Shards of History

by Rebecca Roland

  The barrier shimmered, then disappeared. The Maddion and their dragons began to fall from the sky, dead.

  Malia’s world went black.

  Chapter 28

  Malia floated in nothingness for a long time. Sometimes she heard muffled voices as if she had cloth stuffed in her ears. Sometimes cool hands touched her forehead. Sometimes someone gently fed her broth, which traced a warm, pleasant line down her throat. She always stretched for these things, preferring them over the nothingness, but never quite reached them.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she rose from the dark depths and became aware of the world around her. She lay on a thick wool blanket. A fire burned somewhere to her left. Its warmth washed over her as did the occasional pop and snap of the fire. An image flashed through her mind of her in the middle of a forest fire, a strange man beside her, but when she reached for it, it danced tantalizingly out of her grasp.

  Her eyelids were heavy. She raised a hand to rub them. Her arm seemed to weigh as much as a large rock. It moved slowly through the air. Her hand, when it touched her face, was cold. That, more than anything else, awakened her nearly all the way. She rubbed awkwardly at her eyes as if she hadn’t done such a thing in years.

  “She’s awake,” her mother said. She sounded older, her voice strained.

  “Thank goodness,” said a man.

  Feet scuffled against the floor and clothes rustled as someone knelt beside Malia. A warm hand touched her forehead, her cheeks, then grasped her hand and rubbed warmth into it.

  “Malia, wake up,” said the man. “You’ve been sleeping long enough. Wake up.”

  Her eyelids fluttered and then lifted.

  A thin man, gray around his temples and lines of concern cupping his mouth, watched her anxiously. Behind him hovered her mother. Heavy lines marred her forehead. They were in somebody’s home. Unfamiliar items ringed the walls. Through a square opening in the ceiling came faint daylight.

  “Malia, do you know who I am?” the man asked.

  Something about him was familiar. She struggled for a name or a place where she’d seen him before, but like the forest fire, it remained just out of reach. She let out an exasperated sound.

  “No,” she said. Her voice croaked a bit as if she hadn’t used it in a while. Her throat was raw.

  Disappointment flickered across the man’s face, but he quickly hid it. “My name is Enuwal. I’m a healer in the village of Posalo.”

  “What happened to me?”

  He took a deep breath. “That’s a long, long answer. For now, just know that you’re safe.”

  She wanted to reassure him that her lapse in memory was temporary and she was sure she’d remember him after just a little more time, but fatigue overtook her and drew her back into the darkness.

  * * *

  When Malia woke again, the thin man—Enuwal, his name was Enuwal—was there, as well as her mother. Now the opening in the ceiling revealed a square patch of stars. A fire burned in the open hearth in the center of the room, and several lanterns lent their flickering glow. Shelves lined the walls, filled with dried herbs and odds and ends—dolls, pottery, fine blankets. The scent of the dried herbs tickled her nose.

  A braided man, his back to Malia, spoke in low tones with her mother and Enuwal in one corner. He was so familiar … the way he moved, the shape of his shoulders.

  He turned enough for her to catch his face. Vedran! But when had he braided his hair? When had he grown taller, and when had his muscles filled out his frame?

  Malia struggled to sit, but managed to get only to her elbows. “Vedran? What’s going on? What’s happened to me? Where am I?” Her voice grew more shrill with each question.

  The three of them hurried to her. Enuwal dropped to his knees and pressed her gently down.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  She turned wide eyes to Vedran. “How long have I been like this?” she whispered.

  “A few days,” Enuwal replied. “But you’ve lost many of your memories.”

  She raised a trembling hand to her head, probed for a bump. Sometimes a blow to the head made people forget things. “Did I fall? Was I hurt?”

  “No, nothing like that. We can explain everything, but it will take time.”

  Vedran knelt on her other side and reached an uncertain hand for hers. As he leaned forward, a huge talon fell from his tunic and dangled on a strip of leather.

