by Jen Valena
Rhema echoed Iris’ concerns, “Tyrsten, what is troubling you?”
Tyrsten shrugged. “I will be fine.”
Rhema nodded then asked Huldo, “Do you mind assisting me with the guest rooms?”
Once in the first bedroom, Huldo closed the door. “He suffered a terrible loss.”
“What could break him?”
“Love.”
“Oh.” She shook her head in surprise and understanding.
“He believes that this woman’s spirit told him to come here.”
“I see.” Rhema absentmindedly fluffed the pillows.
“It is a delicate subject for him.”
“Garrick is searching for a young woman with a Magian. Is this her?”
“Yes. However, en route here, she was shot and fell into the Callow River. We searched for her with no results. Tyrsten had accepted that she was completely lost to him. Then he had a vision.”
“You question this vision?”
“I have to, since he does not.”
“He was in love, but he cannot take a mate. Did he break tradition?”
“No. He did not act on his feelings. But he blames himself for her death. He was not as alert as he usually is when outside of the Vihar.” Huldo aggressively tugged on the sheets. “I hope he finds some comfort being here.”
Rhema noted that Huldo was not the same either. “Are you all right?”
“I hate to see him this way. And I mourn her loss, too, like a long-lost sister.”
She paused at the door. “We should keep his presence a secret from the town for now.”
“I doubt he planned on being very social, anyway.” Huldo attempted a smirk.
“There is someone you should meet.”
✹ ✹ ✹
In the morning, Tyrsten again secured his place at the seat near the window. Feron avoided Tyrsten and helped Revin and Iris with household chores as compensation for the comfortable room. Huldo and Rhema headed out to the main road of the village.
Rhema led him to a side alley. “I hope we find an answer for Tyrsten. He needs to learn how to grieve. He never truly did that when your parents were killed.”
“He does not handle emotions well. And now, in a few moon-cycles, he has experienced a lifetime’s worth. He was not prepared.”
Rhema shook her head. “What if his senses are not clear when it comes to her, and perhaps she is not dead? Soldiers still stop and question women with Ithia’s description in the villages.” Rhema stopped outside a meager bungalow. “Here we are.”
From the road, the house was unadorned. If not for the tended herb garden, one might think no one lived here.
“The woman is a Seer—a Woman Sage. She sought refuge in our village last winter.”
Huldo creased his forehead. “Can we trust her?”
“I believe so. Others have gone to her, and no harm has come to them.”
Before Huldo’s knuckles knocked on the wood, a voice from within instructed them to enter. Huldo and Rhema raised their eyebrows.
The old woman sat on a meditation cushion with her eyes closed. Huldo, usually quick at sizing up a person, had difficulty deciphering this woman as friend or foe.
Without opening her eyes, the woman said, “Rhema, what a pleasant surprise—and you brought Huldo.”
Huldo furrowed his eyebrows. “Is it a surprise if you already know who I am?”
“Ah yes, true.” She poured hot chamomile tea for her visitors, cups already placed in front of two cushions. “Please join me.”
Huldo marveled at how she poured without the use of her eyesight and without spilling a drop or overfilling. His inclination was to like this woman, but he held his judgement. “I come for an answer.”
“Oh, many answers. The question is the question, is it not?” The crone continued, “It is not you who wants answers—it is your brother, the one who runs away from both questions and answers. You have aided him in this.”
“I thought I could help, but…”
“Bring him here,” the old woman commanded. “He is the one who must ask.”
The Seer sensed the apprehension in Huldo’s mind as he deliberated the wisdom of letting his fragile brother meet such a powerful woman. She might be the one that coerced Tyrsten into coming to Kladmunt in the first place.
“Do not worry, little brother. His secrets are safe with me. I see more about Tyrsten than you might believe. If I wanted to capture or harm him, I would not need you to bring him to me.”
Huldo sassed, “You have an answer for everything.”
“Ah, no, I see what the Great Source wants an old lady to see. Then there are the challenges of seeing the future. I could spend eternity explaining the complexity of that, and by the time I was done, it would have all changed.” She paused as if consulting her inner crystal ball. “Bring him here after the sun sets, and he is shrouded by the night.”
✹ ✹ ✹
As the heavens ran from deep purple to navy black, Tyrsten approached the Seer’s house. Freshly shaven after a month of growth, he rubbed his chin, wondering if the visit would be worth the gesture.
Huldo stood guard outside. He muttered to Tyrsten, “I am trusting this woman with you for some blasted reason, but there could be another force at work. Be cautious.”
Tyrsten pushed past his brother and entered the bungalow.
The old woman sat, eyes closed. Tyrsten noted serenity swimming like golden koi around her.
“Tea?”
“No, thank you.” Tyrsten sat down on the cushion in front of her.
She poured the tea for him anyway.
Something about her energy struck familiar. “Have we met?”
“Such a complicated question.”
Tyrsten, schooled in the riddles of Sauvants, caught on quick. “So—yes and no.”
