Wow. I finished it. Did hell freeze over?
First of all, I would like to apologize to you all for taking so damn long. I said it'd be a week and it's been months. Life has been hectic and I've had just about the worse case of writer's block known to man. But today I sat down and just spat it out. And it's my longest chapter yet! Hopefully that'll be the last block I'll see for awhile. I got a lot of nice reviews, and they made me very happy. You're all wonderful So wonderful that I'll write out each one, hehe.
Leney – Thanks! Lol I try to be descriptive as possible so that the people reading it will see everything as well as I do.
Tian-Tian – I love you, Mariam
Tribestar5 – Thanks for the great compliment I love compliments, especially about my writing. They're the best feeling in the world. I hope I can continue to keep you interested.
youdontneedtoknow - Yeah R is high, at least for now. I didn't really want to write anything nasty or horrible when she's still a kid, and I'm just setting up her life right now. But action and gore will come soon… and perhaps sex, if I'm brave enough to actually post what I write on here, lol.
Keladry of Mindelan – XD Thanks for the review, it encouraged the heck outta me.
Spordelia Chase – Thanks, Mol. You're a star Everyone else, this is my little sister. She writes Harry Potter stuff. She's not as good as me, heh, but she has promise. Go read!
Now for the story!
In the spring of my fourth year, my father brought home a guest to our town house in Port Legann. Young as I was, I can still remember everything about that day with crystal clarity. It was a beautiful day, warm with a slight breeze and a few fluffy white clouds in the sky. Mother and I were in the garden, pulling weeds from her neat rows of herbs. I wore a plain blue dress and white apron, my mother a similar dress of rose pink, her apron decorated with fine flowering embroidery. Her thick mass of tight curls was bound back from her face in a tight braid, my finer waving hair parted into a girl's twin braids. Birds gathered around us in the trees and along the walls, their voices blending pleasantly with the melody my mother sang.
Mother kept a garden in Legann as well as Conté, using the plants she grew as ingredients for the wizard's mixes she brewed. I was with her everyday, pulling weeds and picking off harmful insects as she taught me the names of the plants and their uses. It was part of my education, and as I grew older we began mixing powders and brewing potions, a cornerstone of sorcery. But then I was still too young for anything more than learning the names of the plants and memorizing their properties.
I heard my dogs barking in the courtyard, waves of the ecstatic joy only dogs seem capable of rolling over me through my wild magic as it did every time my father came home. Leaping up, I ran barefoot out of the garden, through the kitchen and out into the courtyard to throw myself into my father's open arms. He swung me around, a wide grin on his face, the dogs barking with almost hysterical excitement. It was like that every day, and I never tired of it. But today was different. Instead of swinging me up on his shoulders and going to the garden to greet my mother, Father set me down and turned towards a man I hadn't noticed until then. I recognized him, vaguely, from my visits to the barracks of Second Company. He'd always been off to the side with one of the commanders, watching the men spar.
"Donovan, this is my daughter, Melisande." I curtsied as my mother had taught me, unwavering but uncomfortable under the stranger's intense gaze. "Melly, this man is a new friend of mine, Donovan Steelwind, the Gryphon of Shang."
I rose from my curtsy, looking up at him with eyes the size of tea saucers. Many a night my father had put me to bed with tales of the courageous Shang, roaming warriors who lived by a code of honor and had no need for weapons. Once initiated, a fighter would choose a name of an animal that they admired or resembled in their style of fighting. The Shang named after immortals were the best. Gryphon was second only to Dragon.
Donovan was tall and slender; his long arms and legs giving the illusion of an even greater height than his 6'4". He wore simple black breeches and a black leather vest over a white shirt. His black boots and riding gloves had seen many years of hard use, but were well maintained and still in good condition. His eyes were the same coal black as his thick, elbow length braid. His swarthy complexion had been darkened even further by years of exposure to the sun, and small crow's feet appeared at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. He couldn't have been past 30, but his dark gaze held the wisdom of men twice his age. He was intimidating, but I wasn't afraid of him. In a way, he reminded me of my father. They were both destined to be great men.
He bent his knees and sank into a comfortable crouch, bringing himself eye level with me. His dark face softened as his mouth stretched into a warm, genuine smile, showing two rows of straight white teeth. "Hello, Melisande. It's nice to meet you. Has anyone ever told you that you have an excellent sense of balance?"
