Chapter IX: Departure
Most of the day’s traveling passed uneventfully for the newly formed Fieretka. Even though it was only early summer and the sun could scarcely reach its slender fingers through the trees, warm moisture hung uncomfortably thick in the air. The only road to follow had fallen into disuse so long ago that the paved stretches that still remained had been heaved and cracked into minutely moving waves by the relentless, ever-present growth of nature. Only when it forked off did they run into trouble.
“What way heads to Valraines?” Stefi asked.
No one knew.
“There’s a stream alongside this one. It might pay to follow it,” Sansonis offered and pointed to the road heading north. “The road heads north and the stream has to flow to the sea sometime, doesn’t it?”
“Unless it goes into a lake,” Stefi said.
“There are no lakes in this forest that we know of,” Cédes said. “We shall follow the stream.”
And that was the guide they chose to follow. As it and the old road meandered through the forest, Stefi couldn’t help but think how similar it was to Ifaut, wandering aimlessly at its own pace but nevertheless happy and bubbling with laughter.
That was another thing she noticed. Ever since they had left Mafouras, Ifaut had remained silent and even refused to eat anything when they stopped for lunch. She sensed something different about her. Something sad. Her suspicions were confirmed when towards late afternoon Ifaut suddenly burst into tears.
“What’s the matter?” Sansonis asked as he struggled to get over the sudden shock of Ifaut displaying an emotion other than happiness or embarrassment. Or annoyance.
In answer she buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed until his shirt was damp with her tears. “It’s…it’s mummy,” she managed to say. “She’s dying…”
“What?” Sansonis practically shouted, but in shock, not anger.
“She’s dying.” Ifaut sniffed. “That’s why she didn’t see us off. She needs her rest.”
“Is there a reason, Miss Ifaut,” Cédes said, “that you did not tell us before?” If even she didn’t know of Rivista’s illness she knew it must be very serious indeed.
“Because you would want me to stay home. Then I wouldn’t be able to go out and see the world with Saun… Sansonis.” She had started to regain her composure, but a misty veil of tears still obscured her vision.
“I am terribly sorry,” Cédes said. “This is all my fault for wishing to leave so hastily. You must have felt pressured to make a rather impossible choice. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Only if you actually did something wrong,” Ifaut said and her face glimmered with a faint trace of a smile. “It was my decision to go with you guys and I have to live with that. But I’m not alone, right? Stefi chose to leave home to find us, Cédes to leave even though it means endangering our home, Sansonis to help me, and me to leave my dying mum to see the world.” Then she added as an afterthought, “But I don’t think dog-face chose to do anything.”
“I didn’t decide to get dragged along by a crazy girl against my will,” Sansonis joked, provoking a giggle from Ifaut. He took her hand. “Though sometimes I’m glad it happened.”
“The thing is,” Stefi said, “one way or another we’re all in this together, whether we like it or not. So no more secrets, okay? We need to look after each other.”
Yeah, Maya said. Someone has to look after Gemmie!
Who was it that got us tied up in that sack in the first place, huh? Gemmie shot back.
Maya found no answer but Gemmie continued, Give me to Ifaut. I’ll keep an eye on her.
“Ifaut,” Stefi said, “Gemmie says she’ll help you out.” She plucked Gemmie from her shoulder and placed her on Ifaut’s. But despite Ifaut being unable to understand anything Gemmie said, she found more comfort in nuzzles, dooks, and warmth than words.
Pheia’s first day and night had passed by in utter loneliness. Once she’d left behind the plains of home, depressing though they were, sudden isolation rolled over her. Neither Furosans nor humans had yet settled in these parts that lay between the Furosans’ Arigan territories to the east and the human towns and capital city of Sol-Acrima to the west. It didn’t help that as well as hearing stories of the Fieretka and other heroes during her childhood, her father also told her of the restless spirits that still clung to this world, unable or unwilling to go beyond the Rainbow Bridge. As a result her first night consisted of nervous glances towards every unfamiliar sound as she sat alone, illuminated by the eerie blue glow from her father’s last gift. It wasn’t particularly warming in the growing cold.
The following morning, the morning of the Fieretka’s departure, Pheia woke early and left immediately without breakfast. In her haste to leave she’d brought only a little food, but she knew how to hunt. She didn’t like it, yet she would cope.
