Elaina was a songstress.
"Belladonna, belladonna,
Catfolk in a hemlock tree
Gold and silver all aquiver
Nothing left for him or me."
She had been raised by the Jipsies, wanderers exiled from Freid centuries ago, too fickle, too flighty, doomed never to have a home. That was their curse, so many people said; they were welcome in no land, and Asturians, and Fanelians, and the Zaibach alike spurned their markets and burned their few poor wagons. The Fanelians said that was the curse of the jipsies. Doomed to wander, never to settle in one place.
Elaina didn't know what it would be like to settle in one place. She imagined it must be like having chains around your ankles. She preferred her merry life, Pallas one day, the wildwood the next, never staying still for long. How could anyone stay still, she had wondered as a child. Didn't they know what they were missing?
"There was a princess in a rose gown
All sewn from rose petals that she'd torn down
Anblonde knight brought the night, autumn on his blade
Brought the winter to the princess,
And rose petals swooned and swayed
Brought the winter to the princess,
And she died in snowy shade…."
Elaina had been raised a bard, and taught all the old songs of the Jipsies, ballads of Jecture and the Atlanteans and the ancient kings of the past, and she loved those songs and knew them all off by heart, as all the other minstrels-in-training did, among the Jipsie youth. But there was that which set Elaina apart, as well.
"I saw three sisters by the riverside
One in rose petals withered up and died
One turned wintry, frozen at the core
One turned springlike, making for the shore
Learning doctor's arts 'til destiny tore
And swore she would be Princess nevermore…."
She wrote songs of her own. She was the only of the Jipsie youth to do it; the only of her band, even, save for a very old man who had died last fall. She didn't know when she had started, or why. It had just come naturally.
"Dragon prince, dragon prince, where did you go?
Are you with
Jecture, in the deeps below?
Dragon prince, dragon prince, won't
you come home?
Your brother is waiting, your brother's alone!"
She had begun by writing songs about simple things – strange, shining discs she saw in markets, the way the silver moon hung above the trees, the cries of the wolfmen in the dark night. Then, as she grew older – for Elaina was nineteen, a woman, though unmarried – she began to write other things, more important things.
She wrote of what she saw in the world, the sad, sad stories spinning out in spheres above her head. The death of Princess Marlene, so strange, so secret, and the banishment of a fallen Knight Caeli, a knight of heaven. Elaina had seen him, passing by, though Allen Schezar's pious gaze slid right over the Jipsie girl.
"Like an angel or like a saint
Like the first man without sin's taint
He doesn't see you unless you're beautiful too
He doesn't see you less'n he likes the looks of you.
Beautiful with his hair like a jewel
Beautiful, but his lover's a fool, for
Every woman who sees him has her soul bought or sold.
Every woman who sees him perishes of cold
How could such a perfect man ever grow old?"
At first Elaina had thought this was a gift. It must be, mustn't it? Her band looked on her with such pride when she sang as they walked through the highlands, or at the bonfires. But if it was a boon, it was a double-bladed one. For the people who passed her on the street – once so happy to toss a singing Jipsie girl a penny – furrowed their foreheads, scowled and muttered, when they realized what Elaina sang of, that her 'simple peasant songs' were not simple, and spoke that that none else dared.
"Beware the machines that roll on in the night
Beware our belief that clockwork makes things right
Where will this lead, all our faith in false things?
Is this the bright future the emperor brings?"
Elaina could remember the first time a stone, rather than a copper, had been thrown. How she and her people had fled that town in Asturia, shielding their heads, hiding their faces, crying. Elaina had burned with guilt, with shame – all the worse because no one in her band blamed her. They knew, and she knew, that the songs simply came to her, burning with the fire of their truth; and that she must sing them, or keep the flame inside, and perish of the heat, burn to death. Art, the Jipsies taught, was sacred and not to be shut up or put down. The trouble was that Elaina was not a convenient artist.