  Malia recoiled from his touch. She couldn’t help it. Vedran had changed so much, seemingly overnight. And the talon …

  “Jegudun?” she asked, but knew even as the word came out of her mouth that the talon didn’t belong to a Jegudun. It was too large.

  Vedran drew back, disappointment washing over his face. He tucked the talon back into his tunic. “No. It belonged to—”

  “We’ll tell her when the time’s right,” Enuwal said.

  Anger coiled inside her like a snake. “The time is right now.” She shoved Enuwal’s hand from her shoulder and struggled to sit. “Don’t treat me like a child. I want to know what happened to me, and I want to know now.”

  Enuwal began, “I don’t think—”

  “She wants to know what happened to her,” her mother said softly, “and she should. It’s not right that she alone doesn’t know what’s gone on.” Her voice hardened. “I’ll make that a command if necessary, with the full agreement of your women’s council behind it.”

  He blanched. “No, that won’t be necessary. But if she seems like she can’t handle it, we’re stopping.”

  “You were there. You know just how much she can handle.”

  Enuwal closed his eyes and took a breath as if steadying himself. Then he nodded and opened his eyes. “We’ll start in the morning.”

  Malia glanced at Vedran. It was so strange to see him as a braided man. “Now. I feel like I’ve lost enough time already.”

  Enuwal sighed. “Now, then.”

  * * *

  Malia’s mother, Enuwal, and Vedran took turns speaking. They spoke all night and well past dawn, and when they were through, their words sat in Malia’s belly like a heavy meal.

  She couldn’t remember being ill the summer before, or being married, or befriending a Jegudun. A chill ran down her spine at the thought of one of those creatures having used her to work magic. She couldn’t recall the Maddions’ attack on the valley. The dead had all been burned already, but the Maddion had left their mark on the valley with charred forest, dead Taakwa, and those who mourned them.

  When she asked what had happened to her husband, her mother only said he’d been killed. But something in the way she averted her gaze suggested there was much more. Malia couldn’t bear to dig for it, though. Her mind already felt about to burst with everything they had told her.

  Enuwal insisted she walk several times a day, every day, as she recovered. At first her entire body ached and allowed her only a few steps outside his home. She groaned every time he told her to get up. But slowly the aches faded to be replaced by a burgeoning strength.

  Her mother and Vedran left for Selu. Her mother had too many duties to tend to be gone for long. Secretly, Malia was glad to see both of them go. She couldn’t stand the pitying looks her mother gave her, and Vedran’s abrupt—abrupt to her, at any rate—growth into manhood made her uncomfortable.

  Days blended into one another. Summer began to pass, and the crisp bite of autumn filled the air most evenings. Malia and Enuwal took one long walk each day now, and she spent the rest of her time helping him with gathering healing herbs or assisting with those who needed his help. Each time he suggested she take up pottery again, she balked. She couldn’t explain why, but the thought of it made it difficult for her to breathe and caused her pulse to race.

  One day he led them towards the falls. A few Jeguduns circled lazily in the air nearby. Despite their casual flight, they appeared to be hunting for something in the woods.

  Malia drew closer to Enuwal. “We’re awfully close to the cl
iffs.”

  “The Jeguduns won’t hurt us.”

  “You’ve said that before. Others have said that. But I just can’t shake the feeling that they’d sooner take a claw to me than be my friend.”

  They walked in silence a while alongside the gurgling river. The wet dirt would make good clay. Malia’s hands wanted to dig into the moist earth, pull it free, form it into something new, but her mind shied from it. She pulled her attention from the river.

  Sometimes Malia had nightmares about the river. It turned into a wall of water and threatened to pull her under. But those dreams weren’t as bad as the ones where she was trapped in a forest fire. With those she would wake drenched in sweat, the flames’ heat still on her skin, screams of the dying all around her.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, hoping to forget her nightmares.

  “There’s somebody who wants to talk to you and see how you’re doing.”

  “And they’re way out here?”

