A/N: Well. I lied. It's not over yet…Here's the first part of Beauty. Yay for Elestra!
Disclaimer: If I was Sherwood Smith, I wouldn't be posting this on a fanfiction sight. So, obviously, I am not Sherwood Smith.
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In the sunlight, there are voices. Quick as insects, the sweet hum of bees below me, laughter like rain. Emotion pitched like song: humans are so desperate, so willful, every moment bright and dark by turns.
Winter stillness, when the voices give way to silence, leaving me with my dreams…I hear the Hill Folk laughing, distant and near, all around me, their song made to the rhythm of sunlight and dusk, back to dawn, pumping sap through limbs and leaves, the slow trickle of water deep underground.
I am dreaming…starlight, too faint for leaves to drink, but bright to human eyes…water on my face, a human face, salt tears staining, stinging human eyes...How long ago, how long until it passes again? in this form, I know only cycles, consciousness of light and dark, summer and winter, all natural things turning back upon themselves. I do not know how to go back, to memories of power, magic on my lips, the desperate, singing existence of those who run and laugh and cry below me.
Their voices grow clearer, season after season, flirtation and judgment, whispering, shouting around me.
A girl's voice, clear as water, telling secrets to the night…
"They don't see me…just a funny face…"
Changing, daylight, and the hum of many voices…
"Funds for diverting the river…"
"Too likely to cause floods…"
Night again, twilight, dawn, days turning by me. I am fading, growing, losing the harmony of the Hill Folk to change, time moving by me, carrying me with it, breathless, gasping, fearful again.
It is just a moment…as it was before…
And the sinking sun grasps me, holds me in its last rays, transfixed and dwindling, collapsing downwards into myself. With eyes to see, it is blinding, scarlet and gold on my face, and I have a face as I fall to the floor.
Facedown on the cool tiles, I took my first breath in twenty years.
Fists clenched against the floor, I sat up, marveling at the motion. My ears were ringing; the air tasted strange, and I was panting, gulping it down like fresh, cold water after years of thirst.
The sun's last rays slipped past the glass dome overhead (when had the new king built that?), and I was left in darkness.
I sat for a time under the dome, in the space of broken tiles where I had stood for so long, rooted in the earth. Thought was slow in coming, dizzy with seasons of simple existence. But it did not take long to realize that if I was still sitting here when the sun rose, someone would find me.
I didn't want to go back to the past.
Then…
Memories of voices…courtiers and servants, coming in the night to tell their secrets and their sorrows to the tree that had been a mage…I remembered the voice of a girl, a princess, of her mother…
What if Meliara came? I wondered. It would be an amusing end to my time in Remalna, perhaps…and a guaranteed safe passage to the border.
I checked the sheaths at my wrists. One was empty, the knife inside it lost that fateful night twenty years ago…but the second blade I still had. With that and my magic, I could match the one-time Countess easily.
Footsteps in the hallway beyond the throne room, and I ran to press myself against the wall by the doors, out of sight of whoever might enter. Of course, anyone would soon recognize the absence of the goldenwood tree…but by then I'd have them. I drew my dagger.
One of the double doors cracked open, and a slender figure stumbled inside, sniffing. Wan moonlight shone on dull brown hair, a long rose-coloured silk gown. The girl brushed raised a hand to brush the hair out of her eyes—or wipe away tears?—and I recognized who she must be. Meliara's daughter. Not the Queen herself, but good enough.
I paused for a moment, watching her as the door fell shut behind her. She took a deep breath, turning towards the center of the room. I stepped behind her, pressed a hand over her mouth before she saw the tree's absence and screamed.
Her cry was only a squeak; she kicked at me as I pulled her back, too surprised to make any real attempt at breaking free.
"I'd hoped for your mother," I said softly into her ear, "but you'll do."
She tried to scream again, thrashed ineffectually and stamped on my foot. I sighed.
"I don't want to have to kill you. Don't fight."
She went very still, and I took my hand from her mouth, still keeping a hold on her arm, and switching the knife to my free hand. The princess—Elestra was her name, I remembered—Elestra hung her head, panting, her eyes on the knife.
"Come along."
"What?" Her wide eyes flashed to my face. I couldn't see her expression in the shadows, but I rolled my eyes as she didn't move. I tugged at her arm.
"Come along," I repeated. Wondering if this was the sort of conversation I could expect until the border, I contemplated just leaving her there. Who cared if she called the guards?
