Melianarrheyal

by G. Deyke

Ty went back to Therrin and Karr, and at last they awoke and the great ice-wall crumbled and melted and the dragons behind were freed.

  When they saw the flood of dragons flying from the mountain, several of Melianarrheyal's escort fled. They rode eastward, back to the gate. “Sad for them,” Ty said: “in their story, it is the hero who has died. No doubt our little flower's mission – and her failure – will be legend in Thilua in a few years' time.”

  The rest did not wait to see if the dragons posed a threat, but attacked at once. The dragons defended themselves, and the Thiluan strangers were soon slain. What human force could last against an army of dragons all filled with the joy of freedom?

  When that was done the dragons did not stay long. Each of them flew away in a different direction, to spread out over the Unnamed Lands and bring them back to life. Only Karr remained with his Princess. He took his riders to the white castle the mad King had built, where they could live as long as they liked and rest from their adventures.

  I stayed in my room, in the soft bed that was made for me. Therrin allowed me to wander about the white castle as I pleased, but she urged me to rest until my wound was healed, and I saw no reason to leave the four walls around me.

  By the next morning the entire width of my dressing was soiled, though the red in the center was brighter, fresher. In the evening Ty came to change it. It had dried to my wound, and hurt when it was ripped off, and beneath the cloth the gash was still open and fresh, although the bleeding had finally ceased. And though it was cut with one stroke it wasn't a line but a hole, long and wide and deep, flesh-colored but blotched with blood.

  The dressing itself was repugnant, thickly crusted with blood, except for a yellow stain on the inside in the shape of the wound. I looked at it a long while, and didn't know what to think. It was so much blood; and yet so little of what I lost. But Ty took it away, and I would not protest.

  I couldn't hold that arm up – nor the other – without an unpleasant tingling that I could not ignore. Even when I rested them, the wound itself hurt. It would not stop hurting.

  Ty asked me again why I had done it. I had no response.

  When Therrin came to visit me and see how I was healing, I was hopeful that she might not know. Ty had always seemed the sort to keep secrets easily. But right away she asked me: “How could you do such a thing? Why?” and she would not be content with any half-answer I gave her.

  But I had no better answer to give.

  For a long time they stayed and cared for me. They came to visit me, to talk to me, to feed me, to change my dressings. Therrin offered to find a healer – talents work differently in that world, but it would be easy enough to find someone with a knowledge of herbs, and everyone was eager to do whatever they could for the Princess now that she had freed the dragons and brought salvation to their world – but I begged her not to. I was too afraid. I would not leave my room, nor allow anyone but Therrin and Ty to come and visit me. I was too afraid to allow a stranger to heal my arm.

  In time the wound scabbed over with a thick yellow-brown crust. When the dressing was removed it pulled the scab with it and freshened the wound and the blood. It was a sick feeling. After that it was left undressed, to scab in peace.

  The pain stayed. It was always there, a constant pressure on my mind. And my fingers were always tingling, and my head ached easily.

  Once when I couldn't stand my bed any longer I paced my room for hours on end. My arm began to hurt more and more, and I grew more and more dizzy, and cold, and my breath turned shallow. At last I returned to my bed and rested, and did not leave it again for a long while.

  The thick yellow scab crumbled easily, cracked, leaked yellowish liquid with blood fast behind it. I tried to leave it alone, but it sometimes when I picked it off at the edges there wasn't a fresh wound beneath it any longer but a bright pink scar. It scarred over very slowly, from the outside in. Then the pain was joined by an itch, and I found it very difficult not to scratch at it, to scratch off the scab.

  They asked me about it again and again and I never had an answer. I didn't like to talk to them, though I was glad when they came to relieve my loneliness. I didn't like to speak or to think or to feel or to do anything at all.

  When the scab was small enough that they were certain it wouldn't worsen – and the pain was gone, mostly – they left for a while, to see how the Unnamed Lands were faring after the dragons' return. Therrin told me I might come if I would, but I declined, still unwilling to leave the confines of my room; so I was left alone, and my food was brought by the spirits who lived at the white castle, whom the mad King had made as servants long ago and bound to that place.

