The door flew wide open, letting in the rain and the wind. Dara felt her hair, peppered white and fading gold, whip across her face, loosened from her heavy grey-green veil and the woven circlet, her vael-aga, that she wore over her aging head. Dara pretended that the intruder was only the mountain storm and set aside the ladle she'd been stirring her dinner stew with before turning to tend to the cold gale.
"Stop that, mother," her daughter said, as biting as the winter storms that ravaged Caer Pelyn seasonally.
"I hear nothing," Dara shrugged. She strode across the room, strung with dried medicinal herbs and magical charms of her own working. "Only the wailing winds on the slopes."
"You know that's not true, mother," Anrah demanded, her long curls tangled across her face and her many cloaks billowing. She wore no vael-aga, in willful defiance of her heritage. Dara avoided meeting her daughter's eyes. "Let me in, mother."
"Why should I let a wolf into my house?" Dara snapped. Anrah recoiled, as if slapped.
"Because these wolves are your only daughter and your only grandchild, mother," Anrah choked, jerking out the heavily swaddled bundle in her arms.
Dara stood aside to allow them a place by the fire, and closed the door.
..0..
Uncanny beauty, she had always thought. Anrah, whom she had named for humility, had an uncanny beauty, unseen in Caer Pelyn for many years. Dara had never been a pretty woman, hollow-cheeked and stretched out, like some people are born.
That was alright. Dara's knowledge was unmatched by the other medicine women and she spoke with the hearts of each creature with unparalleled skill, and beauty to match would have been too much. Anrah, at fifteen, nearly sixteen, was already too proud, of both her own skills and her own looks. Dara watched, wordlessly, as Anrah examined her reflection in a bowl of water, before making gully or mutton stew, or herbal tea. Her vanity found outlets in the products of her magic and potions; a half-charmed, half-worldly paste that deflected the harsh mountain sun, a soap that softened the hair and did not irritate the eyes . . . the list went on and on.
Such items Dara considered frivolous, except for the paste, which allowed for less protective covering. Little successes like that inflated Anrah's already lofty pride. But the Gods had a way of bringing Their children back to their birthrights. Anrah would learn this from experience and all would be well.
Anrah stood hunched over in a steep meadow, when Dara found her, surrounded by scrub brush and bright sun. Thrown across her shoulders was her fringed cloak, revealing the many-layered, many-colored dress and clay red tunic she wove for herself. Her vael-aga lay tossed to the side, her dark-streaked golden hair loose and unbound, flowing to her elbows in waves.
"You offend the Gods and the Great Dragon," Dara announced crossly, her hands on her hips. She stood with the blazing sun behind her back.
"What, mother?" Anrah asked, shading her eyes as she looked upon her mother.
"Your vael-aga."
Anrah laughed derisively. "Mother! The Great Dragon doesn't know if I wear it or not. He's miles away in the Darkling Woods, mother."
"You owe him your reverence, child," Dara stated, glowering at her difficult daughter. "Both Lord Morva and Lady Myrrh deserve your respect. And the Gods live all around us. You know this well."
Anrah shook her head, wiping the sweat from her undecorated brow with her arm, laden with bangles. Dara scowled. Anrah owned more jewelry than she ever thought necessary, even with all her amulets combined.
"Oh, mother," Anrah scoffed, slicing the tough stem of another plant and depositing it in a basket. "It leaves tan lines on my face. I'll wear it inside, if it makes you happy."
"It is not a question of my happiness," Dara grumbled. The same codes that bound her to the Great Dragon, though, prohibited her from forcing Anrah into the circlet. Dara loved her beautiful daughter dearly—why wouldn't she do what was best for her?
Anrah gripped the handle of the basket—threaded with beads and baubles, like everything else Anrah owned—and stood up, towering over Dara for some good five or six inches. That was her father's height, her father who died, crushed under a boulder, when Anrah was eight.
"What do you need, mother?" Anrah asked dutifully, although she appeared visibly annoyed. Lately, Anrah and Dara had been at odds, never agreeing, even on the color of the sky.
"Weary travelers approach," Dara said. "I want you to help Gira and Naeleh make enough food for a dozen mercenary men crossing into Jehanna. I will be going to greet them myself."
