The thought of more digging and planting gave Iliana new vigour to get the blasted thing on it’s ankle.
In the midst of the scrambling blur and flying grass roots, she caught a foot and held on with all the strength in her body.
She whipped the clasp around. ‘Got you, you little shi—’
‘Enough!’
Zoe slowly backed away from the fuming Muckleberry to stand next to Iliana.
‘Now we must slowly retreat.’
A chorus of hissing rose up from them, and Iliana followed Zoe’s slow retreat as the Muckleberry glared them down. The young hatchling scurried back to its protectors.
‘Tagging can be a tricky task’, Zoe looked across to her, ‘but not too shabby for your first time.’
When they had backed away more than thirty feet, they turned their backs to the herd and headed towards their grazing horses.
Zoe pulled off her white leather gloves and took out a small notebook.
‘That’s the sixth newborn this week, the numbers are looking good.’
Iliana glanced at it curiously. ‘Why do you keep a record?’
She looked at Iliana like she was mentally frail. ‘Because, our purpose here is to protect, sustain and nurture the Muckleberry species. Do you see anyone else in the Otherworld taking on that role?’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t been here that long,’ Iliana responded irritably.
‘Well,’ Zoe said, as she adjusted her horse’s reins and buckles, ‘that will change in time.’
Iliana gripped the saddle and tried to heave herself up as Zoe had shown her, but the horse neighed and stumbled sideways from her.
‘If you can’t show him that you’re committed and confident to haul yourself up, he won’t stand around waiting for you to pull him to the ground.’
Iliana scowled and held onto the reins. ‘You know today was the first time I’ve ever ridden a horse?’
Zoe hoisted herself up effortlessly, feeding Iliana’s envy and humiliation.
When she’d managed to calm the horse, she tried again but her foot slipped in the stirrup. ‘God damn it!’
‘Here,’ Zoe trotted over to take her horse’s reins. ‘Grip both sides of the saddle, insert your foot and hoist yourself up as hard as you can.’
Iliana sighed and repeated as advised. With a couple of more failed tries, she managed to throw her leg over at the last second and took the reins from Zoe.
‘You’ll learn girl, in time.’
Iliana stayed silent as they took an easy trot back to the manse.
In the past few weeks, Zoe had worked up a schedule of tasks for her to complete each day. Iliana had a list of chores to do from gardening, preparing herbs and vegetables for dinner and cleaning inside the manse. In her spare time, she was devouring the books in the library, that acted as a kind of personal sanctuary from her daily life at the manse. She began practising Tai Chi every morning with Zoe, and meditating in the evenings. Strangely, the woman from her dream would pop into Iliana’s mind sometimes, and the scorched land that she inhabited would rush back and fill her senses as if she were there.
Zoe also spent some sessions in schooling her on the Otherworld. At the back of the library she learned of the mountains, swamps, Erp Surrel and the forests.
‘What about those islands?’ Iliana had pointed out one evening to the right.
‘They are uninhabited since the accident.’ Zoe replied ominously, ‘None ventures there anymore.’
Iliana was curious to know more but Zoe moved on. ‘Here are the Steppes, in the heartland of the Otherworld. And here is Erp Surrel. If you reach it, stay out of the lower tiers if you can, for they are filled with vermin, kidney thieves, rapists and all kinds of poison. Try to move towards the middle and top tiers without attracting too much attention to yourself. And don’t go out alone at night.’
Iliana took notes, since she was always convinced that her memory was so bad she could plan her own surprise party.
Zoe also advised her to meditate on a flame.
‘Watch the flame and how it is influenced by the air around it. The air gives the flame life, allowing it to exist, but people should not allow the turbulences to affect them. If they were in a perfect state, they would remain still. You need to learn this.’
Iliana knew she was referring to Zelda, but not grieving felt like a betrayal, and there was no amount of meditation sessions that could stop the tears at night as she sobbed into her pillow.
