faeith ... .. .

faeith
e. jarvis 1999

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Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind ...
In the faith that looks through Death ..
-- wordsworth

    The fate of my companions is unknown to me, here in the Mist, lost here without them. It dampens the sounds, sliding its clean white body between me and the sunlight...it is dark, here, on the sand. I could not hear the voices of my familiars even if they were trying to call to me, in their tiny voices like bells. Yes...I suppose they are...very much like ringing bells. I miss them, even as my hunger eats out of me from within and the chill shakes me like dead leaves in a winter wind... My fingers, holding here my last precious possessions; a feather pen; some enchanted ink in a silver flask melded fast to my palm, and a ream of paper tied together with animal sinew. My fingers are grey, colorless and numb... But my mind burns, you see, with my thoughts as well as the ominous pneumonia racing up my limbs. Burning...crawling along my skin like creeping flames
    The sand is gently eating my eyes, stinging my skin, salting my frozen tongue. You see, even though there is wetness in the Mist, no snow falls to the sand. The wasteland could stretch on for miles in either direction, and walking has only given me open sores on my feet that will never heal... Steady in my mind is the sensation that my toes will soon begin to break off, like so much crumbling plaster. Eating them has crossed my mind more than once, but that only resulted in dry heaves that made my throat drier than it was before... And I can't seem to stop coughing. But that is no matter, now.
    They led me here, my poor tiny friends, with their tiny hands. Led me to no where and left me to wait, they said softly in my ear, as they sat on my shoulder, their wings rustling like...like leaves. Wait for the light to creep through the dark, they said, when it will part the Mist before you, making a trail to your solace. A trail to your safety, beyond this darkness, and perhaps beyond the world you know.
    They didn't say which world, or if it would be before or after I'm dead. I hope they will return, soon--I have most surely lost my way. This can't’ve been what they meant.
    Precious little time I have now to write this down. My thoughts become sluggish, but each one is so important...you, the people of the planet I saw in what I hope was not a dream, should know what I know.
     You should know about the world beyond ours, and the portal that links us.
    I'd...better start before I lose all the feeling in my fingers....and...for whomever finds this manuscript...if it is still intact, give it to Faieth. She will know what to do. She is there with you, somewhere...and you will know her when you see her.

In the beginning they called me a freak. I have white hair and...well, I think, close to violet eyes. My skin is ivory, smooth; no wrinkles, freckles, moles, birthmarks... Nothing. Some people in the village where I was born said it had a sort of glow, especially on winter mornings, especially against a new snow or even in the spring, when the leaves are finally all the way green--the kind of green that makes you want to wander in it forever, when the world smells so beautiful, reborn. My eyebrows...white too. The only really dark feature on my body are my eyes, actually, and the thick black eyelashes that ring them. I think that's why they seem to startle people. They are the only thing that really...frightens people. My parents let my hair grow out, hoping it would become darker as I got older. It didn't. Nor did it sustain any of the smelly, stinging dyes and concoctions they applied to it to make it ebony and straight, like everybody else's... Altogether tired of trying to be parents to a child everyone thought was sent straight from a proverbial Hell, they began to beat me until I prayed to them instead of God for forgiveness; I prayed for them to forgive me, forgive me for being born. I loved them. If only because they were the only ones who cared enough to notice that I was hungry or thirsty. Enough to put clothes on my back even if the garment was really only a scrap of burlap, tied closed at the waist with a bit of string; I loved them because they were the only ones who weren’t trying to pretend I didn't exist.
When I was around thirteen or fourteen my parents sold me to some slave traders...I don't know for how much, because the actual process was carried out so quickly I hadn't even time to get my books from beneath my sleeping mat. For a year the traders tried to sell me as I was - a human with unusual traits - before they began their campaign to convince everyone that I was a freak of the most exclusive kind. I was shuffled between travelling carnivals, gypsy tribes, and the slave market for four more years before the band of slave traders I finally ended up with displayed me as a half-breed elf. They hung a fancy gold-wrought collar around my neck, with a built in hook that new owners could drag me about by if they wished. It was deceiving in its delicacy. That collar was worth more alone monetarily than I was - but it fooled the Queen's steward, famed for being the most clever man in her Kingdom. He bought me for a ridiculous amount of money and tied me into the back of his ridiculous air-carriage. I stayed awake and alert for what must have been at least twenty-nine turns of an hour glass (with very little difficulty, as I was used to it) all the way to the gates.

