Anais Eternal

by Paige Graffunder

  “I think the three of us need to speak about this place.” Etachs said, holding the tea gingerly in their claws. Their gaze was turned toward the paned glass of the doors watching Ayesha hop around the garden.

  "Me too," I said walking out of the kitchen, my stocking-clad feet whispering over the hardwood floors, and the hodgepodge of carpets in the living room. I sat at the dining room table. I had not wasted the hours I had been awake and there were the books from our mother, as well as the selection of journals I had plucked from the shelves last night, and a small stack of papers that I had found in the little desk by the kitchen. I looked up watching as Etachs and Tatiana followed me, settling into the chairs. Etachs turned the low-backed wooden chair around backward, in order to sit in it more comfortably. This world was not made for their anatomy, but, to their credit, they made do and rarely complained.

  "I was wrong before," I started and opened one of the journals, sliding it across the table to Etachs and Tatiana, who both bent over it. "Our grandmother isn't from this place. She made this place." Tatiana looked up at me sharply, her brows furrowed.

  "What do you mean?" Tatiana asked, then looked more closely at the book. "Wait a minute..." She held the place I had opened the book to show her and flipped the book closed. "Ana, how did you get this opened? This was the book that was sealed!" she said, opening the book again and scanning the page I had turned it to.

  I grinned at her. "That's right, I went to grab the books out of my pack this morning and when my fingers touched it, my magic told me how to open it." I beamed, Tatiana gawked, and Etachs looked down at the page, a thoughtful expression on their face.

  "So, if you look here," I said, pointing to about the middle of the page, "you can see this is an account from some ancient Fae news source. See how it has been pasted in over the blank page?" Etachs reached out their hand and ran the back of their claw delicately over it.

  "It's nearly flush with the page. If you had not pointed it out, I would not have noticed it," they said.

  "Read it, Tati," I said, the corner of my mouth still pulled up in a lopsided grin. Tati looked up at me and then began to read aloud.

  The three younglings disappeared from the valleys north of Dunaryst over six days ago. Their pod has been frantically trying to find them ever since. With birth rates declining among the Fae in the last century, our younglings are more precious than ever before. The three younglings are from the same pod but born to different parents. The three podlings are all under the age of 45, with the youngest, Elena, being only 36. The three younglings have always been permitted to wander the grounds of their pod home but have always come back on previous occasions. The pod fears that they may have been injured or taken and continue to mount search efforts...

  Tatiana trailed off. She looked at me. "Grandmother was captured? Taken?"

  I shook my head, my grin widening. "Read the article on the next page," I ordered, my voice breathy with excitement. Tatiana returned her attention to the book, flipping the page over, dipping her head over it and reading aloud again.

  The younglings that disappeared over 10 years ago have been found! They walked into the front door of their pod home yesterday to the surprise and elation of their pod family. When they were questioned about where they were and who had taken them, they had some perplexing answers. They told their pod family and officials from the region that they had not been taken by anyone or been held against their will. They reported that they were at a place called the Glade that they had been creating for the last 10 years. When pressed upon for more information about the precise location of the Glade, 55-year-old Riley and 50-year-old Lemmie remained silent. However, 46-year-old Elena merely said that it was in her pocket. The pod has agreed that the children should be taken to The Oracle to determine whether or not this will impact their magical development...

  Tatiana looked up again, "The Oracle? The same one they took you to?" I nodded and placed another book atop the one open before my sister and Etachs.

  "These books, the ones on the shelves here, they are journals kept by Elena, Riley, and Lemmie while they were here for the 10 years they were missing." I tapped my finger on the page, turning to face Etachs. "This one talks about the animals and why they are the way they are."

  Etachs bent over the book and started to read aloud in their halting way. While they had learned much and had improved greatly in their mastery of our language, they still struggled through more complex words and common Faerie colloquialisms.