"I saw Fanelia burning, tirra lira
And you saw Fanelia burning too
We were in the hills together that night
Me, my love, my skirts tossed off, and you
Tirra lirra
Tirra by the river
We were making love lost in the shadows
We were basking in our fine romance;
Then, a nightmare, look, Fanelia's burning
And our wanton night lost to death's dance
Tirra lira
Tirra by the river…."
She had slipped away quietly one night. She would sing her songs, for good and ill; but the Jipsies would not perish because of Elaina.
Alone, and bitter and abandoned, Elaina allowed her songs to become more dangerous, and didn't care much where she sang them. She wandered through city after city, lost and alone, and the stared her sullenly into town, and heard her sing so sweet, and stoned her out.
"There's a boy prince ruling Freid
Not allowed to be afraid
Tell me, who holds Chid at night
Who puts out the crown Prince's light?
He's a child!
Surely it's not right!"
Bruised, battered and weary, Elaina found herself singing in a nightclub in Zaibach, a slow, sad, jazzy place where she was fool enough to feel safe.
"Why should the people dream of greater things?
I think that poor men have the wealth of kings.
If you have a family,
What care you for fate's decree?
If you have a lover true,
Why fear what's in store for you?"
The secret police of Zaibach had come in the night, to her bed, and she had been imprisoned almost before she knew what was happening. She was charged with thieving. No one contested it, not even those who had listened to Elaina's lovely voice; she was, after all, a gypsy.
"Jecture cares not for money;
She is counting up your sins
Don't you know where profit ends
And true prophecy begins?"
She was set to be executed and not told how she would die, but now she waited, stood shaking in the hall of the Zaibach prison. At length a man came out of a room with barred windows and looked at her. He was dressed like a doctor – a healer, not a killer. "Elaina?"
She nodded.
"What's your last name?"
"I haven't one, sir," she said softly.
"Please follow me."
Flanked by guards, Elaina followed him mutely into a little room, sat on a table. He busied himself with something on a nearby counter, then turned to her and said politely, though briskly, "Have you any final statements you'd like to be recorded?"
She started. "What?"
The doctor-hangsman tapped briskly on a small black box beside him. It was hissing.
Elaina eyed it fearfully. "Is that – is that going to? –"
"No, of course not." He sounded as though she'd offended him. "It's recording you. Your final statements."
Elaina suddenly felt her eyes fill with tears. She didn't know what to say. And so she opened her mouth and sang.
"Belladonna, good lord Dornkirk,
With your good and lordly plans,
Will they put food on my table?
Help the crippled folk to dance?
I spoke only as the angels
Up above told me to say
And for this I am found guilty?
And for this I pass away?
Belladonna, belladonna,
I'm a child and I am true.
Will you kill me for the truth, sir?
When I've not done naught to you?"
She ceased to sing and closed her mouth, and the black box – the recorder – hissed on for a long time as the doctor sat staring at her, motionless, not saying anything. "Sir?" she ventured finally.
He shut off the box's hissing very suddenly and pulled off his white mask and labcoat. "Put these on," he said. "And follow me."
Elaina and the doctor tiptoed quietly through the halls, and no one they passed by questions them, with Elaina masquerading in his whites. At last, they came to a large, locked door; the doctor keyed something into a keypad at hand-height, and it beeped, and swung open. Sunlight struck Elaina, then, squarely in the face. She hesitated. "Sir?"
"It would be wicked to kill you." He didn't look at her, so she looked at him; he had a young, sad face. "You've a beautiful voice and you've done no wrong." He paused. "One of my brothers was a Dragonslayer," he said then, quietly. "Younger than you and better, I'd warrant, as you're a Jipsie. He died at the hand of that demon-prince of Fanelia. And the Escaflowne. Adolphus told me he'd done well. That it couldn't be helped." His voice dripped with bitterness. "I'll not add to the grave-pile of those who die young. Run. I'll tell them you've perished."
Elaina smiled at him, and ran, and ran, and ran, and the sun and air and light embraced her like a child.
"Never give up all hope lightly
If you're living, dare ye pray
Saviors come from strangest quarters
Miracles come every day…."