Chapter IX: A Life Ensared

Adrastos merely pointed up to the stairwell, where the young man Faradin tottered, feigning indifference to their conversation, “You brought Faradin. Your son taught me the little things of life again, that I knew when I was younger. He speaks to every rock, every loom in my household. It is all alive for him. Even a senile cad like myself can see that magic in him. It will never die, Fyara, it’s the essence of his being. It is not every young man that possesses this; only him, on the edge of adulthood, and yet, still has the sweet wisdom of a child. If you despaired over him at his birth, as any woman would have, you need not now. He’s done for himself what an asylum could never do, keeping him in seclusion like that. Through you, he gains intelligence, strength…” he paused, and with a chuckle, added, “fury…but through himself, he has learned to live.” Together, they both turned to watch Faradin, walking along the brink of hope, one foot calmly toe-to-heel with the other.

Chapter X: A World Unimagined

“Don’t speak lies to me, soldier. You take me for a little girl who has seen none of the world. But I have seen it - I have seen more than my share. I saw the fires of Edal before they came true. And now I see our futures are doomed in your less than capable hands. Go home, Elodan of Medford, you are better off there than anywhere else in this hell.”

Shaken, the soldier stood upright. He stared boldly into the gray eyes of this girl - that plain, expressionless glance of her eyes made him bolt awake at once. His soul surged and returned into his body. She could see him, but she could see through him. It was as if in the infinite cosmos, he had worldly value. There was a world around him, but to her, there was a world within him. Her caution came from years of fear, that she might see something she did not want to.

His heart told him she saw it at that moment.

“Go, please.” She was at the brink of tears and then eons away from them. “You have no place here. It is only the money that matters to you.”

”Not now,” he said, gasping. The shock of the moment before still remained with him. Oh, Elodan the womanizer, the jester, the consistence and inconsistence of his life; of all the men in the world, Elodan had told a lie before. But to say it before a woman who could see his words before they formed in his head — he could not do that. No one could. The power of the ulani came clear at this moment. They were soothsayers, prophets. They lived a life unbelievable in a world unimagined. They were not the same human that Elodan might have been, that Rowan was, that sweet insignificant Merta still seemed to be. There was a definition between human and human that he saw at this moment, clearer than it could have ever been in the cloudy gray eyes of this young woman.

Chapter XI OR XII: The Cross-town

The girl was two that day, by her reckoning. Sometimes, she was older than two, other times younger. She led herself to believe that there was no other age, no greater number. Yes, the girl was two. The girl was two and very pleased with that fact.

Under the same pretense, the girl realized that day that beyond the walls of the palace was a world she would never see. Sometimes, her nurse sat her on one of the low fences that looked out on the ocean. In the night, she could see glimmering lights in the water, like little pearls on silken skin. She thought of her mother, but could never see her face. She only saw worried eyes and an upside-down smile. Was it called a frown? It was a frown, then. If she was truly two then, she could understand that. She understood so much more than people would expect of her; every now and then, she’d see her mother’s masked fear and her nurse’s dark laughing eyes, attempting a conversation when there was nothing to speak of. There was something of a similarity between them. But she knew, somehow, that there had been once. Now it had all faded away, washed dry of unity by a salty ocean breeze.

Sometimes, her father called her Keda, and he held her in his arms as he walked along the parapet. She’d run her hand along his sash, bury herself in his cape, and very occasionally, when he wasn’t looking, she’d let her little hand brush across the dagger hidden behind his jacket. He talked to her, and she’d listen with rapt attention. Her father was the only one who spoke to her in a language she could understand. Her nurse has never spoken to her - her mother’s tongue was tears. The way her father cradled her in his safety, two hundred feet from the raging ocean, made her believe in his strength. She would never forget to love her father, no matter that she was two or beyond two, heaven forbid.