Thread
It was Tana who found her, the morning after a storm.
The dawn light splashed over Tana's back and turned the wings of her pegasus to filaments of gold, but ahead, the sea was a rolling blue-back beast beneath the violet sky. When she peered down, she found the beach strewn with debris–broken wood planks, a mess of torn and muddied fabric, several barrels, bobbing near the shore. When she landed, her pegasus's hooves sinking into the wet sand, she found something else.
A figure, curled up against a rocky outcropping.
Tana hesitated a moment, torn between pressing on and going back for help, but a second look decided her. "Hello? Are you all right?" she said as she closed the distance and knelt by her side–for she could see now that it was a young woman. Olive skin showed through the remains of her once fine silk dress. A tangled mane of black hair was wrapped around her face and neck like a fishing net. Tana reached out to push it back and saw a face streaked with brine and blood. Her skin was cold but she shuddered at Tana's touch. Alive. Thank the gods!
The girl's eyes sprang open and she stared wild-eyed at Tana.
"Are you hurt?" Tana asked. "Can you stand?"
A babble of words, rapid and incomprehensible to Tana, tumbled from the girl's lips like notes from a untuned lyre.
"Calm down," Tana said. "I don't understand."
More words, gushing forth, but all strange to Tana's ears. And then sobs, and Tana understood those well enough.
Tana looked the girl up and down and saw blood oozing down her leg. No, she could not walk, and she would need a healer. The morning was chill, though, and Tana could not leave the sodden girl on the beach. Glancing over her shoulder, she clicked her tongue to summon Achaeus. Her pegasus clopped towards them, eliciting a screech from the girl. "It's all right," Tana said softly. "He won't hurt you."
Achaeus approached and Tana patted his nose to show that he was tame. "Down, boy," she said, and gave a gentle tug on his bridle. Achaeus bent his knees and eased his belly down onto the sand. He had done this many times during the war when they had taken injured comrades from the battlefield. The girl's eyes were fixed on the pegasus as if expecting him to try to eat her alive. It was as if she had never seen one, Tana thought.
The girl flinched when Tana reached out to her. "Come with me," Tana said gently. "I'll bring you to a healer."
The girl spoke again, a rapid stream of words, but Tana could no more understand her than the grunts and screeches of a wyvern. A breeze gusted past and the girl shivered.
Tana unfastened the cloak from around her shoulders and put it over the girl like a blanket. The girl looked down at the thick, woolen cloak, its edges embroidered with silver thread. Her fingers reached out to trace the winding scrollwork. When she looked up, she seemed calmer and Tana was able to ease her into Achaeus's saddle. She didn't dare fly so she walked the pegasus back to the castle with the girl on his back, pulling the cloak tightly around herself.
#
A spray of sunlight through the castle window flashed off the tiny gold thread stitches on the fabric clutched between Amy's fingers. Tana halted in the doorway to watch in wonder as the girl's fingers deftly drew her needle through the satin. Several other young ladies worked in the room, seated at square frames, or on chairs with small, circular frames on their laps, but not Amy of the Sea, as they had taken to calling the girl Tana had found. She embroidered without a frame, with stitches unknown to the Frelian ladies.
Amy smiled as Tana approached. "Preencess," she said by way of greeting, the word still tinged with that foreign accent none in Frelia recognised.
"Hello, Amy. How are you?" She spoke slowly, deliberately.
"Whell."
"Me too," Tana said and smiled brightly. "I'm going to the seaside today. Would you like to come?" Amy stared at her blankly. Tana pointed to the window. "Come?"
Amy nodded. "Yes. I come." She set down her embroidery and followed Tana.
Even after all these weeks, that was as much as their exchanges amounted to, though Tana came to see her every day and tried to teach her words and phrases. With no one to translate for them, it was slow going, and surely she must be lonely with no one to speak to. The first time had come down to Tana pointing to herself and saying her name until Amy had pressed her fingers to her chest and spoken her own name. Her fine clothes and gentle manners marked her as nobility, and Tana's father had been happy to take her in–though it was true her manners were sometimes peculiar. Upon first being presented to the king, rather than curtsey, she had knelt on the floor and bowed her head.
