The Secret of Elektra

by Ema Alves

  Near the castle, he grabbed a horse and looked at the window where Danui-an was standing. The master, looking at him, made a gesture of gratitude. Offerus smiled and, hitting the horse’s abdomen with his heels, walked away.

  Already far from the castle, he stopped. And, when he turned back, he thought, as he looked at the castle for one last time:

  “Thank you for the light, which momentarily saved my heart from the darkness of solitude!”

  The hermit distanced himself from that place and followed his fate.

  9

  The reunion with the roots

  Elektra was gloomy. Several days had already passed since Offerus’ departure and she couldn’t find a way to forget him. Meridian noticed his daughter’s grief. He tried to tell her several times to walk back and find happiness with Offerus. He wanted to tell her that he had been wrong since the beginning and, therefore, she no longer had to be taken to the prince whom she did not love. But, if that was the case, then he would be manipulating his daughter’s wishes yet again. Accordingly, he kept his mouth sealed, allowing the destiny to guide his daughter’s heart to where happiness could be found.

  A new lesson had to be learned. He wanted Elektra to listen to her nature and to fight for what she conveyed.

  Meridian felt he was strong enough again to proceed his journey, then said goodbye to Danui-an, got two horses prepared and made his way to the place where the green had ceased to exist.

  As always, Elektra stared at Shekhinah’ lifeless horizon. That was where she meditated. Every day, she walked to the edge of the green and, sitting on the comfortable branch lined with the softest lichen, she allowed herself to travel towards her innermost feelings. The hooves of two horses made her come back to reality.

  - It's time for us to go, my daughter. - Meridian said to her, sitting on a horse. Subtly, he was giving her two options. If she had heard her soul’s intents, she would return, proving that the lesson had been learned. If, on the other hand, she decided to go to Shekhinah, she would still have much to learn.

  Without wasting any time, Elektra jumped on her horse. Meridian felt astonished before her daughter’s willingness to go to Shekhinah.

  He felt confused for a moment. Why didn’t she want to go back? Had she wiped Offerus out of her memory so quickly? Could it be that what she felt for him was nothing more than a fleeting passion, like the one she had shown before Count Drakur? No, of course not! The nobleness of the sentiment showed by both of them could not have deceived him. Therefore, why was Elektra so eager to head to Shekhinah? What sort of fate was she expecting to find?

  Sadly, he concluded that his daughter had yet to learn how to listen to her soul. Pulling on the reins of his horse, he left the green vegetation behind and plunged into the dusty Shekhinah soil.

  *

  After a journey that lasted a couple of hours, the green of the vegetation behind them was now nothing more than a mirage. A powdery cloud rose behind them, propelled by the horse strides. A vast ocher and gray plain appeared to have no end. They passed by several settlements, many of them lifeless, with the huts destroyed by the dry wind’s erosive force. There were others in which tiny clusters of people remained hopeful and managed to get some food while working the land at great cost, extracting something from the dust and stones. These people, albeit young, had aged due to the circumstances. Meridian and Elektra were easily ignored wherever they were, the lands did not allow them to lose one single second, not even to ask those foreigners what had brought them to Shekhinah, now that it was an impoverished kingdom that offered nothing good to anyone who decided to go there. Perhaps, people considered them ignorant and thought they did not justify their time.

  Elektra and Meridian did not even attempt to establish a conversation with the dismayed men. They had to hurry to find someplace comfortable to spend the night.

  By midday, they appeared to have reached the end of the plain and the terrain had become rough. At some cost, they climbed a hill, pulling their horses by the hand.

  - Do you know… that I love Offerus?

  Since they had left the castle, this was the first time Elektra had said anything.

  - Yes, I know! – Meridian answered, not slowing his pace.

  Blocking his father’s path, as if facing him, she proceeded:

  - Do you know why I did not go after Offerus? After what my heart told me was right?

  Meridian had no answer to give. He had wondered about that throughout the whole journey. He even tried to ask her but, fearing the possibility of making her wound even deeper, he decided not to.

  - Because I’m aware of who I am! And I also know that I cannot make any man happy! – Elektra proceeded, swallowing hard. - Therefore... who am I to subject Offerus to the misery of living by my side?

  The wizard did not break his silence. Her daughter was still torturing herself for what she was. She blamed herself for loving and for thinking she could not be loved. But Meridian felt that Offerus had not followed them for some reason in particular. The feeling that had motivated him had been the greatest fuel of all. Love. Love that withstood the truth about Elektra. The truth. Elektra’s wholeness. He was indeed an exceptional creature! A higher being, probably more than he, Danui-an or any other wizard from Heidegger.

  Few days before that, fragmented between these and other considerations, Meridian noticed that perhaps there was no difference between him and the malicious people who had almost murdered them. After all... if he considered Elektra someone normal, why had not he raised her according to what she was? Why did he insist on taking her to the presence of someone who would be like her? Was that the only way that allowed her to be happy? Is love only possible between equals? Prejudice had its roots on that question. “Equals”. How conventional he had been! How... human he was!!