  I was alone a long time, with no one to speak to me, to tell me stories, to be with me. I passed the days in my bed, or pacing the room. One night I taught myself to say Melianarrheyal's name. I tried again and again and I would not allow myself to stop until I could speak it without stumbling. Melianarrheyal. Melianarrheyal. Melianarrheyal of House Chinlar. Melianarrheyal the kind, Melianarrheyal the horrid. Melianarrheyal the dead.

  Another night I allowed myself to remember. I remembered the food she brought me, the gifts she gave me, the lies she told me. I remembered the day when we were walking together on the bridge, and there was a strong wind, and her ribbon tore as she touched her hair. She laughed, and she said: “Here, Arri, you take it!” and she gave it to me and I treasured it for years, as I treasured every other gift.

  I remembered when she told me, “I'll take care of you. Don't you worry.”

  I remembered when she died.

  I wept, remembering her. I wept with fear and hatred and loss. It hurt to think of her, it hurt in ways I did not know I could hurt. And I was still so afraid of her, though I knew she could never come for me again. But that night I allowed myself to think of her, hoping that if I did I'd never think of her again, and it would be over. I hoped in vain. The curse was long gone, but I needed no curse to dream.

  After that I amused myself by trying to remember all the stories Ty had told me before – but most of them I had heard only once, so I could not remember them well, and he was not there to ask. I gave up long before I had finished.

  At last I spoke to one of the spirits who brought me food, asking for charcoal and parchment, and I spent my days blackening the one with the other. I had never had much interest in drawing, but I tried to bring my sorrow and my emptiness and my fear to the parchment; and each time I failed, and each time I blacked out the attempts. I never succeeded, but I was able to keep myself busy in this manner until they returned.

  They had flown with Karr, and had first made a wide sweep of the land and then gone to see how everyone fared whom we had met as we gathered the treasures. Therrin told me everything they saw: the land was no longer gray; its snowy shroud was white and glittering and beneath it everything was bright and colored, just like home. The people were all overjoyed to see colors again, and to see that she had a dragon with her. The exceedingly old remembered what names they'd once had, and the younger chose new names. The land was alive again.

  Ioranne's cottage was gone without her there to keep it alive. They hadn't found the cottage itself at all beneath the snow, and had only guessed as to the clearing in which it once was; there was a great tree curving over the clearing, and they thought they knew it as the tree that had once curved over Ioranne's house. The tree was living now, and when Ty touched it no dust or ash came loose, and its gray was only the normal gray of bark. When summer comes it will have leaves again, green and growing, and there will be fresh moss hanging from its great wooden limbs.

  The fairies had spread a little, no longer confined to the small circle of summer. They were all throughout the forest. They looked forward to spring, and fresh flowers and rains and mushroom rings; but they were glad to see winter again, for the first time in many years. They danced with the snowflakes so that Therrin could hardly tell them apart, and sang for joy, and gathered around Karr's nose to welcome him back, and
alighted on Therrin's hands and arms and hair to thank her for freeing him, and all the dragons. It tickled, she said. Their whispering voices were all around her.

  The old necromancer had died with his duty done, as did Ioranne; but his daughter was alive and well, and had chosen the name Katira. She was much friendlier now that she knew that Therrin was the true Princess, and that she had not failed in her duty. She was eager to meet Karr, and to know about the other dragons, and to give her guests whatever food or beds they needed. She was still proud, but no longer as arrogant, and much kinder.

  The people living by the river in that city were not all lunatics; those who were remained, while others left the city, and still others moved into the abandoned houses to live sanely again. Two of them had a child together, and were overjoyed to find that they were able to name her. Sahta, they called her. She was born just as the first dragon passed over their dead city, and so she was the first child to be born with a name since the gray bane first took the Unnamed Lands.

  And they were not alone in living there: people from all around came to the city, to live among the dead. At least a third of the forsaken houses were filled, and merchants had set up their tents in one street to shout out prices and peddle their wares despite the snow. Indeed not all of these merchants were fully alive, Therrin told me: some were nothing more than richly-dressed bones, and others as thin and transparent as the ghost on the hillock, whom I never saw.