Syrene and a few of the other pegasus knights tagged along as escorts. Amy had gotten used to the pegasi, but still clutched Tana's waist in a death grip when they were flying, even on the short ride between the castle and the seaside. They ate a simple lunch of bread, cheese, and berries, and lounged for a while along the shore.
"I had a letter from Eirika. She plans to visit soon," Tana said. Though she knew Amy understood only a handful of words, Tana did her best to fill the silences with chatter. Save when she was intent on her embroidery, Amy always looked melancholy and Tana didn't know what else she could do to cheer her. "Eirika is the princess of Renais. Her brother Ephraim is the king."
Amy nodded. Princess, brother, and king were all words she'd learned in references to Tana's family. But she turned again to look back out at the waves lapping the shore, her gaze distant. Her fingers plucked at her dress as if wishing to be busy with needlework. As soon as she'd been well, she'd managed to mime sowing and ask for needle and thread. Her skill had been immediately obvious. Needlework was a popular pastime for noblewomen, but Amy's abilities surpassed the hobbyists and more than matched the castle seamstresses. She possessed techniques unknown in Frelia, and soon the other ladies had been gathering around to watch her work her stitches.
When she was working, she was absorbed, intent. Now, out here with the sunshine burnishing her olive skin and the breeze whipping her dark hair around her shoulders, she looked like a rag doll that had lost its stuffing.
Tana touched her shoulder to draw her attention from the rolling waves. "Why do you watch the sea?"
For a long moment Amy said nothing and Tana thought she'd not understood, but finally she finally she sighed and spoke a single word. "Joffre."
Tana shook her head.
Amy, put her hand over her heart and said her name. Then she placed a hand on Tana's shoulder. "Tana." And then she reached as if to place her hand on the shoulder of one who was invisible. "Joffre," she said.
"Ohhh," Tana said, understanding. "Geoffrey. Of course. Was he..." She looked out to the sea. "Geoffrey was with you... on the sea?"
Amy nodded. "Yes. With Joffre."
OOO
When Princess Tahna touched her shoulder, Aimée turned to glance at her. She understood the words "why" and "sea" and had a notion that the words in between meant "to look at"– or something of that sort. After weeks, she had still only picked up simple words. So much of what these people said was a jumble to her. Even when she knew a verb, she could not follow its sinuous path as it twisted and turned from one tense to another; it was like trying to hold on to an eel.
"Joffre," she replied, and then had to explain that it was a name.
She could, perhaps, find a map and then point out her homeland, one of the many islands that stretched far out into the sea beyond Jehanna's southern coast. They might find someone who spoke her language, perhaps among the sea captains or the merchants, but then they might learn who she was and try to return her. She had not told Tahna that she, too, was a king's daughter.
At least her embroidery allowed her to repay their kindness, and the work took her thoughts away from her sorrows, away from the sea and what it had stolen.
#
A whinny, high and long, distracted Aimée for a moment from her work. She glanced through the window and caught a flash of white feathers slicing the air. One of Frelia's flying soldiers. She had wondered at first how a princess like Tahna could have callouses on her palms, but she had seen the princess training on her mount, spear in hand, and understood.
She turned her attention back to the work in her hands and her pupils, gathered in a circle around her. It was difficult sometimes not to be able to speak to them, but in any case, embroidery was learned by doing. She was trying to teach them paned work, the practice of combining fabrics with varied textures for greater effect. The touch of thread and silk beneath her thumb was as soothing to her as lullaby.
When heavy footfalls echoed down the hall, Aimée bit her lip, hoping it was not the prince. Tahna's brother's Prince Inais was always so dour and humourless, and he watched her as if he believed her a spy.
