by Lisa Lowell
The next day, with Everic escorting him, the recovering invalid went outside. He wore rags on his feet and a cast-off shirt of his host’s, but the wind on the cliff where the simple home stood didn’t seem to disturb him. Caught on a cusp between white-capped mountains to the north and the white-capped surf on the beach to the south, this little home struggled to survive. Neither the mountains nor the sea brought anything to mind for the struggling wanderer.
“How did I come to be here?” he asked aloud but to himself. “I couldn’t have arrived in that storm dressed that way. I’ve seen mountains and ocean before, I’m sure, but I cannot remember when. What am I that I would come here without supplies? Where did I leave my boots?”
“Still no memory?” Everic commented. “There wasn’t a mark on you, so you probably weren’t in battle. You have no scars except long-healed rope burns,” and Everic held out his hands so he could witness the scars of pulling fishing line. “You’ve been at sea, but it was years ago. You can’t be much over twenty, so you were young to your calling and left it. Can you do anything else that might witness to your profession?”
Curiosity made the stranger look toward the shed that Everic approached and saw there all the implements of a farmer, a fisherman, a blacksmith, and a hunter. There must be no town nearby that would supply the family’s needs, and so Everic and his wife must make do and performed every profession for themselves. Without asking, the stranger reached for the bow that leaned against the back wall of the shed and pulled it out, sensing the familiarity that went with the actions, as routine as breathing.
“Then you’re an archer,” Everic confirmed and brought out the quiver that went with the bow. “That’s what we’ll do today to fill the pot then. Around here at this time of year, there’re plenty of birds; difficult to hit, but there also might be winter rabbits come out early and now are hungry after the storm. Shall we try your hand?”
They spent the day hunting birds and only had a few for their trouble, but they gained a sense of the stranger’s skill. He made every shot, and Everic was asking him for his recommendations to improve his own skill.
“Make yourself a better bow,” the nameless stranger suggested. “This one doesn’t fit either you or me. I’m used to a heavier pull and less length. And better fletching. Try goose, not seagull feathers.”
“You know your trade then, Archer, for that is what we’ll call you. Do you have any other inclinations you’d like to pursue before we go in?”
Archer…it wasn’t his name, but he would use it nonetheless. He stopped on the bluff considering the question and looked over the edge to the beach several hundred feet below him.
“Can I see the cliff?” He didn’t want to add to his reputation for being slightly off, so he would not tell his new friend what he actually was feeling. A compulsion to climb down and dig into that cliff face would not help their trust in his mental state.
“There’s a path down to the shoreline over there.” Everic pointed and then led the way west, and they climbed down carefully.
The rock face rose black and stark against the wintery sky. It stood riddled with rookeries of a variety of birds. The two men could have climbed for eggs, but Archer’s footwear would prevent it at the moment. Instead, he walked the beach right up to the face of the cliff and rested his hands on it as if it were a door through which he intended to walk. He had touched stone this way, like a craftsman about to cut his way through the cliff, but he couldn’t recall when or why he knew he’d done this before. The rock spoke to him, and it frightened him how much he wanted to reach his hand right through the solid stone.
“There are rumors of a man, old as the mountains themselves, who listens to the stone of the Land and it talks to him. They say he’s a magician,” Everic commented, and Archer shivered, pulling his hand back from exploring. He didn’t want to think about magic. Something about the word chilled him more than the evening wind coming up.
And that magic haunted him for weeks as he struggled to remember.
Finally, one night beside the fire, Archer asked for and got the leathers that had been gathered for clothing. He also had to borrow a knife from Ellie to cut with and a mallet from the tool shed. Elin, the little two-year-old, watched him in fascination with bright, blue eyes. He expertly stripped the fur and worked the hides, rubbing in beeswax, and then began to cut long, thin strips as well as more carefully sliced pieces. The other children slowly gathered around him to observe the handiwork until their mother shooed them off to bed, and still Archer cut and then used the thin strips to start sewing the pieces together.