If there were any doubt in my mind as to the identity of my friends, I think by now I would hate them. They'd have no significance in my world now, cold and black and dark though it is, if I didn't know that they were messengers sent to help me. They were stars in a dismal, patchwork twilight ... I had no idea were they were to lead me. I asked them to come... They merely held out their hands... It was no fault of theirs.

    First things first, perhaps. The Queen (as everybody calls her, even though her official duty is only to manage the changing of the seasons in the dome-cities) did not see me for several days. I stayed in the slave quarters, ignored and denied any type of sustenance. I am rather wiry by nature - delicate would be a wrong word to use, because I am very strong .. but perhaps I look that way - and I was kept well fed and clean by the traders for the purpose of selling me quickly. But I spent such a long time in the dark parts of her castle that I lost the span of that time. I felt the bones begin to be sharp beneath my skin, felt it become very difficult to move about, or sleep peacefully. Hunger was a thing I had always tried to ignore, but it became so awful that I thought at long stretches about what part of me was the most expendable. I let the things in the dark pick at me. My hair clung to my face. Toward the end of this confinement, I began to see visions. I believed I was going to die there, in the dark. It was good, I suppose, that I hadn’t any idea what was yet to come.
    When she finally did send for me must've looked like a ailing old man. Forms, faceless, propelled me to my feet and forced two or three mugs of ale down my throat - it was bitter, but it sent a lovely warmth through me, all the way to the tips of my fingers. While this was going on, someone else was fastening heavy iron rings around my ankles and my wrists. They escorted me back up to the main floors of the Dwelling, where the light was bright. There were many mirrors lining the hall that led to the audience chamber...one look in the leap. the first of those and I did not look again, fearing the sight of myself as I staggered in the leg irons. (The guards, as I remember, were of the genetically altered variety. Bred only for their size and strength. Only for these, obviously, and not for etiquette or manners as they alternately shoved and carried me down the hall.) The gold and the violet swam around and back, forward and behind, and the visions became spots before my eyes. I couldn't walk. My ankles were bleeding and raw.
    Though in the next few minutes I would see the Queen - and she would evermore be in my memory - the sight I remember most of that first journey up and out of the dark were the doors to the Queen's audience chamber. At first glance I thought them to be manufactured wood, like all of that kind of things are these days - but when I looked again, I found myself gaping at the beauty of the carvings. Elk leaping .. forests tall and serene like I always imagined them to be. Lions and ribbons. Climbing ivy outlined them .. doors of wood. The true grain, the smell of oil .. I think I said that word 'wood' out loud because suddenly one of the guards bludgeoned me .. black tiles came abruptly into my visions to crush themselves into my face. I looked up at the doors again, even though the same guard ground his boot heel into the back of my head and bellowed for me to be still, and the other was bringing the butt of his sword down into the middle of my back. I fancied I could even smell the tree, around the copper smell of my own blood.

There are no more trees outside of the dome cities. The last living oak from before the Burning Times resides in the Queen's gardens. I had only heard of it. I only knew the doors were wood in the first place because no grain like that could be created in plastic or metal. I knew it was not artificial. Those doors, as big as three of me standing atop one other, were priceless. Remnants of a world long lost.