But no, not Inais. Instead, the footfalls were those of the red-headed man who followed behind Tahna and the young lady with her. Everyone in the room set down their needlework to curtsey to the princess and her guests, and Aimée was no exception, though she snuck a glance at them as she did. A girl who seemed Tahna's age or a little older. Her long hair fell around her shoulders and her smile was like summer sunshine. The man with them puzzled Aimée. He stood very straight and carried a sword at his hip. His clothes were finely made, but plain.
Tahna made introductions from which Aimée was able to decipher that the girl was Princess Arika, the friend Tahna had said would visit, and that the man was Set, though his title of "General," confused her.
She remained confused even as she joined them for a stroll in the castle gardens. At first she thought that he might be some sort of honour guard, but rather than be alert for danger, he had eyes only for Princess Arika, who took his arm as they walked and smiled up at him. In the dining hall, he was seated next to her at the long banquet table, and Prince Inais scowled at them at intervals.
Later that evening when Tahna came to see her, she did her best to ask about it. She scrunched up her face in an exaggerated imitation of the prince. "Inais not happy?" she said.
Tahna laughed. Aimée didn't quite understand Tahna's next sentence, or the one the followed–something about Prince Inais, Princess Arika, and General Set. She must have realized this for she stopped and began again. "Eirika and Seth," she said. Aimée nodded. "They are to be married."
Aimée followed as far as "they are", and then the eel of a sentence squirmed out of her grasp. "Mari-ed?" she repeated the foreign word.
For a moment Tahna paused and seemed to consider. Then she held up her right hand. "Father," she said. And then her left hand. "Mother." And then she brought her hands together, interlacing her fingers. "Married."
And then Aimée understood. Princess Arika was to wed General Set. She tilted her head to one side. "Princess Arika and... Prince Set?"
"No," Tahna replied, shaking her head. "Not a prince. A knight."
"Nayt?"
Tahna appeared to struggle for a moment. "Like Syrene."
Aimée knew Sarine of course, Tahna's chief escort whenever they left the castle. She was not a princess, only a soldier...
It was not clear to Aimée whether they were married or would be married, or intended to be married–what was clear to her was that she was in a land where a princess could marry a vassal, a land very different from her own.
#
After that, Aimée began embroidering in earnest. She tried to learn the words, one by one, their twists and turns, their meanderings through number and tense, but what she remembered most were the names of the fabric and thread she needed, the colours she required. Silk. Satin. Silver. Gold. Azure and crimson. Ochre and umber.
She rose early to get the first of the morning light and worked until her nimble fingers grew sore. She worked week after week and was always careful to cover her work when Tahna came to visit so that she might not see the piece until it was finished.
OOO
"She seems melancholy, Syrene," Tana said as they walked the castle corridors. "I thought that if I told her she could come to Renais with me for the wedding it would cheer her, but..." The lines around Amy's eyes were deeper, her cheekbones, sharper: she kept forgetting to eat. Tana rubbed her arms. While the stone halls were comfortably cool in summer, now, as autumn approached, they became chill and draughty. "She seems further away than ever. I just–I don't know what else to do."
Syrene patted Tana's shoulder. "You've been very kind, Princess, and you're doing all you can."
"If only she could tell me what's the matter."
"Sometimes," Syrene said, giving Tana a sideways glance, "speaking an old wound is much the same as reliving it."
And Tana bowed her head because she knew it to be true. The war had left them all with wounds, and most found greater solace in silence than speech.
#
Tana found Amy still at her embroidery, even though the afternoon brightness had faded, leaving the space in a cave-like gloom. The other women had retired for the evening, leaving Amy to her own devices. Bent over her work, squinting at the stitches in the dim light, she didn't even notice Tana's approach. She started when Tana called her name.
"I'm sorry," Tana said. "I didn't meant to startle you." Amy shook her head. "I just came to see whether you were ready for the trip." They would be leaving for Renais in the morning and spend several weeks there at Eirika's invitation.
"Ready," she murmured, but her eyes had turned to the length of fabric draped over her lap. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she'd been crying.
Tana reached for her hands. "Oh! Your fingers–they're swollen," she whispered, rubbing her thumbs over the back of Amy's hands. "You need to rest."
Amy shook her head again. "Needed finishing before Renais."
