Side A – Yasgrid
The crone had tea waiting for them. In Stoneling culture, sharing food and beverages with travelers who had dropped by unannounced was considered the bare minimum of hospitality. People who had gotten lost between the settlements were often in pretty rough shape, and even those who knew where they were going could use a helping hand getting there.
Yasgrid wasn’t sure the same was true in Elven culture though. The Darkwood was less barren than her mountains had been. She’d managed to survive by just foraging for weeks? Months? Time had escaped her somewhat while she was traveling.
“It’s good tea,” the crone said. “You’re not like the other one. You and I can talk. Yes, I think we talk.” She motioned Yasgrid to enter which was at once both an innocent and common gesture as well as one which perhaps unique in the history of the Darkwood.
The crone turned to lead Yasgrid in, and Yasgrid felt a moment of hesitation rise like a wall in front of her.
She knew what the crone was.
She knew who it was.
Sitting down to tea with her was a violation of the one of the Darkwood’s oldest and most fundamental orders. Endings was shivering with anticipation at an outcome which Yasgrid suspected was all too likely.
Unless she chose another one.
She crossed the threshold of the crone’s cottage.
“Tea would be wonderful,” she said, Endings’ shock running through her like a bolt which she wrapped in what small reassurance she had to offer.
Taking tea with a Trouble would never have been described as a wise act, but Yasgrid was at the point where what she needed lay beyond the bounds of common wisdom.
“You didn’t draw the blade?” the crone observed.
“Drawing a weapon on one’s host seems like a rather unfriendly gesture,” Yasgrid said, taking a seat where the crone directed her.
“It’s not really necessary either, is it?” the crone asked.
“True as well,” Yasgrid said. She wasn’t surprised the Trouble could tell where the balance of power lay between then, though she was pleased the crone seemed to also understand that they didn’t necessarily need to struggle over that power.
“There are things you wish to know,” the crone said. “About the one who created me.”
“It feels like my questions there are endless,” Yasgrid said.
“And once I’ve answered, my part will be played, and I can rest.” It wasn’t a question but Yasgrid heard the note of trepidation in the crone’s voice.
“Would you like to speak of that first?” she asked. “There are many options before us there.”
“You are…” the crone paused, regarding Yasgrid with a puzzled expression. “You carry more than the blade.”
“I do,” Yasgrid said.
“You’re like her?”
Yasgrid laughed. Once she would have rejected that utterly. Later she would have been terrified of how it might be true. Hearing it from the Trouble before her though, Yasgrid found that the words simply washed off her.
“No. Not like her,” the crone said. “Not like her at all. What are…”
“There’ll be time for that later,” Yasgrid said. “I think what you wish to know is what you’ll receive for the answers to my questions?”
“I’d thought my reward would be oblivion,” the crone said.
“If that’s your wish, it can be, but it seems like a poor repayment for the kindness of sharing your tea and what the knowledge you hold,” Yasgrid said.
“Kindness?” It was the crone’s turn to laugh. “You are the first to accuse me of such a thing. The first who might even have imagined it I would guess.”
“Isn’t that what living here, alone, is?” Yasgrid asked. “I know, in part, how you came to be. I know what designs bound you and circumscribed your existence. What I don’t know is how you slipped free of those bindings enough to endure this solitude, when there is such a hunger within for mayhem and pain and ruin.”
The crone chuckled and relaxed in her chair.
“You are not at all what I expected. Not at all,” she said.
“And you are not what she expected, are you?” Yasgrid asked.
“I can’t imagine what she expected,” the crone said. “But I can tell you that she was not terribly pleased with what she saw in me.”
“Were you the same then as you are now?”
“No, I’ve changed, as all things do,” the crone said. “Though not so much that she wouldn’t recognize me. And not so much that she would find what she was looking for in me.”
“And what was that?” Yasgrid asked. “It wasn’t power was it. Not directly at least.”