  Day Seven. I have found a new way to delight the others. I have found that I can create things from my magic. It takes a lot, but I have begun to make us a house. It will be just perfect for the three of us. I can only do some at a time and then I have to sleep. Riley drew it in the dirt with a stick and I think it will be the most perfect house of any house.

  Etachs turned the page.

  Day Eight. I did something by accident, and I may have hurt Lemmie. I didn't mean to. I was making the house and she touched me to get my attention. When she did, her skin went very pale and she fell to the ground. It took Riley and I several hours to wake her. When she did wake up, she said she felt weak, but otherwise OK. I got more of the house done than I thought I would. I think maybe I stole her magic. When she touched me, it was like she shoved her head into mine, and I could see all of the things she is. I tried to ask her about it, but she said she didn't know what I was talking about. I think she might be a little afraid of me now.

  "Wait a minute," said Tati. "You mean to tell me that Elena made this place with just her magic? The house? The whole house?" I looked up at her, eyes shining.

  "No," I said, barely containing my excitement. "I think she made the whole Glade."

  "What? How?" said Tati, looking back down at the book.

  "Keep reading!" I urged and Etachs looked back down.

  Day 12. The house is finished, but we were almost caught today. I need to find a way to keep the rest of the people out. I read the account of what happened to the last person like me and, from what I can gather, I am incredibly weak in this gift. If they catch us, I could be killed, no matter how strong I am. I feel bad that I dragged along Lemmie and Riley, but I don't think I could have done this without them. Today I asked them if I could borrow some of their magic. I think I know what happened when Lemmie touched me, I think she startled me, and I just drank her all up. But I think I can take little sips now so that things that are bigger than my own abilities can be constructed. I have a great and wonderful plan that will keep us safe forever.

  Day 14. It took longer than I thought, but I was able to construct our safe place. I communed with the earth and air, and space and time, and found a way to make a hole, a small rip in our world that can contain much more inside it. I have done this and wrapped the Glade inside it. I am looking for a way that I can capture this rip inside something else, so that I may take it with me, and Riley and Lemmie and I can travel when we are old enough to pass for adults. We are but children now. To many I am considered a baby still, but the more I speak with my magic, the older and wiser I feel.

  Day 26. I have made a lovely garden of food and herbs. It is not really necessary, as I can simply conjure all we need, but I really feel that we should not waste the gift that has been given and do all that we can to live simply while we study here the limits of what we can do.

  Day 30. I have created life. Today I made a goldfish. Riley said she was feeling homesick, so I have made her a friend.

  Day 31. Riley did a bad thing; I am very cross with her. I walked into her room and she said that her goldfish had disappeared. I didn't believe her, because I didn't make it do that, so I grabbed her hand so I could see inside her head as I did with Lemmie that time. I shouldn't have done it, but she lied to me, I knew she did, so I just grabbed her. She looked scared of me. She felt scared of me. She killed the fish to see if it was empty inside. It wasn't. It was a real fish. I told her that, and she cried and told me to stay out of her head. I told her she kille
d a living thing and she pushed me out of her room and cried all the night through. Through the wall, I could hear her telling the dead fish that she was sorry over and over. I feel bad. She did the bad thing by killing her fish. I know that. Then why do I feel like I did a worse one?

  "How old was she when she was writing this?" asked Tati.

  "Thirty-six, according to the articles."

  "By the Gift...." said Tati in a low, mournful voice.

  "I didn't get much further than that, but once I read that bit, I had a thought." I reached under the table and lifted a small basket. Inside was a squirrel, small and soft and in that strange state of frozen. "I found this little guy tucked into the branches of one of the berry bushes out back. It looks like taxidermy, it's so still, but if you touch it..." I reached my finger inside and gently caressed its fur. "It is still warm and alive, just... kind of stuck..."

  Etachs reached forward and delicately stroked the tiny beast, then looked up, eyebrows raised. "We have a word for this! I don't know how to say it in your tongue, but..." Etachs said the word in Himalani, and Tatiana and I looked at each other. "Do you know this word?" Etachs said looking back and forth.

