Later on, she had wondered, was this what it was like to be born? Because, she later realised, this experience was not a memory of her being born at all. At least, she did not think it was. When she had awoken some time later she had opened her eyes to see someone kneeling over her, calling out to her with fear and concern. Not the face of a mother, wide-eyed and joyful. A man, middle-aged, with tanned face, black hair and beard turning grey. It took a while for her eyes to finally focus on those details. It took a longer while for her to realise he was asking her whether she was all right.
“Yes,” she remembered saying, hardly
hearing herself speak. She knew her
voice was hoarse and broken. “I am all right.”
She remembered also, being lifted up
into a sitting position by the dark-haired man, and seeing her arms and legs
and hands. They were small and dirty,
but they were not the limbs of a babe.
She remembered too, the raggedness of her clothes, and – strange to
recall it – the flash of white the material reflected in the sunlight. Though torn, it had once been a rich
material, that much she had surmised; when the fabric no longer glimmered in
the sun, it had been nothing more than a dull grey.
A gourd of water had been pressed to
her lips then, and she recalled drinking thirstily. When she was done, she had been able to hear better, and the
world had slowly focused about her. The
man was talking to her.
“What is your name? Where do you come from? Why are you here? What happened to you?”
It was then that Elu suddenly
understood that she could not have been born.
For she was conscious of once having had a memory; yet, strange to tell
– she could remember nothing.
The man had taken her back to his
home, had fed her, had bathed her and clothed her. For days she had lain upon the bed he had made for her, dazed
into a stupor. It was only slowly, as
she recovered herself on the herbs and soups he gave her, that she began to
understand her plight. The man who had
rescued her gave her bits of information every time he visited her. The year, apparently, was 4115. That in itself did not make any sense to
Elu. Even worse was the fact that
everything he said to her told her nothing at all. She did not understand anything he told her, not even the name of
the place in which he had found her.
After hours of frustration, she began to feel tired and upset. Unable to grasp a hold of what he was saying
to her, she had begun to cry. Seeing
her so distressed, he had halted in his speech, and had looked upon her
tenderly.
“My dear, child,” he spoke sadly,
“do you not remember anything?”
It was only then that a half memory
formed in her mind, something great and wondrous, all at once tantalizing, for
it passed her in a rush; she was aware of plains of silvery white snow laying
before her from a great height; and this brought to her mind the dream that she
had awoken to, of the old man and the sacrifice of the boy child, and she
pushed it away so quickly that it was lost.
But something had returned to her
with that fleeting recollection, and it was as though, while sitting and
watching those rolling white plains, someone had come up behind her and
whispered softly her name, with a tenderness that caused her heart to flutter
with familiarity.
“Elu,” she echoed that dream-like
whisper on a short breath. “My name is Elu.”
It was a week before she could walk
on her own two feet again, and could explore the man’s house. He was not alone, she soon found. A woman and a boy lived with him, his wife
and his son. They looked upon her
silently, curiosity in their eyes. Elu
had met their stares with the candid innocence of a child. In many ways, it was as though she had
indeed just been born.
Her rescuer’s name, she soon found,
was Eldeen. He was the elder of his
village, a tiny hamlet named Welle. The
village was poor, and little more than a dirt track surrounded by a cluster of
hovels. The people were farmers
foremost, tilling the fields that lay outside their homes. They were thrifty and forthright, and hardy
and resilient, but they were kind and generous of nature. Eldeen himself was an example of this. His hands were chapped and roughened, his
skin tanned, his voice was gruff. But
he treated Elu with a gentleness that belied his looks. His wife too was a merry, friendly woman,
large in the bosom, thick round the middle.
She very much took Elu under her wing, having been scandalized at first
to see how skinny and scrawny the young girl was. Her first mission was baking her pies, and then teaching her how
to make them. She taught the young girl
to weave and knit, to scrub and to wash. Many days Elu would sit by the hearth next to Mistress Eldeen, and
listen to her tutorials. Other days she
would wander amongst the village by herself, thinking on her lost past, and on
the strangeness of that dream she had awoken to the day that Eldeen had found
her. Like a dark waif she walked among
the villagers, for unlike the fair-haired girls of Welle, her hair was as black
as the raven’s wing, and her eyes were gray as pale moonlight. And so they did not find it hard to accept
the name that she had given for herself; for Elu meant ‘night’ in the language
of those lands, and to the girls of the village indeed she seemed to have been
born from the night for all her strangeness.
Yet Elu was content to live this life; for whatever
her past had been it was lost to her now, and it did not reflect the change in
her life now. Later, she would come to
cherish those as happy days, despite their simplicity. Sometimes, the best things in life are truly
those things that we do not desire.
