able to keep his head up. As they settled down for sleep, the moon, a waning gibbous, had risen, bright over the treetops. Not long afterwards, her grandfather began to snore.
It was then the flickering lights around the circle’s periphery caught her eye.
She sat up on her blanket and clasped her knees to her chest. The numbers grew steadily, lighting up the shadows and fluttering above the thickets of tall grass and brush. “Look, Gamba…sparkle flies.”
Her grandfather mumbled and cast a heavy-lidded glance in the direction she indicated with her gaze. “Go to sleep.” He yawned and rolled over.
Confusion darkened her face. “Isn’t it too early in the season for sparkle flies?”
Propped on one elbow, he contemplated the ever-growing swarm of tiny blinking lights swirling up and around her. He rubbed his eyes and stared again. “Those are not sparkle flies, Ellath.” In the next instant he was on his feet, tossing his mantle over his shoulders.
She followed his lead. “Then what—?”
The spiraling mass circled her head. It tousled her hair and tickled her face, their touch light as down and pleasantly warm on her cheeks.
“Those are the Enjari.” He flashed a knowing smile, as the stream of tiny twinkling creatures increased in numbers. “And they appear to want you.”
She drew her cloak more tightly around herself and shivered. “Me? What for?”
“They want you to go with them.” He motioned to the dark wood beyond their circle.
“What could they want of me?” In spite of herself, she giggled and raised her shoulders in response to the Enjari’s benign assault.
“You’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure. Now hurry along.” He ushered her away with a pushing motion. “You’ll be safe with them, but you mustn’t keep them waiting.”
* * *
Since her earliest days, she had heard tales of the Enjari…as had every Lothrian child. Fables mostly, of turbulent times when the land was in need of hope and heroes. Gamba had told of seeing them once or twice as a young man at rituals, like his ethenhurn and other celebrations, and how they appeared suddenly, flashing about like the sparkle flies they resembled. In her younger years, her mother had had an encounter, the memory of which always brought a smile to her lovely eyes and mouth as she related the tale. As greatly as Elthwen enjoyed being entertained by these accounts, she always wondered how much of the telling could be attributed to embellishment and how much was real. After all, no one had seen them in her lifetime…none that she knew.
She followed warily, glancing back at Gamba, who watched after her in the glow of firelight and bathed in Glaer’s protective aura. Accompanied by a sound she could describe only as delicate chimes…or ringing laughter…the whorl of flickering light twined about her, ushering her farther into the wood. A thrill curled up inside as the Enjari rippled against her skin, soft as butterfly wings, their numbers increasing twofold, then threefold, until they were nearly a solid body, moving and changing shape. Clouds passed across the face of the moon, and all her uneasiness vanished with their cheerful glinting light and the tenderness of their touch. They cavorted around her face, daring her to catch them in her cupped hands. She laughed at their antics. The heavy uncertainty that weighed on her for every waking minute since leaving Morolath dissolved into the night.
Even as she trod the soft forest path, she felt herself grow feather-light, swept along by the whirling mass. After a while, she could not be sure if she moved under her own power or if she were carried along on their spiraling flight.
“Are you the one?” They spoke in one voice, pleasant and clear as tiny bells. It might have been a sound from deep inside her. Or it might have come whispering from the trees. “The one who calls thyself Elthric?”
Panic rippled through her. She didn’t know how to respond.
“Are you the one? The one on the run?”
“Yes, but….” She collected her racing thoughts. “I call myself Elthric, but… but that is not my name. I am—”
“Hail to thee, One-Who-Calls-Thyself-Elthric! We’ve been waiting for you.” Their voices jingled with merriment. “Your arrival’s past due.”
“But I am not—”
“No, no, no! You mustn’t say.” They chimed with laughter and tickled her face with fluttering wings. “Or the ones that seek you will take you away.”
She floated; she was sure of it. The ground was no longer solid beneath her feet. The Enjari swirled and coiled around her, supporting her on the strength of their ever-growing numbers.
“We bring a rare gift. So you’ll not go adrift.”
A small multi-faceted crystal emerged from their radiant center, sparkling with light of its own. Attached to a fine golden chain, it settled around her neck.
“For a start, wear it close to your heart.”
“It’s a corrath!” Unlike Glaer, this one was smaller than her grandfather’s crystal and set in a gleaming gold bezel, its light clear and steady.
“Her name is Thenyd.” Tittering and frolicking about her, they ruffled her hair, mingling with the breeze. “Thenyd means truth. Trust her, forsooth.”
She fingered the jewel, radiating warmth as she tucked it into the neck of her tunic. How ironic, she mused, a crystal bearing the name “Truth,” when everything about her—her name and identity—was a deception.
“Thenyd will be your strength,” they said, as if they were privy to her thoughts. “As long as you’re true to who you are, Thenyd will be with you evermore.”
“Why do you believe me worthy of this? What must I do with it?”
They began to dissipate into the darkness. “Tell no one. Reveal your gift to no one.”
“May I tell my grand—?”
“Not even the ghalthrach! Or we’ll take it back.” They sputtered into giddy laughter.
“Then how will I—?”
“When the time doth permit, you’ll know how to use it.”