"Yes, mother," Anrah said, with a strange expression and a long pause.
..0..
"So he left you."
There was no triumph in Dara's voice, only bitterness left from the old wounds between the two.
"Yes, mother," Anrah said, staring into the fire. Her eyes were dark and lifeless, ringed from hard years. In her arms lay a sleeping child, four or five years old or close to that. His hair grew dark and ashen grey,completely unlike either woman, although already, he showed to take after his mother's good looks.
"Why did you come back?"
"For the child."
"You've named the child, then?"
"No, mother."
"Why not?"
Anrah turned to look down at the baby. There was no love in her eyes or in her heart, as if the child was nothing but a burden to her. All the life had been stolen from her daughter's soul, leaving a forsaken, dried-up, tragically beautiful husk.
"I couldn't think of anything to call him," she lied. Dara knew it was a lie, even as Anrah spoke it.
The storm raged on, railing against the protective magic defending the little village of Caer Pelyn.
Don't you love this child, Anrah? Is he not from your womb? Dara asked, heartspeaking as she once did freely with her daughter, despite all their differences. Anrah turned and stared at the fire forlornly. She had not heard anything.
..0..
"You're using too much pepper," Anrah objected, her voice carrying through the walls of the longhouse where community meals were prepared. "You'll burn their tongues off, Naeleh."
"You do it then," Naeleh replied. There was silence as Naeleh must have passed the bowl to Dara's daughter.
Dara shook her head, leaning back from the door and returning to the fire in the center of the village, where the fifteen tired mercenaries sat limply on logs and carved benches. The leader, a dark-haired, hard-faced man named Kiorl, sat at the head of them all, whittling at a piece of wood he must have defaced a tree for, without asking the dryad, the little demigoddesses of trees, that lived there at all. He was tall and young, and spoke quietly with the slight men of Caer Pelyn, who were all shepherds or magicians, and easily dwarfed by his presence.
Most of the women had either gone to join Anrah and Naeleh in the longhouse, or avoided the great fire in the village central, wary of the warriors there. The men in question, though, remained docile, somehow intimidated by the haggard old woman that was Dara, the best druidess in the range and the elder, Haidr, an ancient sage who stared into your eyes and pierced your soul.
Suddenly, the doors of the longhouse kitchen burst open, and Anrah and two other, older girls emerged carrying a massive pot filled to the brim with a frothy, aromatic stew. Some of the mercs clapped as they marched, jostling the cauldron, but not losing a drop—Dara frowned, clucking at Anrah, who'd bewitched it not to.
Anrah, on the other hand, soaked up the praise, beaming at them. Gira and Naeleh flushed, and scurried to pass around bowls, cleverly eluding ever being two feet from a stranger. Anrah smiled at them all. She wasn't wearing a vael-aga, which vexed Dara.
"We share our bounty freely with you, strangers," Dara announced over the din. "And we ask that you respect our people and our customs. All are equal here."
Kiorl was the only one not to listen, Dara noted. His narrow, black eyes followed Anrah's every move.
..0..
Saleh, which meant "devout," seemed to be the antithesis of Anrah as a toddler. He did not smile very openly, but he took to wearing the vael-aga without any question. Saleh spoke early, in full sentences and with a grimness to his young voice that haunted Dara.
If Anrah took any offense to the name Dara gave her child, she did not show it. She spent her days as far from little Saleh as possible, shut into a corner near the fire. Dara did not ask her to wear the vael-aga.
"Dara?" Saleh ventured at her feet as she entered her home, carrying a heavy bucket filled with river water. In his little, stubby hands, he gripped a portion of her drab dress, seeking shelter from his grandmother. The children of Caer Pelyn addressed their grandparents by their given names. "Dara, mama won't eat. Mama won't eat."
Dara glanced at Anrah, slumped in her corner. An upturned bowl lay at her unshod feet. Anrah's paper thin eyelids fluttered as she slept, unwilling to move or care for herself. Her hair hung in matted chunks around her cheeks, with the rest of it scattered on the floor around her, messily shorn.