  They saw more of the bone-animals than we had before: dogs, cats, rats, birds, everything. One of these dogs ran up to Ty and nosed him with apparent affection. They thought it must be the same dog that we saw before, and allowed it to follow them back to Katira's palace. Ty wanted to keep it, as a pet; but he couldn't bring it back on Karr, so he let Katira keep it for him, until he returned for it.

  She said her city needed her, now; but she wanted to leave it for a while, and explore the newly awakened world, in a few months' time. She welcomed any of them to join her, and they promised to consider it. Ty said he very well might. He loves to explore, to learn new things, to find things so old they have been forgotten.

  “Don't you prefer to be alone?” I asked him.

  “I'll grow used to her in time, as I grew used to you and Therrin. Besides, she'll take the dog with her.”

  The villagers who had hoped to burn us were in a sorrier state. They were no longer as gray, but still grayer than most; and they had realized lately that they could sometimes understand when animals spoke, and that they themselves spoke in strange words. They knew nothing of the old ways, nor of the reason for the gray bane, and so they were frightened of Karr when first they saw him. And they knew Therrin and Ty as two of the four who had fallen from the sky in a shower of bones, and feared them.

  But now that they could understand her words, Therrin told them everything: about the dragons, and the old King, and the shared tongue, and the code that all who lived in the Unnamed Lands had once followed not to use the shared tongue for ill. They were afraid to listen at first, she told me. She does not know if they learned. But they did not attack them again, and Karr departed with his riders in peace.

  The fish-people in the lake were glad that the world was saved, and more glad that Therrin had fulfilled her promise to tell Karr to visit them. They knew him personally, it seemed – though they were too young to have met him themselves, they had the memories of their tribe, and he was once a great friend of theirs. They bade him welcome, and recounted a thousand years' gossip, and showed him the crystal-lined cave that had held the chalice. He swam with them in their lake and played at their games, and renewed a friendship a thousand years old. Therrin and Ty could do little to join them, bound to land as they were, so the visit was kept short; but Karr was very glad to see them, as they were glad to see him.

  They waited for night on the hillock with the crown of tall stones; and when the ghost came (far clearer than he was before, Therrin assured me) she cut his chains with her black knife, and so freed him from his eternal bondage. He began to speak, but faded away before his first word was finished, torn apart by the wind. Therrin fancied he might have been hoping to thank her. Ty thought differently; he was sure that the ghost must have been too surprised by the undeserved kindness to think of gratitude.

  “And it was undeserved,” he told me. “It is true that he served his sentence long enough, and that he cannot repeat his crime in death, but I very much doubt he ever learned to regret it; and he did nothing for us but to try to kill us. But Therrin thought it better to be kind, all the same.”

  They might have returned home then to the white castle, but now that Therrin had done what she must she was eager to meet her mother's people. Karr knew the way. The Wind People live in the sky, she told me; they see clouds as islands in the sea of the heavens, and sail between them on great ships.

  “It is a wonderful feeling, to drift through the sky as though weightless,” she told me; “but I think I still love water-ships more. There are no waves and there is no sea-spray beneath their sky-ships, and the only wind is what they call.”

  They are a silent folk, for they have no need of words to speak. They hear each other's thoughts, far more clearly than Therrin ever could. That must be how her mother was able to understand Kerheyin; and perhaps she gave him the stone, that he could understand her as well. But they do have a language of their own, the Wind People. They use it to speak with winds, to bid them fill their sails and part their clouds. They taught Therrin as much of this language as they could, as though her talent weren't already strong enough.

  She told me that they were very beautiful, with shining silver eyes and hair as white as the clouds, or the snow, so that even her own fair hair looked yellow beside theirs. Among humans she looks like one of them, but for her eyes; but among them she looked fully human.

  Still, they knew who she was, and were glad that she had saved their clouds from turning all to heavy stone. They showed her all around their cities, “beautiful cities that shone like pearls,” and they told her whatever she wanted to know about their ways, and they offered to let her stay, if she wanted.

