To study benere is to study to live.
-Genesifin
Colette had not delayed speaking to Gere. The disappointed clansman had accepted her decision to maintain romantic distance, and although peace filled her from the choice, she still stung with sorrow at the pain she had witnessed in his eyes. He now avoided her, and it grieved her that this resolution would likely mean the loss of a dear friend. There was little she could do but respect his imposed space.
Colette yearned for things to change. She found comfort in her companionship with Harta, but the woman was routinely absent or busy with the business of the bethaida. Her shifts in the garden were regular, but even there she stirred with restlessness. Her heart was parched for more…but what?
And her dreams.
When night came, she dreamt of Brenol. Every night. She saw his dark jade eyes, his coppery hair, his wild and disheveled appearance. Her dreams followed him as he wandered forests and fields with filthy face and hollowed features. He roamed her mind with dispassionate solitude, and when she awakened, her heart ached all the more, for she felt not only the loss of him, but a strange sorrow for the mysterious and dwindling figure.
I will never let him go if I continue like this. I’m haunted by things I cannot change…
Colette glanced around the room. Mari had arranged her little carved people neatly in her play corner. Most of the figures formed a ring, but in the center was a lone piece. It was human, but whether Massadan or Tindellan, she could not guess. Colette crouched down to examine the little toys and lit a single finger on the figure in the center. A sudden ire bubbled up within her, and she toppled all the pieces together in a crowded mess.
Suddenly, she blinked and stood decisively. She stepped out in the hall and, with the flick of a wrist and the peal of her bell, stood ready.
A small child of about twelve orbits, lanky and lithe, arrived with bemused expression. “Yes, my queen?” She opened her palm out in a Tindellan gesture of respect. Colette had been told it was indicative of the willingness to serve or give.
Colette smiled easily at the little urchin and slid her own slender hand into the outstretched palm. “Will you show me what you do?”
The girl’s blonde curls bobbed slightly as her chin jutted back in suspicion. Her pale blue eyes were the shade of faded cornflower. “What do you mean?”
Colette dropped down to a squat. She was now a head too low, but it seemed to put the girl at greater ease. “I don’t have anything to do. Will you please show me how the berida works? What the servers do? I’m interested.”
A confusion clouded the light blue eyes, but the pale face nodded. As she led Colette, her gaunt features remained fixed and serious. She did not try to extricate her hand, but the moment Colette loosened her grip, the girl slid from its hold.
“What’s your name?” Colette asked quietly.
The child glanced sideways. “Hazel.”
“How long have you worked as a server?”
Hazel wrinkled her nose in thought. It made her look even younger. “Several seasons. Almost a whole orbit.”
“Do you like it?”
The question received an even longer stare and no vocal response.
Colette halted and tugged at the child’s sleeve gently, coaxing her to pause in the empty corridor. The dim light from the lantern tinged their faces with a golden glow.
“My queen—” she began.
“Hazel,” she interrupted mildly. “I’m not trying to hurt you or get anything from you. Truly.” Her emerald eyes reached out to the child, pleading. “I just want to find a place here. I want to know how your people live and survive and all that happens. I want to be a part of this place, to fit in.”
A flurry of emotions darkened the thin face, but eventually Hazel nodded. The girl’s shoulders loosened, and a sly smile slipped onto her Tindellan features. “I don’t know if you’ll fit in here, though. The berida is mostly children.”
“Scoffed from within, scorned from without?”
The urchin ran the words through her mind like beads through hands. Eventually she nodded. “I guess so.”
Colette smiled. “I’m already both of those things. I think I will enjoy your company and learn something new as well…unless you’d have too much difficulty with it?”
“I would be honored, my queen.”
She began to step ahead to lead, but Colette did not move. Instead, the lunitata dipped down to a near squat and waited for the girl to return. “Would it be ok if when we are alone you just called me Colette?”
Hazel’s expression brightened. She nodded, squeezed Colette’s hand with a sudden camaraderie, and led the woman to the berida.
~
Brenol placed the tin cup carefully into his sack and cocked his head in consideration. He inhaled the chilly air deeply and nodded to himself. A storm was approaching. His nostrils practically quivered in the certainty of this fact.
He collected the remainder of his meager possessions and tugged a patched cap over his head, his mess of red hair tumbling out the sides in unruly waves. Brenol cropped it himself occasionally, with quick and indifferent swipes of the knife, merely to keep the shaggy locks from blinding his vision. His beard had received even less attention; he had sawn at its end once when it had begun to collect crumbs. He cared little for anything but surviving the present day.