The plains of Éadan had been the darkest in the days after the War of the Sundering, when the four great races of the world had turned against one another, and sought to kill and maim their enemies in battle. Men were loath at first to inhabit these lands, where demons and dragons had gathered and burnt and charred the green fields. Once they had held the greatest of the ancient civilisations and had been a land of wisdom and peace. But in that terrible war it had taken the brunt of the onslaught by the evil creatures of the Dark, and where once the fabled Spheres of Harmony had shone their brightest, now they were hidden behind ashen clouds. Yet presently small bands of nomads, remnants of the men descended from those who had lived in the fallen capital, wandered now and then on to what grassy plains were left, and eventually began to settle down with their families. That was four millennia ago.
Now this once great realm was dotted
with many villages and farmsteads, the homes of peasants and villeins whose job
it was to work the soil and raise crops.
They were a poor people, taking pleasure from the simple things in life,
who toiled hard and reaped what little reward they got without complaint. They saw and knew little of the outside
world, nor did they feel the need to wonder what lay beyond their fields. They were content to live out their simple
lives without the interference of unwelcome outsiders.
Perhaps the smallest and poorest of these villages
was the hamlet named Welle. It had the
dubious distinction of being the village with the lowest turnout at harvest
ever year. Yet despite the poverty of
the peasants that lived there, they were a gentle and uncomplicated peoples,
friendly and generous. It was into this
small and insignificant world that Elu had first appeared. Hers was a story that many of the villagers
often liked to recount, for it was unusual, by poor folk’s standards. They would tell that the elder of the
village, Old Eldeen, had gone to the ruins of the old capital of Éadan, Bal
Desai, to gather stone to build his new house with. And wondering amongst the remnants of the fallen temple of Aan he
had met Elu, dirty and bedraggled, aimless and confused. Indeed, to the old man it seemed as if a
shadow had fallen over the young girl, for her eyes were wide and dark, and
unseeing of her past. She remembered
nothing, and could tell him nothing.
The only clue as to her identity had been the clothes on her back. Obviously once of a rich material, the
villagers had made up wild stories of a noble girl being taken by the wild,
monstrous Aksees, of there being a fight between her captors and marauding
trolls. They had lost her in the fray,
but not after she herself had been wounded, or caught under a deep spell. Taking refuge in the hills she had found herself
in the ruins of the old capital, Bal Desai.
There she had fallen into a swoon, and when she had awoken all her
memories had been stripped from her.
So she had wandered, until their villager elder,
Eldeen, had discovered her and taken her in.
Though rumours abounded of Elu’s apparent high
birth, Elu herself gave no credence to them.
She did not understand the rumours, or the importance of them. She said nothing on them, and did not
encourage them. But Eldeen and his wife
became worried to hear them, thinking that someday Elu’s family would come
searching for her, and that when that day came, Elu would not be ready to
remember whatever had traumatised her so much as to make her forget. But they pursed their lips and said nothing.
Whatever the genuine affection Eldeen and his wife
held Elu in, their son, Mirulas, did not share that attachment. A gangly, awkward boy of fifteen, he soon
became jealous of the attention paid to the young girl. Being an only son he had been the centre of
his parent’s world, and now to find himself usurped by a foundling was an
outrage to him. It was evident that Elu
was older than him by several years, and was more a woman to his child. But her childlike mildness made her seem
much younger to him and he hated her. During
those early years he would make her life a misery, getting her into trouble
with his parents as often as he could, taunting her about her past, calling her
names that were devised to hurt her in the cruellest way possible. One of his favourites was orphan
suckler. It was during such intense
arguments with him that Elu rediscovered a certain amount of pride that she had
not known was in her. Mild though she
was, she would not suffer abuse thrown at her, especially not from a young boy.
“Be careful whom you’re speaking to,” she would tell
him loftily, “Or one day my parents will come and reclaim me, and then I shall
tell them how you’ve treated me, and Aan knows what they’ll do to you.”
He would sulk then and leave her alone for a few
days, but their swords were always guaranteed to cross again. She was relieved when, at sixteen, he was
sent to the neighbouring village of Pedrell to become apprentice to a carpenter
there. This was in the best interests
of furthering his education as well as his career. Pedrell was a larger village than Welle, and its inhabitants were
more worldly and mannered. Mistress
Eldeen had shed many tears at her son’s departure, but Eldeen had been cheerful
about it.
“When he returns in eight years time,” he told Elu
when Mirulas’ mule and cart and left the village and was far into the distance,
“he shall be a gentleman. And no doubt
he will earn his bread.”
Elu had wanted to laugh. Mirulas, that horrible, immature little boy? A gentleman? Never! But she had
suppressed her mirth long enough to comfort Mistress Eldeen, who was dabbing
her eyes with the edge of her apron, and let it out once she had reached her
bedroom. Let Mirulas stay all his life
in Pedrell! She, for one, was not sorry
he was gone!