“You’ve got more skills than the bow,” Everic commented as he came to fill in where his children had been. “Where did you learn to do leatherwork? You would be the handiest man out here on the edge. You don’t have to leave.”
Archer shook his head as he fit the next piece to his leg, trimmed a bit more off one side and then began sewing again. He thought carefully before he replied. “I remember a forest…where I’ve done this before. Tall trees with lights above my head.”
“There’s a forest on the other side of the Wall, but you don’t speak like a Demionian. Your native tongue is that of the Land,” Emmi commented. “I don’t know of any other forest nearby.
“Up northwest, there’s a forest,” Archer commented and then startled, looking up from his work. “How can I know that if I don’t even know my own name?” That conundrum brought a sudden ache behind his eyes, and he squashed the leather in his hands, gripping the knife like a weapon.
Then Emmi murmured something in wonder.
“What?” the men asked in tandem.
“The knife,” she whispered and reached across the table to take the blade she had lent to Archer to cut and work the leather. “It was my butcher knife…but now it’s got a curve…a leather knife. You’re a magician, Archer,” she declared with conviction.
Elin’s bright eyes still awake in her bed in the firelight caught Archer’s attention, and he wished that she would go to sleep. He didn’t want her to remember all this strangeness he had brought to her family. How had he made a change like that to the tool without even knowing he had done it? He had wanted a better knife, had wished for it, but had resigned himself to awkwardly slashing and punching the holes he needed to craft his boots. But now, Emmi held the knife he would have wanted from the start – short blade, curved almost like a spoon and exquisitely sharp.
“An archer, a leather-worker, and a magician,” commented Everic sardonically. “You are a very skilled man.”
Archer looked over at the bed and noticed that Elin’s wondrous blue eyes were asleep. Had he done that? If so, it frightened him. “What was the name of that old man you spoke of?” he asked as he took back the leather knife and resumed his work almost frantically. If he finished these boots tonight, he could leave in the morning and not bring ruin and magic on his hosts. If it frightened him, it must be terrifying for them.
Everic sat down on the bench beside him and rested his hand on his guest’s arm. Archer paid him no attention and kept working. “I don’t know, as he has a real name, but they call him the King of the Mountains, Vamilion. Is that where you’re going to go? To find him?”
“I have to find answers or someone else who knows who I am,” Archer replied. “If I stay here, I’ll only bring a curse upon your house, and I don’t want that. I’ll finish this and then leave.”
At dawn, Archer stood at the door wearing his newly crafted boots and bid his hosts goodbye. The comforting isolation and familial bond of the couple plucked a string of longing in his heart. He wondered if he had enjoyed this type of life before he lost his memory. Somewhere was there a wife and children wondering where he had fallen. Without thinking about it, Archer had somehow returned the leather knife back into the butcher knife. He gave it back to Emmi with his thanks. The children, who stood clustered around their parents, all smiled with bright eyes. Elin must have forgotten what she had seen the night before.
“You’ll be fine, Archer,” Everic reassured him. “Here is the bow. You made far better use of it than I could. Don’t forget us here on the edge of the world when you’ve found your way.”
Archer took the proffered bow and quiver, gave each family member a hug, and then turned away from the lonely cabin on the bluff. He walked to the west, into the morning mist toward the head of the trail down to the beach. He felt he must go that way, though he would only have to climb back the way he had come. Everic’s family need not know that. He might have made himself invisible in the fog or maybe the bluff blocked his trail. He turned down the path to the beach as if drawn by a lodestone. Something there on the cliff face still called to him, and he wanted to seek it out before he went to go find some elusive King of the Mountains.
At the base of the cliff, he set his bow and quiver down and stepped up onto the fallen rocks to look more closely at the face than he had before. His hand-made boots, sturdy and utilitarian, allowed him to climb higher, to where his yearning had drawn him. It still pinged and itched like a frantic, far-off teapot demanding in its shrill voice to be heard. Unerringly, Archer reached to his left, to the very tip of his long fingers, and found a single handhold. He didn’t dare question why he could do this. If he did, he’d fall.
