Erdil
Exhausted, Emeline collapsed into the arms of the woman who'd saved her. The smell of spices mixed with dust and old fabric clung to the woman, oddly it comforted her. The woman wrapped her arm around Emeline, her skin soft but cool, and Emeline's eyes drooped closed as her cheek pressed against the fabric of the woman's strange dress.
#
Milk-white: piercing, sharp, pure. The white bled away like liquid mist and Emeline blinked. Colourful smudges defined themselves past the milkiness, becoming first indistinct chairs, then glorious seats of royalty far beyond her stature. Gems glittering colours vaster than any she knew, brighter and deeper than any she'd ever seen. And that would be one, so she supposed her gem analysis was weak enough to assume these were real. Still, they breathed ethereal glory. Her eyes drank in the beauty, drowned in the gold glitter playing with the white that seemed to be more than white, alive somehow. Animate.
Behind her a presence grew. She felt it in the sudden tension knotting her shoulders, the premonition shivering her backbone, the tingling tracing her skin.
'Emeline Frost.'
A man's voice, a voice she knew and couldn't place. A man her instincts interpreted as lethal and loving—contrast her mind struggled to solve.
'Full,' she said, 'not Frost.' But her certainty had fled with the voice's echoes. The shiver on her skin warped to a seed of something festering in her belly. Good or bad, she couldn't be sure. It echoed blood, snow, a river, a terror, black smoke swirling in a stormy sky, screams, shouts. It echoed. Her hands began to tremble. The boniness of them seemed suddenly frail, brought from illness or terror, brought from a just punishment she would not acknowledge. Fighting the flood of horror threatening to lap over her carefully constructed walls, she strained to remember what was real, what she acknowledged as real.
Avétk, stringy oily hair, yellowed teeth, sorrow-filled inky eyes, that hollow smile that had warmed so on their journey. Her heart calmed, and her memory called up Ketiya, husky grating voice, her freedom, her dexterity in body and soul. And the Mage, that mystery inclined to mercy she didn't fully trust. What did he really want with her? And then came the prophecy and her soul's assertion that she was the Girl Child.
And, behind her at last she knew, stood the Fathers. The terror unfurled its wings and set her heart racing with something new. Awe.
The Fathers stood before her, and she was naked as she had been in the first dream, shapely curves and pallid milky skin. Her hips felt bare and she was keenly aware of the parts usually covered modestly. The Fathers didn't seem concerned. Their faces were familiar. A man with a giant dark beard and sorrow-filled eyes; another man with unremarkable features, a bald pate, a vine tattoo or marking snaking around one side of his face; and a third man with a chiselled jaw and a large, lively moustache dominating his face. Then it clicked; these were the faces on the statuette the Mage had given her in a dream. The amulet's power made more sense now. It was said even the Fathers' likeness wielded powers beyond the natural. That was why nobody painted them, or at least whoever did had no clue what they really looked like.
The robes they wore were a bright white.
'Welcome,' the Father with the moustache said, 'I am Mercur, Father of Time.'
'I' —Emeline glanced furtively about— 'I was reading The Book...'
'And now you are here,' the Father with the twining vine markings said, 'with us.' A great smile burst from him then, and he stepped forward, grabbed Emeline in an embrace. 'My little one,' he said, pulling back to see her face.
'Elian,' the Father of time said, nodding at the man who held Emeline by the shoulders. 'And this is the Great Father, Axel.' He showed a hand toward the man with the sorrow-filled eyes, and there seemed an endless depth to them that caught Emeline's breath for a second. That stirred those dark pools deep inside her uncomfortably.
'Child, you have kept the truth from yourself for too long,' he whispered after a moment. Emeline breathed again.
'They said reading the Book would save Erdil,' she whispered.
The fathers shared glances. 'Let us hope so,' the Father of Time said stepping forward, his hand at the nape of her back. 'Let me show you what you have come for. The first is the gift the Father of Time can give. Most who read The Book beg the gift of immortality from me. One begged me to reveal the future, and it was this very one that wrote the prophecy all of Öldeim obsesses over. In his time he saw you dear one, and here you are as he foretold. My gift to you will not be immortality, or visions of the future, but hindsight.'
Emeline's brows knit. Reading the Book turned out to be an experience far beyond what she had expected, and she felt jarred, going so quickly from the dream battle with the Dark Woman to this place
'Usually one can choose their gift,' Elian said, hands behind his back, 'but in this instance—Well, you will see why it has been decided thus Emeline, and when you and Mercur return we will discuss your second gift.' The warmth from his smile washed over her, called to mind a warm summer night on the farm when she had lain gazing at the stars. 'Father,' she managed to say, bowing deeply.
Mercur stood at her side patiently, and once she turned to him, he took her hand, and in a flash they were somewhere else.
A dark place. Noisy, the stench of blood thick as the dark mists in the air. They floated above it all, like the fae of legends, they drew nearer to the dark place, and Emeline saw gnarled trees in a dark mass, leafless. Something inside her roiled. This was familiar. The Father's grip on her hand squeezed, reassured her. 'What is this place?'
'Look carefully,' Mercur said, meeting her eyes briefly, his own a piercing grey. He pointed at the heart of the dark place, and there Emeline saw four creatures. Almost human, but somehow ethereal. 'What are they?'
'You never knew them,' the Father of time said. 'They are Immortals, the ones who started this whole mess.'