The fire had dwindled, and he—rather unnecessarily—booted the remaining embers with soil and snow. He turned to the surrounding woods with a set jaw and moved south. Hunger was a regular sensation, but recently it had gnawed at him with a more exacting bite. He needed to find food or else make his way to a town to barter, and the warning signs in the air pressed on him.
Brenol wound through the woods, aware of the crunch of his boots upon the snow, the sighing breeze through the bare limbed trees, and the silence that otherwise pervaded deep winter. There were no insects, no song birds, no skittering squirrels jumping through vegetation. He was accustomed to this silence. Now it was the unceasing chatter and din of towns that made him ill at ease. He offered a prayer, hoping he would be able to scavenge food on his own and continued the trek.
By afternoon, the faint rumble of the Barn awakened his ears. He had not passed this far south in seasons, and he peered around the terrain with keen eyes. The river was ahead, but he was unsure of the distance as the trees muffled the current’s mighty thunder. After ten minutes of sliding through the forest, she came into sight. He approached the river with a wary curiosity and allowed the roar to fill his ears and vibrate through his chest. Never before had he seen her at this point in her course, and his eyes pored over every detail and curve. She was lovely, powerful, vigorous. He peered around the bracken and stone that interrupted his vision and spied what he had been seeking: a bridge. Half a matrole down, a rise of black wood touched the earth. Fortuitously, it appeared to be unmanned. Brenol dipped his head beneath bough and branch and crept beside towering rock. He halted abruptly.
An old sensation gripped him, and he shrank at the possibility of this grave error.
He dropped into a crouch and fearfully skimmed the snowy soil with gloved hand. His entire body remained rigid and taut, like a statue suspended in mid-action. Finally, he sighed, relief coursing through his chilled veins.
I’m still in the lugazzi.
He raised himself to a stand and peered ahead to the bridge.
But won’t be soon…
Brenol had tenaciously circumvented the terrisdans, living in the mountainous lugazzi outside of Brovingbune, Selenia, and Conch. His grief and guilt had been enough to chew through without adding more. He harbored no desire to walk the lands and hear their dying whispers, and he had utterly refused to go near the eerily empty soil of Selet. It had been close to his undoing when he had first experienced it. He could barely recall his time of imprisonment without quivering.
But ahead, he faced his resolution anew.
“Do you go or stay, you fool?” Brenol whispered to himself. “Go or stay?”
The bridge taunted him with its lovely curve. It lay less than twenty strides away, but he knew with conviction that one more step, perhaps two, would bring him into the territory of Conch. His skin tingled with the awareness, but he remained ignorant of what lay there.
Is Conch dying? Does it know what I did?
It was like coming upon a creature in the dead of night; one could not know its temperament, nor if it was roused and hungry, but one could feel its hot breath and the mystery of its presence.
“Go or stay?” he mumbled.
His stomach grumbled as if to make its say, and his lip curled in displeasure. The possibilities before him were innumerable, and he disliked most of them.
Conch might have a longer stretch of neutrality, he thought with a weak hope. I might not even feel the eye in that short tract.
Another voice, a hard voice, whispered in his mind, Or maybe it’s nearly dead. Because of you and your sword. Because you couldn’t take care of Chaul the first time.
Colette is gone because you failed.
Brenol swallowed. He had lived with these wrenching thoughts for ages, and guilt forever wrung his insides with knots. He rubbed his tired features with the motion of a far older man.
“I won’t cross,” Brenol said softly, but his jade eyes tarried on the black rise of wood. He could not deny it; he was exhausted, his bones ached in the wintry wind, and he longed for something hot to fill his belly. He lacked the energy to battle his own way across the Barn, and turning back did not seem a viable option.
Without conscious decision, both legs lit forward as though they knew the right course. Halfway to the bridge, Brenol froze again. His eyes darted around, and his shoulders stiffened. He longed to about-face and flee but found his muscles incapable of movement.
A faint whisper brushed through the snowy path. Brenol cringed, afraid to listen.
The sound sighed around him again.
And again.
Finally, he heard it and understood.
“You are Brenol,” it said. “I have been waiting.”