“Good. We have established ourselves.” She giggled.
Tyrsten was curt. “Why have I come to Kladmunt?”
“You already have that answer.”
“The spirit of a woman came to me and—”
“Ithia came to you.”
Tyrsten’s insides tensed that the Seer knew Ithia’s name, but of course she would.
“I hope you did not come here thinking you were to discover what to do with the rest of your life now that you have lost Ithia.”
He mumbled, coarsely, “I did not know what to expect in coming here.”
“You desired,” she interpreted for him.
“A fault of mine lately.”
“A fault? That depends. Unconditional love is a blessed state. However, to let that passion destroy you—to become obsessed—that is another point of potential awareness.”
“Potential awareness?”
“Every thing we do, whether it is considered good or bad—oh, the simplicity of human minds—is simply a setup, inviting our conscious selves to become aware.”
“Aware of what?”
“Everything! Daily experiences are all awakenings or enlightenments waiting to happen, to knock you into another way of seeing reality—presenting themselves one after another. But you constantly pass up these opportunities. The majority of us do.”
“You accuse me of not making use of—her death, as an opportunity?”
“You awoke the sleeping beast inside. Either tame your erratic emotions or they will control you. You skirt around your emotions, hiding from them. But by running away, you are at their mercy. Acknowledge your emotions and let them go on their merry way. Your issue now is that your mind and heart disagree with one another.”
“What does it matter now what my heart wants? Ithia is lost to me.”
“Oh, Tyrsten, life is a process. Even now, Love is part of that journey—in whatever way you may express it.”
“I could not express it even if she were alive, because I am Magian.”
A grumble rumbled in her throat. “Hogwash! Throughout our history, Magians have denied the nature of their humanity to serve—but to what end? Not able to
adapt—to grow—by holding too tightly. Beliefs became rules, that became dogma, that became limiting! This is our downfall.”
Tyrsten clenched his teeth. “What could you know of the plight of the Magians?”
She opened her eyes to reveal her large black Innocenti eyes. “More than you think.”
His mouth fell open in astonishment. Tyrsten stuttered, “How? I did not know. Forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive. Your question was legitimate.”
“Then please, answer my next question so that I may have my eyes opened. Why did Ithia have to… go?”
“Did you expect her to always be by your side?”
“She had just arrived! Her path! To fulfill Quanen’s Vision.”
“You put too much faith in her and not enough in your people or yourself. Why do you claim her to be the one Quanen spoke of? Because you saw her in visions? Because he described someone like her to you? Because you changed her into—of all things—a Magian Sidari? These things could add up to nothing.”
Tyrsten nodded reluctantly.
The Seer continued: “There is so much you are ill-informed about. Why do you think Sauvant Quanen insisted on Actuating you instead of allowing Master Larin to do it? Did you sense what truths each of them hid from you? You do not even think to question your elders. The Magians did not even teach the true ancient mysteries. Your teachers were as lost as you are right now. Yet you mapped Ithia’s path by their words, even without an idea how to accomplish the quest you heaped on her shoulders.”
“I thought…” he muttered, holding his head low.
“I know what you thought. Was it your place to tell her what she was to become? Especially when you know not truly what you are?”
“She needed some explanation of what I thought her to be. She was in danger.”
“Danger—such a subjective word. Often caused by one’s own damned self.” She refilled her cup as she let him ponder. She sipped. “What would you have done differently?”
“Many things.”
“You are saddened because she is lost to you, but she is never lost—not forever.”
A pithy edge cut his voice. “Little comfort in this life.”
“You gave up on a future with her, so your future with her gave up on you.” She sighed. “What if you question your Sauvant’s teachings? What if you ask what your path is? Ithia embodied your hopes because she was a new way of being. She changed the rules. How can you change your world?”
Tyrsten sat speechless for a long extended moment. The Seer’s energy and questions wrapped around him like serpents. Without a word, Tyrsten rose to his feet and slogged out of the house. He passed Huldo with no indication that he had seen him or anything else in the universe. He marched on as a man under a spell—under silent command to be anywhere but here.
Huldo shouted for him to stop.
Tyrsten only heard muffled noises like the rush of underwater currents. Underwater. Yes, Ithia was forever underwater in his mind. Unreachable. Drowned in the potential awareness that he had denied her, by his stubbornness, his presumptions, his carelessness.
Huldo barged into the Seer’s house. “What is wrong with him?”
“Everything and nothing,” she answered, eyes closed.
“Why is he acting like that? Where did you send him?”
“I did nothing. There are answers he needs to find on his own. Ones that cannot be found by the confines of a window.” The Seer waved her hand in Tyrsten’s direction. “Let him go.”
“I am not sure I should.”
“You doubt your brother?”
“Not usually.”
“Why now?”
“He has gone quite mad.”
She chuckled. “A mere matter of perspective.”