"Stop it!" Dara cried angrily. She dropped the bucket and flew to Anrah's side, taking her arm and shaking her. "Don't you do this to yourself, Anrah! Your son still needs you!"
Anrah's head lolled, regarding her son without affection. Saleh crept towards Anrah hopefully, hesitantly reaching for his mother's slender fingers. For a moment Anrah's deep, jewel-blue eyes brightened, curling her fingers around his small hands. Dara backed away, allowing Anrah space to reacquaint herself with her son.
"There," Dara said warmly. "Saleh still needs you, child."
Something snapped inside Anrah's frail mind. Her slim hand broke away from Saleh grip and struck out with uncommon loathing, knocking him to the ground.
"I hate you! I hate you!" Anrah shrieked, wildly.
He cried out in shock and hurt. Anrah leaned forward with a sudden burst of strength and hit him again, and again. Dara leapt forward, trying to restrain her. Anrah was younger and despite her deep depression and lack of care, remained the stronger, breaking free of Dara's hold. She lunged for Saleh, unrelenting, striking him.
"No, Anrah!" Dara screamed.
A powerful wind, akin to the winter storm, out of place in the late spring, tossed both Anrah and her mother to the side, lifting Dara clear off her feet. Her possession scattered, flying from the walls and swirling in whirlwinds. When the wind died down, Dara felt like she had been floating, witness to an act of the Gods. A sniffle returned her to the ground. There had been no Gods. There had only been little Saleh, weeping hysterically on the rugs spread across the hut floor and confused that mama hated him.
..0..
Dara awoke that morning, smelling early autumn gusts and rain, only a taste of the hurricane-like weather to come. She grumbled, reaching for the vael-aga to fix to her head, and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The troupe of mercenaries left earlier, before dawn, or so Kiorl had promised.
The druidess yawned, stretching her bad back. In the dark of the hut, she felt around for her clothes, drawing them on without sight.
"Anrah," she muttered. "Anrah, child, wake up."
Anrah would complain that being woken up so early would be bad for her skin; she'd stayed up late into the night, speaking with Kiorl and his men, the center of attention. Dara watched, almost jealously, as Anrah laughed and talked, radiantly beautiful in the fire- and starlight, until she grew tired and took herself to bed, instructing Anrah to do the same.
Her eyes had been sparkling and her face was flushed light pink, as Dara told her that. Dara clucked her tongue again, not amused. The strangers had produced some liquor and Anrah had even taken a taste, against Naeleh's advice. Naeleh was a smart girl, Dara thought approvingly. Her mother, Yudae, ought to be proud of such a prudent daughter.
Unlike this impossible child, Dara thought tiredly.
"Lazy child," Dara snapped, irritable in the early morning. She followed the wall to the door and flung it open, letting the weak daylight pour in. The windows were opened next, and Dara set to stoking the dying embers into a proper fire again, throwing a log into the hearth.
"Anrah, child, you'll have to chop a little extra wood for the stores," Dara murmured. She waited for the grudging reply of "yes, mother," or "oh, mother!" Dara sighed, as silence answered her.
She crossed to Anrah's pallet, and kicked it a little. The sleeping lump of Anrah's body quivered but did not rise. Dara scowled darkly, leaning over and ripping the quilt from her.
That sparkle in her eyes that night, Dara realized. That fascination with Kiorl, and consequently, the world outside the shelter of the mountains and Caer Pelyn. She should have recognized it. She should have stopped it.
Anrah was not in her bed.
Dara rushed outside, panicked. "Have you seen my daughter?" she asked the first man she saw, a Caer shepherd. His mouth formed an o and his eyes widened, but he shook his head no.
As it turned out, no one had. It was clear by midday that Anrah had run away with Kiorl and the troupe. Dara wept bitterly and pretended that Anrah had suddenly died, burning her vael-aga on the funeral pyre as though it were her body.
..0..
Saleh would not go near Anrah anymore, which was fine. Anrah glared murderously under her scraggly hair whenever he was near, snarling. Dara gave Saleh temporarily to Naeleh, a mother of another, older boy, who complained Saleh was an unwanted hindrance, but tolerated him.