Words choked in the man’s throat, but somewhere in the throttling fear a new hope arose: perhaps Conch would take his life, and he could at last be rid of his crippling guilt. Brenol raised his shaggy head and glanced around with a new expectancy.
“I am Bren. Take your vengeance.” The freedom he suddenly felt was delicious, even if he stood clenched and awaiting the land’s blow. It would be over so soon, and he could finally meet justice.
“Enough. I am passing. But you must know,” Conch whispered.
Brenol arched his neck, listening. It had been so long since he had heard the land. He felt petty at the rush of joy that burst within him as the words materialized. There were few things he loved as he did this unusual connection. He shook his head to clear it of such foolishness.
“What must I know?” he asked, surprised to find his voice tender.
Brenol lit down to his haunches, removed his gloves, and touched the earth as he had so many times in the past. The familiarity of the sensation perilously reminded him of another life.
The snow and soil appeared so light against his blackened palms as he allowed the freezing handful to crumble and fall from them. A peace, as gentle as morning’s light, kissed him, and he found his eyes welling. “You can tell me.”
“Veronia did it for her. For her.”
Brenol’s face furrowed, for her could only be one person, and Colette’s name was like a knife through his insides—he refused to speak it aloud. “For…for her?”
“Yes. She will save the peoples. The Lady of Purpose.”
“Lady of Purpose?”
“Yes. The lady of the blue.”
Brenol sighed in comprehension; Conch did not speak of Colette. This had nothing to do with his soumme. He knew where she lay. He, with Arman’s help, had dug up, hauled, and set her bones anew in the soil at his home in Veronia. He had chiseled her name in a stone to mark the cherished site. All likely now rested under a blanket of snow.
“—you.”
“What?” Brenol asked, realizing the sentences were fumbling from his unpracticed ears.
“Called you.”
He placed his fingers to his temples. “I don’t understand.” The initial high from the connection was wearing away to the sensation of sluggish deduction. The moons and seasons of imposed silence had turned all conversation awkward and forced. He longed to flee back to the lugazzi and the emptiness that surrounded him there. “What do you want from me? Who called me?”
“Veronia called you long ago. For her. You were needed for all.”
He began to consider a new possibility: the land must surely have lost its power to reason. Its words made little sense. “What do you want?” he asked again cautiously.
“Tell her. The lands all knew they would die…”
Brenol’s jaw clenched.
“Fate was approaching. But we drank willingly. We drank the poison of Jerem. To protect you, to protect all people, to protect her.”
“Drank the poison? Protect us?” His mind reeled. “I thought it didn’t affect creatures…”
“Not after Garnoble and Veronia absorbed the bulk. They chose to—” The wind rushed through, and Brenol’s ears flooded with the biting blast.
“What?” he asked when it had calmed. “They chose death?”
“They drank deeply. And found great bounty.”
“Bounty?” The word barely sounded as it reluctantly passed his lips.
“To save the world—what could be of greater bounty?”
Brenol swallowed. He closed his eyes for a moment in the hopes of gathering his thoughts. This tale did not make sense. “Conch…what about the antidote? Didn’t it mend the lands?”
“In part. It lengthened our time. It healed much. But we were already passi—”
Again, the winds swept across the land.
“The icing—it is the sign of our ending. A symptom of our faltering. It has been coming for seasons, orbits.”
“So all the terrisdans are dying now?”
“They are dead. I am the last.”
Brenol’s insides twisted. “The last?”
“We knew it would come. The day? No. But the fate? Yes. The Three told us at our birth.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You do not have to,” the terrisdan sighed. “Just tell her. Tell the Lady that all was done so she might save.”
“I don’t know who you are talking about.”
“You will.”
Brenol’s face pinched, but suddenly opened in a desperate hope. “Heart Render didn’t do this then?” he asked. He waited with suspended breath, yet no whisper or sigh swept through the wood.
Brenol concentrated again and spoke, “Conch. I still don’t kn—,” but then stuttered to a stop. He glanced around and trembled as he sensed Conch’s eye faltering. The incomprehensible conversation, his emaciated gut, the wintry cold, his confused shame—they all smothered him with crushing power. He jerked himself to a stand, pressed his hands to his ears, and fled back in the direction of the lugazzi.
In his frenzy, Brenol failed to guard his steps, and he tripped and found himself diving face first into bracken and rock. It took a moment for the sensation to blossom, but then his head burst alive in pain, and he smelled the sharp scent of blood and felt it trickling down from his crown. He blinked dizzily.