  “He prefers it that way.”

  Malia tried to imagine someone who preferred living so close to Jeguduns. The person must be an exile, a Jegudun sympathizer. Her steps faltered.

  Enuwal stopped. Lines of concern creased his forehead. “Malia, do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprised at the answer. She trusted no one else these days, including herself. Her own mind betrayed her by not giving up the answers she knew it held.

  “Then believe me when I say I want to help you. I want you to remember everything you’ve forgotten.”

  There was such tenderness in his voice. Malia hadn’t noticed it before, but it was always there. Enuwal cared for her, and not just as a healer for one who was ill. Something inside her swayed towards him. Had she cared for him before losing her memory? Did it have something to do with why neither he nor her mother wanted to discuss her dead husband? It was something to pursue later.

  “I do believe you,” she said.

  Enuwal’s face relaxed. “We don’t have much farther to go.”

  The woods thinned and then revealed an open, grass-covered space between the last line of trees and the base of the cliffs. Several hundred paces west stood the charred remains of the forest. The fire had spread to the grassy area but had been contained by a river of gray rocks that lined a slope. Malia’s chest tightened. Was this the fire she dreamed of?

  Dark openings dotted the cliff face. Jegudun homes, Malia realized. But the Jeguduns were all either inside or away because the skies here were empty. Still, gooseflesh broke out along her arms at being so close to so many of them.

  A man strode towards them from across the grassy plain. His shorn head marked him as an exile.

  “Is that him?” Malia asked.

  “Yes.”

  He wore loose fitting clothes and, as he drew closer, Malia could make out a ragged, white scar on his left cheek. It puckered the skin around it.

  She did her best to calm her thoughts. She trusted Enuwal. If he thought she should speak with this exile, then she would. Perhaps he held a clue to some of her lost memories.

  He stopped several paces away and nodded a greeting at both of them. Then he focused on Malia.

  “You’re looking well.” His voice was raspy, as if hardly used. A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Much better than the last time I saw you. I thought you were dead.”

  “For a while I thought I was dead, too.”

  The grin faded. “Do you remember me at all?”

  She shook her head.

  “My name is Rasmus. You saved my life during a fire.”

  “I dream about a fire sometimes. It’s all around me.”

  “You do?” Enuwal said. “Why haven’t you mentioned it?”

  “I’d rather try to forget it.” She studied Rasmus. He was so large and strong. How had she saved him from a fire? Then she remembered the women who had been caught in a fire several years ago outside Selu and how those who had survived spoke of clearing a space around them and riding out the fire. Had she done that? It would explain the dream and how the heat and ash was all around her.

  “There’s a place we’d like to take you,” Enuwal said. “It might help with your memories.”

  “Nothing else has helped.”

  “Give it a try. Please.”

  It probably couldn’t worsen the fog that Malia wandered in or make her feel any more broken. With a sigh, she agreed.

  She and Enuwal followed Rasmus west along the cliffs. Their passage stirred the smell of sun-warmed grass and earth. Far overhead birds flew in crooked formation on their way south. An image flashed in her mind of winged lizards—dragons, that was what the Maddion rode on—swooping over the valley, letting loose streams of fire and ripping Jeguduns and Taakwa to shreds with their teeth and talons. Screams of pain echoed in her head, and the ghostly smell of blood lingered.

  She reminded herself that there were things she wanted to remember, like Vedran’s last few years. Otherwise she would have turned around, content that a fog covered part of her life.

  They came to a wide cave opening. Its maw looked ready to swallow them whole. Along the wall inside, torches flickered from sconces.

  “We have to go in there?” she asked. The cave’s chill reached out to caress her skin.

  “Look at the wall here,” Enuwal said.

  She pulled her attention from the cave’s black gullet to its edges. There were paintings all around, generations old by the look of it, and in the Taakwa style. She moved closer.