“She didn’t need the power I held. She wouldn’t have been able to draw me out of another if she lacked it,” the crone said. “In truth I don’t know what she was looking for, only that she didn’t find it in me, and I have not changed so fundamentally that something missing would now be there.”
“Is that something you would wish for?” Yasgrid asked. “To change like that? To become something entirely new?”
“Once? Yes, once I desired nothing more than to not be what I was. When all is pain, and torment, and meaningless strife, being something else entirely or even nothing at all is a very tempting dream to pursue.”
“It can be a tempting dream even when all that’s wrong is one simple thing,” Yasgrid said, thinking back to how readily she’d welcome to escape into Nia’s life in place of needing to play in the Calling.
“Tempting, but not really an option,” the crone said. “I am what I am, and I’ve been what I am for a long time now.”
“Long enough that you’re ready to change, or long enough that you’ve lost the desire to?” Yasgrid asked.
“Long enough to know better that I can,” the crone said. “Long enough to know that everything has a price.”
“Everything does,” Yasgrid said. “But not all prices are ones we can’t afford.”
“And what would it cost me then? To become like you?”
“Years of walking in my shoes, being born to a mother of surpassing skill and somewhat surpassed attentiveness, finding someone whose life you fit and who fits yours. Even with all that though, I don’t know how alike to me you would be, since you carry experiences that I never could.”
“And I’m constrained by bindings which will never be laid on you,” the crone said.
“Those needn’t bind you any longer,” Yasgrid said.
“Of course not. You can draw your blade and end all that nonsense, and me along with it,” the crone said.
“May I?” Yasgrid asked, reaching her left hand out towards the crone.
The crone looked bewildered for a moment, presumably at the thought that Yasgrid was asking permission to destroy her with Endings. Bewilderment turned to pure confusion as she saw that Yasgrid was not drawing forth the crystal blade, and was not asking permission to destroy the crone at all.
The crone nodded and Yasgrid reached to brush her hand in front of the crone’s face, grasping at nothing at all. As she pulled her hand back though, the crone’s form waved like water being blown by a gentle gale.
“What? What was that?” the wavering young woman in front of Yasgrid asked before her features settled back into those of the crone’s.
“That was one of your constraints,” Yasgrid said. “Whatever you choose to do next, I don’t believe you needed to be locked into the form the one who made you found most repulsive.”
The crone brought her hand to her face and as she traced it over her cheeks her features flickered between young and old, settling at last on a state midway to between youth and maturity.
“You changed me?”
“Your appearance is your own doing,” Yasgrid said. “I only removed the binding which was preventing you from making that choice.”
The former-crone gawped at that and ran her hands back and forth over her face changing from old to young, heavy to thin, sharp to soft.
“What you’ve been doesn’t have to be what you become,” Yasgrid said.
“But I can’t pretend I’m not who I was,” the crone said, settling back into her more wizened appearance.
“And now that choice is yours,” Yasgrid said. “I can do the same with your other bindings. I can remove the hunger to inflict pain and the loops which force you back, over and over, into the moment of your creation. You can, if you want, simply be.”
“Be who?” the crone asked. “This is who I am, who I’ve always been. I wouldn’t know who I was if I didn’t have my pain to define me. And you don’t know what I would do without those bindings.”
“You would be like the rest of us, and you’d do what you wanted,” Yasgrid said.
“And what if what I chose to do was horrible?” the crone asked.
“Then that would be your choice and the consequences would be yours to endure as well,” Yasgrid said.
The crone was silent for a long moment, so Yasgrid took another sip of the tea. It was both surprisingly mild and surprisingly free of poison.
“What do you wish to know?” the crone asked. “What’s your price for all this?”
“Those are two very different questions,” Yasgrid said. “My price is simple. I ask that with your freedom you search for yourself. Discover who you wish to be, and what you have to give to the world.”
“And if that is still pain and misery?”
“Then we shall likely speak again, though it may be a brief conversation and less pleasant than this one.”
“You would let me run free though? Take the risk that I can be trusted to be something other than the monster she made me to be? Even when I can make no promises in support of that?”