He attempted to sit up as he cradled his throbbing head, but it was not the injury that kept his heart thundering; he knew he still lay in Conch. Despite his disorientation, he was determined to do what he must to get back to the lugazzi.
He did not have the chance.
“I am the last,” Conch whispered weakly in the breeze. “The last terrisdan.”
Brenol wondered how he had not noticed the frailty in the voice earlier. The blinding fear and shame which had previously been throttling him suddenly drained away, and compassion ushered into its place. He brushed the soil beneath him, recalling the terror that often accompanied approaching death.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m here with you.”
“You will tell her?”
“I will tell her,” he said, finding tears washing down his cold cheeks. “Whoever she is, I’ll find her for you.”
The land sighed, and its eye fell rigid and inert.
“Old friend,” Brenol whispered hoarsely, feeling the lack of Conch’s presence in every bone. “Farewell.”
He choked at his next attempts at words, dipped his shaggy head, and wept without inhibition.
The terrisdans were no more.
~
Over several moons, Colette observed and attended the berida network in which servers moved and worked in the bethaida. The habitations were divided into various sections, and the children rotated through them, with the exceptionally skilled servers caring for the Tindellan elite. The entire system was ordered and precise. Training, payment, accounting. Everything was committed to memory and then tallied before the roster at the close of shift, and the children flew about as if well-oiled cogs in a time piece. The berida was not overly complex, and she found she grasped the workings of it all after two septspan.
It took much longer to memorize the secrets crannies of the bethaida, but that was what was truly fascinating. The servers knew the hallways and twists of corridors better than any, and they scurried about with purpose. Tunnels that had been tapestried off and forgotten were utilized by the swift little legs, and abandoned rooms became places of covert games and laughter whenever free time could be snatched.
Not all the children were eager for Colette to know their ways. They regarded her suspiciously with their thin, pale faces—their looks eerie reflections of those she had seen on the faces of their elders. Colette did not force anything but continued to learn and befriend those who would accept her.
And many proved willing. Her heart discovered solace in the strange companionship she had found. It made the icy strangeness of the adults seem a silly game, for she was acquiring the love of their children. They were often drawn to the “dark one” out of curiosity, but Colette’s genuine kindness and interest helped win their hearts.
Mari did the rest.
One afternoon, Colette brought Mari with her to the fifth sector. The toddler sat quietly on her hip as she slipped through the corridors and slowly slid down dark passages. Mari regarded it all with a somber interest.
Colette paused and closed her eyes. She sifted through her memory to place the exact location where Hazel had ducked to reveal a private tunnel. She followed the image behind tapestry and through darkness.
Colette emerged and entered the small space. It was no larger than a simple bedroom for an average Tindel, with smooth clay floors and two sconces. One was utilized and its lantern gave off a dull glow. In the center of the room sat a handful of youth, circled and playing opit: a game involving dice, a small ball, and a whittled fish. Their startled eyes darted up with alarm for a moment, but then Hazel smiled widely and raced to greet the two. One haughty boy opened his mouth to object, but his words died in his throat at the sight of the child.
Mari wiggled out of her mother’s arms and laughingly ran to the center of the circle. She took each hand in turn and kissed it with utter innocence before sitting down upon whatever was left of their game. She smiled and gazed at them with her sparkling green eyes.
There were many hushed whispers. “The green one.” “The gift.” “Her hair!”
Their expressions were full of awe, but also joy, as the toddler moved about them with ease and simplicity. She was not a creature of guile, just love and laughter.
Mari is the key to this people, Colette thought, smiling. She saves them, but with unassuming gentleness. She found tears welling in her eyes. Her heart flooded with gratitude: her daughter, this place, this chance, this moment, her cartess.
I will live fully. I will, she promised.
Her nights might remain in the ghost world forever, but her days would be full of life.
~
Arman scrutinized the hovel’s exterior. He clicked the link of beads within his pocket in ordered code—what is he thinking living out here?—and approached with soft footfalls.
The home—if it could be termed as much—was little more than a heap of mismatched planks nailed together. Apparently no eye had been given toward efficiency, and cracks as wide as the width of his thumb remained, allowing the wintry blasts of the wilderness to slice through without mercy. The door was a slab of canvas, thick enough to not bend with the wind but falling several digits too high from the earth.
He is a fool, Arman thought, but then he cocked his head, and his mouth spread into a wry, pitying smile. No, this was deliberate. He chose this.
