Chapter Five

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My people don’t require sleep, not in the traditional sense.

An intense chill filled the air around me. I wasn’t sure where I was or what had happened to me, but it must have been traumatic. I knew what this was. I was beginning to trance.

If you ever see an elf taking a nap, you can consider that their idea of a recreational activity. To recover, we enter a sort of inert state not unlike meditation. While our bodies rest, our minds expand, and we are capable of giving serious consideration to whatever matter is currently weighing heavily upon us. Once, when I was young, I had tranced for eight hours and considered what I should have for breakfast when I came out of it. Not every trance has to be meaningful.

But sometimes, if we weren’t careful, our trance can take on a mind of its own, forcing us to relive moments or events that hold some sort of meaning for us. Negative or positive is unimportant, it’s the weight of the thing. And I’ve been forced to live through far too much to ever consider taking the experience lightly. Unfortunately, somewhere out there in the world, something terrible must have happened to me because I could feel a very significant event coming on, hitting me with the force of a dam break. This was something that I’ve spent most of my life trying not to remember, and if something this repressed was finally breaking free, I could only assume that I was in an awful sort of way.

The thought that this might be the last thing I ever experienced seized me suddenly, the fear of it giving me even less control of the trance. There was no reigning it in now; I’d just have to ride it out and hope for the best. The process of experiencing days, weeks, or even years in the span of a few hours could be unnerving, depending on how prepared you were for it. I was not prepared. I knew exactly what I was about to experience, that I would see, hear and feel these things for the first time and yet I knew every second of every minute and I would have no control over the outcome. I was an unwilling observer of my own life.

My eyes open to see my lover watching me with something like bemused admiration. “I was starting to think you might sleep through lunch,” he teases. Our bodies face each other as we lay on the soft bedding, our feet a tangled mess of gentle familiarity. The sun shines aggressively into our clay hut, suggesting that he wasn’t entirely joking.

“Good morning yourself.” I feel my smile tighten in spite of myself. “You know that sleeping is still new to me. Besides, do you have somewhere else to be?”

I lean in to give him the briefest of kisses, the joy I feel at his acceptance and love fighting for position in the pit of my stomach with the rising disgust and embarrassment I feel at knowing where this all ends.

“I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be,” he tells me, running a finger down my arm. I believe him and welcome his touch. The rage I feel never shows. This already happened.

My eyes widen suddenly with the knowledge that I was supposed to help my mother this morning, and I have no idea how late I am. Alistair teases me, then tries to coax me back into bed. I laugh joyously, regardless of the anxiety that normally comes from my mother’s potential disappointment. I dress as quickly as possible while Alistair sits up and watches me with a look of contentment. “Fine, I surrender,” he says with a smile. “But tonight I have something of vital importance to tell you. Promise me we can speak over dinner?”

“Promise,” I tell him, hastily slipping on a boot.

“Promise-promise?” he asks.

“Yes! Promise-promise!” I nearly squeal. I lean in for another kiss before he can respond. “But I really have to go! Be a good boy, all right?”

He laughs at that. “I don’t know why I’d start now!”

I throw his shirt at him, and he allows it to land on his head, covering his face. I blow him a kiss that he cannot see, and I’m out the door faster than he knows.

* * *

“So, what was it that you had to tell me?” I ask Alistair. It is dark now, and we are sharing a meal on a stone table, the warmth of a nearby fire pit staving off the chilly night air.

“It’s not what sort of meat this is,” he responds sardonically as he pokes his meal apprehensively. “I don’t know that I want to know what this is.”

“Quit playing with your food,” I chide, taking another bite of my own. I briefly ponder if the meal is still vegetarian if the plant produces meat.

Boldly chomping into my food seems to embolden him to take a bite of his own. His face registers displeasure, but he powers with gusto. “I have to go,” he says finally.

My stomach drops at the news. Just like that, no warning. Alistair is leaving me. He sees it on my face and holds up a hand to indicate that there’s more. “This isn’t bad news,” he reassures me. “I’ve been here far longer than I was ever meant to be, and I have a job I must return to. You must have known this day would come.”

I did, not that I ever wanted to admit it. “So, what happens now?” The question comes out of me robotically.

