Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1)

by Jonathan Renshaw

  “Even if we only sink one ship,” Aedan said, this time without humour, “it will more than pay back our absence from Castath. There is a retired Captain who is going to give us some instruction on Lekran ports and ship design and how to cause the most damage with limited tools.”

  “That sounds reasonable. My last question, then: Will we be able to come back?”

  “The orders will be official,” said Aedan. “General Osric himself will sign them. But it’s complicated. We are fairly sure Prince Burkhart would try to stop us if he found out. He’s too shortsighted to see the advantages of something like this and too insecure to attempt anything that might anger the Lekrans. We won’t directly break any laws by leaving, but we’ll be slipping between them on the way out, and coming back might be complicated.”

  “Burkhart is a two-faced, lying, murderous coward who needs a lashing from his father,” Peashot mumbled. “Liru told me what he tried to do to you two.”

  Everyone was quite happy to let these words hang in the air unchallenged.

  “At worst,” Aedan resumed, “we could be arrested on our return. I know of two soldiers who were made to disappear without any trial or official record. So it’s dangerous. At best, you’ll lose a year of your studies.”

  Peashot almost looked bored with the details. Aedan guessed he’d be making the journey with them even if he was guaranteed an execution on his return.

  Hadley was done thinking. That toppling look came into his eyes. “I doubt the worst case is likely,” he said. “Dropping back a year doesn’t look so bad either. You’re going to drop back two if you don’t lose your place altogether, and Lorrimer has been skimming through by magic – he’s due to fail about now. I’d go anyway, but it’s nice to know I won’t be alone afterwards. I’m in. Only thing that’s going to annoy me now is the waiting.”

  “Couldn’t Lorrimer come?” asked Peashot.

  “His height would draw too much attention,” Aedan said. “Think of how tall he’ll be in another year. And Vayle wouldn’t want to go. We all know how difficult it is to just get him to drop whatever he’s reading and actually do something.”

  Hadley and Peashot laughed. Vayle had earned himself the reputation – he preferred contemplating plans to implementing them. He was roughly Hadley’s opposite.

  “Also,” said Tyne, “With Liru’s sister, Aedan and I will have four slaves when we reach Ulnoi. Any more could begin to make us look more important than we can afford. Unusually wealthy strangers will tend to be noticed more.”

  “So you think we make good slaves,” said Peashot, loading another stone with a mean smirk.

  “Rotten slave,” said Aedan. “Good saboteur.”

  “What language is that?”

  “Yours, blockhead. It means someone who sabotages, you know – breaks stuff. You’re good at that.”

  “Good?” Hadley said. “Complete genius is more like it.”

  “So are we all agreed?” Aedan looked around.

  They all agreed, except Peashot who was taking aim. Liru flicked his ear, and that brought him back. “Ouch! Yes, yes, of course I’m in, blockheads. Sorry Tyne. Didn’t mean you. Ouch! Or you, Liru.”

  “Then remember that if a word of this gets out, it’s all over. Try to get as fluent as you can in Lekran. As slaves, you will not be expected to sound like natives, but the more pairs of working ears we have, the better. Also, get used to Lekran weapons. We won’t take any of our own. I hope we don’t need to fight, but if we do, you don’t want to discover in the moment that their blades are shorter and heavier and the crossbows have a very tricky latch. Lekrans also have some strange weapons that are in the upper racks in the weapons hall. I’ll speak to Fergal. Maybe he can nudge Master Dun to teach us how to use them. Lekrau is, after all, a constant threat.”

  Aedan and Peashot lingered after the others had left – Aedan because Fergal did not expect him back immediately, Peashot because he never cared much what any of the masters expected from him. He hadn’t been in trouble for almost a fortnight and some disturbance was due.

  They talked of this and that – Fennlor, classes, Murn, Liru and Kalry, but no matter what they spoke of, it was Kalry who filled Aedan’s mind, and butterflies and birds and storms crashed about in his belly.