Tana squeezed her hands. "No, no need," she said as clearly as she could. "You're a guest, not a seamstress. No one expects you to finish anything on a schedule."
Shaking her head, Amy tugged her hands out of Tana's grasp and reached for the fabric. She rose. "Come see."
A table rested on the far side of the room near one of the windows. As Tana approached, Amy spread the cloth out on the table. Tana gasped.
She could see now that the fabric was a silk cloak decorated by a series of richly embroidered panels surrounded by gold scrollwork. Two square panels lay side by side at the top and bottom of the cloak, with a longer panel in the centre. As she took in the images on the five panels, she realized that they told a story. Tana looked from Amy to the cloak, at a loss for words.
In the first panel a man and a woman stood apart, facing opposite directions. The woman had dark hair and wore a flowing gown, while the man appeared to be a soldier, sword in hand. In the next panel the two figures were facing one another, hands clasped. Standing above them, a man wearing a crown–a king– pointed accusingly at them.
In the central panel, the two figures appeared together once more, standing now on the deck of a ship. Angry clouds loomed over it and a bolt of lightning zig-zagged down to strike the boat.
The woman appeared again in the bottom left panel, alone by the sea, crouched on the ground. But then in the final panel a second woman was standing next to her, taking her hand.
A faint smile graced Amy's features. She pointed to the figure of the woman in the first panel. "Aimée," she said. And then she pointed to the man. "Joffre."
Hesitating for a moment, Tana finally pointed to the king. "And this?"
"King Yves. Father."
Tana's mouth opened and an "Oh!" squeaked out of her, even as she raised her hand to her lips. "You're a princess then?"
Amy nodded. "Yes. Princess Aimée."
"And you and Geoffrey... eloped?"
Amy tilted her head. "Ellop?"
"It's when you run away to get married."
She nodded then, her eyes turning to inspect the cloak. "Yes. Me and Joffre. Run away... to marry." She pointed to the central panel. "Aimée and Joffre. On the sea."
"Oh... I'm sorry."
She nodded vaguely and then, after a few moments she pointed to the final panel. "Aimée and Tana. By the sea."
In silence, Tana regarded the cloak, her fingers reaching out to trace the scrollwork that surrounded the panels. Her fingertips followed their loops and curls, but when she reached the bottom panel, the stitching trailed off. At first she thought that perhaps Amy had not had time to finish the piece, but no, the same trailing pattern was imitated on the other side of the cloak beneath the bottom panel. It was symmetrical. Intentional. She took a step back to look at the cloak as a whole. It was not normal scrollwork, she realized. The twining lines around the panels represented a rope, a rope which dangled loosely beneath the bottom panel, its ends frayed. Severed. Like the two lovers.
"It's beautiful," Tana whispered, wiping at her eyes.
Amy smiled again. "Gift," she said. "For Tana."
#
Autumn had swept over Renais and its woods were awash in shades of crimson and ochre that would be the envy of any dye-maker. Leafy boughs and fruits of the fall harvest decorated the castle courtyard along with reams of cloth in rich browns and red. There was a festival atmosphere, Tana thought as she strolled along the edge of the courtyard. Syrene close at her heels, kept a wary eye on the assorted locals who were gathering to see the wedding of their princess.
As a breeze whipped her hair about her face, Tana drew in a deep breath of cool air and smiled, tugging Amy's cloak around her shoulders. Eirika was almost beside herself with happiness and excitement. Amy, too, seemed to be faring well. After seeing the cloak and hearing the story it told, Tana had worried that the trip would leave Amy more downcast than ever, but she'd been adamant about accompanying Tana. When they'd arrived, Tana had made certain to show Eirika the cloak so that Amy might enjoy Eirika's warm praises. Though Amy could not understand all the words, she could understand their warmth.
A raised platform had been erected in the courtyard so that the ceremony could be held outdoors and witnessed by all the guests, noble and common alike. The bustling from that direction drew her attention. Craning her neck to see past the groups who'd paused to look, she could make out Sir Seth, decked out in ceremonial armour that glittered in the sun as if the metal plates were studded with diamonds. All agleam though he might be, the way he wrung his hands gave him away: he looked as nervous as a newfound squire .