As he hung from his single hand, his right palm reached out, and he set it flat against the rough stone. He imagined the opening he sought and abruptly felt no resistance to his pressing at the exact spot. The ringing in his bones only increased as a fist-sized hollow met his search. He reached blindly into the hole that magic cut, and he refused to think of what monstrous creature might dwell in such a den. Fear and his overactive imagination must be banished. This he knew. Archer stretched his fingers into the pit and felt something cool and metal. He grasped it and brought it out into the morning light.
Archer dropped down to the sandy beach before he dared look at the little gold box he had retrieved. How? Archer couldn’t care less, though the magic of it all mystified him. If he regained his memory, would the magic not frighten him so much, or was this the key to that lost past? The box looked finely crafted, with a hinge and latch etched into the round lid that fit easily in his palm. The intricate patterns laced over the lid fascinated him. Horses, grasses, and a background of far-off mountains decorated the sides of the box. Carefully, he lifted the lid and peeked inside.
On a white, porcelain face, he saw finely crafted arms that spun around a central spindle of quartz crystal. The edge of the disc had been etched and then gold-filled, with marks and four symbols. Archer looked at them curiously as they teased at his memory. He’d seen them before, but like his name, the memory of their meaning washed away on the tide. Hopefully, his memory would return like the ocean’s cycle again, but when worried him.
Instinctively, he turned to look back at the sea, but the arms on the disc spun erratically at his abrupt change in direction. Archer turned back to the cliff face and watched the arms in the little box move again. Experimenting, he watched as one arm always shifted toward one of the symbols. No matter how he turned, that arm always pointed toward the same mark. The other arm shifted more dramatically, spinning in both directions while he moved, but when he stopped, it stilled too and pointed up the trail toward the bluff.
Archer felt his breath leave him as it dawned on him what he held: a compass. It pointed toward the direction he was supposed to travel. He held memories of this type of device, but again, he had no idea where they came from. Were all compasses magic? Certainly, this one, with its hidden alcove in a sealed cliff, must be, but common compasses needed no magic, just a loadstone that would point north. Unlike those everyday devices, this one didn’t point toward where he turned, but in another direction: the one he was supposed to take? He didn’t doubt his instinct in this. Magic had guided him unerringly to finding the machine, so why would he question his understanding of its function? This was magic through and through.
Archer looked up at the cliff face and saw that the den where he had found the compass had closed. Its work was finished, and the stone remained solid, untouched. Well, then he had only to decide if he would follow where this new guide would take him. Archer retrieved his bow and quiver, hitched them over his shoulder, and launched out into the unknown, following a magical guide up the bluff and toward the west, away from the Vamilion Mountains as he had planned.
Instead, Archer chose to follow a stranger guide.
15
Siren
Several weeks later, crawling across the slopes between the Vamilion Mountains and the sea, Archer found his way to a river, wide and deep. It spilled into a swampy area with vast marshes that threatened to drown him, but the compass guided him unerringly the whole way, almost step-by-step through the drier patches. He followed it faithfully, for the device proved far wiser than he when it came to hunting and shelter. It guided him to spring roots to eat, fresh water to drink, a covey of doves to shoot, and windbreaks to protect him in his travels.
Slowly, winter lifted as he trekked west, and spring rose up around him. Mists, fens, and strange outcroppings formed a maze he wandered. He half-expected the compass purposely led him on tangled paths, for it meandered, and as the land grew more sodden, he found himself stepping from island to island in the fens. Now, if the river was the goal, he had arrived and stood on a shoreline the compass could not help him overcome. In the morning light filtering through the mists, he saw the sun glare off the water, and though he wished for some way to cross, the fog felt so thick he couldn’t even see the far shore.
“What now?” he asked the compass, not expecting an answer. “I can’t fly, can I?”
