The human’s voice echoed amidst the bewildered assembly, and died at the edge of the woods. The air was heavy, suspended between two breaths that never came. The offer surprised us, and it surprised Adelun as well, who eventually broke the silence:
“My apologies, young one, but I cannot accept. Our sun is not mine to bargain with.”
“But… But I’m offering you help. You’ve been stuck down here for centuries. It’s killing you and making the woods sick, and you’re refusing this gift?”
“If you are demanding something in return for your gift, child, it is not a gift. But the issue lies not with this. Twice already have I gone out of my way to do what I deemed necessary. Twice have I used my power outside its boundaries. You have but to look around you to witness the result of these choices. Understand that I am sorry, young one, but I cannot give you what you wish for.” And with this, Adelun turned her back on the girl.
Whether the human mind was fragile or her hopes were especially high, we knew not. But the mask of certainty that the human had worn until then melted, faster than the lightning strikes. A sudden panic froze her whole body, or her legs would have given way in despair. More than being rejected, something had struck her heart. A deep fear took over her body, that made her teeth chatter as if she was cold, her eyes twitch and dry up. Her voice was cracked, a broken whisper that died on her lips when she spoke: “You wouldn’t let the Night win, would you?”
Adelun stopped, and turned to stare at the girl. Her light glowed a little brighter, a little warmer. She was touched by the young girl’s fear of Alendore, aden of stars and shadows, Dreamcaster and Conductor of the night sky—our Maestra.
“Why do you fear the night so much?”
“Why? Why do I… But there’s everything to fear!” The girl’s voice was shaking, though we knew not if it was from anger or terror. “Just look at your dryads, they’re already infected with that poison the Night spreads. The woods are sick, the animals are sick, plants don’t grow, everything’s rotting away. Of course I’m scared, because all of that is just the beginning. I’ve seen what it does to people, how they become when darkness takes over.”
“You have met with her before. You have known the night.”
“I guess you could say that. There was… It was a long time ago, twenty years or so. There was an outage in my City.” The girl began to pace back and forth before Adelun as she told of her home world. “Because it’s so old, the equipment the City runs on gets more and more defective through the years, and sometimes it breaks. Usually, it’s in a district far from the city centre, and just on a level or two—it can be fixed easily. This time, the main district shut off entirely. And a couple hours later, the one next to it. Past midday, half the City had lost power, and people were becoming uneasy, unable to contact their friends or family, unable to play, to gamble, to entertain themselves. At the end of the day, everyone was in the dark. The mesh was down all around town, the relay nods didn’t function, so all robots and smart devices shut down. Which means, almost everything. No crowd control, no phone service, no assistant, no doctor. It lasted for the whole night and into the next day. We couldn’t even see the sky outside, because the dome is so thick to protect us from the sun during daytime. So the whole place was pitch-black.
“I’d never been scared of the dark before, mostly because I never knew what it really was. I was out when it happened, of course, and I found myself unable to come back to my flat because I just couldn’t find it. I felt like my whole world was crumbling. I lost… I lost my way in a district I knew by heart, or thought I knew. I couldn’t find the stairs I had climbed a thousand times. I couldn’t find doors, alleys, bridges… I realised how much I relied on some big screens of nearby towers to go around, how I knew the hour because of the shows that played at any given time. I knew the streets because of the signs of its shops, I knew the people because of the music they listened to, the ringtone of their phones. Some people I talked to, knew their voices. But not their screams.
“That evening, people went mad. They shouted, they ran, they pushed and screamed at each other, blamed each other. They became overly aggressive against the more quiet people; with me. Usually, they didn’t take any notice of me. I knew my way around grown-ups, so that I wouldn’t bother them, and so they didn’t know much about me. But this time, they decided I was something important, a trophy, a culprit, prey. I don’t know. So when they chased after me, I did what I could and ran blindly, trying my best to find something, to find help. I asked people, but they pushed me off because they were scared as well, too scared to try and help a beggar girl like me.”
The human paused for a while and looked up at the sky, and at the broken lines of the branches, dark over the pale blue morning sky. The wind ruffled her hair. She breathed slowly, taking in the perfume of the dying forest, perfumes of lost hopes and regrets, of a long autumn that never ended, of damp logs and humus, and she hummed quietly for a while. We had heard this song before, yes. But because it came from the mouth of a human, we understood it not, at first. Adelun, however, was better used to conversing with beasts.
“You sing beautifully, young one. Had they still been around, surely Ofel would have appreciated it.”
The humming stopped, and the human said: “That song saved me. I heard it in a narrow alleyway, somewhere nobody ever went. I chased it because it sounded warm and cosy, and I had nothing else to hold on to. I found a door where the song was the loudest, threw myself in the room and closed it behind me. My assailants tried to force the entrance for a while, it scared me to death. I really thought I was done for, but they just couldn’t open it. So, eventually, they gave up, and left me alone. That’s when I found… I still don’t know. Memories? Echoes? I don’t know what remained of them, but I found elves.”