“Well, come with me.”

“Alistair!” I exclaim, unable to help myself. “It’s not that simple! If I leave, that’s it for me. I’ll never be able to return, never again be able to see my mother! I would never—!”

His hand covers mine, and I fall silent. “I know,” he says gently. “This is not a small thing that I ask of you. But where I am from, it is customary that birds leave the nest. That is to say, you’ve grown beyond this place. This is it, Chalsarda. This is when you fly. Together, we can have our adventures, seek our fortunes. See the unseen!”

“But my mother—”

“Speak with her,” he suggests. “And take the time you need to decide. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I didn’t think you could do. I know this is right for us. We are in love, and a whole world is waiting for us out there. In the morning I will be gone, and I lack the ability to take you with me besides. But there is another who can help you. If you choose to stay, I will miss you dearly and remember you always. But if you come with, that is, if you come to me... Well, right, you’ve never been outside of the town, have you? Hold on.”

Alistair is frantic as he runs inside, returning with charcoal and parchment. “This is the way,” he begins as he draws a map, first of our town, then our roads and surrounding areas. “So, the road to the south of town winds a little bit down, about a mile or so away is a creek.”

I tease him in spite of myself. “Yes, I know all this, we sell maps. Have you not noticed the traders?”

Alistair looks flushed with embarrassment at that. “Right. Yes, of course. Well then, this will be your special one of a kind map in that case, with something you might not have seen.”

He goes on to explain that past the river there is a fork in the road. To the east lies plains and farmland, but I am to head to the west. About half a day’s travel I will spot an enormous rock that looks like a crow. I ask him what a crow is. He waves it off and tells me that from there I must leave the path and venture into the forest. He will mark a path for me by way of string, but to be careful as the area is home to bears. I ask him what bears are. He reminds me of my rug, and I nod. We do not call them bears, but I don’t press the issue. He is eager to finish his story. In a clearing some ways in, I will find a door. The door shall be held for me on the other side, a week’s time and no longer. I do not understand what he means by the other side, but before I can ask further questions his fingers weave through my hair as his hands draw me into him and he kisses me. I am unable to correctly process the competing forces of revulsion and the sense that time itself has stopped.

“If this is to be our last night together,” he says, brushing away a lock of hair resting against my jaw as he searches for something in my eyes, “then may we do everything necessary to remember each other forever.”

It is lovely and romantic, and it’s all wrong.

* * *

The days following are hard and pass by painfully; I’m watching them as they happened, playing out in my mind’s eye now as minutes. But I remember the void left in his absence. I had become accustomed to his presence, and just like that, he was gone. It is the fourth day when my mother approaches me. She knows even before I tell her.

I’m not ready.

This is the clearest vision of her yet, my attention focused solely on this memory and I’m not... I couldn’t have prepared for... She is just so—

I miss my mother.

As she comes into focus, I take in everything I can the way one lost in the desert takes in an oasis. Her hair is the color of snow, not from age but from birth. Her pale, violet-colored eyes like sun-bleached amethyst, still vibrant but gentler somehow and they seem to brighten as they see me. Her eyes are one of the traits I did not inherit from my mother, those eyes lacking any white or pupil, just one solid and captivating color. My father, a different sort of elf, had eyes much closer to those of the humans, and I ended up with those. Her skin was also not quite like mine, reminding me of the palest of periwinkles but shone with the smoothness of stone polished by the patience only time itself can offer. In contrast to the paleness in other parts of her, her smile shines brighter than any sunrise as the human child eagerly accepts the poultices and salves my mother hands him, no doubt as part of a delivery. There should be nothing extraordinary about this memory, it is routine even, but I cherish it all the same.

It has been so long since I’ve had a memory of her this vivid and I want nothing more than for this moment to stretch out into eternity. That’s not how this works, however. I am merely a passenger in my story, unable to stop myself or any of this. I will always leave, and even now as I try to block out my own voice, I hear it. I address my mother by her name, Aeleth, in some childish attempt to show that I am grown and capable of making this decision. It is time for me to say goodbye to the friendly roads of Verisia. There is more to be seen than can ever be seen, and I can’t stay here. She has taught me so much, how to mix elixirs to heal the infirm with that which has been given to us by the earth. How to defend the defenseless, and more importantly, why it is always best to help others in need. But most of all, she has taught me how to be kind, and the world can always use more kindness.