  "Yes," said Tatiana. "The word is stasis."

  "Stasis," I said, mulling it over. "Yes, that fits. But watch this." I whispered my magic into life and pushed a tiny sliver of it out and into the tiny critter. For a moment nothing happened.

  "Watch what, Ana?" said Tatiana.

  "Wait," I hissed and inclined my head back to the basket. After another moment, the squirrel began to move, subtly at first, the rising and falling of its little chest as it began again to breathe. Within another couple of seconds, it was fully moving around inside the basket, climbing out and strutting around the table like it owned the place.

  "What the fuck..." Tatiana breathed, sitting absolutely still as she watched the animal get acquainted with its new surroundings. If it had noticed we were sitting there watching it, it showed no fear of us. I reached into my pocket and produced an acorn, resting my hand on the table in front of me, the acorn held between my thumb and forefinger, palm up and relaxed. The squirrel quickly approached and put its paws around the acorn, sniffing at it gently, then climbed into my hand. I lifted my other hand and began to stroke the supple fur as the squirrel began to make quick work of the acorn.

  "They don't fear anything, they are docile as a babe, and it's all the animals here. I spent some time exploring this morning. They are real animals, and I am sure that like in Elena's journal, if we were to kill one, it would bleed and suffer, but if I pluck my magic back out of it, it simply returns to..."

  "Stasis," Tati whispered.

  "Yes, stasis," I replied.

  "How many did you try this with?" asked Etachs, eyes still fixated on the squirrel in my hands.

  "Oh, all of them," I said nonchalantly. Tati pushed away from the table then, so fast I jumped, the squirrel, startled by the sudden movement, dashed away off the table, across the house, and out the still open double doors. I looked at her and she looked at me, and we held each other's eyes for a moment, but it was like there was a wall up. I couldn't feel what she felt. I could just see the conflicted look on her face. "Tati," I started, but then she was gone. She fled from the house, the door banging against the wall as she wrenched it open, not bothering to shut it as she ran.

  I watched her go, then turned to Etachs, and did not immediately understand the look on their face. It wasn't until later when the night had fallen, that I realized it was pity. They realized before I did, that Tatiana, my sister, my protector, my champion, had become afraid of me.

  Doubt and Discovery

  Nysthrani regarded Elena from her seat nestled behind the outcropping of rock. This teasing was completely unnecessary, of course. She already knew the child Elena's daughter was clutching to her chest was one of the Manuhiri. The child was little more than a baby and yet her magic was already alive inside her. Alive and writhing. Nysthrani bared her teeth in what looked to Elena like a snarl from the dripping maw of a monstrous creature. But Annalisa visibly relaxed. To her, the beautiful woman behind the rock was smiling in a soft, motherly way. Nysthrani lifted her arms toward Annalisa and beckoned her forward. Elena lowered her eyes to the ground as Annalisa approached the Oracle with Anais in her arms. Nysthrani smiled up at her and gestured for her to lay the child on the table.

  Annalisa tried to look back at her mother, but Elena had closed her eyes, head lowered, posture defeated. She turned back to Nysthrani, this beautiful, ethereal woman, smiling up at her, but she felt like there were fangs behind the smile. She just couldn't tell why. She lowered Anais to the table and Nysthrani began to inspect her, muttering under her breath, her full attention on the child. After a moment or two, she started to remove jars of herbs and instruments, crystals and vials from the little containers and boxes and parcels strewn about her.

  Annalisa blinked. She was sure none of these items had been near Nysthrani before, but she was reaching for them as though they had always been there. Annalisa felt sweat slide down her spine and her skin erupted in gooseflesh. She felt less comfortable now than she had before she had handed this creature her precious child. Nysthrani muttered words in a language that Annalisa could not place and mixed things in a large bowl. She waved her hands and then everything went black.