  The conclusion of his thoughts had been a source of joy for him. He had also determined how difficult it was to stop influencing someone else’s destiny, even as a Wizard. Unintentionally, she had put Elektra on the path to something she had not chosen.

  Trying to motivate her daughter, he showed his updated beliefs:

  - Go back. Follow the path you have chosen ... I’m sure Offerus loves you too!

  An infrequent and lively satisfaction took complete control of Elektra's mind. That elocution was a new source of hope for her being. Spontaneously, that uncertainty which was corroding her mood, had acquired wings and, with a relieving sigh, flown out of her heart. Was her father being honest? Did Offerus love her?

  Elektra smiled pleasantly and kissed her father in a frenzy. The fact that Meridian allowed her to choose her own destiny was yet another massive surprise. Nevertheless, something with a higher force had pushed her even deeper into that derelict kingdom. An intensified energy, hypnotically engraving its intentions in Elektra’s spirit, prevented her from going back.

  - I cannot go back. Something is pulling me into this kingdom, I still don’t know what that is, but I feel it is more important than following only a part of my heart. My heart still has a large void, which I must fill. – Elektra frowningly concluded.

  Everything that her daughter had said took Meridian by surprise. What did that kingdom hold that could obfuscate the love she felt for Offerus? What energy was that, capable of leading her towards it? Was destiny trying to tell him that, after all, the prince was her soulmate and that she was being taken to her?

  The licentious set of questions that tainted his intellect made him even more confused. He could only passively wait for the progress of time, which would then reveal all the answers.

  After some unavoidable pauses to rest from such a strenuous climb, they reached the mountain summit. The landscape, albeit not particularly beautiful, was definitely exquisite. Something odd did not fit the rest of the scenario. A river split two different hills, forming a valley sheltered by the wind. Some dead trunks were still showing the grandeur signs of a forest that was now extinct. Some wrecked little houses could be seen near the water. Notic
eable movements revealed the presence of people standing by the river, perhaps because they were trying to extract edible from it. But the weird thing about that was a green patch, a simple vegetable spot, rich and beautiful, which painted the amorphous landscape with a soothing shiver. It looked like a tree. A massive tree, prostrated over the river.

  Intrigued, Meridian started to walk down between the old trunks which, after a millennial-old life, saw their sap being dried under a touch of death. From afar, that green point was an immaculate bit encircled by a sinful scenario. A willow whose branches dropped over the stream.

  After completing a couple of meters, he noticed that Elektra was not following him. He stopped his progress, looked around, but she was nowhere to be seen. He then decided to walk back.

  Still on the top of the hill, Elektra was petrified. Meridian approached her and asked her what was happening.

  A tear was running down her face. The greatest grief of all had taken hold of her. Not even the sourness of having lost Offerus was comparable to that sensation. Now she knew why she had not walked back to Offerus. There was something in that place that had been calling her for a long time. In her hands, she now felt the task of finishing something that had started with her gloomy birth.

  - My... my roots! - Elektra replied.

  - Are you sure this was the place? - Meridian wondered, a bit awe-struck.

  Elektra was puzzled before her father’s question. He now seemed to doubt her sixth sense, her intuition, the mind’s eye which had been so well awakened by him. But he didn’t, he just did not want his daughter to rush things and pointlessly suffer again.

  Quickly, Elektra jumped on her horse and began to descend towards the tree. Meridian followed her, unable to reach her.

  A barely audible whisper, a cold chill touched the back of her head, forcing Elektra to be even quicker. She felt someone was happy to see her again. Someone that had accumulated eighteen years of longingness. A joy that concealed a profound sadness, caused by their separation. She now knew why she craved freedom.

  Halfway there, something made her stop. She looked to the left and a cottage darkened by the fire send shivers down her spine. She did not even dare to walk to it. It was her home. Her motherhood’s womb now only had four walls, all of them destroyed by the flames.

  A vision of different men with improvised torches setting the house on fire crossed her mind. For a moment she thought she had travelled back in time, her spirit appeared to be inside that house. She saw a woman, whose perished body was being engulfed by the flames. The realization that this would be her mother crushed her head and she fell from the horse.

  Meridian approached her. Elektra was contorting herself on the floor, shrieking as if she were witnessing the image of hell. He attempted to bring her back to reality, since her daughter’s eyes rolled spasmodically without showing any improvement. The visions inside her head were acquiring more consistency. She seemed to be seeing through the eyes of a man who, at the river, shrieked in pain. She also felt the chill of the death brought by the iron that pierced his entrails. For a brief moment, she stared at the face of the man who killed him. She could hear angry voices, a conundrum that made her look in every direction. One voice stood out, grabbing her attention. She searched with her eyes and encountered the face of a woman who, avidly laughing, seemed to be in command of that whole mob. A plethora of emotions made her head throb in pain, labor tools were descending impetuously, craving that dying body. When she was about to burst from the intensity of the sensations, a sense of escaping, of disincarnating, of flowing out of the physical body, gave her peace. Instead of darkness, a white light engulfed everything in a sweet odor of reconciliation. Elektra felt her own body again.