She squinted past the darkness. A man with a chiselled jaw and long blonde hair, his skin wispy like ghost-sugar, white and semi-translucent, gestured wildly with his hands, clearly upset. With a woman. She stood calmly, hands clasped before her, a dark tattered dress whipping in the cool winter winds. Emeline's breath caught. She knew this woman—the Dark Woman.
'Where is this?' she asked. The Father of time did not answer, his gaze caught on the four. As Emeline watched, they started moving in hypnotic dances, their hands twining, oscillating, their bodies soon joining the movements. 'The Way,' she said to herself.
Mercur nodded.
The man with short brown hair swung his arms wildly, anger evident, and called a great blast of energy from the sky. A bolt of lightning struck where the Dark Woman should have been, but she was gone. From above it was easy to spot her reappearing. She touched him on the shoulder and he fell to the snow, frozen. This seemed to infuriate the fourth figure. Emeline squinted but could not figure out what she was. A woman with white hair, then grey hair, then black, blue nails, green skin, then grey skin, red lips, then she became all red as the man with short hair collapsed. In the redness, a dark orange swirled. The colour woman spun, but her movements felt awkward, even to Emeline who knew so little of movements of The Way. Or did she? Some things were all wrong. She flicked her wrist when she should have whipped it. She curled her thumb when she should have jabbed it.
The Dark Woman sneered at the colour-changing woman, whatever she was, but stirred the air about her expertly in a dangerous Movement of The Way. Luckily the colour woman noticed just as the Dark Woman had amassed the right amount of power, and she floated high into the air, like a ghost kissed by the sunset, frail and perfect, pale and bright.
Emeline's eyes widened. Nothing as beautiful as this woman existed, she was sure. Yet here she was. She watched the woman, her skin semi-translucent, reflecting light and shadow, her hair like long wisps of ghost-sugar floating around her, and then in a flash, she fell. Black tendrils of mist gripped her ankles, pulling her down. Emeline watched the woman's expression of shock and her hands trembled. The woman hit the earth with a boom like ten Great Oaks toppling at once. 'Oh!' Emeline gasped, a tear cutting her cheek. The woman lay splayed, surely gravely injured or dead. The Dark Woman hovered over her, sneering as she spoke. Emeline itched to know what she said, but they floated too far out of earshot to hear.
'What is she saying?' Emeline asked, turning to the Father of Time.
The Father met her eyes but did not answer. Instead she felt the air moving about them and then they were closer. Two of the four immortals lay frozen in the snow, no breath moving their chests. Panic nipped at Emeline, but she reminded herself that immortals were just that: immortal. Surely these two were not dead.
'You don't understand, Huiden,' the Dark Woman was saying. 'I have a plan for Erdil, one that puts us high above all created things. One that rivals the Fathers. Would you give that up for these two? Or a few measly humans?'
The words seemed almost reasonable coming from a woman as elegant and poised as the Dark Woman gesturing calmly at Erdil like it belonged to her, but the pain in Emeline's abdomen said otherwise. She was wicked, evil, dark in every sense. A woman who craved power and would do anything to sate that lust.
Huiden frowned, furious. 'That doesn't explain him!' he gestured wildly at the dark forest around them. 'He wasn't necessary for this plan!' His chest heaved, furious breaths rushing in and out, but the Dark Woman was calm.
A smile twisted her mouth upward. 'Jealous, lover?'
The man grit his teeth but did not answer.
'Oh hush, Huiden, he was necessary for the power he held. How else do you think I created this dark cloud?' The mist around her twirled and whispered into her palm. A handful of dark sand granules.
So the mist wasn't mist at all but sand. Emeline did not understand what that meant, but it sure wasn't natural. She stretched her hand to feel the mist, the particles danced from her palm then swished around her fingers.
'What does it mean, Father?'
Mercur smiled, then whisked her upward. The world spun and they floated over the same dark cloud, but time had changed. As they drew closer to the surface, Emeline's eyes grew wide. Blood smeared the leafless trees. The snow was trampled, muddy and red with blood. Thousands of humans gathered in the woods. For some reason a stark contrast existed between one half of the multitude and the other. The place looked desecrated, but Emeline realised it was the same place she had seen before when she spotted three still figures lying frozen in the snow-now bloodstained. The man with the blonde hair, the woman with the rainbow of colours, and the short-haired man in the brown robe.
She glanced around for the Dark Woman who was sure to be about mischief. In fact, Emeline guessed this whole mess was her fault. Her eyes fell upon a massive Greystone altar, crimson with bloodstains, anda river of blood flowing from it, cutting the multitude in half for miles far.
She shivered. The shiver lingered, turned to cold terror in her guts, a metallic taste in her mouth, a snowstorm, a river of blood, a moment screaming in the fibres of her being. She shut her eyes, squeezed her ears shut, whimpered as she cried. 'No,' she choked.
The Father gently lifted her fingers and took her hands. 'Come dear daughter, it is time you faced your past. You can't hide it forever. This is where you come from. This is who you are. Watch, remember, and become yourself in truth.'
PS
I wrote it. At last. Sorry for taking so long! *runs*
Guys, if you haven't seen it, check out the competition on my profile (it's one of my books called "The Great Fan Art & Review Competition". You can win cover art, a pro edit of your work by me, lots of crits, reviews, an interview, and lots of exposure. I Appreciate all the fandom and support and every entry will seriously make my day!
© Joy Cronjé 2015