Adelun said nothing, but we gather she was just as surprised as we were. The girl had met fae in the human world before coming here. It explained a few things. But not all.
“The room was just as dark as the outside,” the girl continued, “but it was not terrifying. It was quite the opposite. I knew where I was, I could feel the walls, and the door—it was not a prison, I could get out. And there were the soothing voices of the elves talking to me. So I just lay down, and slept. And the elves filled my night with dreams, that I should not be scared. I saw vines and roots grew around and beneath me, saw the foliage of oak and alder trees grow and bloom above my head. There was a river babbling, there were birds singing, I bathed in sunlight!” The girl chuckled, an actual smile crossing her face like a white cloud in a stark blue sky. “I was in their sacred woods, where they meet at the end of the summer. For two days, I just indulged in dreams and hallucination, when eventually they stopped, because I needed to go out, to come back to my place. My friends were so worried, they thought I had… I’d been…”
The smile left the girl’s face.
“The darkness of that day never left you, did it? Like a veil over your eyes, so that you saw your world as if you were an outsider.”
“Yeah, kind of. I never liked the City much, but after the black out, it got worse. I spent more and more time in the dark room with the elves, and they taught me so much. They had fled when the war ended, and hid in our City, like so many others, only to die eventually because our world is toxic. They found a spell to… kind of etch an image of their mind into the walls of the room, so that whoever found them could learn from them; which I did. They taught me your language, told me about the woods and trees, about the tide and the colour of the sea, about the wind and its songs, the splendour of dawn, the quiet of the twilight. Things that we lacked, that I knew of only in films; that I desired to see more than anything else I ever desired before. And they told me about you.” The girl looked with sincere, yet sorrowful fondness at Adelun: “They loved this world so much. They loved you so much. You still warmed their broken soul, you were the life that kept them sane beyond death. So, they told me to come to you. That you were the goddess of life, or aden for whatever difference it makes. That the world blossomed at your feet, that pain ceased in your light, wounds healed, worries melted. It lasted for a few years before one of my friends got sick because of an issue with the recycled air. That’s when I decided to come.”
For a while, there was no sound in the glade of oaks, as Adelun reflected on what the girl had said. Eventually, she said: “If it is true the dark drove you out of your home, there is a question you have not answered yet. How is it you came to know of the conflict between Alendore and me?”
“The elves told me,” said the girl, a little too fast, with a quiver in her voice.
“But they never came back to our world after the war. They could not have known, and neither could you.”
The girl did not remain silent for long, but it was long enough. She talked back boldly to the Dame, evading the question: “What does it matter, anyway? I’ve lost time enough coming here, and you… If we wait any longer, if that sun falls and the night rises… You’ll be gone. You’ll be gone, and dead, and everything will be over. If that happens, I don’t have any reason for being here. I don’t have any reason for abandoning my home all those years ago, of pursuing a dream, or a nightmare more like. It’s been awful to leave, and to survive out there. And… I promised my friends I’d find you. That they would see the light of day, the one I saw in dreams, the one I see now, to shine for real outside the city walls. I told them they’ll smell the earth and trees, all of that! I can’t let them down. I can’t.”
“These events happen because they were meant to, child. It is not up to you to decide against it.”
“Meant to? Are you kidding me? We all know Alendore’s the one who locked you out of your domain, it was intentional, not some cosmic event! The world is dying, nothing grows any more, you don’t nurture it, you can’t heal it… There’s nothing normal about this! And, I mean, even if it were, I certainly wouldn’t accept it. That’s true, you aren’t doing this world any good; but neither will the Night. She’ll spread fear like she does already in your precious Garden, and she’ll rally those who conspired against you. She’ll rally Nefilen, who longed for the crown of Ofel; she’ll rally the old gods of the earth, she’ll rally the Dreamers.”
The girl was shaking with anger. “You locked up the elves for a good reason. Whatever you said, that you shouldn’t have intervened or whatever, you did and were right to. But you can’t just give up now and set them free. They destroyed my world. They set it on fire, tore our walls down and murdered more than half the population. They’re greedy, demented, and they’ll get their shot at us again anytime if they’re given the opportunity. Maybe they’ll even turn on their kin this time. So, no. This was not meant to be. I didn’t come here out of the goodness of my heart to hear this nonsense. I need to save my home, and you have to save yours. My offer still stands.”
There was an outcry from the assembly, and dryads made to attack the girl, for she had been rude to their Mother. Yet the Dame was not angered for so little. She even seemed to shine brighter still. She motioned the dryads to remain quiet as she answered the human.