  In the end she declined, being too human to stay in a place that would not last. The islands moved about, drifting on the winds, so that nothing was ever the same after an hour's time; and the Wind People, who can live only some twenty years, live so wholly in the moment that they will not remember the past. They had almost forgotten the gray bane already. They had almost forgotten Therrin's mother. When she pressed them they said that she and Kerheyin had been mourned, and their bodies given to the winds, long ago; and now they had let go of them, and would remember nothing more.

  Their lives are fleeting. They run from one day to the next, touching each experience but never holding on, taking joy in those things that come again each day rather than those that always remain. Therrin's nameless mother must have left them some four or five years ago at least; she had long passed out of their memories.

  So Therrin told them that she would find a place among humans; and they bade them farewell, and flew back to the white castle, to me.

  When they came I hid the blackened parchment under my bed, ashamed.

  Therrin had grown while they were away – she looked older than I, then, and Ty's beard was a little thicker. They asked me what I had done while they were gone, and I had to confess that I had yet to leave the room. They looked at my arm, which was all healed to a pink scar, with flaking peeling skin, except for the center which was still scabbed; and they asked me again why I had done it.

  Again, still, I had no answer.

  They grew more and more vexed with my silence. Once Therrin even yelled at me, her eyes bright with tears, trying to make me answer, trying to make me feel. But though the world around me was growing ever more alive, I was hollow inside; and even when she yelled I neither answered nor cowered. I only sat and listened and looked away from her.

  In the end they gave up again, and only cared for me. They brought me food and told
me about everything they saw and everything they did while they were gone. I listened and thought of the healing world that they both so love. I liked it better now, though I'd yet to see it with my own eye. It no longer seemed so strange – nor so drab – and whatever had always been missing had been returned. I might live there in comfort, now, though it could never be home.

  When the days grew warmer, and the snow began to melt, and the birds began to sing again, the dragons all gathered around the white castle. Karr told Therrin that the time had come to perform her last duty as Princess. She asked me to come see the ceremony; I declined. The four walls of white stone had been around me all winter, and I was not yet ready to leave them. My arm might be healed – but for that spot in the center; I tried so often to pull off the scab, hoping there would be fresh skin beneath, and found only blood – but I was still too afraid of the world outside.

  She told me about it, afterward. She stood before an army of dragons glittering in the springtime sun, and was asked to give the Unnamed Lands a name; and when she had done so they told her she was a Princess no longer, but a Queen, if she would have that title. She refused it. “This world has never had need of a ruler,” she said. “It has had only one King before, to my knowledge, and see what ruin he wrought! No, you must live for yourselves, or seek leadership from your cities if you must; and I daresay you'll be more content with that.” And she took up her black knife and cut the other two treasures apart with it, and shattered the knife itself against a rock. So Karr was freed from his bondage, and the two were tied together only by friendship.

  “What name did you choose?” I asked her.

  “Shiaran,” she answered. “They may not know of the old language here, but I do, and I know that a name ought to be in the old language; and that is one of the only words I know, as it was my family's name in Thilua. It means a good thing, something commended. The name Shiaran was the reason my father was always able to find new work, although we moved so often.”

  So the Unnamed Lands were unnamed no longer.

  Now that all her duties to this world were fulfilled, Therrin began to long for home; and soon she decided to leave Shiaran, and return to Ler's ship to live out her days. She didn't know how much time she had left, as daughter of the Wind People and humans both, but she wanted to spend it sailing the open seas under the gold banner.

  She and Karr made a pact to meet each year at the gate, as long as they both live, and invited Ty and me – and anyone we might be traveling with – to join them. The time would be in spring, on the day that is as long as the night. Ty agreed readily, so long as Karr would come for him each year and return him when the meeting was over. I was less certain – who knows what the future holds? What if I did not live to meet them? – but I agreed to keep it in mind.

  With that decided they left at once for the gate, and took Ty along to leave him in the dead city with Katira. Again, Therrin asked me to join them. This time I agreed. Perhaps this world was living, now, but I would rather not stay there forever, especially not alone; and this might be my last chance to fly to the gate rather than walk all the long way. And Thilua was safe again now that Melianarrheyal was dead.

  I was afraid to leave my room at first, but when I saw Karr again I forgot my fear. As long as I was Therrin's friend, I would be safe with him.