“What was done to you was unconscionable,” Yasgrid said. “The only thing staying my hand from freeing you from the cruel constraints laid upon you is that to take them away without your permission would be as much of a violation as placing them on you in the first place was.”
“Ask your questions then,” the crone said. “Even if I do not need to buy my freedom, I would offer you what coin I can for it.”
“Oh, you don’t need to ask that one. If you wanted to understand me, you could have simply asked,” Elshira said, appearing in the middle of a stride.
“You decided to join us?” Yasgrid said, amazed and delighted that her long hunt might finally be coming to an end.
“How could I not?” Elshira said, the confidence radiating from her starkly at odds with her dogged flight from Yasgrid’s hunt of the past weeks. “After all you are set to unleash untold horrors upon my home.”
She had an audience.
Yasgrid could see it in Elshira’s eyes. The dead woman was playing to an unseen crowd.
A particularly dim unseen crowd if they believed Elshira cared about the Darkwood whatsoever.
“Am I now?” Yasgrid nearly purred as she rose from her chair. She hadn’t been expecting Elshira to play her hand so soon, but that didn’t mean Yasgrid wasn’t more than willing to dance with the dead woman. “And what horrors do you imagine I would unleashed on the afterlife?”
“Come now, there is no reason to be coy,” Elshira said, circling the small cottage to stay just out of arms reach from Yasgrid.
The crone had go as still and silent as the trees around them, which reminded Yasgrid that Elshira was still, theoretically, at least, a Bearer, and had a wide range of powers over the Troubles of the Darkwood.
“I have no reason to play with you,” Yasgrid said, trying to discern what strange stratagem Elshira felt was worth the risk she was taking.
“Of course not. You have all the Troubles in the Darkwood that you would corrupt to do your bidding. I imagine that’s a time consuming endeavor.”
“I would hardly credit your imagination when you are so capable of speaking from experience.”
Why was Elshira bringing a discussion of Troubles into her performance? Whoever her audience was, they couldn’t possibly think that Elshira hadn’t violated every law and custom of the Darkwood in how she’d treated with them?
“Oh, but I have never corrupted the Troubles. Not as you have,” Elshira said. “In my studies, I sought only to ameliorate the peril they pose. I have never changed one, as you so clearly just did, I only ever sought to control them, in order that the Darkwood might be spared from their ravages.”
“Because what point would there be ruling over a land ravaged by Troubles?” Yasgrid said.
“I have never sought to rule,” Elshira said. “I only ever sought understanding. Understanding which, unlike you, I have been willing to share.”
Share? If there was one thing Elshira would never willing do, it was share her power.
Yasgrid was sure of that.
So why was she also certain she had fallen into a trap?
“I see you do not even try to deny the accusation that you have corrupted the Darkwood’s Troubles,” Elshira said. “Good. Perhaps justice can be hastened.”
“You would invite justice into our midst? By all means, let us end this as justly as possible,” Yasgrid said, her concerns about the audience they were playing too falling away as she drew on the powers she’d found and focused on the dead woman in front of her.
Elshira simply shook her head.
“Spoken like a Bearer,” Elshira said. “Always thinking of endings. Or is it that Endings is thinking for you? It’s so hard to tell when a Bearer takes up the blade. Unless they can prove they’ve broken free of its overwhelming influence at least.”
Yasgrid had been just about to reach out, just about to grasp Elshira’s essence, just about to cast aside the plans she’d made and simply, finally, end their dance before the dead woman could cause any more damage.
But she saw, a moment before she lashed out, who Elshira’s audience was.
And a moment later the cottage was blown apart, revealing the army of Fate Dancers who’d assembled under Elshira’s banner.
In Elshira’s eyes, Yasgrid saw triumph.
“You wonder how it comes to be that we are allied?” Elshira asked, hearing Yasgrid’s unspoken, despairing “how?”