✹ ✹ ✹
Tyrsten trudged ahead at a mindless, methodical pace into the woods, with only his night vision as a guide. The glow of the trees, plants and rocks dimmed from winter’s hibernation. A giant tether dragged him along, reeling him in, but he could not say to where. Each foot found itself in front of the other until he was lost far below in the valley’s forest.
He wandered into a wide clearing, a sea of ochre—tall skeletons of dying grasses. At the center of the meadow, a low-lying object shone a bright, silver aura that radiated outward over the icy, organic shag. He followed the tree line, careful to conceal himself. It now appeared the source was a human figure, splayed out as a child about to make a snow angel. But there was no snow, and this was no child.
She was the snow angel—frozen.
He approached cautiously. Fear and excitement warmed his chest.
Here lay the woman he had loved and lost. He resisted the instinct to rub his eyes or shake his head, in case it rid him of this trick of the mind. He wanted to live a bit longer within his delusion.
Motionless, she was an exquisitely carved glowing marble statue fallen from her pedestal, a perfect replica of his Ithia. Wanting to test if she was as soft as she appeared, he dared to reach out to touch her pearlescent cheek.
She opened her eyes.
Tyrsten still radiated a golden aura, but now that was diminished. He had appeared from the unknown and touched her.
Her heart left her no other choice but to smile.
He smiled.
She parted her mouth to speak, but feared breaking the spell she was under. Words might jar her awake. She resisted the urge to sit up and inspect him closer—it might disrupt the illusion. She didn’t want that. Transfixed, she let the apparition glow above her. She was going to cling to this vision until it could no longer hold its cohesiveness until it disappeared into limbo as all dreams do.
As he had done many times before, Tyrsten brushed her long bangs aside and tucked them behind her left ear. The warmth of his hands thawed her frosted face.
This was too real.
He spoke, “I have hated myself for over a moon-cycle—there is so much I would have done differently—I failed you.”
“No, I jumped into the water and left you behind. But I had to.” Tears slid down her face and filled the cradle of her ears. The full weight of the pain of losing him pressed on her. “I distracted us at the river. It was my fault for asking something so ridiculous of you.”
“I should have given anything you asked of me.”
“You were being true to yourself. I shouldn’t have questioned that.”
“I was not being true to myself. You brought me to life, not just physically, but emotionally.”
She sighed. “This is a dream, so you’re saying what I want to hear—”
Her argument was cut short as Tyrsten leaned over her and clasped his hands along the sides of her face. Their eyes reflected tiny sparkles into the other. A drunken pleasure of being so close drowned her objections. Her hands entangled themselves in his black locks.
A moment of reason flickered. She hesitated.
Then his honey-sweet pheromones ensnared her keen senses, an appetite for him overwhelmed her. Was this real? She didn’t care if it was or not. She was going to be true to herself, and that meant loving him in this moment, even if only in a hallucination.
They gravitated to each other, unable to stop themselves. When their lips touched, an electrical shock tingled down their spines. Their heart rates rocketed in response.
It was all too intense to be a dream.
As they pulled back to evaluate the validity of their mutual delusion, they stared into each other’s eyes and said in unison, “I am sorry I could not save you.”
“What?” they both asked.
Ithia refuted her demise first. “I’m not dead! At least—I don’t think I am.”
She feared for a moment that she hadn’t survived her last encounter.
“In a vision, I saw your broken body on the river’s shore.”
“Yeah, I washed up on shore, but I was taken to a safe place and healed. When the men captured you, I heard your death cry. This can only be a dream.”
“Then I
am dreaming you.”
They touched each other’s face once again to figure out who was real.
“Who is dreaming who?” Ithia pinched herself on the arm. She winced at the sting. “I’m not dreaming. But I’m definitely not yours either.”
Tyrsten jumped to his feet and lifted Ithia up. He pressed her body hard against his chest. His arms wrapped so tight that she thought her ribs would crack. For good measure, he spun her around in a circle. “If I am dreaming you, then I do not want to wake.”
“I think we should make sure.” She kissed him. “Well?” She smiled innocently.
He returned her kiss in celebration. Her silver aura swirled and merged with his golden luminescence, dancing around them.
On the way up the mountain to Kladmunt, they made their way through their stories of what had happened since they were separated at Callow River.
“When I recovered from my head injury, I could not deal with your death, so we searched for your body.”
“How depressing.”
“What happened?” Tyrsten couldn’t take his eyes off of Ithia. He might lose her again. “You were dead.”
“I was pretty close to dead. Frog woke me up. Did I mention I have a frog spirit now? And…” Ithia was so excited, spoke so fast, Tyrsten had trouble keeping up. She told him about the women’s circle and Visioning. She left out a few elements, which she had an impulse to keep to herself, such as the existence of the woman Magian and her recent encounter with the shadow. She also left out how difficult it was for her to keep pace with Tyrsten. Ithia’s vigor was drained from her attack. If she revealed her weakened condition, she would have to confess what had happened.
All he could do was nod during her story.
“It appears you had a great time,” he mumbled, a bit put-off, discovering she had done so well without him while he had fallen apart.