  Peashot aimed, fired and scooted back to savour another bark of pain. “You are different since Kultûhm,” he said. “You don’t walk around looking like you have a dagger up your sleeve and a score to settle. Liru says you look stronger. I just think it looks like you aren’t taking your daily draught of poison, whatever it was.”

  “Close enough.”

  “She thinks something happened to you in the lightning. What was it?”

  Aedan thought for a while. “It wasn’t something,” he said, “it was someone. And to be plain, I’m still trying to understand it myself. I think the lightning was only a doorway, just like my dreams have been lately.”

  “You’re not going to start blabbing like those diviners our prince has on every street corner?”

  Aedan laughed. “If I do, please hit me very hard.”

  “With pleasure,” said Peashot, clicking his knuckles. “But don’t you think you could have imagined the whole experience? Shock or something?”

  “If you were there you’d understand why it couldn’t have been anything like that. Ever had that experience when you wake up and it’s snowing in the night? Maybe you even walk out and let it land on your shoulders, but by morning it’s all melted? The only person who saw the proof was you, and the only proof you can give anyone else is that you’re convinced it was real. That’s what it’s like for me. I know I’ve got a strong imagination, but this was far, far beyond anything my imagination can produce.”

  “You’re not talking it up? The way people do about things they own or places they’ve been?”

  “I’m not talking it up or making it better than it was. I can’t even get close to what it was like. It was better than anything else I know.”

  “Even better than Kalry?” Peashot grinned.

  Aedan felt the blood rush to his face. He tried not to smile – it was hopeless. “I would have to say yes, but – it was better in a different way.”

  “What’s she like?”

  It was a question to breach a dam wall. Aedan took a deep breath. “She’s what I wanted Ilona to be. She really is the kindest and sweetest person I know –”

  “Huh!” Peashot interrupted. “So where does that put me?”

  “Last. Idiot.”

  Peashot smirked.

  “Kalry always used to make me want to be nicer to others because she made it look so good. Being kind to people made her happy. To see it was really something. And it wasn’t just people. I remember that time I walked through town with Ilona and there was a donkey braying because it couldn’t reach the stand of cabbages. I secretly wanted to go buy it one, but I had a feeling Ilona would have rolled her eyes at me. That’s the difference. Kalry wouldn’t have been able to enjoy herself without doing something for the hungry donkey, and she would have run down to the market with me, shared the cost, and smiled all the way home.”

  “Pretty?”

  Aedan laughed. “Not like Ilona. Ilona’s a rose or something sophisticated. Kalry’s more like a wildflower – a simpler kind of beauty, but it felt more complete, more honest. When she smiled at me it was like being hugged. And it wasn’t just the way she looked. Her thoughts were … Let me put it this way – conversations with her were like magical journeys. There was also something about the way she spoke, like a kind of singing in her voice that brought everything she said to life – you should have seen the way babies would listen to her. Big eager eyes, spellbound. There was one thing everyone used to tease her about, it was her messy hair, but I remember it as threaded with trapped sunlight. And she had these laughing hazel eyes, more brown than green, as soft and warm as rich tilled earth baking in the sun of a spring morning –”

  “Ugh. Stop! What’s with all the
poetry? All you had to say was yes, she’s pretty. I can just see you and Lorrimer bent over the lines you’ve obviously been composing, sniffing and weeping and –”

  Aedan lurched over and snapped a solid punch at the unguarded shoulder. It brought Peashot’s mockery to an abrupt end and he leaned back, probing the damage to his freshly bitten tongue. He drew his finger out and brightened when he saw a little blood.

  “I suppose I’d best get going,” he said. “Classes feel weird now that you are missing. Even Malik commented on it.”

  “Oh? What did he say?”

  “Something that earned him a gut punch.”

  “You don’t have to fight my battles.”

  Peashot frowned. “What’s that got to do with it? Think I would miss an opportunity like that? It was truffle pudding.”

  “Is that where you got the mark under your eye?”