After several hours the plains gave way to the mounds of hills rising steadily from the ground like the curving backs of giant sleeping animals. Large chunks of soft white rock littered the landscape like the sun-bleached bones of the same animals, these ones dead instead of sleeping. Despite her uneasy thoughts about them, the landscape was surprisingly teeming with life. At her approach, pheasants shot off in a flurry of squawking and feathers, and rabbits tried to flatten themselves into the folds of the earth. She watched one such rabbit and felt pangs of both hunger and sympathy. Her basic instinct was for a minute overridden by how similar the rabbit seemed to her and her fellow Furosans; a creature wishing to harm no one, cowering before an enemy of greater size and strength but still able to at least hide. Or try to.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and nocked an arrow to her bowstring. As soon as the arrow leapt from the string with a musical twang, the rabbit fired the powerful muscles in its back legs and propelled itself forward.
Pheia had anticipated its every move, knowing that it would run, and had adjusted her aim to ensure a kill. Virtually every animal was the same when faced with such circumstances, as she knew all too well. Even humans.
The rabbit fell with an arrow in its neck and kicked the last of its life into the windswept grass. As she knelt down beside the still-warm body she avoided its blank, accusing eyes as they glazed over. “Thank you for the meat,” she said. Even after all the years of killing, she thought, it never got any easier. For that, too, she was thankful.
“Cédes?” Stefi asked after some time, “What do the Furosans believe in?”
“What do you mean?” Cédes said. “Likely the same things as everybody else. Doing what is right, loving others, hopes, dreams…”
“I meant about our world. I’ve already heard some of the Otsukuné side. Now how about yours? We’ve gotta do something to pass the time while we walk, don’t we?”
“That we do,” Cédes said. “Just note that history was never my strong point.”
“Will do.”
“I have already told you about the nature of our world, that Furosa is its underlying life force and that ferrets are a vital part of its existence. They spread life-giving Furosa about our world, and we believe that we were born from this spread, part ferret ourselves.” She smiled and touched her ear with its many piercings. “And when we die, our souls leave this world for a kind of in-between. There we rejoin with the souls of the ferrets we loved in this world, and with them as our guides we cross the Rainbow Bridge into the next life.”
“Humans too?” Stefi asked.
Cédes seemed surprised by such a question. “Why not?” she said as if it were obvious that they did.
“The Church tells us that the true believers enter some afterlife of light alongside Kardin, while everyone else, Furosans included, end up in some sort of eternal damnation.” She shook her head. “I think I prefer your version, though. It’s much more inclusive. And pleasant.”
“I think I prefer it too,” Cédes said. “After all, we are all essentially the same, are we not? Beings of light and love connected to the world.”
“And where do you believe Feregana came from?” Stefi asked.
“Even we who carry some Furosa have no knowledge of the origins of the world. We may have creation myths, of Feregana being created by the other heavenly bodies of the sun and the moons, yellow Ramila and watery blue Larnia. But they are just that: stories we tell to sate the curiosity of children.”
Rhaka interrupted her with a growl. “They may be nothing more than stories to you, yet they are the only truth we know of our world. I would ask that you not so disrespectfully dismiss them, Furosan.”
“Then perhaps you might enlighten us and my ignorance of history?” she said with a light smirk.
“From the eternal waters of nothingness emerged Jarahk, the father-sun, who fathered the Three Sisters: Rishka, the elder-moon, Larnia, the younger-moon, and Feregana, the youngest of the three. We Otsukuné were born of Jarahk and Larnia, and our very name means ‘moon-children’.”
Cédes interrupted right back, returning the favor. “But why did Larnia give birth to the Otsukuné with her father? That does not sound very right to me.”
“It does not matter whether you think it’s right, Furosan,” Rhaka said. “As I was saying, Feregana bore the ferrets from her Furosa and the Furosans came from this new distribution.”
Cédes turned her blind eyes in Rhaka’s direction. “At least we can agree on one thing,” she said almost bitterly.
Suddenly everyone stopped and Cédes and Rhaka glared at each other.