“I do believe your heart has more to do with this than you care to admit.” The girl answered this not, but was a little red on the cheeks. The Dame asked: “Have you no fear for your world, that I might endanger it further were I to go there, just as I brought trouble to this world?”
“We’ll see about it when we get there. Are you in?”
“Do you grant me another question, young one?”
“It’s better than saying no. Go on.”
“No aden but me can go beyond the heart of the sun, wherein lies my domain. Not even Venelia who can travel across space freely. What does a young human know that we aden do not?”
“Well, I’ve crossed between two worlds to come here, haven’t I?” There it was again. That pride we had seen when first she set foot in our world. A pride that could only bloom in a human heart. It led to more questions than answers, but apparently the human was not yet keen to say more. “What I need is for you to help me get to the sun and protect me so that I can reach its heart. Then, I can open the way to your domain. But I need to stand in front of its entrance, I can’t just magically create a path from anywhere, or else I’d already be inside.”
“Allow me a moment to ponder over your request.”
“But we don’t have a moment! It’s almost noon. What more do you need?”
Yet the Dame answered not. Instead, she broke into a mist of gold, a shimmer that coiled around the trees and covered the dryads in warmth. The human girl erupted in anger, screaming uncalled for curses for a little while, but eventually quieted down, and paced energetically around the glade to calm herself. Dryads looked at her from the corner of their eyes, but dared not confront her in any way. She had proved, indeed, that she was a powerful beast, and worthy of the aden. Meanwhile, Adelun ran along the dried-up beds of rivers, flew through the woods, round and round, so as to cover the whole Garden in glitter of gold. She eventually came back to the glade, and changed again into whatever shape the human had seen her in previously, while to us she was again the shadow of the sun.
“Come with me, child,” she said to the girl.
And the human followed, aware not to ask questions yet.
They came to the shore after a short walk. The sea was peaceful, a murmur lapping at the sand and rocks. It spanned all the way to the west, up to the Outer Sea, which in turn spread beyond the horizon, where the world met its end in the shadows of the cosmos. But the human girl saw none of this. To her, it was a great expanse of pearly white waves that reflected the blinding sun of the midday.
“Have you heard of the Spectre?”
“I don’t think so.” The girl was laconic and hid behind a mask of indifference.
“When I tried to get back inside my domain, I was pushed back by an impenetrable darkness, the likes of which I had never seen in my long existence. We suspected a spell, for runes have scarred the walls at the heart of the sun, but no spell alone could defy my light. And so, we remembered a rumour. A tale amongst beasts and fae of a creature, born in secrecy from the bowels of Alendore. We had heard of it like a distant whisper, yet there had never been any truth to it, any shadow of certainty. And I wished not to believe that Alendore could be responsible for such a monstrosity. But this darkness smelled of hatred, child, and if you are to enter my domain, you will certainly meet with what was, until now, a myth.”
The girl looked at Adelun, and suspicion gleamed in her eyes, mistrust.
“You were a myth to me as well, before today. I’ve met ghosts, I can do it again,” she said eventually, without much conviction.
In other times, maybe Adelun would have dissuaded her. Maybe she would have talked the girl out of it, taken care of her and protected her, as always she did. But today, the Dame decided to indulge the human. It got the girl perplex and proud at the same time, wondering why it had been so easy, while being convinced of her own quality.
“If so, I will send you to the Isle of Venelia that you might reach from there the Forge of Æron. It will be the one to grant you passage to the sun and offer you protection as you walk through its fire to its heart.”
“I don’t understand, though. Why don’t you get me to the sun yourself? The longer we wait, the weaker you become, and it might set before I reach it. Or have you forgotten we must not allow that to happen?”
“I have not. Had it been a few years ago, maybe I could have sent you right away. But fending off Alendore, keeping the sun in a half-day, never truly sinking beneath the waves so that she overcomes me not, has left me weakened, shrivelled like an old tree. What I can do is make you a boat, and gift you with the knowledge of the dwarves who sailed the tideless seas to the east. Some of my children will assist you.”
The wind rose above the waves, clouds gathered to the south and the sea became agitated. But the girl saw none of that.
“And then, what? Will you come back with me to my world to help it?”
“If you do heal our world, young girl, I assure you that you will find the power to heal yours.”
The human protested, threatened to go back and abandon them. But of course, she meant none of what she said. She was full of pride and confidence in her own abilities, she wanted to impress, to prove her worth. Adelun knew so, and had already left to make the boat. She sang the vessel from the wood of birch trees, and taught the skills of old dwarves to the girl through a spell of her own.
The sun had fallen far down the clouded skies when the girl, clad in overconfidence, left the shores of the Garden of the Dame to sail west.
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