  “Pathetic, isn’t it? I thought I would at least get a nice blue plum. All he could manage was this little sissy bruise. Looks like a coal smudge.”

  Aedan laughed. “You just don’t mind pain, do you? Sometimes I’m convinced it actually makes you comfortable.”

  Peashot smirked.

  “Well,” said Aedan, “thanks for giving Malik my regards.”

  “Sure. I’ll see you at lunch. Can’t wait to smell what they put in front of you today. That grey thing you ate yesterday had us all checking under our shoes.”

  “Better get used to it. What do you think you’re going to eat on Lekrau?”

  Peashot grumbled and sauntered off.

  For a while Aedan sat, letting the wind gust around and buffet his shoulders. He looked up over the nearby walls and spires of the knife-like Pellamine range. Then he raised his eyes to the young blue of the morning sky. As he did so, something in his chest blazed. His hands and feet prickled with that peculiar feeling, as though the air around them was no longer air, but something else. This was the fourth or fifth time it had happened since the lightning strike, and it gave him the strangest feeling that something about him was changing, being transformed in a way that not even Fergal would comprehend. He had a sudden urge to leap out from the wall, not to fall, but to travel, to glide. The sensation was so strong that he moved back from the edge and pressed against a large block of stone. Thoughts like these were dangerous.

  When the tingling had gone, he drew out the little leather-encased journal. He never looked at it unless he was alone. It had a trick of drawing tears.

  Now that he knew Kalry to be alive, he wasn’t too sure if he should read it anymore. After a small inner battle, his scruples were defeated. He promised himself, though, that it would be the last time. There were two entries he wanted to pay a last visit. He found the first and began to read.

  Remember when we found that cave in Nymliss and there was that huge claw sticking out of a pile of rocks we couldn’t move? Well that day I realised that wonderful terrible incredible things were actually possible because that claw had to have belonged to a real animal big enough to eat cows or trees for breakfast. (I hope it preferred trees.) And it wasn’t a pretend discovery! No matter what Emroy and my father and my tutor said when I told them. (This doesn’t mean that I think pretend discoveries aren’t important, it’s just that a pretend discovery can’t actually bite you.)

  Can you imagine if we could have lived in times when enormous animals like that were alive. I know trolls and dragons and all those are made up (I think) but imagine if there were creatures just as spektackuler (I’m really going to have to ask your mum about this word) that were actually walking around and we had to run away from them unless maybe hopefully we could make friends with them.

  Now this brings me back to what I wrote in my last entry, about the song that I can sense all around me. It’s like the earth and the trees and the birds and the flies, no not the flies, but everything else is excited about something. Everyone would laugh at me if I said it, but I think there is some huge and ancient power breathing into the world the same way we blow on little sparks to make a fire. Remember that ecscwisit storm you told me about that happened over Nymliss that one time, and ever since then Nymliss has felt all tingly and mysterious? From what travellers are saying it sounds like those storms are also over DinEilan. Maybe they’ll move over the whole world. I’m sure they are changing things.

  Just imagining what could happen is already making me full of jumps and squeals. I can’t even describe the feeling I have about it. How do you describe something indescribable? I read somewhere that the best word for things that are bigger than words is wonder. It’s now my favourite word and I need it here, because I think the time we are living in is going to be a dawn of wonder, the beginning of something incredible, a time of mysteries and legends and heroes, just like in the old stories.

  If that’s what’s about to happen then I’m going to be excited and scared and you are going to have to let me hold your hand. Just please don’t spit in it first.

  Aedan grinned at that. He wondered now for the first time if the claw had really belonged to a dead animal. They had prodded and tugged and wrestled to pull it free. What had really lain behind that screen of rocks – a skeleton, or something in a deep sleep?

  The second entry he wanted to read had broken his heart at the time, and now called to him like the sounds of a celebration. He found the page and angled it so that the morning sun reflected off paper that was stained, thumbed, creased, and crinkled from more than one soaking. Around the edges, ink had run into little rivulets and pools now dried, but the young handwriting he knew so well was still legible.