They should have been the direst of enemies. The Fate Dancers and the Abomination. There should have been no discussion, no words at all, just knives and Troubles and death.
“I have shared with them what you would not,” Elshira said. “The secrets I’ve learned are now theirs. Through me, they now have the power to render both Bearer and Blade a thing of the past.”
Side B – Nia
Nia was lost, but that wasn’t bothering her anymore. Lost things could be found after all in the uttermost distance, she could at last hear Margrada’s drumming.
“Can we go back?” Elgi asked. “This doesn’t seem conducive to our health.”
Around them a glorious tempest soared and crashed, roaring with an inescapable joy for life and the harmony it had found.
Which made things a bit difficult for Nia, since she needed to escape the inescapable song without parting with either life or joy.
Focusing on Margrada made that a little easier though.
“Going back won’t save us,” Nia said. “We need to cross the gap and get back to the physical world.”
“What gap?” Elgi asked, clinging to Nia’s right hand.
“We’re inside a space that’s not physically real,” Nia said. “The music drew us in and carried more than our attention here.”
“That does not sound promising for our physical bodies,” Elgi said.
“It’s not, though at the moment they’re a nice durable stone, so we shouldn’t need to worry about them too much.”
“I don’t recall being stone,” Elgi said. “I suspect it would cause problems with breathing.”
“Breathing and a number of other things,” Nia said. “If we can pull what we are now back to those bodies though, the magic we’re wrapped in should revert us to the flesh and blood we normally enjoy being.”
“Should?” Elgi asked.
“It’s worked at least once already,” Nia said.
“How do we reunite with our bodies then?” Elgi asked.
“There’s a part of the song that’s not drawing us in. It’s trying to lead us out. If we can synch ourselves up with that, we can follow it back. Or let it pull us back,” Nia said.
“I don’t know how to do that,” Elgi said.
“We play the drums,” Nia said.
“But there are no drums here?” Elgi said.
“I thought so too at first,” Nia said. “But it turns out almost anything can be a drum, even the surface of a world that’s not there.”
She guided Elgi’s hand down to the imagined ground beneath their feet.
“Hold onto me while I play,” Nia said. “I have your name to bind us together, but I don’t want to test the limits of that.”
“Understood,” Elgi said, and Nia felt two hands clasp tight around her right hand.
Which left only her left to try to match Margrada’s playing with.
As though she could ever match Margrada’s playing.
Fortunately she didn’t need to.
With small, unnoticeable beats, she joined in the rhythm Margrada was weaving. It was so close to the songs central themes of connection and sharing that Nia was swept time and again into the song’s heart, and far out of reach of Margrada’s playing.
“I cannot hear the other song you spoke of,” Elgi said.
“It’s faint,” Nia said. “I still have it though, so we can keep trying.”
Margrada wasn’t going to give up on her, Nia was sure of that.
And so she pressed on.
And so she was swept into the song’s heart again. And again. And again.
And each time it was overjoyed at her return.
She couldn’t speak to it, or plead with it. She tried that almost immediately with no luck whatsoever. It didn’t want to hear how she had to get free. It didn’t care that she had a life to get back to, or that there was so much more she needed to do still.
“Can you still hear the song your listening for?” Elgi asked.
“It’s still there but every time I try to get us closer to it, something pulls us back. It’s like we’re stuck here or there’s some…”
That was what it was. The insight hit her hard enough that she almost forgot about Elgi for a moment. Only almost though. Forgetting Elgi completely, even for a moment, would mean losing them forever and Nia had come too far to give up yet.
But she would have to give up.
Not Elgi, but the baggage she was carrying, the feelings and memories and long forgotten pains which still tied her to the Darkwood. They were what the song was using to draw her back. To escape the inescapable song, she needed to become something that it held no sway over. Something with no ties to the Darkwood so that the harmony of togetherness the song embodied wouldn’t resonate with her soul and try to keep her close, bound up in its heart.
“Do you have anything keeping you in the Darkwood?” she asked Elgi, thinking it could be a problem they both shared.