  We flew over the awakening land. In many places the snow had given way to green blades of grass and bright purple and yellow flowers, and in the trees the birds were singing, and the trees were budding and beginning to bloom. Spring had come again and brought color to the land.

  We left Ty in the silent forest beside the dead city. I was glad that we didn't go into the city ourselves, or meet Katira; I had left my room so recently, and was not yet willing to meet a stranger, nor to leave Karr's side.

  “Farewell then,” Ty said. “Thank you, Karr and Therrin, for fulfilling the prophecy and for allowing me to witness it; and as for you, Arrek...” He looked at me with his thick eyebrows lowered. “I suppose you still don't have an answer.”

  I shook my head. What more could I do?

  He sighed then, and said, “Take care,” and left for the city and Katira's palace.

  When he was gone we flew through the gate. Karr flew with us to Thilua. Ty had told us that his family might be in Saluyah at this time of year, and that if they weren't there yet they might come soon; so that was Therrin's destination. But she thought it best if Karr did not show himself too near the city, so he flew to the Desert and past some small villages, and landed beside the River Saluyah with nothing else in sight.

  Now Therrin and Karr took leave of each other. It was a hard parting for them both, for they were and are close friends. They took comfort in the knowledge that they would see each other again come next spring, and again every spring thenceforth for as long as they both lived.

  When that was done Karr took wing again, and flew back toward the gate, toward Shiaran, toward his home. Therrin watched him fly away, until he was nothing more than a distant speck in the bright sky. Then she turned to me and asked: “Will you come with me?”

  I shook my head. “I have no place on Ler's ship,” I said.

  “Then this is farewell for us as well,” she said. She took my hand in parting, then flung her arms around me. “If you ever need something – anything at all – you know where to find me,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “Good luck, whatever you do now, whithersoever you go.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Farewell.”

  And then she turned from me and walked upriver, toward Saluyah, and soon she was swallowed by the dunes, and I could no longer watch her go.

  And now here I am all alone, beside the River, with bright hot sands all around me. The brightness that once hurt my eye does not hurt the demon, but the Desert's heat is already beginning to burn.

  I still have my three copper (how long has it been now since that night in Therwil when she – Melianarrheyal – woke me?) but with that I could do nothing more than return to being kretchin. I will not be kretchin again. Too long have I slept in a bed and eaten well; I will not return now.

  My hair has grown long enough that I could easily pass for a commoner, but I am afraid to go to the city, afraid to speak to them, afraid to pretend that I am one of them. Therrin once suggested that I might ask for apprenticeship to a craftsman, but I think I am still too afraid to try. The scar on my arm (and not even all a scar, yet!) proves that I am not whole. How soon will it be that I make another, in a fit of fear or despair? How likely is it that I can live through it again, if no one is with me to bind my wound?

  I said I was Arrek, and I tried to be strong, but my strength was all worn down by shadows and curses and cold gray dust. I am not Arri. I am not Arrek. I am through with names.

  And I am all alone again, with my friends (dare I use the word?) and family far away; there is no one to stop me when I am foolish, no one to comfort me when light breaks into my darkness, no one to slow my breathing and calm my mind.

  There is only me.

  I lie back on the burning sand, not caring as it sears my skin. I turn my demon-eye to the blazing sun high above me. I listen to the wind sweeping through the dunes.

  I breathe deeply, and I begin to smile, and at last I laugh aloud. It doesn't matter. What happens next, whether I live or die, what will find me if I stay here – it doesn't matter.

  What matters is this hot sand beneath me, this bright sky, this river running by my feet. What matters is this world, and the gods below me.

  What matters is that if I should die now, here, alone and forsaken in this place of heat and merciless light, it will be all right.

  I laugh, and I whistle to Snake, and I wait.

  ###

  Thank you for reading.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Jacob and Anne Fletcher for love, support, friendship, and help with editing. It wouldn't have been possible without you.

  And thanks to Constance Griffith, for keep
ing me alive through the experiences I drew on to write this book.

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  Find G. Deyke online:

  deviantART: https://wintyrsnow.deviantart.com/

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