"Anrah?" Dara asked, after failing to convince her daughter to eat. "Anrah, child? You don't have to speak, but I know I must ask you . . . why do you hate Saleh so?"
Anrah lay silent, sprawled on her pallet haphazardly. Her face was dirty and greasy, but she did not seem to care to clean it. She stank of self-neglect. Dara turned away to throw out the cold stew, but then Anrah opened her mouth and croaked, "I should love him."
Dara set the bowl aside on the floor and crouched near her daughter. "What was that, Anrah?"
"I should love him," she repeated, listlessly. "I know I should. But I can't, mother. Because of him, Kiorl left. He didn't want a child. He never did. He never even wanted me, mother. And . . . I was ashamed."
Dara's lips tightened, but she stroked Anrah's cheek comfortingly. She tried to smile.
"It's alright, child," Dara spoke softly. "There is no judgment here."
"That's not true, mother," Anrah said, fervently. Her eyes blazed, and she struggled to sit up. "You've always judged me, mother."
Dara remained quiet for many moments, trying to find the words. "There is no judgment any longer, my daughter. You are as welcome here as the day you were born."
Anrah gazed fixatedly at a point behind Dara's face, and laid back down, exhausted. She did not speak after that, but drifted off into a deep sleep as Dara prepared to sleep herself.
..0..
"Ow!"
Saleh's hand flew to his head, hissing angrily as the pain ebbed. The low stone ceiling of the little cave was not hospitable to his height, which was not extraordinarily impressive, but enough to bump his head.
"Ewan, you'd better be in here," he warned. A sniffle from the back of the cave, in the darkness, rewarded him. Saleh sighed and cooled his tone. "Ewan, I'm not angry."
Very much, at least, he amended in his heart. Ewan seemed to respond to that unconsciously and somehow made the darkness even darker.
"Ewan! Come on now," Saleh said, fiddling with a bundle of dried herbs. With a few quick words, he lit a torch that wouldn't burn out or smoke, a trick of his own invention. He lifted it to see Ewan holed up in the back. Saleh half-crawled, half hobbled to his quivering little student and knelt before him, peering into his face. "Ewan, I've been looking for you for hours. What happened?"
He sniffed and opened his mouth to explain. Saleh held up a hand.
"No, the other thing. I don't care about the book, Ewan, I was worried about you," Saleh said firmly. He could replace a tome of Elfire easily, with a few hours and a good, empty notebook. It would be harder to explain a lost Ewan to Tethys and Gerik.
"I got scared," Ewan said in a small voice, completely unlike himself.
Saleh waited for Ewan to continue. The little troublemaker swallowed his tears and started again, his words wavering terribly.
"I thought you were gonna throw me out," Ewan admitted. Saleh breathed out, relieved.
"No, Ewan, I'm not throwing you out," Saleh said. Ewan broke out into fresh sobs and rushed to his teacher, clinging to him. Carefully holding the torch away from Ewan, Saleh sighed and patted his red hair affectionately. Ewan's heart was bawling. "Now, tell me what's really wrong."
Ewan muttered something into Saleh's chest, muffled by the thick clothes he wore against the biting winds of Caer Pelyn's autumn. The sage sighed.
"I can't hear you, Ewan," Saleh prompted, adding a little push of reassurance from his own heart.
"Tethys said I had to be good or you'd throw me out, and I'd be alone again," Ewan gulped, holding tighter to the grey-green of Saleh's heavy cloak. "And you looked all mad and I thought you were gonna throw me out for sure, just like—"
He cut himself off, looking pathetic and sorry for himself. Saleh resigned himself and settled down to sit, one arm around his student. Ewan wiped his tears with the fabric of his own little cape.
Just like what, Ewan? Saleh asked, pushing words out so strong it was like he'd said them out loud, at least to Ewan. The boy hesitated before continuing.
"Jus' like when pop left us out on the street. He got mad and yelled at mom, and Tethys was cryin' . . . and he threw us out. Tethys doesn't think I remember it, but I do, I do," Ewan said. He waited for Saleh's reply with big watery eyes.