I don’t tell her my other reasons. I want to slay great beasts and revel in the glory as the names of Chalsarda and Alistair are sung about in taverns. That I want to have a grand love affair that will make poets blush and great lovers frustrated at their own envy. I want to get so deep into trouble with my beloved that the only light either of us will be able to see will be in each other’s eyes as we laugh at the joke that only the two of us are in on. That when we get away, as we always will, our story will just be that much more impressive because of the odds stacked up against us.

I am a fool.

She doesn’t try to stop me, of course. If anything, she says she always knew this day would come and wishes me well. Her path is not my path, but she will never forget me, and I promise to always remember her and to take what she taught me into the world beyond our walls. There’s no further ceremony, no going away feast or speech in the town square. I’m up and gone as the sun rises the next morning without any tearful goodbyes because deep down I had wanted to leave so badly that from the moment I stepped out onto the road I had never stopped to consider where it was that I was going. I’m just filled with a sense of adventure, the nervous expectation that I’m coming for my love.

Alistair left adequate instructions, though he underestimated the pace with which I would travel, and I am over the river and through the woods well before the sun had its chance to reach the height of midday. I had not, however, expected there to be a literal door in the middle of a clearing, regardless of what Alistair had told me. It was a door, yes, nothing special about the wood, painted white. Brass handle on either side, but it was not attached to anything. No hinges, nothing on either side of it. I could simultaneously touch both sides of the door, and I did. I was meant to open it, surely, but what could that possibly accomplish? Did it matter what side I tried to open? If I pulled it open or pushed? And that’s when a that’s when a thought so obvious occurred to me that I laughed at the stupidity of it.

I knocked.

There was a beat, nothing but the sounds of the woods, and then a voice from thin air invited me to come in. Well, I had come this far, so why not? I opened the door and stepped through, and found myself in another world. Where there had just been daylight and serene forest, it was now twilight and vast desert. At the time, I didn’t even know what desert was, but that was it. Nothing more for another moment, then soft tones played across a gentle wind, and behind me a voice. I turned and recognized what he was in an instant, though not who. Not elf or human or anything else. Something greater. He regarded me with a smile, knew my name. I must be the one Alistair mentioned. I ask him his name, but he assures me it doesn’t matter. Even then, I know that is false, but not a lie. He apologies for the delay, then makes a wry comment that he hopes nothing else has come through. Enough of that, however, he says, we have business to discuss.

We are in something best described as the middle. The halfway point between my world and his. I can turn back now, and that will be the end of it. Alistair will be lost to me. Or I can accept a trade. An item of fantastic power that can take me to Alistair and back again. The description and the origin sound beyond belief, but I know the words ring true. The deal then is this. Alistair helps him on occasion, but the lives of humans are fickle. The item is mine forever, never to be withdrawn and I may use it to visit his world. However, at such time as our relationship ends, likely after what humans would consider a long and healthy lifetime; I am to return to him to work in his service for such a time that he deems appropriate to the value of the gift, doing the tasks he feels that I am best suited for.

I am screaming now. I know better, I know that I cannot change what has happened, but I do not care. I know how this will end, and I am fighting it with everything in me, because just once I want to view another account of this. An account where I ask questions, an account where I am not taken in by the showy bauble, an account where I don’t blindly believe an obvious serpent because he is promising to give me access to a life that I think I want and know now that I will never have. I have no form here, no legs with which to kick or arms with which to slam fists on the inside of my own skull; just thought and a voice that only I can hear. Not even a throat to rend raw with my screams.

So it’s what I do. I beg and plead and shout every curse and offer every bargain as I watch myself accept the deal. As I look into those ethereal blue eyes, never questioning why they are so hungry. I reach my hand out to his, never questioning why it has been put towards mine so eagerly. I do this until the screaming isn’t just my own, nor is the pleading, and I’m confused.

And then I’m awake and aware of where I am. Ann, my dear, dying friend who should be very far away from me, is pleading with me to wake up. And more importantly, pleading with universe that I am not dead.

***