"Balance?" I grinned, jumping back a few steps. "You mean like this?"
I started turning cartwheels right there in the courtyard, a trick I had learned from Agatha only three weeks earlier. I had mastered it easily, and I had come close to driving my mother mad more than once by cart wheeling through the house and garden. Only recently had I got the hang of finishing one cart wheel and going right into another without falling on my face. I completed a full circled around my father and Donovan, skipping out of my last cart wheel to grin breathlessly up at them. My father was practically glowing with pride and love, and Donovan's dark face was lit by a gentle smile. Then, to my great surprise and my father's amusement, Donovan took a big step and turned a pair of cartwheels as if he were still a child at play.
"Yes." He said, walking back over to us and kneeling next to me once more. "Balance. You're a very smart young lady."
I grinned at him, already deciding that I liked this strange new man. Mother came out, and introductions were made again. Donovan bowed and kissed her hand as smoothly as a seasoned court noble, treating my mother with the respect she was due as the wife of royalty, but was so often denied. She curtsied daintily, inviting him to join us for dinner in the house. He accepted of course, and Mother led us inside.
Mother left us in the parlor to go to the kitchen and help prepare dinner. My father poured a glass of wine for himself and Donovan, and I was given a cup of fruit juice. As they sat down in chairs, I sprawled out on the carpet with our big rat catcher, Momo. I ignored their conversation, expecting it to turn towards boring adult affairs. I didn't realize that they were talking about me until my father pulled on my bare foot.
"Melly? Donovan was hoping to talk to you about something."
Sitting up in a tailor's seat, I pulled Momo into my lap and regarded them both with wide eyes. "About what?"
Donovan took over and addressed me himself. "Melisande, you know about Shang, right? If a fighter finds a child who shows enough promise, he takes the child with him to Shang, and trains it in our way."
"And they grow up to travel the world and become heroes!" I squeezed the cat to my chest in excitement, ignoring her yowl of protest.
"Sometimes. But half of it isn't nearly as glorious as bards would make it out to be." I ignored that, pushing it off as adult silliness.
He was losing my attention, and knew it, so he moved away from trying to enlighten me on the grim reality of life as Shang. Slipping out of his chair, he knelt on the floor next to me. "Melisande, what would you say if I offered to take you with me? If I told you that you could grow up to be a Shang fighter, like me?"
My eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. Momo escaped as my arms went slack, and I didn't try to recapture her. Me, Shang? I had many romantic dreams about my future, most of them inspired by the stories my father put me to bed with. Many times I had fantasized about fighting side-by-side with a legendary Shang warrior, but rarely did I dare to imagine myself as one of them. It had seemed too far fetched, too arrogant. But now one of their greatest was right in front of me, offering me the chance to live among heroes. To become a legend.
"I could be Shang? Like Bear or Falcon or Wolf?"
Donovan smiled at me and nodded. "Melisande, I have been watching you for a few weeks while I was training with your father's men. You show vast potential for the fighting arts. An excellent sense of balance, wonderful hand-eye coordination, and a born talent for the discipline required for our calling, even at such a young age."
"But Melly is Gifted."
My mother stood in the doorway, face pale, her expression set in stone. She walked to stand next to my father's chair, reaching out for his hand. She was trembling.
"It's true, most Shang fighters are not Gifted, and if they are it's almost always small, lighting fires and moving things." Donovan met my mother's anxious gaze with frank honesty, knowing that what he was proposing would separate mother and child. "I myself am Gifted. I have the Sight, passed on to me by my father. It's not strong enough that I need training, but I do get very strong feelings about important things and people, and if it's strong enough I have dreams."
"When I met Lord Raenef I had a very strong feeling that this was someone important, someone I must know for the future. And when I saw your Melly at the barracks of the Own, I began to have dreams." He ran a hand over his hair. "I believe Ganiel is telling me that she is to be my student... that it's imperative that I teach her."
My mother took this all with great composure, but I could see her knuckles were white from clinging to my father's hands and small tremors ran up her arms. My father saw it as well, and stood up, ushering her into his chair before she collapsed. It was times like these that I saw just how weak giving birth to me had made her. Immediately I got up and rushed across the room to climb into her lap and wrap my arm around her neck. As much as I wanted to go with Donovan, to become a hero, I knew I could not leave my mother.
