MIRRORHIVE
By Essie Zins
Copyright 2014 Essie Zins
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Luo watched from the shadows as his nephew went through the Choosing.
He was against it. Always had been. He remembered himself in the hall of fame at the age of twelve, impatiently waiting in a crowd of scared boys like this one, afraid of the quest they could draw moments later. All quests were dangerous; most were fatal. It was the goal, Luo mused for the umpteenth time, to kill off most boys before they reach adulthood. Of course, the council masked this from the people. Their community had to be strong, a fact they always reminded them. Girls were as rare as clean water, so strong men had to watch over them. Only the strongest could survive in a world where spirits governed humans, and only by completing quests could they be acknowledged by the Sprites and live in peace. Only children, who still had the use of magic, stood a chance in the Sprite populated outside world.
All the adults, the ones who survived their quest, knew the truth, but any who spoke of it would mysteriously disappear. Taburn had disappeared years ago. Luo recalled what his friend had told him on the day of their Choosing, before they got their sacrificial quest. “We have to wear something proper for the Choosing. After all, it might be the last time your family sees you. Better leave ‘em a good memory of you, eh?”
Luo’s eyes strolled on the kids, detailing their apparels. Some of them were dressed nicely as they were in his time. He guessed most followed tradition while others put up a good image and a brave front for their relatives.
It would soon be his nephew’s turn. Eyes on the boy, Luo could not help but marvel at the family resemblance they shared. They both had the same jet-black hair, the same bony face and dark green eyes common in their village. But while Luo’s skin was darkened and leathered with scars, his was light with a honey touch. Luo had been a skinny boy as white as snow, whose blush was like red roses. His nephew was sturdy, made for hard work. The resemblance, however, was unmistakable. His scared face did not try to be brave and his eyes kept glancing through the crowd, seemingly looking for familiar faces in this sea of people.
Luo remembered his own Choosing. He had had no mother to reassure him. He had been with Taburn, a teen at the time, with his father, baby sister and uncle somewhere in the crowd. Taburn had had the easiest quest, probably because he was to become a tailor, and the coming winter was prophesied to be harsh. Luo had not been so lucky. He had been chosen alone to go on a quest meant for two. At the time he had thought the Herald, who was not a friend of his father, had set him up. He had gone to the man and lashed out at him in anger, punching him. Luo, who was supposed to embark on the last ship north, ended up taking the first one.
The journey north had been a long and boring one. The children sailed through the White Sea, a tremendously large desert landscape consisting only of thousand metre deep snow, its rare cities and villages all constructed on mountain peaks long buried under white powder. Slowly, one by one, the boys arrived at their destinations and departed gladly from the boat. After a month of sailing, Luo had found himself alone on a crewless deck, his small magic allowing him to man the schooner. It was all there was to this place; a kid and his crewless boat, a rainy gale against them both.
Sometimes, around the schooner, Luo could see shadows. Through the mist, he had glimpsed these Sprites, remnants of lives past, trapped souls of those who died in this cold desert. The fog blew through their vague and deformed bodies. In utter silence, they would stand inches above the ground, as if staring at the vessel, before they wavered, turned and fled. After a couple of days, the young man learned not to fear these strange apparitions. They were likely Sprites or souls of the dead, curious of any form of life venturing around these parts of the world.
There was no sunrise, the sickly mist just slowly lightened up as hours passed. Some days lasted only a mere hour while others lasted weeks. There were no rules on this side of the Queendom of MirrorHive, for these were not always natural phenomena. The sky and the land seemed to be bound by strange spells, and the ever-present wind seemed to softly whisper charms in the traveller’s ears.
Rain, sleet and hail would come stinging across Luo’s back and frost the boat. He could not see more than ten feet away, even if the fog had lifted because of these downpours. After the violent gusts of wind appeased and when the rain began to pour lazily, Luo always suffered from magic sickness, as he had been trying to cover a great distance of land before the rain mixed snow hardened and ice permanently froze the vessel in place.
Once only, Luo docked at the port of one of the farthest cities north. He had made his way toward lights in the distance, ice cracking under the weight of the magical snow ship. Smoke of hearth-fires lingered black over the white roofs of the little town, a comforting sight in the vast sameness of the sea of snow. It was always a reassurance to him to see the lights were a city’s. Light was not always a sign of human life in the white desert. Some of them were lures, magically summoned werelights which led travellers into the gigantic maws of Hellhounds. Luo always had goose bumps when thinking of the skeletal malnourished dogs, each as big as a Man-o’-war with transparent organs through which you could see the contents of their stomachs. His uncle had terrified him with many stories of these creatures that swallow you whole and trap you in their empty rib cages, waiting to be digested.
However, when he disembarked, his delight at seeing other human beings perished quickly as he was hushed out of port with only little provisions.
In weeks of travelling in the endless, mucked plains of the White Sea, he had met countless silent shadows floating in the fog. He had felt cold, and hungry, until he nearly wrecked on the peak of a concealed mount. The gusts had been sinking, and heavy snow had given way to a thick mist. Luo was half-asleep when the schooner ran aground. He had hopped off his ship to begin repairs.
It was when the wind stopped completely, when Luo could hear neither snow, wind, wood nor sails, that a deafening silence crushed his heart in a vice grip. Nothing moved. This was the coming of the Stillness. Nobody could survive it without a flicker of holy fire by them. He had felt the cold entering him, freezing his blood like cold river water running through in the centre of his bones. Frost had gripped his mantle at an ant’s walking pace. Throwing salt on the bridge, he crumbled the sails into a mess he took with him as he made his way to the captain’s cabin, closed the door and began a fire. Only after a few flames licked the hearth did he throw in shining black stones, the fire changing from orange to a hellish blue furnace. However, the heated room never got any hotter. The windows slowly got covered by frost, followed rapidly by thick ice, and from under the door snakes of frost slithered in. Luo wrapped himself in fur coats before sitting as close to the fire as he could without burning himself, and he prayed for the Stillness to pass.
