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I stare out of the window as small droplets of rain cling to the
pane, and then, wasted, continue on their way down. The streets of Minea are
covered with grime and grey, ruined by the downpour of mud and slush. Minea
always receives a heavier monsoon than other places, but this year it is
unusually heavy. Perhaps the wet mud that evaporated earlier this year was more,
but no one could fathom how so much of it had evaporated, leaving the layers of
soil thinner and more prone to wearing away. It seemed that Covinci's magic has
altered the environment as well as the people.
Small children dance in the mud-rain, delighting in the slithers of cool mud
sliding down their tender bodies. I remember what it was like to dance in the
mud rain, sometimes tasting the ripe mud. Later Annea would scold me for eating
mud, but I usually spit it out anyway, so how did it matter? But spitting was
another thing Annea disapproved of. "Littering the streets with your filth!" She
would scream, spanking me on the bottom. I hated it when Annea acted like that.
Maybe it was fear of her worries and scoldings that eventually stopped me from
dancing in the mud-rain. But I still dream of the way Linnhe and I had kissed in
the mud-rain, our hair matted yet slippery, our mouths tasting silt and the
bitter taste of the quenhem plant we had been eating, our arms encircling each
other, wiping the mud off each other's faces.
"Ekakshra!" Annea called, sounding tired. "Ekakshra, where are you? Come and
finish cleaning up your mess down here!"
I sigh, then leave the plush window seat in my bedroom. The window is huge,
occupying an entire wall, and the curtains seem even huger, held at either end
by strong gold rope. If I master the right spell, I can see the entire aurora
borealis right outside my window. it's as if the Dwarka pole has been brought
right to where I live, and the lights are glimmering specially for me. Sometimes
I imagine I see Linnhe floating by on a star. She smiles at me and for some
reason she has wings like a faerie does, and she flies right up to me, and the
only thing blocking me from touching her is the window pane.
I make my way down the step-ladder into the parlour, where Annea is standing,
her hands on her hips, exasperated.
"Are you daydreaming again?" She asks. "You look lost."
"I always daydream in some form or another," I reply, "My mind works like that."
"Well, your mind better attend to all that stuff over there," She points to the
area next to the fireplace, "or you can't go to your party tonight."
I sigh again, then begin to pick up the pieces of quamiya I was strining into
jewellery. So far, I have two necklaces and two pairs of earrings. I fancy I'll
wear some of it to the party tonight.
The party is at Limpael Hills, and luckily by the time I have to leave the slush
has stopped, leaving in its wake a sultry smell resembling beetle odours. I
wrinkle my nose as I slide onto my plate and whirl myself off into the air. I
close my eyes and murmur, "Limpael Hills, 862." Shortly my plate whittles down
to its stop, and I get off, slightly breathless. I leave it next to all the
other plates by the door, then ring the doorbell. I have been awaiting this
party with trepidation, for I know Elyssa the mindreader is attending it.
It is a dream-coloured party, so I chose my best dream dress to wear. But now
looking around at all the clothes the others are wearing, I feel poor and
inadequate. People mill around, sipping quenhem juice or blinkada, talking
amiably. I do not see Elyssa anywhere, but just then a great silence descends
upon the party, and someone booms, "Elyssa Queltenmoore, queen of Dimitri." And,
regally and importantly, some choir music starts up as Elyssa descends. She is
the only person dressed in a colour other than dream - fiery, deep red, from her
bountiful curls to the tips of her dainty shoes.
The first time I met Elyssa she was reading a book called "Leaves of Grass."
When I asked her what it was, she said it was poetry.
I would never have found her anywhere else but in real life. Sitting under the
marble arch of our school building, munching chocolatl and reading poetry, she
would have fit into a paining perfectly. As it was, things were even more
beautiful, full of voluptuous charm and incongruous truth. Shattered, the pieces
of the painting would have magically rearranged themselves, refusing to be
discarded. She was everything an artist could hope for, and yet she made you
wonder about the laws of perfection. Around her the grass was green, the sky was
cyan tinged with grey, awaiting twilight. The flowers and leaves waved in the
slight breeze, and the trees danced with the air's ghostly sprites. A
sanctimonious waltz followed, full of precision and exactment, each beady
droplet of dew merging with every single blade of grass. It was like nature was
inviting a seance of romance, a breath of dreams, a limbre, fast-moving train of
passion. Simplicity was impossible in the complexity of that scene, and yet the
complex things were in their true, undiluted nature simple. Atop this scene she
sat, reigning like a supreme queen, and yet her existence suggested an air of
homeliness, of humility. Immersed in her book, she did not notice the
omnipresent sense of entrancement, or the casual invitation to a grand soiree in
the heavens that had been flung out to her.