Pulling her after me, I whispered a spell of concealment. The princess gasped a little as the air around us shimmered, distorted like light through water. We walked in silence through the halls that were both familiar to me and strange after long years of absence. It didn't take long to reach the garden, and I was glad, despite the soft, insistent rain that dampened my hair and made my tunic, heavy velvet, cling soggily to my skin. Those halls held too many memories. The gardens, at least had changed, new paths and flowers opening before me, unfamiliar since long years of sunlight and water…I could almost reach out to them, feel that vital pulse of music that shaped their days…
The spell wavered, almost broke from my concentration, and I brought my mind back to the present, trying to lose memories and think only of the spell. The border of the garden was near, trees towering ahead of us…I almost felt their endless indrawn breath, pulled back from that awareness.
Beside me, Elestra shifted. I gripped the hilt of the knife tightly in my hand. I felt her turning, ready to jump on me or reach for the knife—and then she tripped and fell sprawling into the mess of mud and leaf loam carpeting the ground. I swallowed a yelp of laughter that would probably have been audible within a ten radius. My shoulders were shaking with it as I knelt down beside her.
Elestra might be better company than I had supposed.
"I expect the time has come to negotiate," I said to her, trying, and failing, to keep the laughter out of my voice.
She appeared to think for a moment, then grumbled "If you surrender now, I won't be too hard on you."
I laughed aloud this time. "This is what I had in mind. You come along eithout putting me to trouble, and I'll contrive the journey in comfort."
"No," she said, sounding admirably bold, given the situation. "I don't want to go anywhere."
"I regret the necessity, but I require a hostage, just to the border, and you are it." And very amusing this promises to be, too.
She made a noncommittal noise.
"Well?" I asked. "What shall it be? Comfort or duress?" And, when she stayed silent, "I feel obliged to reiterate that you're going either way."
She sighed—and had to stop and spit out an unfortunate small insect. Pausing—to recollect her dignity?—she gritted her teeth. "So you asking my parole. Just to the border. And then you'll let me be?"
"Correct," I said with a smile.
There was a long pause. Leaves rustled overhead, and a raindrop slipped through their cover and slid down my nose. The wet ground was seeping through the knees of my trousers, and my wet tunic wasn't getting any more comfortable. I tried to keep my mind on those discomforts, on the princess as she lay in the grass, and not on the trees around me. Distantly, I thought that I could hear…their song. I clenched my fists, hoping Elestra wouldn't notice.
"I'll do it." Her voice shook me from my thoughts.
"I have your word, then?" My voice seemed very small in the stillness, and I inwardly cursed the Hill Folk. I had nothing to fear.
"Yes!" she said, with some annoyance. I sighed and sheathed my knife, reaching down to help her up. She ignored my hand and stood on her own, looking down to shake the moss off her skirt and study its interesting mud stains.
The next hour's walk was not enjoyable. I stumbled over roots and stones, trying not to fall, trying not to listen to the rustling of the trees. I had never had any woodscraft, and twenty-odd years as a tree seemed to have only made walking in the woods even more uncomfortable. I stumbled blindly through a patch of briars, biting back a curse. Behind me, I heard the sound of cloth ripping as Elestra tripped through after me. I thought another curse. If we weren't well away by the time someone realized she was missing, anyone looking for us would just have to follow the trail of shredded evening gown. I could do that.
And I was tired. No, exhausted. And hungry. After all, I hadn't slept or eaten in twenty years. I wondered whether they'd think to check the deserted old house in the woods, then sighed. It would probably be the first place any searchers looked. And I couldn't even find it…
I tripped out into a clearing. And there was the house, before me, blackened timbers being reclaimed by vines and saplings. The roof had fallen, the stones were scorched…
"It's gone." I was shocked out of all proportion.
Twigs cracked behind me as Elestra stepped into the clearing.
"That was used as a guardhouse by the enemy in the war. My father led a raid. Burned it. No one has been here since." She took a breath. "What did do expect to find."
I sighed, closed my eyes. "Not a ruin."
The second part of the walk was even worse than its beginning. I stumbled through bracken and thorns and tried to keep my eyes open, hearing the trees breathe. More than once, I opened my mouth to say something, anything to Elestra, to drive away that silence with human contact, but every time my words failed. By the time we reached the forest's edge, I felt like the walking dead.
Moonlight cast its faint reflection on the river that wound its way through the valley below us. Not far away, it opened out into a broad bay. A small village stood by the river's edge. Sheep grazed on the hillside below us, like small low-floating clouds.
I sighed and brushed the hair from my eyes. I was tired enough that the world around me seemed to be shaking erratically. I took a few stumbling steps to a grove of willow and sank to the ground beneath it. Elestra followed.
I had just enough energy to cast the spell that would make certain she slept, before my eyes too slipped shut.