"It's almost time, Princess," Syrene said. "We should take our places."
Tana nodded. "Amy is probably already waiting for us."
While the ceremony's participants would occupy the centre of the platform, the many noble guests would occupy raised stands overlooking it, much like those used during jousting tournaments. She paused, though, before she quite reached them as her gaze was arrested by the sight of the Silver Knight standing there in the centre of the platform, shifting from foot to foot, clasping and unclasping his hands.
She turned to Syrene. "Just a moment." And with that she ascended onto the platform and crossed the space to Sir Seth.
He bowed hurriedly. "Princess Tana." His face was a mask of anxiety. "Has there been a delay?"
She had to stifle a laugh. "Everything is fine, General. The maids are just fussing with Eirika's dress and hair to make sure it's all perfect."
A hint of relief crossed his features, but his hands still moved about restlessly in a way they never had during the war even on the brink of battle. "Is she–" But then he broke off, his spine suddenly stiff, his eyes trained on something behind them. His hand reached for his hilt and Tana spun to see what was the matter.
A man was pushing through the crowd toward the platform. He was yelling something that she could not make out. Sir Seth stepped in front of her, his hand gripping the haft of his sword, ready to draw, all sign of nervousness vanished.
A pair of guards were closing in on the man. "Lady!" he yelled. And then she heard another word that might have been "cap" or maybe"cape" ?
He did not struggle as the guards grabbed his arms to restrain him, but he continued to yell and try to move forward as if oblivious to them. Sir Seth strode to the edge of the platform. "What is this about?"
"Lady. I talk with lady. Pleasing, sir!" Sir Seth's bafflement was as clear on his face as his anxiousness had been a moment before, but something about the man's speech, the odd way he formed his words, was familiar to Tana.
She moved closer. "Let me speak to him." The guards glanced at Seth who, after a moment's consideration motioned for them to approach. They still held man's arms as they moved to the foot of the platform. "You wished to speak to me?"
"Lady, pleasing... your cape... where have you gotten it?"
The knotted sentence took her a few seconds to unravel. "My cloak?" she said, brushing her fingers over the embroidered fabric. He nodded vigorously. "It was a gift."
He looked crestfallen but after a moment he recovered and spoke again. "Who maded it?"
But just as Tana opened her mouth to reply she heard a voice calling her. She turned to see Syrene crossing the platform with long strides, and Amy behind her, looking both curious and concerned. And then Amy froze. Her hand covered her mouth. She stared, eyes wide–at what, Tana was not certain–and then a word burst from her lips. "Joffre!" She grabbed her skirts, pulling them above her ankles so that she could race across the platform.
"Joffre!" she called again.
"Aimée!" called out the man, his face lighting up as he saw her.
Tana looked from Amy to the man and then spun to face Sir Seth. "Let him go," she said frantically.
"Princess?"
"Please, Sir Seth, release him."
Sir Seth appeared a bit dazed, but gave the signal to his men. No sooner had they released the man than he scrambled up onto the platform to meet Amy. She threw her arms around his neck while his own arms made a tight knot around her waist. They were each speaking very quickly in a language Tana could not understand, alternately embracing and drawing back to look into each other's faces, babbling all the while.
It was Amy's Geoffrey. Somehow he had survived the sea, found his way to Renais, even come to see the wedding.
Fingering the gold scrollwork of her cloak, Tana realized that she did not need to speak their tongue to understand. There would be time later to learn what had led Geoffrey here, to learn where he had washed up, whether he had given up hope or been searching all this time. For now, Tana took joy in the knowledge that the thread connecting the two had not been severed. Though they might be frayed, the stitches binding them together had held.
The End
A/N: Just to be really clear, Joffre/Geoffrey is in no way meant to refer to the Geoffrey in FE 9/10. I was just aiming for something that seemed like a good translation of the foreign name.