“Ordah?” he called.
A sputtering cough was the only reply. Arman swiftly pressed past the door flap and entered the miniscule space.
It was no more than three strides across and nearly bare. In one corner, a fireplace had been mortared together with smooth, white stones. It had been crafted with greater care than the surrounding edifice, yet it remained cold and without the song of crackling heat. An emaciated figure lay curled before the empty hearth on a mess of straw. His withered body, shivering beneath a thin blanket, racked with coughing.
Arman bent to the shrunken man and placed a hand upon his forehead. It was cool to the touch. “You old fool,” he said softly.
Ordah merely gazed back wearily.
The juile rose and exited to search for sticks and kindling and reentered to build up a warm blaze. He found a pot, collected some water, and set it to boil. He ducked out again, toting a bowl, and returned with it brimming with a clumpy assortment of straw and mud. He set this aside momentarily and prepared tea, eventually assisting Ordah to a seated position and handing him a mug.
“You punish yourself far worse than Massada ever would have,” Arman said matter-of-factly. He collected the bowl of mud and began to scoop slops of the mixture into the slits and holes of the shack with his fingertips.
“What do you know of my motives?” Ordah snapped. His voice was cracked and weak.
Arman paused to turn and peer at the shriveled prophet. The man’s cheeks were ashy and gaunt, and the steely eyes were sunken in and—save the current sweep of anger—fireless.
“Nothing,” Arman replied simply. “Nothing at all.”
Like a candle thrown into a dark lake, the spark of ire in Ordah died without a sputter. “Thank you for coming,” he said hoarsely.
Arman nodded and returned to his labors.
“Tell me of the Tindel,” Ordah said quietly.
“They are helping. They have been burrowing under the terrisdans. Their skills are extraordinary. What would take any Massadan orbits to carve out underground, they manage in a mere moon. They have not been idle out in the peri. They know much.”
“And Colette?”
The juile set down the bucket and wiped his hand on his robe. It was a strange sight to see the streak of soil painting his otherwise immaculate robes. He squatted before the wasted figure. Ordah’s lips parted.
“Ordah, have you not seen any of this?” Arman asked genuinely.
The man sighed and turned his eyes to the ground. “My sight died with the maralane.”
Arman did not flinch; he was unsurprised. “But you came out here long before they passed. You had power before you chose to wander into the wild and make your own grave.”
Ordah sighed again. His mouth turned sideways in a scowl. “You’re worse than a prophet, Arman.”
For a moment, the edges of the juile’s mouth flickered as though they might spread in mirth, but instead, concern overtook his features. Silence filled the tiny space, and Arman’s eyes remained fixed upon the seated man.
“I never did anything about Jerem,” Ordah finally whispered. His thin chest labored in and out with his feeble breaths. “I knew what he had done to our parents as a child…but I didn’t do anything.”
Arman waited patiently. He refilled the man’s cup and allowed him to continue in his own time.
“I hated him, even as a boy. We were brothers, but that meant nothing to either of us. He was cruel, and so I’d fight him with the only means I had: my tongue.” Ordah hacked violently but continued once he had found his breath. “It was rumored I’d gotten the family intuit, so I used to taunt him. I told him he would become Vicog, the villain, and steal souls. I even hinted that I knew how he would die.” Ordah met the juile’s eyes.
“What did you say?” Arman asked.
“He would die by a nurest.”
Arman’s face opened in understanding. “Your sight was at work even before you knew.”
“Yes.”
Arman shook his head sadly. “You think you began his path of evil then?”
Ordah dipped his chin once in assent.
“And later?” Arman asked.
Ordah shook his head slowly. “No. Massada is wrong. I didn’t hide my intuit from seeing his horror. But isn’t my previous fault greater?”
Arman placed his hand gently upon the prophet’s forearm. “If you could not harness the power to see Jerem when he had Colette and the other nuresti, how could you control it as a child to know what folly you spoke?”
Ordah did not respond.
The juile shook his head. “No. I think that in this you are innocent. You were a rash child who needed discipline, but the tornado of evil that Jerem brought can never be said to be your fault. He made his own choices.”
“And my parents?” he asked gruffly.
Arman sighed. “Must mistakes always imply guilt? You were a child. You were scared and did not speak, but who can say that any would have even believed you? You were a child,” he repeated.