  The paintings showed Taakwa and Jeguduns working and playing together. Side by side they worked in fields of corn. Jeguduns flew overhead, pointing out herds of animals that would have been hidden to the groups of Taakwa hunting on the ground. And in other paintings, Jegudun and Taakwa exchanged pottery for what looked like metal goods such as lanterns and tools.

  “These are old,” Malia said. “And the details are fine. A lot of care was given to these paintings.”

  “There are more inside,” Enuwal said.

  The cave no longer seemed ready to swallow Malia. Rather, it whispered to her of answers to her questions. Perhaps it didn’t hold all the answers, but she knew it could give her enough.

  “Then let’s go,” she said.

  Each of them took a torch from a sconce. Rasmus led them down a gentle, constant slope. The cave remained wide, but the ceiling loomed close overhead. It smelled damp and mossy, and their scuffling footsteps echoed. Unlit torches lined the walls. By the number of them, she guessed that the cave was sometimes a busy place.

  A dim glow appeared ahead and brightened with each step. The cave grew taller and wider until it opened on a huge space that could have easily held a thousand Taakwa.

  Lanterns had been placed at regular intervals along the wall, and they all cast their light towards the cave’s ceiling. Paintings covered the ceiling and the wall, some vibrant and obviously new, others weathered. They were done in an unusual style, with detail that Taakwa paintings never held, almost as if the very moment had been captured on stone. They showed Taakwa, Jeguduns, Maddion, dragons. Malia had heard descriptions of the Maddion from others, particularly her brother, but now she saw for herself the coils of hair, the furious expressions on their pale faces, and the weapons. The cave’s chill, forgotten as she’d walked, returned to wrap its arms around her. She shivered.

  She walked slowly around the space, studying each painting, and found a different history of her people in the pictures. They had fought the Maddion before, and won. But the Maddion had done horrible things to them. Taakwa hung by their arms from wooden posts driven into the ground. Dragons ripped into their bellies, spilling intestines and lapping the blood. It turned her stomach, and she wrapped her arms around herself.

  The Jeguduns had been the Maddions’ slaves. Without the Taakwa’s help, they would have been enslaved again. This much Malia understood. A fierce pride rose in her that her ancestors had risked their lives for another people’s freedom.

  The newest,
most vibrant paintings showed the recent battle. And in the midst of it was Malia. She and another Jegudun, its wings clipped, stood at the river just before it plunged off the cliffs. Together they pieced the broken barrier back together as if repairing shattered pottery.

  She didn’t know how long she stared at the painting. Enough to absorb every detail. Enuwal and Rasmus were in it, too, fighting young Maddion men while she and the Jegudun fixed the barrier. Behind the Maddion stood their temporary village, small homes made of animal skin. From one of them ran a Taakwa boy, guarded by two Jeguduns.

  She struggled to recall the moment in her own mind and couldn’t. She couldn’t even believe she’d been responsible for repairing the barrier. It was like a story that happened to another person. And yet, from what Enuwal had told her, that Jegudun had drawn so much power from her that it had erased all her recent memories.

  “Malia,” Enuwal said gently as he laid a hand on her arm.

  His touch and voice startled her from her thoughts. She rubbed the cave’s chill from her arms. “Is it time to go back?” She really didn’t want to. She could have spent days in the cave.

  “If it’s all right with you, there’s a Jegudun here who would like to share some of his memories with you. They’re memories of you.”

  Behind Enuwal, standing just in the shadows, was a Jegudun. He stepped into the light and bowed deeply to her. His feathers were a deep brown, like polished wood, and they gleamed.

  Malia’s pulse quickened. A Jegudun, so close … she couldn’t help the desire to run.

  She pushed the urge aside. She had to trust herself. Jeguduns had been her friends and allies. And these paintings, clearly done by Jeguduns, depicted Taakwa—including her—with nothing but respect.

  “What do I need to do?” The large cave swallowed up her voice.

  “Just let him hold your hand. I’ll be right beside you.”

  “Will you … will you hold my other hand?”