Eight years passed, and to many of the villagers, it
was as though Elu had always been amongst them. She was gentle and kind, simple and charming. She was exactly the kind of person that the
people of Welle liked, and were accustomed to.
They became used to her constant presence, for Elu was never intrusive,
and she preferred to spend her time in her own company than in the company of
others. She never did anything
extraordinary, and she never did anything to ire or upset the other inhabitants. And so it was that the villagers of Welle
accepted her, and nurtured her well.
As for herself, Elu did not often question her
past. But when she did, her mind often
thought upon the blackness, the first thing that she could actually
remember. She often dreamt about it,
and such nights were troubled ones, ones when she would often wake to bouts of
impulsive shivering. Sometimes she
would re-dream that dream, of the boy with the obsidian knife coming at him, of
her wanting to rip out the heart of his priest-grandfather. And sometimes, on the point of her awaking,
she would hear that other voice, saying softly, over and over, at last, you are here. Though during many of her lonely moments she
would ponder on what these things meant, she never told a soul about them, not
even Eldeen or his wife. Some things
are too personal, too inexplicable to be confessed. And more than that, Elu was afraid of what they might mean.
It had hardly seemed that more than a year had passed before news was received in Welle that Mirulas would be returning. According to his mother, who had received the letter from him in his own hand, Mirulas had missed his home, and after completing his eight years of apprenticeship, he had returned to Welle to set up his own workshop there. Elu had listened to Mistress Eldeen read out the letter to the household before the fireplace, and had decided very firmly that when Mirulas came home she would make it her mission to make peace with him. She had grown older and more mature now, a woman in her own right, and had little concern for the petty little jibes the young boy had been so fond of throwing at her. Fair enough if he did not want to get along with her. But she was not going to encourage him in any way, shape or form. As the Eldeen household’s personal maid, there was no point in them making things uncomfortable for one another.
“Well,” Eldeen spoke to Elu, seeing the grim look on her face, “What are you thinking, Elu, child?”
“That it will be very nice to have Mirulas home,” she replied stiffly. Eldeen smiled. He had become very fond of Elu, and had learnt to read her every expression. There’s a lot of pride in that girl, he thought, and a lot of mettle. She’s a determined spirit, but she doesn’t show it much, not until the time’s right. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did have noble blood in her.
“Now Elu,” he spoke out loud, “I know there was no love lost between you and my son. But it would please me greatly if you at least try to get along. You might find he has pleasantly changed since you saw him last.”
“I will try to be nice to him, master,” Elu spoke agreeably as she could, “But only because I do not wish to upset you, or Mistress Eldeen.”
“That is well, Elu, that is well,” Eldeen nodded. Yes, he thought abstractly to himself, there’s mettle there.
In readiness for Mirulas’ return, there had been a great feast prepared, and minstrels and entertainers were employed to amuse the guests at the gathering. A great crowd had appeared at the entrance to the village, awaiting the mule and cart that would bear the young son of their elder. After a moment, the sound of hooves could be heard over the hills. Everyone strained their ears to listen. But it was not a mule and cart that came up over the horizon; instead there was a horse, trailing behind it a sizeable carriage of woodwork and tools, evidence of Mirulas’ new trade. A stir went up through the village, one of excitement and pride. Elu could feel it as the elder and his wife strode forward to greet their son. There he was on the back of the horse, smiling, waving at the faces he found so familiar. There was a flurry, then a cheer as he stopped outside the entrance and leapt off his horse and embraced his parents, before being overrun by those eager to welcome him back into their midst.
Now twenty-four, much taller and less ungainly, Mirulas cut a fine figure. Though he had not lost any of his height, his limbs and chest had filled out, now giving him the impression of strength rather than clumsiness. By the cut of his clothes, it was plain that he was going to be considered much more sophisticated than his fellow countrymen. Though not outwardly ostentatious, they were of a finer cloth than anyone that day was wearing. Elu gawked at him, suddenly feeling very dowdy in her plain blue cotton chemise and linen skirt. She did not know why it suddenly seemed so important to her. Suddenly she found herself creeping to the fringes of the group, hoping to go unnoticed. But as luck, or unluck, would have it, a timely parting came up in the crowd, Mirulas looked up and his eyes fell upon her; it seemed like a lifetime before he realised he’d been staring at her, and it was a much longer time before Elu realised that her heart was pumping hard.
A ruckus followed during which Mirulas was brought into the village amid much laughing and chattering. He responded to the joviality in a merry and genuine manner, seeming to fit in with the folk as if he had never been away. He might have earned himself a bad reputation, if he had been of a prouder and more arrogant character – but he had turned out a good-hearted and generous lad, and he embraced the welcoming people as his equals. Indeed, it seemed to him that not much had changed since he had left; but as he was reunited with his family, he noticed that one thing had apparently changed, and that was Elu.