Arman paused, continuing only after the prophet remained silent. “Ordah, I do not doubt the Hand’s purpose. There was a reason why Tofinaol granted your intuit as a child and withheld it later. I do not understand, but the Three do not move blindly. I think you can rest in the assurance that you are not responsible for the demise of the world. Even Chaul could not accomplish as much when flagrantly trying.”
Ordah did not answer, but his shoulders loosened and his chest dipped down. He lowered himself to his straw bedding with a cough, and the juile stoked the fire to a steady heat.
“You won’t leave tonight?” Ordah asked with closed eyes.
“I will stay with you,” Arman answered.
“Thank you, old friend.”
“In good accord,” the juile replied.
The night was bitter, but Arman rose every few hours to awaken the fire to a heartier blaze. The eerie stillness in the tiny room filled him with a knowing dread, but he did not want to acknowledge the truth before dawn broke the sky. He trained his eyes from the still and empty body beside him and continued to warm the shack as if he tended for an invalid.
Eventually, morning light poured through the cracks and holes he had not filled, and the juile peered over at Ordah, cold and white in death beside him.
“Old friend,” Arman whispered solemnly. “Would that you had chosen a different end.”
He kissed the cool forehead with an affection that surprised him, and his face streamed with the heavy emotion that hung in his chest. It was as though Ordah had become the fissure through which all his other grief might escape. He let the swell flow until his insides again knew balance.
“Your life was bountiful,” he intoned. “May death’s reins only lead you to greater heights.”
The juile rose, collected his things, and bent to straighten the ring that was loose upon the prophet’s emaciated hand. “Know peace. Know peace.”
He drew in a breath, composing himself, then carefully set to turning the hovel into a blazing pyre.
~
Following the Tindellan feast of Pur, Colette moved her attentions to the kitchens. The cooks befriended her more quickly than she had anticipated, largely because she was quiet and obediently did all they directed her to do. She learned their recipes, food preparations, storage techniques, and drying methods. It was ideal work, as she was allowed to bring Mari, and was soon expected to do so.
The child walked the kitchens with wide eyes and a toothy grin, speaking the cooks’ names proudly while Colette moved about under their bidding. The girl was doted on more than Colette preferred, but still she felt the goodness of the cookery filling her life as the berida had.
It provided a different sort of camaraderie, yet the work and conversation pushed away idle thoughts, and she found that the Tindel were becoming something new in her mind. Their harsh foreign quality dulled, and she began to perceive a strong, robust people who knew the value of labor and honor. While much could never be reconciled within her, the more Colette allowed herself to see their goodness, the more her heart could appreciate their differences and perhaps even see them as beautiful.
After the cookery, Colette moved through various work fields with simplicity and openness, seeking only to learn and help and find friendship. It suited her, and she was pleased to discover it suited the people. Instead of undermining her newly acquired authority, she found that her interest in their ways only endeared her to them. They were accepting her, but more—she was truly becoming theirs. Colette, without intending to, was gradually becoming queen. It was different than she had anticipated, but she found the reality to be better. Relationship and respect ruled instead of fear and force.
Yet still the dreams continued.
Brenol forever huddled through her nights, staring into the flames with morose eyes and overgrown hair. His face was covered with a thick coppery beard, and his figure was wiry thin. For a long time, she had tried to call to him, to speak his name, but he never responded. Once, he had looked up as if almost expecting to see her, but the hope had faded from his features in an instant, and he was left more downcast than she had ever before seen. She had woken sobbing. It was silly, but she stopped trying to reach him after that. Never again did she want to see that hopeless, haunted look play upon Brenol’s face, even if he was only a dream.
Moons passed, and the news of the bethaidas in Massada was promising. The gertali and builders had finished the initial tunneling much more quickly than they had expected. The land was not as thickly frozen as it was in the perideta. It granted them more time, and their scattered seals rang with hope: they could likely save much of Massada.
Danger still plagued the terrisdans, though, and Colette was mercilessly shown this again and again as tidings of her people were brought back to the bethaida. The creatures living upon the land had little, and many acted savagely when faced with starvation and suffering. Terror tickled at her neck as rumors whispered down the corridors—greenlanders had begun to eat animals and were but a breath away from cannibalism. Whether it be true or not, there was little she could do but pray—and that she did fervently.
Colette’s work as aide and intern halted abruptly after a few humans agreed to cross the perideta and live amongst the Tindel. The clansmen accepted them in their own manner, and Colette assumed the task of acclimating and transitioning these few.