Before they could say anything more, Stefi leapt between them and held out her arms like a barrier. “Geez, all I wanted was to hear a story.” She sighed. “Why are we arguing over a silly thing that we can’t even prove? It doesn’t matter if you two have different theories. I believe the world hatched from a giant ferret egg. What matters is that we all acknowledge each other’s beliefs and respect them, not force them down other peoples’ throats like humans love to do. If it’s not hurting anyone, then who really cares?”
“Do you really believe the world hatched from a giant ferret egg? Where is the ferret who laid it now?” Cédes asked with utmost sincerity. “And the ferret that laid its egg?”
“Cédes, Cédes, Cédes” Stefi said as she shook her head in disbelief. “I was being sarcastic.”
“What does it mean to be sarcastic?”
She thought it over for a minute. “Well, it’s basically when I say something is true when I actually mean the opposite. You can tell by the tone of my voice when I say it.”
“Oh.” Cédes’s mouth hung open. “I was taught to speak only the truth. Even the smallest lie can hurt like the largest knife.”
“Now that you’re one of us you can say what you like! I’m going to teach you how to have fun and not be so serious.”
“You mean praying and meditating?” Stefi couldn’t quite tell if this was her first attempt at sarcasm.
“No, not that, silly. Didn’t you ever play, run, leap, dance, wrestle with your friends?”
“Not really,” she said. “My only real friends were the scripts, Lidae, the fellow temple goers. Although I have played with Ifaut and some of the younger children before.”
“Well,” Stefi said, “it’s time you learned to play like a real Furosan! Why don’t you start by taking off those robes? They look uncomfortable.”
“Are you sure? I might not be allowed.”
“Who’s the one that started this Fieretka thing?” Stefi asked, almost demanding.
“You.”
“And now that you’re away from home, who do you listen to?”
“Since Miss Ifaut is first in line to the Mafouras kingdom, I must obey her for now.”
Everyone turned to Ifaut. Sansonis laughed. “Ifaut’s sweet enough and all, but she’s not exactly leadership material.”
“He is right,” Ifaut said with an unaccustomed seriousness, cut deep by Sansonis’s remark. “I know that I have much to learn before I’m ready to take over from my parents.” She sighed. “I vote that we make Stefi our leader. Then someone else can boss Cédes around.”
“I second Ifaut,” Sansonis said.
“As do I,” Rhaka added.
“Miss Ifaut, please forgive me for what could be mistaken as treason. I also believe that Stefi would make a good leader.”
You know you’re the only one we’d listen to, anyway, Gemmie said from Ifaut’s shoulder.
Ifaut smiled and nodded her approval in Stefi’s direction.
“Now that I’m leader of this little group, my first order is for you, Cédes, to have fun.” Stefi laughed.
“O-Okay,” Cédes stammered, “I trust you with my life. Surely I can trust you with this.”
Cédes slipped off her robes as if she didn’t want to hurt them and carefully folded them. Beneath she wore a light shirt and a skirt over shorts much like any other Furosan would. Her pale skin seemed to shine in the late sunlight, and for the first time in ages the wind of the open world brushed against her. Several golden bangles hung around her wrists, and a long silver chain about her neck.
“Is…Is the world always this marvelous?” she asked and turned slowly around with outstretched arms, jewelry jingling like a heavenly voice. “Such a wonderful feeling. I feel so free and alive! I only wish I could see it…”
“You can,” Stefi said. “Take my hand.”
Cédes searched with her delicate hand and slipped it into Stefi’s when she found it.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Stefi said. “The sun is shining, the trees are a brilliant green, and the stream is flowing and eddying in little swirls. There are little insects hovering above the surface, like they’re admiring their reflections. Do you remember all these sights?”
“Yes,” Cédes said and sniffed. Tears welled in her eyes. “I do. When I was a child I used to lie by the stream and watch the little silver fish dancing their quiet dance beneath the water and the birds soaring across the sky upon their wings, and wished I could join both of them in their little worlds. However, I had to spend most of my time in the temple serving the people. It was my destiny. And now that I’m blind I’ll never see their wondrous forms again, at least not in the seeing sense of the rest of you. But I have my dreams, and my memories. And you, dear heart.” She let go of Stefi’s hand and wrapped her arms around her. “Thank you for showing me the world through my eyes again,” she said so quietly only Stefi could hear it.
Some time afterwards, once darkness was nearly upon them, they stopped for the night, exhausted after having walked all day with little rest and no naps.