  Nysthrani smirked as all in the cave went still as statues, except herself and the babe. She dropped all her glamours and what sat behind the outcrop of rock was a spindly creature that looked like nothing else had ever looked in this world. She was a pale grey, with a thin, fragile-looking body. Each of her bones pressed grotesquely against her paper-thin skin. She wielded four arms that resembled the limbs of an insect—long, articulated in eight places, and painfully thin. Her head was the shape of a teardrop, her eyes wide silver orbs of swirling mist, her mouth full of long, needle-like teeth.

  She had come to this world when all life here had been primordial, when the rock on the land was still cooling from its volcanic formation. She had not meant to stay. She had not meant to end up here at all, but fate is as fickle as a forgetful lover and had seen fit to deal her this hand. She had remained here, trapped, the eons passing on and on as the hope of rescue first dwindled and faded, then disappeared. Eventually it was as though there had never been any hope of it at all. Nysthrani was here as the universe was here. They were unavoidable, inevitable, and objective. She had made mistakes in that time, and the Manuhiri were proof of those mistakes. She had once loved a Fae, a man when the Fae were still new and wild. She had shared communion with him.

  In that communion she had seen that his love for her was deep. Feeling as though she no longer had to hide, she had shed her glamours and shown herself as she truly was to him. She had been foolish and had forgotten the only thing that is true of all creatures that were made or born: the only feeling deeper than love is fear. Her love did fear her, so much so that he was driven mad with fear. She tried to fix it, to clear the memories of her true self from his mind through communion, but he had fought her, and she had, in her panic, destroyed his mind. She had mourned him ever since, but through their union, she had born younglings. Two of them, one male, one female. They took no likeness from her. They looked Fae, though they took her magic. She had left them, unable to look into the faces that reminded her of her love gone mad. She had climbed this mountain that stretched above the cloud lines, and here she stayed.

  The Humans had made up stories of gods, and oracles, and the Fae came to her when they were scared of the power they did not understand. How could they understand? This power was not of them. Through the millennia she sat, and saw Manuhiri, and watched the line of her magic grow longer and longer, until one day she could not bear to see the children all wearing remnants of the face of her love anymore. In a rage, she had spread lies and deceit and planted seeds in the minds of the Fae that the Manuhiri were corrupted, and unjust. She had fled back to her mountain to escape the screams of genocide. The ending o
f her line.

  Or so she had thought, until they had brought her a sullen and resolute little girl who had stared up at her defiantly. Until Elena.

  ◆◆◆

  Tatiana made herself scarce over the next couple of days. She would greet me when she saw me, then busy herself with something that would take her away. The first time this happened, I had started out after her, but Etachs stayed me with a gentle touch.

  "She needs time to process all that she has learned, Ana. Let her do it in peace."

  "I don't need you to lecture me about my own sister," I had snapped back.

  "Yes, you do," was all Etachs said before walking into the living room to inspect the small bundle of games we had found. I stared after them for a moment, really wanting to be angry, but finding myself unable to do it. They were right; sometimes I did need some temperance when it came to Tatiana. So instead, I walked to Etachs and started the laborious task of teaching them chess.

  The next week passed in a kind of haze. We rose, we ate, Tatiana made her excuses and left the house as soon as the meal was cleared. Etachs and I played chess, then Etachs worked on their reading and writing, both Fae and the Common Tongue, and I read the journals, and puzzled through the chaotic nature of my grandmother's writing. For the first five years, there were journals from all three girls, and, after that, just from Elena. I hadn't read Lemmie and Riley's tomes, only Elena's.

  I followed along as my grandmother discovered the depths of her magic. Some of it was normal Fae magic, like pulling moisture from the air to conjure water, or helping nature to grow, taming animals. But some of it was not. Creating something from nothing is not a common Fae gift. We can create illusions, but Elena's creations were not illusions. We had decided as a group not to hunt the animals in the glade and eat only plant life. The animals were docile and tame as well-loved pets and we saw no reason to harm them. None of us were desperate for meat.