Suddenly she set her book down and called out, "Who's there?" I clenched my
fists nervously, wondering if she'd noticed me. I thought I was perfectly hidden
in my treetop post, but apparently I wasn't.
"I know someone's out there, so you might as well come out now." She sounded
sure, definite; but underneath that I detected a twinge of nervousness. Maybe it
was that tiny twinge that made me reluctantly drop down to the ground and walk
towards her. Inside, I was shaking,. I had never revealed that I was spying on
her before.
That was the first time I found out she was a mind reader. I was entranced by
her, and knowing that she knew I was in love with her only made me fall even
more hopelessly in love with her. Knowing that she had known all along that I
was spying on her, when I thought it was some big secret, should have made me
feel worried and confused. Instead I only hoped she would understand the extent
of my love for her. But instead she disappeared, and all the years I searched
for her were in vain, because when Elyssa the mindreader doesn't want to be
found, she isn't found.
Now as I stare at her in all her newborn glory, our eyes connect, and she
extends a hand to me. She murmurs, "Dance with me." I can only acquiesce, for
who would deny a queen? So we dance in front of all the nobles and aristocrats,
princesses and goblins, witches and harlequins. And all the time we are heading
farther and farther away from them, and then we are spinning into what wseems
like a void.
But it is not a void. I see other people spinning along with us, but they appear
only as indistinct blurs against a whirling landscape. But the landscape is
hardly a landscape - it is grey and dull, which is why at first I thought it was
a void. Now it seems like a tornado is spinning us further and further away from
the party.
We land in Elyssa's palace. It is an austere sort of place, with high canopied
beds and long snaky sofas. Not at all like the comfortable atmosphere of my own
home. This is not the sort of place I would have thought Elyssa would live in.
But then, this was Dimitri's palace, not hers. I recollect my memories of
Dimitri. He was always too old for Elyssa, thirty odd years older than her when
they married, now probably seventy years older. Of course he still looked as
young as ever. She had already provided him with three princesses, heiresses to
the throne. As I look around at the firghteningly blood red carpets and the bars
on the windows, I wonder how children could grow up in such a place. It would be
fearsome, just like Dimitri's nature. Dimitri and Covinci are in alliance, so
Dimitri also wields immense power over Minea.
Outside the mud-rain has begun again, this time no longer soothing. It is fierce
and brusque, biting and raw. No children will be playing outside now. Elyssa
offers me some juice, but I demur, wondering if she has truly brought me here
just for small talk, after all these years...
I was thirteen then, and she was almost twenty. The children were small babies,
always creating a ruckus. Since they were triplets, no matter how much work you
did, there would always be one needing attention. I was their babysitter. It was
a secret way for Elyssa and I to meet. This was before she disappeared. There
were so many things that happened before she disappeared. It seemed we were
secret lovers, delighting in our chances at happiness. But then she introduced
me to Linnhe. And with that, she - poof! - vanished, and expected all my
affections to transfer to Linnhe, and never fixate on her again...
"I can't take it anymore." She is standing in front of me, resting her hand on
the sofa. The mud-rain is slowing down outside, but it is still pouring
steadfastly.
"What can't you take anymore?" I ask, startled. Elyssa has always seemed so calm
and collected. For her to leave all her responsibilities behind, saying so can
no longer do it, is impossible.
"This. Everything. This farce of a life." She gestures around, as if expecting
me to see the ghosts of her problems crowding in on her.
"Why is it a farce?" I ask. But I can already see the answer, as the problems
begin to conglomerate. She was never meant to be Dimitri's wife. He was
everything she was against, everything her family had struggled against for
years. So why did she suddenly marry him? I didn't know - it was something she
had always refused to tell me.
Elyssa looked about, as if she expected one of her many problems to jump out at
her, startling her. Then she takes me hand and softly kisses it. I am surprised,
but then I see Dimitri, as a shadow, tall and overbearing, commanding the
shadows of her three girls. This is her shadow magic - reincarnating the past,
present and future through shadows. Annea always envied those select few who
could do shadow magic. It was a way of seeing the world from an omnicient point
of view, and being able to know what had happened or what would be, or what was
going on, anywhere in the universe.
"Elyssa, tell me where your stone is." Dimitri spoke, and his voiice was echoey
and hollow, grave and without any scent of happiness.
"I cannot," Her voice came, not from the Elyssa who had kissed my hand, but from
another Elyssa, deep within her.
"Tell me!" He commanded, and suddenly he became more overbearing, taller,
graver, like a stern headmaster, only far more powerful.