  Dear Aedan

  You weren’t at Badgerfields today so I played hide and seek with Thomas and Dara. I decided to hide in the forest and I went in a bit too deep. At first it was fun practising all those bird calls we’ve been learning and hooting into my fist like an owl (I’m getting really good now) but then I realised it was too quiet and I got muddled trying to find the way home. By the time I got out again it was dark and I was horribly frightened. I’m scared that one day I might get so lost that nobody will find me. I thought that was going to happen today.

  It made me think about that story of the little boy who wandered into Nymliss and he was given up for lost by the end of the week. I think most people were just too scared to go and look for him properly.

  I wouldn’t have been scared if you had been there. You can find anything. I’ll never forget the day you took me along a fox trail and we actually saw the fox and her cubs. I don’t know how you see prints from those little scuffs in the dirt. I actually thought you were making it up until the vixen growled.

  I suppose it’s silly to write this in my diary, but I’m going to one day ask you to promise me that if I’m ever so lost in the forest that nobody even knows where to start, you will look for me until you find me. I’ll draw flowers in the earth and arrange pine cones like hearts, you know, all that girly stuff you tease me about, then you’ll know it’s me and not some bandit’s trail.

  I’ll have to tell you one of these days.

  When you set out, please bring some of Dorothy’s muffins because there’s nothing to eat in most places that are any good for getting lost in, so I’ll probably be starving. But don’t wait for her to cook new ones, just take whatever is in the cupboard. And bring my wool jersey too, the old blue one with the holes in the elbows. It’s probably going to be lying under the bed or dangling over the chair or hiding under something. Ask Tulia to dig for it.

  Just so you know, I’m not asking you to do all this only because you are good at finding things. It’s because when I get rescued I want it to be you. It was sort of weird when your father found me once. And if I see Emroy first, I think I’ll pretend not to see him and stay lost until someone else comes along. He tried to kiss me one time and when I pushed him away he raised his arm like he would hit me. I didn’t tell you because I knew you would go and punch him in the face and then he would have tried to use that horrible cane on your head. He is really not a
nice boy. He is not allowed to be part of my rescue!

  I’m very fussy about this. It has to be you because I want to be found by someone, you know, like a princess being found by a prince. I haven’t forgotten that you always made your nose go like wrinkled dead frog skin when those parts of the stories came along, but this is my rescue, so I get to say how it happens. If I cry, it will be because I’m happy to bursting. Just remember that. You’ll spoil the magic if you ask what’s wrong.

  I have to go. Dinner’s ready. Don’t forget about the muffins.

  Aedan closed the diary for the last time and slipped it back into its cover. And for the first time, there were no tears. He held it before him and looked again at the image on the case – the toadstool and the sapling. He still remembered asking her what it meant and hadn’t forgotten her answer.

  “Oh, Aedan! I’d spoil it all if I told you what I think it means before you’ve had a chance to think too. A mystery is so much more exciting than a wrapped up answer, wouldn’t you say? A mystery carries on but an answer just ends.”

  The following day Aedan had told her that he’d thought about it, and decided it meant slow beginnings were not so bad because the sapling would outgrow the toadstool. Then he demanded her interpretation.

  “Maybe,” she said with one of her thoughtful, faraway smiles. “But what if it’s a toadstool like the pearlnut tree? When I look, I imagine the remains of a tiny picnic under the sapling, and the hasty footprints of the silver dwarf. On the ground are little holes where his sword and arrows were pushed into the ground, just so he could be ready in case of danger. There’s a concealed hatch in the side of the toadstool that has been slammed tight, and the grass is starting to move as a wicked creeper approaches, awake like the pearlnut tree, only in a dangerous way. It’s a story, an adventure – and it’s just beginning.”

  “So it is,” Aedan whispered as he got to his feet and looked out to the west. Out there, far away was Lekrau, and somewhere on the northmost island, she was captive. He wished he could say something to the wind and have it carry the message to her. He raised his eyes to the sky again.