It took him the whole night to gather his courage and break through the door. One look at the bridge told him what he needed to know. Thick frost rimmed the sides of the bow and stuck the vessel into the iced snow covered sea. Her mast, broken like glass, had crashed on the side, leaving long gashes and a hole. She was of no use to him anymore.
The next day, he had put on spelled snowshoes, but he still plodded on in knee-high snow. The chill of the icy sand slowly drew warmth away from his body. Apart from the whispers under his feet, the deadly silence of the snow landscape embraced him. To keep his lonely mind sane, Luo sang aloud the shanties of the Deeds of the First Empress as
he remembered. His voice was shivering, yet it boomed in the stillness of the fogged sea. He stayed awake, afraid the cold night would freeze his sleeping body and that he would never wake. He watched through the mist the stars rise upon his right whirl above him and drown into far grey snow on the left, all the while he was walking, and walking, and walking. He would nod off every now and then, even toppling over once only to raise himself sharply with a start.
He could sometimes see curious shadows peering at him through the veil. There was only snow around him, under him, over him. In this cruel desert, water was plenty, food was scarce. Soon he himself would join the Shades.
Sometimes, a frosted, blue-skinned limb could be seen sticking out of the sea. Sometimes he would pass a wreckage, corpses escaping from their white coverage, snow dirtied red by the blood of the sinking vessel’s previous occupants. Walking toward them, he had to force himself to ignore the frigid bodies of those laying still in their chairs, taken by the great Stillness. He would take what he could find for sustenance, sometimes stealing a bag he would stuff with things he thought useful, sometimes swapping his mantle for a heavier, warmer garment than the one he already had on. Luo never stayed long after dark.
He would walk in utter darkness, half-conscious he was walking among shadows. Light brought predators, and the Shades. He did not want to meet either, but he had kept a selfish wish: that a light would appear not far in the distance, sign that a vessel was passing by. He knew that if his wish was to be granted, the light-bringers would be in peril. Light is a sign of life, and what other proof did the great Ice-Worms and prison like rib-caged beasts of the MirrorHive north wilds needed to attack a ship?
From time to time, it had seemed to him that the laments of the wind were dying away. He had then heard his own gasping breath, feeling a chilling breeze beat ice-cold droplets against his face. Knees weakening, he had fallen into the snow, slowly sinking into the glacial sea. He had spoken the forbidden words of his village and a werelight had appeared, blinding him in the utter darkness that was now the world. He did not care anymore for predators, for dying a slow death of being frozen was worse than being eaten alive, or so he told himself. A sob escaped his lips, but he was too worn out to despair, so he just laid there.
He had thought he would become part of the landscape. When he woke up, he was securely wrapped in furs aboard a sleigh. A young woman had saved him. Her name was Virgule, a not so strange name in a world where people were called after objects and ideas. She had seen his flickering werelight and had come to investigate for hunting. She was a huntress, sent by her village to rid the surrounding land of pests. When asked why she was not part of a nursery, she grew silent.
They bonded over time. Boasted and prided by her skills, she offered to help him on his quest. Lonely and eager for human warmth, he had accepted. It took only a couple of days for them to arrive to Luo’s quest’s location.
The tree had stood out against the rest of the colourful crystallised woodland. Luo had imagined something quite extraordinary: a tall crystal tree supporting equally precious fruits, perched high in the sky on their fragile branches over a heavily guarded fairyland. This tree was none of that. It was small, rising to probably twice the height of the tallest adult of Luo’s village. Its branches were sturdy and strong. The fruits it bore were red and golden apples, some rip, some still green. In the whole Queendom of MirrorHive, covered with wonderful, shiny and precious stones, and inhabited by marvels with extraordinary beings, Luo would never had thought the object of his perilous quest was just an ordinary fruit. Was the village this desperate to dispose of boys? It did not matter to him at the time; he would go back home. His quest was finished.
But the tree was a Sprite, and it had played a trick on them. It had captured his friend and asked for the stolen apples in exchange. Hesitantly, Luo chose to lose his only chance at returning to his village rather than see his friend die. The tree then asked him to lay down his life as well to save his friend. After much pondering Luo had agreed, but concluding she was more valuable the tree consumed Virgule. In her last moments, while Luo desperately tried to save her from transforming into one of the surrounding crystal trees, she spoke so softly he hardly heard her words. She had told the tree she would sacrifice herself to save him. She was barren. She would not be missed. The apples reddened with fresh blood.
On his way back to his village, in a mess of tears, Luo understood that the Sprite wanted a life, a soul to feast on. He was sent on a quest meant for two, where only one of two boys could have escaped alive. He would have died, and Virgule would still be alive if he had not so selfishly accepted her. If he returned to the village, he would face the pained faces of all the other parents seeing it was not their child coming back. He suddenly realised that by going back, he would be forced to have children; daughters ripped from him at birth to become breeders and waiting for his sons to grow until their teenage years before being sent off to their death. Angry, Luo wanted nothing to do with this way of life anymore. He had decided to run off, letting his people think he had died.
His muse abruptly stopped singing to him. He recognised his own family name being called as a child made his way to the platform. His sister had already lost her first born, which was when Luo was out of their autarkic village, surviving in MirrorHive’s harsh nature. Taking a trembling breath, he saw his nephew, the third born, reach into the Doom Glass, stare at his ticket and visibly pale, his panicked eyes searching the crowd for his mother. Luo would never let what he lived happen again, not to his family. He had yet to find a way to end the tradition which was deeply rooted in his people’s culture, but for now he could save one life.