"I can't leave Mama. She needs me." I looked at the Gryphon, tears in my eyes. "I'm sorry."
He was disappointed, I could tell, but he smiled at me nonetheless. "That's very brave of you, Melisande. It says a great deal about the kind of person you are, and will be. Not many children would give up a fairy tale for another's sake."
My mother's arms wrapped around me tightly and she kissed my brow, whispering to me in Yamani. "Sweet, you should not give this up for me. It's the chance of a life time. You'll regret it when he's gone."
"Mama, I don't wanna leave you. You'd be too sad. I'd be sad."
She hugged me tightly, running a quick finger under each eye to erase the threat of tears. I felt my father's big, callused hand running over my hair, and it cemented my decision. Even at four years old, I knew my family was more important than some romantic notion of becoming a legend. And I knew there were other ways for me to become a warrior. After all, I was noble born, the daughter of a Conté. When I turned ten, I could always travel to Corus and become a page and learn the skills of a knight.
It wasn't as glorious a notion as becoming a Shang fighter, but I bit my lip and didn't let myself dwell on it. I was young, and my life revolved around only one thing: my parents. My mind was too naïve and undeveloped to imagine life without them.
Cook came in after that, informing us that dinner was ready and waiting for us in the other room. Father picked me up from Mother's lap and sat me on his shoulders, following Cook out of the room to dinner. Unlike most noble families, we had a one course dinner, sharing the meal with our servants. Our staff was small, consisting only of Cook, who doubled as my mother's personal maid, Agatha, my nursemaid, and Adish and Namir, the young Bahzir twins my father had recently hired to serve as guards for my mother and me. Adish carried in an extra chair from the parlor for Donovan, setting it to the right of Father's chair. Mother said the blessing, and we all sat and began passing around the dishes.
Usually at dinner I was very talkative and energetic, often forgetting that there was food on my plate because I was too busy chattering. But that night I hardly said two words, and everyone noticed. Namir tried to draw me out of my shell of misery by juggling grapes and making silly jokes, but I just stared at my plate, pushing a piece of potato around with my fork. I tuned out the adult's conversation, eating even though I wasn't hungry. The minute I was done I pushed back my chair and asked to be excused, not waiting for an answer before running to my room.
Katla and Somerled, my father's two great Scanran wolfhounds, followed me upstairs. Ignoring my bed, I flopped down on the big rug, wrapping my arms around Katla's scruffy neck. Somerled lay down next to me, laying his big head in my lap. They knew I was sad, but couldn't understand why. Years with me and my mother had given them almost human intelligence, but animal sense didn't allow them to understand the intricacies of humanity. They didn't understand my dilemma, but that didn't stop them from comforting me in every way they knew how.
Giving birth to me had nearly killed my mother. She had survived only through the grace of her grandmother, the Green Lady, who'd broken the boundaries of her lands in the mountain just to watch over her granddaughter. With her divine intervention, the midwife had been able to save both me and my mother. But her health never really recovered. She was fragile, vulnerable to illnesses that only made her weaker. When I was old enough for my powerful Gift to begin manifesting itself, I'd prayed to the Mother Goddess for the power to heal, so one day I could cure my mother of all her ailments. The healing Gift was not uncommon in the Conté line, but my father was a warrior mage, as was my mother. To my crushing disappointment, so was I.
I fell asleep with the dogs on the floor, my head pillowed on Katla's neck, my body tucked securely between the two big hounds. They were as good as any blanket, lulling me into a deep, dreamless sleep with their steady breathing and warm bodies. I'd fallen asleep like that before, and Agatha or my mother always came in and moved me to my bed, but that night they let me be.
Nobody woke me up in the morning, letting me sleep in until noon. Normally I would've awoken on my own, much earlier, but the stress and tears of the night before had exhausted me. Warm tongues lapping at my face brought me fully awake and I giggled, pushing the two big hounds off of me so I could sit up. The sun cast light into my unlit room, accompanied by the cheerful chirping of sparrows in the tree outside my window.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and went out into the hallway, finding it silent and empty. Katla and Somerled followed me as I made my way downstairs, my feet bare and my hair mussed from sleep. I could hear Agatha down the hallway in the kitchen with Cook, sharing some bit of inane gossip by the excitement in their voices. Not wanting to be around people, I ran outside to the courtyard, hounds hot on my heels. They were excited to be outside, thinking it would cheer me up as it always did them. How could I stay glum when the sun was shining and there were squirrels to chase?