    The guards dragged me to my feet and left me. I waited in a kind of confused stupor for the doors to open, unwilling at the last to touch them for fear they would crumble to dust beneath my fingertips. I looked up instead. Plaster painted with cherubs and puffy cotton clouds, bits of an azure sky. I reeled and caught myself from falling .. caught myself from falling and instead fell, quite unceremoniously, into the chamber.
    A moment, silence. Then her voice.
    "He's already bowing. I can see he is not any kitchen whelp, to be sure. Poor, pale boy .. " the voice came, murmuring, something like that. I don't remember the words as well as I remember the sound of the words, a caress, something too intimate and uncomfortably close. I crawled farther into the room, and the doors I had pushed open were pulled closed again behind me.
     The room was suddenly bathed with light. Against my will a small cry escaped me, and I pulled my arms around my head like a fool. A trembling shook me. I loathed the weakness of it.
    "Will someone help him up? He's far too interesting to be balled up on the floor like that," the Queen said, but again the words are garbled in memory, blurred like sidewalk chalk in the rain .. you must remember, I was becoming quite drunk.
    Seven soldiers rushed to my rescue and, grabbing a portion of each arm between them, they helped me gently to my feet. At the end of the hall, a point of white moved, presumably standing up. From the speakers far overhead there came a tiny laugh .. much like the voices of my friends, now that I think of it. "Give him a monitor," she said lightly. The whole room was still; nobody moved. Strange, I remember thinking, because everything she’d ordered up to that point had been obeyed without hesitation ..
    "Now," she murmured, and there was an indefinite rustling to my left (I could not turn to see because of my 'attendants'). A headset, heavy, was slipped over my head. Then, like that burst of illumination not more than two minutes earlier, there was another revelation.
    I was looking into the face of the one who changes the seasons. Known, yes, as the Queen .. the tiny empress.
    I sagged into the grips of the guards, staggered by her purity. On the Outside she could not have been older than sixteen. The season was spring - a white robe swathed her slender body, and her hair was wound around her head once, held there by a wreath of green, two thick plaits of it falling down around her feet. They spilled down the dais stairs, ending on the fourth or fifth step down .. She branded herself into my mind .. and, suddenly, so did the brilliance of her smile. So innocent. Such a deception.
    Her eyes were infinite. "You are beautiful," she whispered, her hand seeming so small as it reached towards the monitor with my face on it. She must not have been getting a very good view of me, with the headset and all, but still she said this, her eyes so wide as to be odd. "Have they treated you well?" she asked suddenly, seating herself in her throne again. The throne itself, of ivory, was simple and tall.
    "Of course, my Queen," I said, maybe a little too loudly.
    "Your clothes are filthy," she whispered, a small white finger pressing to her lips.
    "I haven't any others, My Queen." My mouth seemed to be full, my words slurred .. My hands began to feel like slabs of meat on the ends of my arms. "I am sorry, My Queen."
    "Nonsense," she laughed, waving her hands in the air. "You are a slave, are you not?"
    "I suppose so, My Queen," I replied stupidly. My head was beginning to feel too heavy. The monitor (for the guards didn't really adjust it for my face) fell down around my neck, so suddenly that I gasped a little as it's weight fell painfully onto my chest. There was an answering gasp from the queen.
    "Look at his eyes!" She stood up again, and even came down the steps of the dais. Maybe she was trembling. "How .. how are is his eyes like that?" The Headsman replied into his headset.
    "The steward said he bought the boy at an Outside auction .. the slave dealer wouldn't reveal the names of the parents. He said they were normal, though. Normal elves."
    "He is certainly not an elf. I have seen elves and so have you; this boy isn't small enough, or frail enough to be an elven boy. Too graceful to be normal, though, certainly." She walked even farther down the blue carpet, close enough for me to begin to see the milky triangle of her face. Her small hands wrung together, sending stabs of light into my eyes as the lamps caught in the jewels in her small rings. "What are you?" she asked, sincerely curious, and a little frightened.
     "I am...a human boy, My Queen. Nothing more," I said.
    "Can you prove it?" She took two more steps. I could see the color of her eyes. Tiny, glittering emeralds.
    "My ears are not pointed .. they were .. mutilated by the slave trader. In any other case .. no." I replied slowly, my vision beginning to blur.
    "Turn his face," she said.
    The guard to my left grabbed my chin and pinched, pulling my eyes away from her. The guard at my right lifted my filthy hair, revealing my mangled right ear. "This boy speaks the truth, my Queen," he said. A certain sickness was descending on my stomach, then, and I turned a shade paler. I must've been bluish. Maybe that is why she answered so uneasily.
    "Certainly." After a moment, she gestured to the guards that held me standing. "Bring him to my suite .. give him something to get sick in, for surely he will do that soon. Then, after he has rested, have the kitchens bake up something appropriate for the drink-sickness .. something soothing, filling. Hot. After my duties are done here, I will attend him there." She turned and stepped back up to her throne, her robes whispering around her. Then she sat and said: "No guards will be necessary .. he will not escape." This, in such a voice as to reveal its every intention. The Steward gaped, the guards snickered, the Headsman chuckled outright, and I relieved the contents of my stomach all over the regal floor.

