Of Starlight and Ashes

Chapter Three

"Zeno!" she exclaimed. Her brown eyes were playfully stern as she fought back a smile. "I told you to be back before midday. What do you call this?" Zeno rolled his eyes with a giant smile and inclined his head towards me.

"I was helping this traveller," he told her, accentuating the word traveller as if with extra meaning, "because I came across her, lost, in the forest." The woman instantly wiped her hands on the puffy pants she was wearing and donned a serious expression.

"Come in, dear," the woman said reluctantly, opening the slightly broken door to her home. Zeno instantly moved to walk inside and I followed. The inside of the small house was dim, plain and smelled faintly of rotting wood. "Now, would you like a cup of tea? I'm afraid we have no cream or sugar, but we have tea leaves." Somehow her words felt forced, as if she was trying to force herself to be hospitable.

"No, thank you," I instantly replied. I didn't like tea that much. I had always preferred the sweet taste of hot cocoa. But if this family could only afford the leaves for tea, there was no way they'd have any cocoa. Was this how the rest of the world lived outside the walls of my family home? In a town that smelled of rotting foods, with only enough money for bread and tea leaves, in run down houses that seemed to be falling apart?

"Right, then I'd like to know what's really going on," she said, narrowing her gaze at Zeno. He put his hands up in a submissive gesture and smiled an innocent smile.

"I can't tell you much apart from I found this girl in the forest," he said quickly. "And that she has the Silver Eyes." The room suddenly became still and quiet as the woman stared across the room at me. I couldn't help but drop my head and look away from her. Her surveying eyes made a feeling of discomfort settle in me, the same as which I sometimes felt when father had over other noble families and the elegant ladies and young girls would survey my dress and hair and skin. It made me feel like there was going to be something wrong with me, something they wouldn't like. Needless to say, if Niyx was here, she would flaunt her beauty without a second thought and have all the women admiring her easy grace. I didn't share that same skill.

"You're not the girl they're looking for," she told me tightly. "You should go back to wherever you came from before you attract the attention of the Tutamen. We don't need anymore trouble in these parts."

"Mother!" Zeno exclaimed instantly. "She's not able to go home. You know as well as I that we have to help her to the Rebel Keep! She's Silver Eyed!" Zeno's mother gave another stern look at me and shook her head.

"Send her Ellesmere," his mother hissed, sending her son a disapproving glare. "She belongs there, under the care of the High King. A noble child like her won't survive our world. She won't help us." Her severe words, though against me, filled me with warmth. I knew exactly why she wanted me gone, why she would never risk helping someone she doesn't trust.

"You love your family very much," I said quietly. Both Zeno and his mother looked at me with surprise. "You protect them with everything you have as my siblings used to protect me. I'm not going to ask you to help me, because I don't even know where I'm supposed to go. All I ask is that you allow me to write two letters to send to my family." Zeno looked to his mother, his brown eyes pleading.

"At least let her do that," he pleaded. Zeno's mother sighed and moved to a small set of drawers, pulling from it parchment, a pot of ink and a quill. She passed them to me hesitantly, as if not willing to let them go, and then levelled a glare at me.

"Once you're done, I want you gone," she told me. "I will get you a horse, but after that you're on your own. I have enough to deal with with this one, I can't have another brat to look after." I nodded understandingly, though I really didn't. She was acting as if being caught with me in her house could result in her death, or the death of her family. But I was sure the High King would reward them for their kindness. Father had told me of the gentleness of the King.