It was strange to see dark-haired, ruddy-complexioned people in Iret, and she found their ways grating and rude. She sometimes wondered if she was more Tindellan than Massadan now, but in the end she always heard Arman’s plain voice: It matters not. He grounded her even in his absence, and his steady bass resonated precisely in her mind. It was a comfort.
After a particularly trying day, Colette ambled back from the dining hall with Mari. The girl sang happily as they walked hand in hand, her tinny voice echoing a simple Tindellan rhyme down the corridors. Mari could not yet carry a tune, and her earnest warbles drew a smile to Colette’s face and helped to ease her mind.
“Want to see if Hazel is around this evening?” Colette ventured.
The rosy cheeks lifted and red curls bobbed emphatically.
The two rounded the corner and found the very girl herself.
“Hazee!” Mari squealed and ran to the girl, who scooped the child into a large hug. She was ever the wiry reed, and lifting a toddler only made her look smaller.
Hazel smiled broadly, set Mari back down upon the ground awkwardly, and turned exuberantly to Colette.
“You have a seal!” she exclaimed. She held the small triangle in the center of her hand. The light blue paper, with a thickness that betrayed at least two pages, held the firm block writing of Arman across the top. Hazel nearly shook in eagerness.
“Thank you, Hazel,” Colette said sincerely.
She plucked the seal from the child’s hand and beckoned her back to her room. Along the way, Hazel danced with joy, and Colette could not help but share the sentiment. It had been moons since she had seen Arman, and correspondence had been all but impossible. The most she had received was a sentence relayed by mouth, twice. It felt surreal to have an actual letter in her possession. She stroked the seal with her fingers and relished the sensation of the imprinted wax.
After she had let the canvas doorway flap closed behind her, Colette broke the seal with ardor and hastily scoured the letter. Arman was well. The juile had seen her mother, who sent words of love and eagerly awaited meeting Mari. The construction of the bethaidas was much work, and the Tindel were glad for his help. He spoke of the progress of the tunnels, the new underground healing stations, the land. The terrisdans themselves were no more, and the icing was intensifying. He did not know how long the people could survive upon the surface without sustenance… He traveled Massada enlisting help and proclaiming the new bethaidas to all who would hear. There was some resistance and some hope, but that was to be expected. The letter continued…
He reveals more in what he doesn’t say than in what he does…
“What’s it about?” Hazel interrupted.
Colette smiled. “You may look if you like.”
The child shook her head, shocked, but her eyes remained glued to the lunitata with a voracious curiosity. Colette’s bemused face opened up in clarity as she realized her error. The Tindel were highly secretive about their mail. She laughed and surrendered to the knowledge that she would still be learning their social norms even when her back was curved and her hair had grown white.
“Arman says the new bethaidas are doing well. He gives it another few seasons, possibly more, before they’re habitable. They’re working out the ventilation and sewage systems, but he is pleased with the progress.”
Hazel nodded happily and returned to Mari. The toddler reached for the older girl’s hand and led her toward the corner where she had arranged her toys. The two giggled and played, leaving Colette to her musings. She sat down upon the table and again perused the letter. It seemed straightforward, but she could not shake the feeling that she was missing something.
Arman…what are you hinting at? What?
A loneliness that usually only came at morning bell collided into her like a cinderblock meeting her chest. It nearly stole her breath it was so real, so unexpected. She sat, brushed away a few tears, inhaled deeply, and turned back to the letter. After reading it through to the point of memorization, Colette found she was even more unsure. Perhaps Arman did only send news.
Then why am I quivering like a cat in a river?
Her fingers pressed the smooth paper back into its original precise triangle. In the mundane action, her intuit sparked alive. The truth caused her heart to tremble and turned her limbs to ice. It was not Arman trying to whisper something to her. It was herself. Her thin hands shook, and she pressed them against her body in a vain attempt to calm away the sensation.
It’s nothing, she rationalized. Nothing.
She thrust back from her chair and paced the room. The girls paid little notice and continued their play. She began to tidy the immaculate space with determination—sweeping, picking up, scrubbing her tea table, refolding her few items of clothing that were already neat and ordered.
“What are you worried about?” Deniel’s voice resounded from her past. His smile flashed before her eye. The picture of the tree, the golden rainbow of leaves, the garden of light, the peace. It all enveloped her, and she held the memory open like a clam shell.