They debated several times on life and death, the slavers in particular were a hot topic for them both. Philosophy was never Iliana’s strong point, but she became absorbed in the books on it in the library. A part of her regretted not paying more attention to Greek history and the scholars that lived during that era.
After dinner with Zoe, she sat by the window and watched a herd of about sixty Muckleberry sprint across the plains as twilight crawled in. It was entrancing to watch how they moved as though they were a single limb, like a flock of birds, changing direction smoothly like one mind. She thought of how a school of fish did the same, and wondered how animals separate from one another could on instinct work in such flawless synchronicity.
In the reflection of the window by the candlelight, Zelda’s face materialized, as it often did at night. Eyes haunted and melancholic, as they watched her from a land beyond time. Either that, or Iliana was going crazy. Which is very possible, she thought.
She touched the glass, lost as she normally was when she saw her. Besides her nightmares, it was the only other time she could see her face, and she pressed her fingers to it like a drug addict, starved of her.
Her chest. She gasped at the pain and began her nightly sob.
I would kill a hundred Xingers, she thought, I’d kill them all.
Zelda’s face wavered once, and was gone.
The following morning Iliana rose to meditate for half an hour. She listened to the distant cries of the Muckleberry and focusing on her breathing the way Zoe had shown her. She dressed herself in a clean shirt and loose trousers and left the house barefooted. It was a ritual she did most days since her first time walking out onto the Steppes with Zoe.
The sun warmed her skin mildly, heating her as though she were stone as she sat in the grass.
Concentrating on her breathing for a few minutes, her mind eventually stopped popping thoughts into her head to the point where she was only aware of her inner stillness. Iliana thought of it as staring into a pond when there were no ripples, it made delving deeper easier to do and connecting with deeper parts of herself.
When she reported to Zoe for her chores for the day, she surprised her with a special task. ‘I want you to patrol with Branson, seems we have some visitors who don’t know when to bugger off. The ward on the lower east quadrant was tampered with this morning.’
Iliana’s interest was piqued. ‘Do these things normally end in a fight?’
Zoe gave her a tired look. ‘Iliana, destroying my kitchen taught you to restrain yourself, but there will also be times when you need to take action. Let that be today’s lesson. You will need to gain a solid grip on your abilities soon. He’s waiting for you in the kitchen.’
She looked down and gave a toothy smile to the stem at her feet that uncurled like a lolling baby awaking in its cot.
‘Trust yourself girl,’ she looked up, ‘I have faith in you.’
‘Am I supposed to fight them?’ Iliana could feel the crease that etched its way between her eyebrows whenever she got stressed.
‘Don’t know, go judge the situation for yourself.’
Iliana and Branson galloped through the plains, she would have enjoyed it if it were not for the fact that she didn’t know what she was galloping towards. And ever since her flight from Walkers Fall, facing the unknown was something she was finding harder and more terrifying to do.
They arrived at an outcrop, where the lip of the rock sat at a thirty-foot drop. Below, a ri
ver gushed over sharp rocks, rushing away as if to be rid of their presence.
Iliana stretched out her senses, a practice that Zoe walked through with her everyday. The first time she was so overwhelmed with the life energies fizzing around her she nearly blacked out. She learned to attune her senses to cut out much of the background noise of growing vegetation, animals and insects and much of it was down to the basics: meditation.
The focus of inward attention and disciplining the mind.
Iliana learned that life energies existed with their own personality, especially with people. Branson’s and Blava’s were like lava lamp orange blobs, and Iliana could feel their heat. Zoe’s was like standing next to an active volcano; because of its sheer size and velocity it was difficult to ignore. So, she now practised alone, only approaching her when she needed advice on certain matters.
A little ways off, she picked up on two energy forms.
‘Do you feel them?’ she asked.
‘Hmm?’ Branson was leaning forward on his huge horse, distracted. ‘Ah, no. That’s not a gift everyone has, but I’m sure,’ looking at her sideways, ‘that you have your limitations.’
He took out a spyglass. ‘Where abouts?’