    "You are feeling better, I see."
    She startled me, perhaps on purpose. I glanced around, replacing the book I had pulled out of the bookcae. The Queen stood beside me, in temple garments.
    The guards had had to carry me up to her chambers. The Queens handmaids bathed me, fed me, and then dressed me in some kind of court confection; I now wore a green linen shirt, an embroidered vest, and black pants that clung to my legs and my buttocks like a second skin. They had brushed my hair until it shone, and had even hung an earring from one of my mangled ears. All this I discovered when, minutes before, I had awoke in her bed.
    She was covered - not clothed, really - with some kind of feather-weight snow white cloth that was molded her breasts, sewn with little diamonds. Little silver bells hung from the bottom seam, against the taught skin of her belly. The same covered her sex, held there by slender strips of cloth, curving over her hips, also hung with those same small, silver bells. Her feet were bare. Her hair was plaited again, interwoven with more strips of cloth, and wrapped atop her head a few times so that it only hung to her knees.
    "Yes, My Queen .. the stew was very good," I answered warily. The bells on her bodice jingled ever so slightly.
    "I am glad. Please, call me Sabinah." She strode to a chair, settled herself in it. She laid her hands against her bare lap. "It is my given name. And yours?"
    "Daniel, My Queen," I said, turning from her and to the window. The dark looked even blacker, I think, than it ever had been in the dungeons. The Queen sighed, a soft, deep-throated sigh. All the hair on my neck stood on end.
    "Do not be afraid of me, Daniel. Just because I am Queen does not mean I do not see beyond my own nose." She rose again after a long moment. I did not turn as the tinkling of those tiny bells came closer, and suddenly she stood so close behind me that I could feel the heat of her body .. the sigh of her breath. Her hands burrowed beneath my shirt, slipping up my abdomen and over my nipples. I could feel her fingers fall between every rib. I stepped out of her embrace, but not before I perceived her firm, warm, and barely budded breasts pressing into my back. grecian angel, feather of the seasons ..
    "You do not draw away from me, Daniel. You know this," she said, her voice not a little irritated. She paused, thinking. "You are cold. I wish to warm you," she murmured at length, though she knew this sounded ridiculous, and not coy.
    "My Queen .. I am not well. I couldn't possibly please you in such a state," I answered, pressing my palms against the window. It was true, even though I said it to put her off .. I was still ill. She had had me dressed, and put me in her bed, hoping to catch me just as I was waking, but I had risen early .. Her approach had been ruined. The trousers they had given me were unforgiving, though, and I knew she could see that my body was not entirely agreeing.
    "You say 'my Queen,' and yet I know that you do not believe it," she said, in that voice of silk she used in the audience chamber, coming close to me again. "I am yours, your Queen, Daniel, if you would have me."
    "My Queen, I am not well."
    "I don't care."
    "You must care, My Queen. I am bones. I am not fit for your magnificence."
    "My handmaids say that you are." So my supposedly paranoid were correct. Not only were the handmaids cleaning me, but they'd been measuring me up as well.
    "Please believe me, my Queen, when I say that I cannot possibly do this."
    "With all due respect of course." Her right hand cupped my crotch.
    "Of course, my Queen."
    "And not because you don't think you are worthy." I knew something had gone dreadfully wrong when she said this. And her hand drew away.
    "My Queen?" I turned. She was so beautiful. I had hurt her, it shone in her eyes. Her shoulders edged back a bit more, her collarbones jutting from beneath her flawless skin.
    "You think I am not worthy of you."
    "It isn't that, my Queen, b - " Worthy of her? Had she gone mad?
    "I'm just as much a .. cast-off as you are. This title, this ‘Queen’” she gestured explosively, “makes it so. I don't have to have eyes the color of flowers in a meadow, or hair almost as white as ceremonial garments. I am just as alone!" She had said too much. It made her angry. Her little mouth opened and called for her guards and they came, grabbing me roughly. The room became one of my visions, and has always been. The way she stood with tears in her eyes, and watched as I was clubbed to the floor and then dragged out of the room by one arm. The way she followed my feet out into the hall, the way her hands covered her face as my legs were torn open on the carpet and the stairs.
    I was never allowed there again.