  Two figures were approaching. A man and a woman who, holding hands, walked to her and, leaning forward, they said: - We just wanted to know if you were okay. To know if our deaths were worth something!

  Elektra fell asleep in her parents’ arms. She sensed the affection, the warmth of tender hands. Between the limits of the real and the dream, she opened her eyes and saw Meridian caressing her gently.

  - Now… there can be peace again! – Elektra said to Meridian with a relieved smile. - Take me to the tree.

  A few meters below, the large willow figure displayed its healthiness fed by the blood of death. Its branches towered over the water like tears. This weeping willow marked the place and everything around it was subjected to a curse uttered eighteen years ago. Since then, whatever was sown or worked by the hand of man did not grow. The curse’s strength was so immense that, enraged by the dreadful events, nature also obliged to it, draining its vital force from the soil, making it barren.

  Meridian complied with what Elektra had asked. He dragged her body’s weight to the tree. He laid her beneath the glamorous shadow and leaned her head against the trunk which was sweating with life from being so warm.

  - What are you doing here? Don’t you know that this place is cursed? Get out! - an old woman said, who, as if out of nowhere, had appeared before them.

  When Elektra looked at the creature’s brownish face, she squeezed Meridian’s hand in terror.

  - Who are you? What do you mean? – Meridian briskly inquired, noticing that his daughter was oddly affected by that presence.

  - You must get out of this place, I have told you already! - The woman replied, as if she feared something. Weirdly, she seemed to want to hide some fact that could somehow affect her.

  Taken by a deeply jolting fury, Elektra stood up and, confronting that woman, asserted:

  - If someone has to leave, that someone is you! You are not welcome here!

  The girl’s tone stunned Meridian and the old woman, who stepped back, as if she had just been haunted. Momentarily, it seemed to her that the girl knew of the tragic murder that had occurred in that place, eighteen years ago. But the girl’s evident age made the old woman sigh with relief. She was too young to have witnessed anything. As a matter of fact, the lynching had remained within the limits of the village. Everyone who had participated tried to forget it, promising not to talk about it. It was a well-kept secret by the weight of shame, fear and the curse’s strength.

  Another man approached the spot a bit later, nervously holding a mattock.

  - Do you want to repeat your mistake, Kafhar? – Elektra inquired, suddenly facing him.

  - How do you know my name? – the man asked, who, terrified by the girl’s words, dropped his mattock.

  Meridian was flabbergasted. He could not fully fathom what was going on, a piece was certainly missing. How could Elektra know that man’s name? What mistake was she referring to?

  The woman surrendered herself to the evidence. The girl surely knew everything, she couldn’t understand why, but she knew. Trembling with remorse, she began to shriek hysterically. - Forgive us! Forgive us, we have already paid properly for the evil we have done to you! Damn you!!! Damn you!! – she desperately cried, grabbing the willow as if it held the soul of the one they had killed. But the robust tree remained motionless before that futile weeping.

  Running past the sorcerers, Kafhar joined the woman, hugging the tree while asking for forgiveness. They felt that their time had come, those wizards surely were their executioners. Maybe sent from the devil himself to put an end to their fragile lives.

  With her fists clenched, Elektra kept turning her back to the two ridiculous creatures. They were the ones who tormented her in the vision. Elektra’s spirit had traveled back in time and experienced the suffering his father had tasted in the hands of those. The ones responsible for the pain, for the death, for his abandonment and for the materialization of the curse.

  - You don’t understand... I regret it every single day... - said the woman on her knees, facing the strangers.

  - Every day I blame myself for the evil we have done, but how can you understand? He was the demon’s father! – she continued.

  The woman’s words only proved that her remorse was not honest. There wa
s only selfishness involved.

  - You’re still selfish! - Elektra angrily declared. – You only regret the death you have caused, because you have suffered from it. Deep down, you think you did the right thing, since you just said that he was the father of a demon!

  - How can you condemn us? You didn’t see the creature that he brought to this world! It was dreadful, a real demon. She was not beautiful like you!

  When Elektra stared directly at the old woman’s gaze, the latter felt horrified.

  - But... who are you? What do you want from us? – she asked, taking a few steps back, noticing that she had been denounced by her own words.

  Elektra looked at Meridian who, although still silent, smiled before Elektra’s soundness in the way she dealt with the situation. Finally, the wheel was about to close its cycle.

  Riding their horses, they silently departed, distancing themselves from the martyred pair. But Elektra did not want to leave any loose ends and so she answered that question. A bit distant from them, she turned back and said in a low voice:

  - I am Elektra, the demon you talk about and hate so much. They made my uniqueness a secret...but raised me as an equal. Being who I am is the cause of my unhappiness...but fear nothing, I have already forgiven you.