“What about monsters?” Ifaut asked timidly as the light from the campfire slowly waned later in the night.
“Not in these parts, young Furosan,” Rhaka said. “Humans have not yet penetrated this far into the forest.”
Stefi only rolled her eyes.
After a rather messy and undercooked lunch (cooking was never her strong point), Pheia continued ever westwards, spurred on by new-found energy and a full stomach. As she walked with only the whistling of the wind for company, she began to sing. At first she found herself only humming, but then the words came. Words, she thought, from long ago. A song from her childhood. A song that she couldn’t even understand. Yet it seemed to carry emotional meaning rather than a specific message.
“Laure Musrem, Daga Te’a.”
The more she sang, the more she felt long-forgotten memories stir. But who had taught her those words, that tune? Memories shrouded in fog seemed to flit through her consciousness, memories whose true meaning could only be guessed at, memories that had been displaced by the horrors of killing to survive and washed away by bloodshed.
“Te’n Laema, Feamat Mus.”
Through the veil over her memory she thought she could see someone, an indistinct shape darting in and out of the shadows. She was so focused on her own memories that she barely noticed a real fog rolling across the landscape from hidden waterways that reduced visibility to a few steps ahead.
“Soma Sern
e, Ue Sae Sem’la.”
Even as she felt dew settle in her hair in tiny beads she kept singing and thinking, pushing through two fogs. Which was the thickest? She couldn’t tell. Her distant memories and the obscured path seemed to become one, reality melding into fantasy. Perhaps that was why she didn’t register the vaguely human form lingering just inside the field of her vision.
“Peper Ter-Ram Tela.”
The figure in her head eased closer, mimicking the one beyond the fog of reality. A female form, a girl nearly half her age. But just as the face was about to pierce the mists of her mind, everything vanished. She stopped singing.
“Ah!” she screamed in frustration. “Who are you?” Her voice echoed back in reply. Then there was another answer.
“Over here!” she heard a voice shout and then the noise of piercing air as something struck the ground at her feet. A crossbow bolt.
She broke into a run, the fear of humans flooding her body with adrenaline, and tore through the fog. Up rises, jumping creeks, crushing dry grasses, running wherever she couldn’t hear the growing number of voices. Behind she heard the click of a trigger and instantly threw herself into a roll. The bolt grazed her leg but she was quickly on her feet again, mindful of the creeping warmth of blood and the burning in her lungs.
Another figure loomed before her, its eyes wide with surprise, a strange weapon leveled. Had she been any slower, she knew she would have died then and there. But she knew a bow and arrow weren’t just useful at range. Without slowing she pulled an arrow from the quiver at her hip and thrust it into the man’s leg like a knife, burying the head in the soft flesh until the shaft snapped. The man yelled in agony and anger, twisting on his crippled leg as he fell.
An ear-ringing boom erupted from the weapon he carried, the likes of which Pheia had never seen before. She couldn’t tell what hit first: the rolling crack that made her mind reel, or the terrible spike that tore through her like a flaming nail.
She stumbled, screaming, and clutched her right shoulder. Her stomach flipped when she felt a hole ripped through the flesh of her now useless arm, a hole spurting blood with each pump of her tired heart.
“What… why…” she stammered as she felt a new fog, this one between the real world and her memories, creep over her eyes.
As she stumbled over yet another rise, woozy from the loss of blood, she saw lights flickering in the distance; warm lights that reminded her of the home she had left behind only to die in some place she couldn’t even name.
“Laure Musrem, Daga Te’a,” she managed to choke out in ragged breaths.
Her legs folded beneath her and she collapsed face first on the ground. Defeated, she couldn’t even summon the strength to crawl.
“Te’n Laema, Feamat Mus,” she continued, hoping even in her last moments to find out who lingered in the mists of her past. Nothing.
“Soma Serne, Ue Sae Sem’la,” she sobbed. Her voice grew louder in desperation even as she heard heavy footfalls slowly approaching.
“Peper Ter-Ram Tela,” she finished. Then it came. Not a face, but a name. Sohei.
She smiled as the pain, and the world about her, faded. But the hidden face had a name. That at least comforted her.
Through her dying hearing, over the white noise of the fog that obscured her vision, she thought she heard a roar. And then blackness.