Elu, the malnourished, skinny, pale and bedraggled waif had now blossomed and grown into a comely young woman, as far as poor village lasses may bloom; and Mirulas, Elu thought, had grown in ways she found most disconcerting. She had avoided him during the festivities, trying to tell herself that all she felt was jealousy. She had bitten viciously into her fallowseed cake, pretending it was because of envy rather than the quickening pace of her heartbeat when she saw him amongst the crowd. She danced with a ruthlessness that made the other young men fear her, until she was left alone at the edges of the revelry, foul and dark of temper. She should have known that her aloneness would have made her vulnerable. It was only until she saw Mirulas himself making his way towards her that she realised her mistake.
“Would you care to dance?” he asked her politely, adding to the gesture with a deep bow. It was enough to send Elu’s heart racing, but she attempted vainly to cover it.
“I’m an awful dancer, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she replied acidly, “As you can see, all the young men around here have long abandoned me.”
“That’s hardly the Elu I remember,” Mirulas replied, standing up straighter, a little disconcerted by her brusque rejection. “You were always such a graceful dancer, even when I was a boy.”
The fact that he remembered the way she had danced was enough to make her give in there and then. But for some reason, she would not concede him the victory.
“I don’t think I’d be good enough for such a gentleman as yourself,” she answered tartly, “I’m sure you’ve danced with much more accomplished women than I.”
As soon as she said it, she wanted to kick herself. That was not what she had intended to say at all. He chuckled.
“Then if you would permit me to teach you a step or two?” he offered, eyebrows raised. Elu stared at him. There was no putting this off. He was too insistent. Grudgingly, she gave him her hand. It was enough to set a small thrill coursing through her, but she said nothing. He led her to the heat of the dance, and began slowly, leading her with the patience of a teacher. Yet despite her insistence that she could not dance, she followed him into the steps with an easiness that gave away her pretence. After a while, he laughed and she glared at him.
“What is it?” she ordered, piqued at his apparent amusement. He quickly sobered.
“It’s nice to see you haven’t changed.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she asked hotly.
“You didn’t have to lie to me,” he stated, expertly avoiding the question. Evidently he’d become used to the ways of women during his sojourn in Pedrell. “About your dancing, I mean. You could have just refused me.”
“I didn’t want to,” she replied with a pout.
“That’s exactly what I mean. You haven’t changed one bit. You’re still as proud and insufferable as ever.”
“Then why would you want to dance with me then?”
“Well, you might not have changed, but I have.” His eyes twinkled. “I’ve taken a liking to disagreeable women while I’ve been away.”
She stared at him, and he stared at her. After a moment she laughed. She couldn’t help it.
“What?” he asked, genuinely confused.
“You know,” she spoke shyly, “Before you arrived I had been thinking that it was I who was going to make peace with you.”
He said nothing, but grinned to show he understood.
The festivities lasted well into the early hours, and Elu was surprised to find that she had spent most of her time quietly conversing with Mirulas. He spoke to her of many things, of his apprenticeship, and of the difficulties he had endured at first, being a poorer lad than many of the other young men in Pedrell. He had been bullied and scorned, and had almost wanted to return to Welle several times. But each time, he had found an ounce of strength in him and had continued to prove himself. It had been the making of his character. Within four years he had proven himself a worthy craftsman, and had sold several pieces of work to the more important members of the village. He had earned respect amongst his peers. But he had missed Welle and his parents, and had decided to open up his own woodshop in his hometown, where he could teach some of the boys there his craft. Now he had dreams, goals to achieve. Elu marvelled at the change in him. She could say little of the same for herself in the eight years she had stayed in Welle. She could not help but admire how he had managed to remain steadfast through adversity. She told him so.
“Well, it’s nothing really,” he laughed, but his tone was modest. “It’s as father always used to say: a man can only do what he has to do. And that’s what I did.”
“I have done little,” Elu sighed, lowering her head. “Listening to your stories makes me feel that perhaps I should travel a little, or learn a craft as you have. Your mother has noted that I weave quite well, though I do not think I have much talent in it. I wish I was talented in something.”
“I think you are very talented in dancing,” he replied softly, and reached out to touch her hand. Elu blushed as much at the compliment as she did at the touch.
He walked her back to their home that night, and was very nonchalant about it. It had taken her a moment to remember that her house was also his house after all. She felt a little put out at that. As though the walk home was not a show of his attentions at all. It was only until they had entered the darkened little house, and they had reached the bottom of the stairs that she realised how blind she had been. As though on a sudden impulse he turned and faced her, and she knew that his cheeks were flushed.
“Good night, Elu.”
Even before
she could grasp that much he had claimed her mouth with a short but passionate
kiss. It was only after he had turned
and run up the stairs that she was able to stare after him, and feel the blush
rise up to colour her own cheeks.