Iliana pointed to a forty-five-degree angle in a little copse of wood on the river’s opposite banks.
‘Down there.’
He folded the spyglass. ‘So, let’s test them out.’
‘Has Zoe told you anything about me? About what I’m doing?’
Branson led them down a steep trail towards the river.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t need to know.’
‘I don’t know if I can be of much help is what I’m saying,’ Iliana said urgently, as she meandered her horse through the scree. Stones tumbled and splashed into the water below. ‘I may end up making things worse.’
‘How would you like to find out?’
‘How would you like to keep your woods?’
Branson bellowed out a laugh, similar to burly woodsman who drank too much. His kind eyes crinkled as he looked back up at her. ‘The woods will be just fine. For once, trust yourself.’
‘You sound like bloody Zoe.’
Branson smiled wickedly. ‘Don’t let her hear you say that, that woman’s got eyes and ears everywhere in the Otherworld. Mark my words.’
They slushed through the river and entered the wood. Branson put his finger to his lips.
Her mind was a radar, sensing particular objects nearby except not only did she pick up on their size, but she also sensed their power and even their mood. Surprisingly, this applied to nearly everything around her, even things she never saw as conscious or intelligent.
‘Not far ahead,’ she whispered.
The sea of silence made her short breaths sound loud, and she clamped her hand down over her mouth. The birds twittered amicably in the branches above, and the only other sounds were their horses rustling through the green underbrush. The smell of lichen and moss thickened the air and Iliana was rushed back to Walkers Fall. She pushed aside her homesickness.
And then they saw them.
Up close, Iliana could see a man with a sheathed sword at the belt washing his face. He had tanned skin and a black Arab moustache wearing a purple velvet cape. Beside him was a woman with a black, light veil over her head, obscuring her face and a long dress embroidered with exotic, floral designs.
Their horses were tethered to a tree nearby. Both looked up alarmingly at their approach.
‘You’re trespassing on private land,’ Branson said, as they drew near. He leaned over the front of his saddle. ‘Get out.’
The man pulled out a sword but the woman placed a hand on his arm. Iliana noticed she was heavily pregnant.
The woman shouted at him in a language that she couldn’t understand, although from her emotional tone, she could tell the woman was appealing to him nervously.
Glaring at Branson, the man lowered his sword and spat.
‘Private property,’ Branson repeated, ‘Off, now. Or I will kill you where you stand in front of your pregnant wife.’
‘Sister,’ he snarled, in a lilted accent.
Iliana studied him. She didn’t need to be in the Otherworld for long to know he wasn’t from around their parts.
The concealed woman held up her hands in a show of diplomacy, her skirts swirling around her. ‘Please, we just needed the river to bathe; we will be gone by sundown.’
‘You’ll be gone now.’
‘We’re,’ she turned to look at her companion and looked back, ‘we’re with a travelling circus and we’ve fallen behind. Please, we’re not poachers; we’re not interested in your Mucklebruse or whatever they are called.’
‘Interesting,’ Branson fingered his beard, ‘I would have imagined they would be of great interest to the circus.’
‘Perhaps the animal trainers, but not us. We’re...part of the show.’
‘I bet you are. But you’re trespassers, and I wouldn’t be doing my job right if I turned and went home so how about this: we wait till you have packed up all your belongings and escort you back to the border, nice and easy. We should have killed you both by now or at least given you both a good knock out. We’re going easy here. Isn’t that right, Iliana?’
Branson turned in his saddle to smile at her. It was met with a sullen stare.
‘But I’m assuming,’ he continued, ‘that one or both of you know how to counteract my traps which, to be honest, I’m not too fond of to have found out. I’m in a bad mood, don’t make it worse.’ The last sentence came out in a low, threatening whisper that gave Iliana shivers. It was odd seeing the crinkled eyed good-natured man slip into a suit that looked ugly on him. It was disconcerting to realisethat it reminded of her in some way of her father.
Her stomach did a sickening twist at the thought of him.