    She came to see me, once, maybe twice. I remember vaguely her face looking into mine as I lay in my own excrement, with a body of bones and skin .. Her expression was cold. It was hard, her features of porcelain .. a doll’s face, a doll’s eyes. She watched, sometimes, when I was raped. The guards would come and so would she, standing near the door in utter silence as they battered my body and my mind. My cries would move through her, it seemed to me .. She became a figment of my imagination, a fixture in my nightmares. Never once did I pray to be back in that room, with her, that night that I could have changed everything .. She was cold, and I believe I would have died without knowing freedom had I slept with her as she’d asked.
    Nor would I have known Faeith.
    I lay on the floor of my cell several nights later, fighting for my life. The men had chained me to the wall face-first .. I was bleeding profusely from wounds in the flesh of my back, in terrible agony from those they had inflicted within as they forced themselves into me again, and again .. I hung from the wall, gazing up at the moon, believing those moments to be the last I would ever cherish. The cell door opened behind me and, instantly, my entire body readied itself for another attack. I hadn't the strength to scream, or I think that perhaps I would have. But the steps gave the person away.
    A woman’s tread, light and tentative, approached me. That it was sweetly shy whispered that it could not be the Queen .. and as the woman’s face appeared beside my own, I was struck with the strange sensation that I was looking at a spirit. Her skin was slightly bronzed from working outside .. Her eyes were dark, and her hair was a cloud of red around her face. I looked down at her, and she looked back at me with horror in those beautiful, beautiful eyes .. I loved her the instant that I saw her.
    “My name is Faeith,” she whispered, touching my cheek. “I am here to heal you.” I must have started back from her touch, because the pity that dawned in her eyes seared me. “Don’t be afraid of me, Daniel. I won’t hurt you.” She swallowed hard and mouthed the words, her expression crumpling slightly. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
    She looked at me for an eternity. Her face and one of her shoulders turned, then, toward the door of my cell. “You," she pointed, her arm was long, "let him down from here. And you, go and get some bread and some hot broth .. You, fetch me some bandages and some boiling water, as quickly as you can.” They stood, exchanging glances, snickering. She cried out: “You’ve all had your fun.” She pointed to me. “This man has done nothing to you, and he hangs here, bathed in his own blood. Go,” she murmured hoarsely. And they went. Perhaps at that point she still had some power over them.
    As soon as I was brought down from the wall I fell into unconsciousness. Whatever she did while I was lying on the floor I do not know, but when I awoke I was lying in a heap of blankets .. and she, she lay beside me, her bronze faded, sallow, her eyes ringed with bruises. I tried to lean over and look into her face .. but my newly healed wounds shrieked at the movement. So I lay there, looking at her out of the corner of my eye, scarcely breathing, barely alive. Then I slept, on and off and on again. When at last I awoke feeling strong enough to move about, I discovered that she was gone.
    Soft chuckles were the reply to my hasty questions, nasty faces hanging about the little window in the door, their mouths wide with mockery. Only once did they give me an answer I understood as truth .. She had been sylvan, a healer, brought in by the Queen to keep me alive. I was to be kept indefinitely, with no hope of death, or freedom .. This, a punishment for refusing her majesty’s ‘gift.’
    I didn’t know what more horrible: only being able to see Faeith when I was too delerious with pain to even open my eyes to look at her .. or to be alive, living in this dank, lightless filth, the fear so constant I became mad for a time, chewing mindlessly on my own fingers and toes ..

to be continued.

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