“No,” whispered a delicate feminine voice in the mist. “Not unless you change shape. Can you?”
Archer whirled, pocketed the compass, and drew his bow in one swift movement, seeking the source of the shrouded human hidden in the fog.
“No need of that,” the bodiless voice commented. “I’m right here. Follow the sound of my words.”
Archer didn’t know whether to trust it or not. He recalled the legends of the sea, of sirens that lured sailors to their death with the sweetness of their song. This voice might not be singing to him, but the allure of human contact after weeks alone across the frontier urged him on. He didn’t lower his bow, but stepped carefully, leery of sinking sands and other mist traps towards the water’s edge.
“That’s right, wanderer. You’ve come a long way to find my home here. That takes guidance. What has led you here, wanderer?” the voice continued. She led him now, warning him of turns, reminding him how to make the subtle adjustments in his step.
Then the mist thinned magically, and he saw the Siren. She appeared like a ghost or part of the fog, and he could see the standing stones behind the wondrous, flawless visage of a woman. Her bronze hair flared in the morning light and flowed in a wind not found here in the marshes. Her alabaster skin seemed so translucent that he could see the rocks and reeds behind her. A spirit? She certainly could not be wholly human.
“I am the Lost; not a ghost, nor alive, but something in between. I am a seeker of those that made me this way. Are you one such as that?” she asked, her golden and green eyes flashing and beckoning to him. Archer kept his arrow trained on her, but somehow, he doubted that his bolt would have any effect on her. The mist formed her gauzy gown and blended into the morning. An arrow would do nothing.
“No, I’m an archer,” he replied simply.
“Yet, you were guided to me. It must be fate,” she replied. He felt his knees grow weak staring at her willowy form, fading around the edges as the sun began burning the light around her shape. “How did you find me?”
“I don’t know.” He felt his breathing grow shallow and realized his name of Siren could not be far afield. She was putting a spell on him, churning his curiosity, drawing him in.
“What is your name, wanderer?” she continued, with her voice sending shivers of warmth over his arms and down his spine. He found i
t difficult to keep the bow taut. Every word from her shimmering lips made him want to melt into the mud. Unwillingly, he lowered the weapon and felt the relief in his trembling arms. The blood in them began burning, adding to the sensation of melting. With an effort, he looked away, seeking the sun, and saw only a flat, white disc against the white of the sky; no gold. All the gold burned within the Siren’s glowing form.
“Shall I read your fate, wanderer? I can tell you everything you’ve ever yearned to know with a look at your palm?” she promised.
The ragged ends of Archer’s breath burned free from his lungs around a simple question. “Can you tell me my name?”
The Siren’s head tilted to the side, curious, like the nods of the doves he had shot for his food. Her misty eyes glowed. “You do not know that? How strange.”
Archer could not shake his head or speak any longer. He felt his skin begin to burn as the mist pulled in closer and his mind screamed for air. He was drowning in the shrouds of her hair, her arms, and the vapors. The Siren reached out and touched his cheek with her alabaster hand, and her caress burned as fire. He wanted to cry out and pull away, bring the bow back to bear, but he could not move. The Lady of the Mist had him completely under her spell. He would drown here on the edge of the Lara River and be lost forever. He knew it. The compass had led him astray.
“Then, wanderer with no name, we shall have to explore that indeed,” she whispered, and her gentle caressing lips met his in an eruption of white light.
Rashel brought out a blanket and set Nevai on it to enjoy the first fine day of spring. She sat on the stoop beside the baby and noted the hens were pecking more urgently in the yard. She saw a faint haze of green on the trees just beyond the fence. The plum tree had grown red with potential budding over-night. Like magic, it must have struck, she realized and felt a pit of worry in her stomach. Yeolani, where were you? The plowing must begin soon, and he had not contacted her, not once in the weeks since he had left his dog with her. Marit frolicked with her puppies and enjoyed nipping at the heels of the cattle on this fine morning, forgetful of her missing master.