The woman was silent behind her veil, probably churning over her options. She gathered her bed roll, pots and pans and a little brown drawstring bag and packed them into her horse’s saddle bags. Her brother sat sullenly on her horse and watched her work.
‘Would he not even help her?’ Iliana asked, irritated by the sheer rudeness and arrogance of the man.
‘They’re from a place further south of the Swamps, they have strange customs.’
‘Strange, or just fucking self-absorbed.’
Branson raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Didn’t take you as one for cursing,’ he said, as they watched the woman struggled to get on her horse.
‘Nobody takes me for anything,’ she muttered angrily.
They escorted them quietly to the border, a half a mile further south east.
Iliana was relieved that she didn’t have a dangerous confrontation to handle; she had seen too many of them as far as she was concerned.
The man looked at them once, scoffed, and then galloped away.
Iliana fumed at him. His arrogance was impalpable.
The woman delayed, seemingly procrastinating over something though it was difficult to tell with her face hidden.
‘You should know,’ she said lowly, ‘that Hannelsford prison is no more. A few criminals escaped and there may have been some enemy of yours there too. Perhaps they will come here now.’
Branson frowned. ‘What happened?’
‘Not sure, it is gone now.’
She urged her horse on and disappeared over a hill, following her brother’s trail.
Branson was introspective on their journey back and Iliana realised that she took his gaiety for granted; a warming manner was something he reserved only for the manse, out here he was the Lone Ranger protecting the border.
They arrived back in time for dinner. Warm broth stew soaked the air and fogged the tiny round windows in the kitchen. It had recovered back to it’s traditional, cosy, countryside decor that looked like it could be featured on the front cover of an Italian cookbook.
Around the table was a lingering silence as everyone sippe
d on Zoe’s vegetable soup.
Iliana didn’t dare reach across the table for a slice of bread.
Branson set down his steaming spoon. ‘Hannelsford was destroyed some time back.’
Zoe sipped her spoon. ‘Really?’
Iliana made eye contact with Cinderella (the nickname she created for the servant girl who worked closely with Blava), and an undercurrent of acknowledgement passed between them. Neither of them wanted to eat at the table.
Cinderella stood. ‘I will take my dinner back to my quarters,’ she said meekly.
‘You can stay, it’s good for us to openly discuss. No secrets,’ Zoe replied.
The girl stood hesitatingly, wearing her apron of splotches and stains, then reluctantly lowered herself down.
‘You’re one to talk of secrets. When were you going to tell me about Hannelsford?’
‘Most prisoners didn’t even survive the colossal attack, there was no point in worrying you. Besides, I have been keeping an eye on it.’
‘Do you know who did it?’
Zoe glanced sideways at Iliana. ‘We will speak more of that later.’
Though Iliana couldn’t know for sure, she felt there was a movement, a paradigm shift taking place beyond her sight. There was so much that Zoe knew but wouldn’t share with her and not only was it disempowering, it made her angry.
‘I want to know,’ she stated boldly before the open table.
Cinderella stopped midway on her soup, looking at Iliana as though she had committed treason.
Zoe patted her hand. ‘All in good time dear.’
She threw down her bib and stormed upstairs.
Table etiquette be damned, she thought.
She confined herself to her room for the next hour and poured over her history books, learning more about the early formation of the Otherworld.
It began when the Tuatha De Dannan clan entered the Otherworld from Earth, led by their leader Maeve.
One passage stated: ‘They thrived in the New World and once more built their courts and palaces. The ascension of the ambitious wizard Morgan however created a divide in the Tuatha De Dannan. Those who despised the faeries for being traitorous to their true form and insulting their patron goddess, Danu, for being different joined his side. Various debates were held over the variety of forms some of the Tuatha De Dannan took, and furthermore, their fellow brethren who stayed behind on Earth and turned themselves into stone. Morgan was determined to have all those in the Otherworld in their ‘pure form’ and resemble a human, devoid of any physical alterations.
Return of the Starchild (The Divine Inheritance Series Book 1) Page 16
