Family, Chapter One - Ellimere and Touchstone, on Sabriel's Absence
Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.
-Elizabeth Stone
"Wait for me, Ellimere," her mother had said when she'd kissed her daughter goodbye, "and mind your Father."
Ellimere hated waiting. She hated it more than anything else in the world – and when one considers all the things in a little princess' world worth hating, it is no small mystery why she hated waiting so much. She hated waiting for her birthday to come around again – she would be turning six – and she hated waiting for her father to finish his work (what it was he did, Ellimere wasn't too sure, but she knew it was both important and unpleasant, because he went around frowning all the time). She hated waiting on the proper while the hostler saddled her pony, and she hated standing in front of the big oven in the kitchen's corner waiting for the day's ginger cakes to be done. She absolutely loathed standing still on the tiny little platform in the seamstress' room waiting for her hem to be pinned, and she would rather have eaten a worm than spent another single moment standing idly by the window awaiting her mother's return. She hated that more than anything else. Her father hated it too, she knew. He hated it as much as she did. Every time Sabriel left she asked Ellimere to wait for her, and every time Ellimere hated it more and more.
Especially when her mother was late: Sabriel's return was three days overdue.
Sitting beside her window, gazing out through an overgrown lattice of Charter-spelled ivy, Ellimere clutched her doll harder against her small frame and valiantly fought back tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks. The almost-full moon shone down upon the palace, clear and bright. From her window, through the creeping vines, Ellimere could see the West Yard for the paperwings, and if she leaned out a bit farther, the South Gates. There was no paperwing in sight, no small column of riders heading toward the gates.
Every single night she had kept watch just so. Her father would tuck her in and kiss her goodnight, and then when he had closed the door, she would creep from her bed and tiptoe to the window, where she would sit until morning. Nothing tonight, just as there had been nothing the night before, and nothing the night before that.
The moon made its slow, arduous journey through the skies as night wore on, and Ellimere grew tired. Her head nodded more and more, and still her mother never appeared. Her grip on the small cloth doll weakened, until she finally curled up on the window seat, and let sleep take her.
She dreamed: A man came to her father at breakfast. His red tabard made him a guard. Short hair. Course hands. He spoke haltingly, and carried a package wrapped in soft, oiled leather. Heavy. Cumbersome. Wrong. She knew what was in the package, and what wasn't. A sword that had never needed sharpening, and six bells. Only six. There were arms around her, and her father's choked voice in her ear. She's not coming back to us, he said. She's not coming back…
Ellimere awoke with a cry, tears falling down her small red cheeks as she tumbled from the window seat. With a great sob of anguish she leapt from the floor and flew from her room, through the parlor, straight past the massive wooden doors that led out to the palace, and to her parents' bedroom. The heavy door flew open, rebounding off the wall as she raced past. Her father, standing by the window to watch the West Yard, turned as the door banged open. Her little brother was asleep in the big, velvet-draped bed.
Trying to quiet her cries – not wanting to wake Sameth – Ellimere ran to her father's outstretched arms. He swept her off the floor in one smooth motion and hugged her tightly, rubbing her back as she sobbed into his chest. Her tears made a dark spot on his shirt.
"Hush, Elli. Hush darling. It's alright," Touchstone murmured softly, sitting down carefully on the bed. Sam felt the mattress dip, but all he did was mumble and roll onto his back.
After a few long, weary moments, Ellimere's sobs began to quiet. The warmth of her father's arms pushed away the infirmity in her own small limbs, and his soothing voice, murmuring words of ease and comfort, chased away all her fears and uncertainties.
When she had shed her tears, and wiped her nose on her sleeve, her father asked gently, "What's wrong, Elli? What's frightened you?"
Instead of answering his question, Ellimere asked one of her own, choking back her hiccups just long enough to gasp out, "When is Mother coming home?"
The look of sudden loss and despair on her father's face was disheartening, and nearly enough to send her back to sobbing. He hugged her tightly, harder then he had before, and answered, "I don't know."
"I wish she were here with us," Ellimere said, reaching out to wrap one of her little hands around the curls just above her father's right ear, tears once again beginning to leak.
"So do I, darling," Touchstone said softly, one again struck by how much Ellimere resembled his wife. She would be a perfect picture of Sabriel when she was grown, of that much he was sure.
"Why is she always leaving us?" Ellimere asked. "Doesn't she love us? Doesn't she get lonely?"
"Of course she loves us," Touchstone said immediately. "And I'm sure she misses us very much."
"Then why does she leave us?" the young princess persisted. "I don't understand!"
Touchstone considered for a moment, not sure how to answer the question to his daughter's satisfaction.
"Whenever your mother leaves," he said finally, looking into a pair of familiar brown eyes, "she goes out to make the world a better place for you to grow up in. She loves you and Sam and I so much that she is willing to bear the pain of being away from us."
Ellimere sniffled, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, before asking, "Is it very bad, out in the world?"
"Not so very," Touchstone answered, giving her a small, sad smile. "But it is dangerous."
"Could she die?"
The answering nod made his chest ache, but Touchstone could not find it in him to lie to Elli – not when her mother had been missing for three days.
The concept of death was not unknown to Ellimere - with the Abhorsen for a mother, how could it be? - but the feelings it brought were quite unfamiliar. The mere thought of living without her mother, or her father or brother, brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes. Sniffling, she wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, and said, "I love you, Daddy." Then, reaching up, she wrapped her arms around Touchstone's neck in a tight hug.
"I love you too, darling," he said as he hugged her back.
A loud knock echoed through from the parlor, startling both father and daughter. "Your Highness?" one of the guards called from the next room.
Touchstone let out a tired sigh at the interruption. He gave Ellimere a dour scowl, half-veiled by a smile, and moved her off his lap to sit beside her brother on the bed. Then he stood, stretched briefly, and made his was through the bedroom door – which shut behind him with a snap! – out into the parlor.
For a moment Ellimere was tempted to follow after her father. She looked down at Sameth, who still slumbered deeply, wrapped in his tangled nightshirt and the bed's thick blankets. Her gaze was distasteful: she was more than sure that she had never looked like that when she was three (though Sam would be four in another week). There was drool gathering at the corner of his mouth, and his nose was running. He was sucking lightly on the first two fingers of his left hand. Ellimere had often found her mother exclaiming over how adorable Sam was when he slept, but she herself simply could not see it.
Her father came back into the room then, but he did not close the door behind himself. Smiling at her, he said, "Go and get your dressing gown Elli, and we'll meet your mother in the West Yard."
A wide, beaming grin broke Ellimere's previously gloomy disposition. Dashing from the room, she ran back down the hall and into her bedroom. With quick hands and little care for what was pushed aside, she pulled the dark blue robe from her wardrobe, and ran back out into the hall. Then she sped back in, stepped into her slippers, and was off again.
She was still tugging on her dressing gown when she returned. Her father was wrapping Sam in one of his extra coats and hoisting the small boy into his arms. Sameth made no protest, looking out through bleary eyes before burying his head on his father's shoulder to fall back to sleep.
With Sam in one arm, and Ellimere's hand clutched tightly in his own, Touchstone made his way out into the palace, down a long hallway toward the flight of steps that would take them down to the West Yard. Ellimere was tugging him along as fast as her little legs could carry her.
"I'm glad we don't have to wait anymore," Ellimere commented.
After telling her not to skip down the stairs, her father said, "So am I, Ellimere. So am I."