"Dimitri, it is a sacred agreement!" Her voice is pitifully high as she cowers
in the shadow of her lord.
"Tell me!" He roars, and suddenly he whips out a knife and holds it to her
throat. "I don't care what measly agreement you have, my dear," He snarls. There
is a flash of blue light and then Dimitri backs away, dazed and shocked.
"You shall never harm me, Dimitri," Elyssa says coldly.
"He's been gone ever since." Elyssa explains, looking at me. "And I know I have
to go, for this is no longer my home. That incident pretty much established
that."
"But he'll track you down. He wants the stone," i say, somewhat plaintively.
"Yes, that's why we have to find them first,." Elyssa looks at me gravely.
"But I thought you knew where it was." I say, confused.
"I only know where four of them are. He wants all of them. The rest were stolen
and lost long ago, and nobody knows where they are. But come, we must rest now.
I want to show you something, too." She leads me into an antechamber and
conjures up two cups of tea. We sit down. My mind is whirling, only beginning to
understand this quest we must undertake.
"Do you remember Silean?" Elyssa asks, sipping her tea and looking at me
intently.
I stare at her for a second, riddled by memories of my first lover, riddled by
their perplexing complexity.
I stopped trusting Silean when he sent me a letter with one word scribbled on it
a million times - randomness. This was after a big fight we had about his
religion,. Canitra. I argued that there was no point in practicing a kind of
magic that did not exist, but he couldn't see that it did not exist. When he
created a "placket," or a direct, so-called non-binding link between us, which
according to his "magic" was a physical link, I did not know what to think. I
wondered how lost he was in this strange, unreal world of his, and why he
persistently believed in a magic that did not exist when there was a magic that
did exist but which he dismissed as too factual? And why hadn't he asked me
before creating the placket? Everything I loved about him seemed to fade as this
adamantly religious, lost boy took his place. I should have been more tolerant,
perhaps, but instead I grew scared, wondering what to do about his strange love
for me. When he started saying things about the placket, such as it not letting
him sleep, and asking me whether I slept alright, it bothered me immensely. What
confusion had he stumbled upon? Perhaps it was the stress of his father's
sickness that made him so. His religion had swallowed him to the point where he
saw things from a surreal, warped point of view. he no longer wanted to use the
real magic to try and learn, and grow from it. Instead, he chose a magic that
consumed him...
Over the years we grew farther and farther apart. Elyssa helped me heal, and
then there was Linnhe. But even now, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the
night, wondering where Silean is. Perhaps he would interpret this as effects of
the placket. Knowing this made me want to curse him, and yet I felt deeply
scared and alone, and wondered if I had made the right choice in leaving him.
"Yes, I remember Silean..." I trail off, looking expectantly at Elyssa. "Why?"
"He emigrated to Lazar three years ago. he had... one ring... in his possession.
He asked me to give it to you. Since he doesn't believe in our magic, he says
you'll be able to use it better than he did."
I stare at her, stunned. "One of the nine stones?" I ask, wondering how Silean
could have gotten such a ring.
"Yes," She smiles slightly, "It's time you became a goddess, Ekakshra."
As she slips the ring with its powerful blue stone onto my finger, I am
overwhelmed with confusion, surprise and other feelings I can't quite
understand.
"What power does it have?" I ask, almost secondarily.
"You will be the fairy godmother of whoever you choose," Elyssa explains. She
looks into my eyes, murmurs, "Choose wisely," and then, importantly, she gathers
up herself and says, "I must go. It is now your turn to gather up others who
will accompany us on our quest. Until we meet again, Ekakshra, my thoughts shall
guide you." I am not sure what she means, but I don't get the chance to ask, for
with a tiny glimmer she is gone.
I am left bewildered, wondering how I have suddenly gotten entangled in a plot
that is far beyond anything I had ever imagined before. What chance did we have,
when Dimitri and Covinci, and possibly even the Sorceress, were against us? I
wished Elyssa had explained things more clearly to me, but when Elyssa the
mindreader doesn't want to explain things, she doesn't. That is just her way,
and us lesser mortals have no choice, however unfair it seems.
I go home, traversing the dark, night-lit streets of Minea. I wonder when I will
see Elyssa again, and what she will tell me to do next. It seems that my
axctions are dictrated by people like Elyssa, and for a moment I ruminate
bitterly on the unfairness of it all. In Minea people like Elyssa and Dimitri
are considered greater humans and are luckily bestowed with magical skills. it
is the nonexistent God, of course, who dictates who will be these chosen few,
aided by the Sorceress. I stop, suddenly realising what I must do.
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