Shadows in the Trees: Book 1

Chapter 29

Vess stood, though she had to duck her head, and stepped forward, pulling back her hood. Yaya's eyes widened. "One of our own has turned against us. She has come to the human world and intends to enslave humans and kill the rest of her kind. We need your help." 

"My . . . " Yaya's eyes were glassy, and she clutched her chest. 

"Yaya," Freya said. "We need you to tell us where the Fae are. And we need you to help us warn the rest of the humans, and we need you to help us fight against her." 

"You know Jentsi don't fight," Yaya said, shaking her head. 

"This is different. The world is at stake!" Freya said. 

"I . . . " she looked at the humans. "Here, you must all be starving. There's a feast going on outside; go eat." When no one moved, she said, "I need to speak with Freya, and the -- the Sylph, alone." The humans stood awkwardly and filed out of the wagon. Freya looked to Yaya.

"I know we don't fight, but -- "

"Have you completely forgotten the ways of your people?" Yaya said. "We do not concern ourselves with war, with senseless violence. We choose to live apart from that." 

Freya flinched, but pressed on. "If we don't fight, we die! Roltandre won't stop at the kingdoms. She will come for Jentsi too, and you will have to fight, whether you like it or not." 

"Who is this Roltandre? How can she be so powerful she can conquer all of the kingdoms of this land without -- " 

"She is my sister. My twin, actually," Vess cut in, sitting down in front of Yaya. Yaya's eyes widened with understanding. "For Sylph, twins are sacred, and very powerful. We were the first twins born since . . . well, since before Malachai. No one knew what our powers were. Even as we grew into adolescents, no one could guess what our gifts were. Roltandre enjoyed gardening, and I was gifted at sword fighting, but neither of those was particularly telling. I had a companion, Ingemar, who shared my love of sword play and sparred with me often. One day, we were playing by the river, and we began to spar with sticks." Vess hesitated. 

"You do not have to do this," Jubil said. He came and sat next to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. 

"It is important," Vess said, swallowing hard. Freya was surprised to see a tear fall down her mottled cheek. She found it unnerving to see something that looked so not  human express such a human emotion. "We were sparring, and I just found this rhythm, this -- I don't know how to explain it. Ingemar was stumbling back, I know now she was scared but I could not stop, I just became this, this force, and I hit her in her head, hard, and I -- I killed her. I killed her." Vess took a breath. "As soon as I saw her lying there, I knew, and I -- I don't know how Ro knew, but she came rushing to me, found me at the river. But it was too late. Others had heard my wails and had come to the river. Someone got Ingemar's mother, and she, and she cradled Ingemar in her lap, weeping. And then Roltandre said, 'Don't worry, I can fix this'. She kept saying, 'I can fix this'. She took Ingemar's head in her hands, and she closed her eyes, and then Ingemar -- her skull, it -- I had smashed it to bits, but it began . . . coming back together, the skin just sealed back up. And then Ingemar opened her eyes. Her mother was overjoyed, but the others were horrified.

"And then Ingemar moved her mouth, like she was trying to speak, but no sound came out. She stood up, and she could walk, but her eyes were . . . it wasn't Ingemar." Vess looked down at her hands. "Later that week, a council decided to . . . re-kill Ingemar, and give her a proper burial. Her mother was devastated. And Roltandre, well, she was ostracized. People feared her, thought she was unnatural. But no one seemed to blame me. I apologized over and over, but everyone said it was an accident. That I was not used to controlling my powers. That it was not my fault.

"Roltandre made her own hut deeper in the woods, away from everyone else. My mother and I tried to get her to come back to the village, but she refused, and no one wanted her back anyway. She became obsessed with dissecting animals, studying their anatomy, practicing bringing them back to life. She grew to hate our ways, hate her own people. She became a cautionary tale; children were warned not to venture off to far from the village, lest they meet Roltandre.

"And then one day, when I went to visit her, she was gone. We searched the forest, and we tracked her to the edge of the treeline -- no one would go further. No one knew where she went, or why she left. But I know my sister. I can feel the anger in her heart, even now. She hungers for vengeance; or rather, what she believes to be justice." Vess scrubbed the tears from her cheeks, and Jubil rubbed her back. No one seemed to know what to say. 

"That is . . . quite a story," Yaya said finally. Freya scooted closer to Yaya and took her hands, and she peeled her eyes away from the Sylph to look at Freya. 

"I don't want to fight either. But you know the stories of Sylph, you told them to me. You know what they can do to our world. We can't do nothing," Freya said. Yaya nodded. 

"The Jentsi will not fight," she said. "But we will help you."