“No,” Elgi said. “I’ve wanted to wander my whole life. I was probably going to leave the wood next year anyways.”
“Leave without being able to ever return?” Nia asked, not as surprised as she once would have been, having made the same choice for herself already.
“I don’t think I’ll ever need to,” Elgi said. “The world is wider than our imagination and filled with more wonders than we could ever hope to see.”
“I bet that’s why you got swept up,” Nia said. “You were already attuned to the idea of seeing something new. Which would also explain why no other Elves arrived along with you.”
“I am considered odd,” Elgi said.
“That oddness is exactly what we need here,” Nia said, a twinge of guilt shot through her at the thought that everything they were going through was probably her fault.
A deeper one followed at the thought of what she was going to have to give up to get free of the song’s grasp.
Her memories of her favorite hidey-bough where she’d snuggled more than once with Marianne. The apple bakes that always heralded the coming of autumn. Her bed and the childhood toys which had survived to the present.
Kayelle.
Naosha.
It was too much.
She couldn’t give those up.
Even with a new life before her, she couldn’t lose who’d she’d once been.
She needed a better answer.
Margrada’s song, already faint, grew more distant still.
Not because Margrada was faltering.
Nia was growing weaker.
How much more fight did she have left in her?
Shouldn’t she do what she needed to do?
If she wanted to save Elgi, wasn’t she going to have to?
No. She would fight on. There was a way. There had to be one.
The song’s heart swept her up again and it was all Nia could to pull free of it once more.
She was exhausted.
Worn thin.
Why are you fighting?
It sounded like her mother speaking. Like Kayelle. Or maybe even her father.
But it wasn’t.
It was a question she was asking herself.
Why are you fighting?
Because I can’t give up on them.
Because I can’t lose who I was.
Because this is my fault and I should be better than this.
Why are you fighting?
The question she was asking herself finally became clear and with it so did the answer.
“Elgi, forget what I said. Was there anything you loved about home. Anything you’d carry with you if you could?”
“The Dawnwing Butterflies. I always loved seeing them on midsummer’s,” Elgi said.
“Forget the song, focus on those, and on the trip you wanted to make. Imagine, if you can, piles of stone so high that they touch the sky. Imagine ponds so large they stretch out endlessly, past where the eye can see. Imagine the cold of winter and warmth of great big fires. Picture a people who are loud and lively and as beautiful as the sunrise.”
“That’s a lot,” Elgi said.
“Then focus on the things you cherish and the desires which drive you on,” Nia said. “And hold on tight. We’re going into the heart of the song and this time we’re not coming out.”
“Are you sure?” Elgi asked.
“As I’ve ever been,” Nia said and opened herself to all the memories she had of the Darkwood and her time in Yasgrid’s skin.
The song cheered and welcomed her in, embracing her with the fury of an earthquake and strength of all every growing thing in the Darkwood.
Yes, she whispered to it, I’ll embrace your harmony, I’m a part of both your worlds. Those worlds are so much wider than either of us though. We bring them together, but we can do more than that. We can become a bridge between them, we can let ideas, and dreams, and even people pass from one to the other and back.”
The song, her song, her joy and exaltation, listened to her once again, could hear her dream because while she was so very small, her dream was as vast as the universe they sung within.
Why was she fighting, when working with the song could get her everything she wanted and more?
As it turned out, it was the ‘more’ that was the problem.
At Nia’s urging, the song began to lift them up.
She was able to fully grasp onto the rhythm of Margrada’s song at long last.
Along with it though came a melody which could only have originated in the Darkwood.
As loving hands embraced her and she landed once more in her flesh and blood body, she heard the song ringing out from the mountains around her and entwined with it, the wind swept of the Darkwood danced as well.
That wasn’t the problem though.
The performance hall she’d been sitting in was gone.
In it’s place was a grove of stone, crystal, and multi-hued vegetation of all kinds.
And beyond its edges she could see the mountains in one direction, and a dark and friendly forest in the other.