Their simple reasoning made me smile, but it wasn't in me to play with them just then. Maybe later, I told them, sitting down on the steps and casting a glance about the courtyard. When I'd first come out, I'd thought it empty, but a lone figure in black occupied the far corner. I felt my heart constrict and immediately turned to run back inside, but his voice stopped me.
"Good morning, Melisande. Would you care to join me?"
My mother had taught me to be polite, and my limited young mind couldn't think of any way to leave without being rude. So I swallowed heavily and crossed the courtyard to sit on the bench Donovan occupied.
He smiled at me and I immediately turned my gaze away, unable to face his kindness. His deep voice was light and conversational. "I trust you slept well?"
I nodded but said nothing, for I didn't have it in me to speak to him. His mere presence was a weight on my chest, a constant reminder of the dream I had given up for the sake of my mother. I wanted so badly to take back my decision, to become his student and one day be Shang. But the memory of my mother's tear-filled eyes loomed heavy in my mind, so I held my tongue.
Katla and Somerled had followed me across the yard, stopping a few feet away from the bench. They seemed to be debating on whether to growl at this strange new man or leap on him and give him a welcoming tongue bath. They could tell I was uncomfortable and upset in his presence, but I held no feelings of resentment or hostility towards him, so they were confused. Somerled inched forward to lay his big head on my leg. Katla soon followed, encouraged when I lifted my hand to scratch his ears out of habit. She allowed Donovan to do the same, and for a long while we sat there in complete silence, save the noise of the city beyond the walls.
His voice broke the silence, making me cringe. "I'm sorry, Melly. You were very brave, choosing as you did. Not many children would act so selflessly."
That broke me, and tears began to drip from my eyes on to Somerled's scruffy brow, my shoulders heaving in sobs I tried to muffle by pressing a fist to my mouth. To my surprise, Donovan reached out and put his arm around me in a gentle, comforting hug, and then put his hand under my chin to lift my eyes to his. In those black depths I saw nothing but compassion, not pity or disdain for my weakness. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he gave it to me so I could wipe my eyes, not even caring that I also rudely used it to blow my nose.
"Melisande," he began, his voice soft and thoughtful. "If you could stay with your mother and still learn to be Shang, would you want to do that?"
I stared at him as if he were offering me the treasury of Tortall, and dumbly nodded my head.
"I know you are important to my future, Melisande, the gods have told me so. I see great potential in you, and I hate to give it up." He took a deep sigh. "If you would agree to it, I would stay here, as your teacher. You could learn to be Shang."
Nothing could have prepared me for this. In all the stories I'd heard, the Shang were all said to be rootless adventurers. They prized their freedom, rarely staying in any one place for more that a year. That was part of the appeal to me: living on a whim and going wherever the mood struck you. It was the Shang mystique.
But here beside me was the greatest Shang alive, the Gryphon, offering to give up his freedom for me, a child, just so I could learn the Shang way.
"But you'd be trapped here!" I blurted out.
He smiled wryly and shook his head. "I have always been one of the less adventurous Shang. Traveling is nice, but many a time have I thought about how nice it would be to have a home, somewhere to belong. I know the idea of living so freely seems romantic to you, but in reality it is a very lonely way to live. It lost its appeal to me long ago.
"But we would not be trapped, I promise you. I know for a fact that your family travels often, so we would never be in one place for too long. And I'm sure when you're older we could travel on our own. It would be as unconventional an apprenticeship as the Shang had ever known, but I believe that it is worth it."
I threw my arms around him and hugged him with all the strength I had in my skinny little girl arms, crying tears of joy. We went inside to find my mother and father and tell them of this new arrangement, and both of them were delighted that their daughter could live her dream after all. To celebrate, Papa took us to the fields outside Legann to picnic, bringing the entire household as well. As I raced over the hills with Katla and Somerled at my heels, the adults toasted wine and my father officially hired Donovan as a member of his household, my master at arms.
There are no words for the joy I felt that day. I wanted to leap to the sky and shout my happiness to the gods themselves. My family was growing, and I was to be Shang. What more could a young girl want?
The richest of kings were poor compared to the treasures I was surrounded with.