"Oh, Ewan," Saleh said. In a brief, rare moment, the corners of his mouth turned up in the most unused of his expressions. "I told you, I'm not kicking you out. That was just . . . inconsiderate. We'll laugh about this someday, Ewan, when you're a great scholar. Forget that. The past is unchangeable. The future is not."
Ewan smiled back, and curled up against Saleh's shoulder, thoroughly comforted. "Thanks, Teacher."
Saleh sighed, a little over much. Ewan laughed at his teacher's odd, dry humor. Awkward in displays of affection, Saleh waited patiently for Ewan to break away, but he never did. Tethys probably held him close like this, soothing his fears of abandonment.
"Teach?"
"Yes, Ewan?"
"Do you . . . do you have a mom?"
Saleh held the torch a little higher, looking down at Ewan incredulously.
"What sort of question is that?"
"I dunno!" Ewan said defensively. "I just never heard of you having a mom or a pop. I mean, you got the Elder . . . but you don't got any aunts or uncles or nothin'. So I was wondering."
"Ah . . ." Saleh furrowed his brow, looking hard at the jagged cave wall. This really was a nifty place that Ewan found, perfect for a little boy to hide from chores. Saleh could remember having found a similar cave in his youth. Dara had been the only parent he'd ever really known.
"My mother died when I was still very young, Ewan," Saleh began hesitantly. "I know nothing of my father. Dara does not speak of him, but I have been told he was a traveling mercenary."
How'd your mom die? Ewan asked. He probably didn't realize he said that in his heart.
"She fell off of a cliff when I was about five," Saleh replied aloud. "I remember she was very beautiful. She and I, Dara tells me, lived in Jehanna for the early years of my life, although I remember almost nothing of that time."
"Really?" Ewan asked, intrigued. "So that's why you look like a Jehan."
"Do I really?" Saleh raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah," he nodded feverishly. "It's in your face and stuff. Gerik thought you were someone he knew, when he first saw you. Ke—Ki—Korl, or something. I dunno. He mumbles sometimes."
"Is that so?" Saleh said, almost completely disinterested. "Come along, let's go. I am hungry, and I am almost certain that Dara wants mutton stew and that takes work."
"Aw, am I making it?" Ewan whined, his tears forgotten entirely. He had an entirely carefree way about him, didn't he, a way that just brushed all sadness to the wayside.
"Well, now that you've offered . . ."
"Aw, Teach!"
..0..
Dara woke up that morning, and again, she found that Anrah was not in her bed.
"Anrah!" Dara called, running through the village. Naeleh rushed forward, holding the hands of her son, Fian, and little Saleh. "Have you seen Anrah? Have you seen my daughter?"
Naeleh shook her head. Saleh looked up, panicked, and Naeleh knelt to soothe him as Dara rushed away.
"Anrah!" Dara shouted, her hands cupped around her mouth as she ran, a hobbling mess of thrown on clothes and hair. Her vael-aga lay on the floor at home.
Anrah stood alone in the meadow where the flower for her sun-blocking paste grew. Her mangy hair flew in chunks around her face in the wind, and she wore remarkably little, compared to the cold. Dara's arms fell to her sides, as Anrah turned to look at her mother. Her bare toes curled on the edge of the precipice, the one that Dara warned her of when she was a little girl.
Don't run too close to here. It drops off here, out of nowhere—don't play too far out of sight, Anrah, child . . .
"Are you here to stop me, mother?" Anrah asked, tiredly. If Dara begged, perhaps she would have followed her back to the village, perhaps she would have lived.
Dara took a breath and let go.
"No, my child. I am not here to judge."
Anrah nodded, and then let herself fall.
..0..
"You know I was so surprised the first time I visited Caer Pelyn. The elder's eyes . . . they were not the eyes of average person. They were filled with a lifetime's wisdom and seem to look right through you. Deep . . . and sharp. And they were so clear. I've looked into the eyes of many people, but no one had eyes like hers. But the thing about the elder is that her eyes weren't harsh, or judgmental. That's that what I like about her."
..0..
I had the idea for this fic and then it wouldn't leave me alone, even though I knew I couldn't really do it justice. Maybe I'll come back. Pfft.