She examined it cautiously, more from habit than angst. She had lived her life fighting this memory, longing to forget, fearing it had been the cause of Deniel’s death… But in the end it had come to pass. Even still, the thought drew her mouth open into a stupefied gape. She was queen. Queen. Just as Deniel had shown her.
How did he know so much? He was a mere child too.
Ever since that eventful day in the gardens with the Tindellan leaders, she had sought to find reason in this old memory, but the reality was plain: her intuit was truthful. It had been right from the start.
She smiled. Deniel—her brother in nearly every regard—really had known, but so had she.
“Trust it, Colette,” she heard Deniel whisper in memory, and again he asked, “What are you worried about?”
She nodded to herself and allowed the peace to wash in like a strong, steady current. It had been ages since she had drawn herself interiorly back to the tree, but the experience was the same, and she found that her ability had not lapsed.
The fragrances were as intoxicating as before. She inhaled the lushness around her and wiggled her toes upon the soft moss. The tree was lovely, perhaps more than ever before. It had grown fuller, and the smattering of colors had broadened into hundreds of hues to give it a richness that was simply breathtaking. It was an older tree now, but no sign of illness marred its sturdy trunk, and its roots were thicker and burrowed into the rich soil in bows and twists. Her hands went up to graze the tips of the lowest leaves. They moved under her touch like wind chimes. Memories flashed through her mind.
Again, she smiled.
Wait for the wind, she told herself, contenting her heart with staring at the gently swaying rainbow of gold.
This time it was not a simple breeze. No, the gust that rushed through was more akin to a gale, but Colette clung tightly to her peace. Soon, the wind abated, but still there was nothing. She waited longer. Another wailing blast pounded through the branches and shook the tree with force. She closed her eyes and cowered under its stinging power, but still, nothing altered.
She continued to stand, to wait.
At last, a faint whisper of a breeze came up and swirled around her like a gentle eddy. It was as soft as a fairy’s touch, barely breathing upon the leaves and branches. The kiss of air lifted up tiny purple flowers from the earth, and the blossoms twirled around her and amongst the rainbow of leaves. They danced in the air as though they would never light down again. The sky was a vista of enchantment.
The wisp of wind slowed, and the flowers sashayed down to the earth, as if in exhale. As petals grazed her face in their fall, the whisper of wind spoke. It was hardly audible, but the words were unmistakable: “Brenol is still alive. He has never left.”
~
Brenol was weary with cold and allowed his lids to dip into the peace of unconsciousness. Sleep was a relief to him during the day, but when the sun set, he only wanted to gaze at the fire and be still. Somehow in the night he felt Colette’s presence, and he did not want to miss it in slumber. But that evening, Brenol did not fight the darkness.
He opened his dream eyes and did not regret that sleep had taken him, for he saw Colette’s tree. It was the same, yet even more alive and full than it had been in Deniel’s memory and in that dream of long ago. It was lovely. The gold glinted sharply and played in a delightful game of color as the leaves caught the prancing shafts of light.
It was warm here, and the scents of life and growth were like water to the parched. He had not smelled such goodness in so long. He had not breathed this easily in orbits.
He approached the tree trembling, afraid it was a mirage. He sighed as his hands met the trunk. It was real. The bark was as smooth as ivory under his palms and just as white. He allowed his cheek to slide across its surface and choked back emotion as his arms embraced the thick trunk. He did not want to waste tears on this moment of paradise; it would slip away too soon.
Eventually, he faced about and allowed his legs to sink under him so that he sat in the grooved hollow at the base of the tree. He closed his eyes in comfort and pressed his fingertips through the rich loam. It stuck to his hands and smeared them black-brown, for here in this dream, his palms were as pink as the rest of his skin. He breathed in the life and soaked in the sights of the swaying leaves. It was more beauty than he thought he could handle. He ached in its goodness.
A soft breeze flowed through the branches, and his ears twitched at its melody. There was something about it, something about the cadence. He stilled his mind and heart and waited with anticipation.
Before he could grasp the words, the blanket of the dream was ripped away. His body shivered violently before the dimming fire, and he breathed in the weariness of his world.
There had been a time of life and heat and love once, but that time had died long ago. Long ago. He sighed and stoked the embers back to health, but even still his bones rattled in the cold.
I have no more tears, he thought. Even my dreams are lies.