INTO THE NIGHT THE Scintillant fled, uncaring and unseeing of where she flew. As she skimmed across a long, narrow pond, spouts of dark water leaped up seeking to crush her, to roll her beneath the surface. Naiads circled her in the deep sapphire blue, endlessly taunting, dragging her under again and again into their undertow with a tinkling of cruel laughter. In her fraught mental state, she might have welcomed the relief of unconsciousness, but since this Allory had no need to breathe air, their cruel intentions could not harm her. Less so the gleaming Elemental Naiads who found her next. They were wary of her power, however, exclaiming over the hot, liquescent magic that spun about her never-breathing Scintillant form beneath the water.
Reluctantly, they ejected the interloper from their realm.
Allory wept for the longest time amongst the reeds and along the riverbank. Her family. How could it all have gone so wrong? Why had she never been able to heal them? Call herself a healer? It must be her fault. Hansanori was right. She was the boneyard girl. Evil clung to her like the miasmic mists of that place, drawing other victims into its perpetual embrace. She tainted all she touched.
How could she live like this?
The pliable reeds dipped toward her.
“Don’t bow to me!” she screamed impotently. “I’m nothing. Nothing!”
For days, she had tantalised poor Hansanori into chasing her all over the Deepwoods when he should have been sitting at his dying Dadfae’s cocoon-side.
Allory crashed through a screen of willows. “I’m so selfish! All I wanted was his attention.”
Aye, for when she danced, what she craved most was for the eyes of others to follow her, to be thinking that she was beautiful, magical, adorable – anything but the worthless, oft-beaten little runt, the broken, cast-off thing her parents and siblings had convinced her she was.
Did she long for him to search for her again? To thrill to the notes of her verimost soul?
Screaming down a rolling hill covered in the softest, bluest grass she had ever known, Allory cried, “I’ll never dance again!”
Crashing into a nest of tall grass blades, she tried to bury her being against the sward, yet when an inhalation brought an awareness of loamy life and goodness, she wept, “Oh Middlesun, I cannot possibly go on. I can’t carry this burden. No more. It hurts too much. It hurts, oh, it hurts …”
A storm of grief consumed her soul for the longest time.
Gradually, it abated, leaving her feeling as hollowed out as a gourd. Almost, she wished for the soul-deep distress that had gone before. At least that was something. Now she was empty. Ashamed. Not knowing what to do with herself. Nor had the burden magically evaporated into the aether. Something of its terrible weight felt different, yet she could not have said what.
How could she face her companions again? Apologise for the umpteenth time for being such a weakling, for – huh? What was that?
A hoof trembled the ground nearby. Magic prickled upon her skin. Allory was not a teary wreck any longer – nor could she be, she realised – but she was a darkened, despairing cluster of motes, sapphire for the most part but struggling to hold together. The madness that clearly terrified Hansanori beyond any and all reason – that troubled her, too. Never mind not trusting her companions. Knowing her own irredeemable brokenness and fragility, how could she trust herself? How could she think back to the fragments of dreams which she had now begun to remember, in this new Elemental Scintillant form, as if a veil of darkness had been lifted from her mind and she saw all afresh, even the terrifying halls of her memory?
She feared to return there. Feared the darkness, the pain, the images of war and suffering and death …
Courage. Hauling herself together with a shuddering effort, the Scintillant Fae raised her perception above the level of the grass blades.
Struck breathless.
A magnificent Unicorn stallion pranced restlessly across the thick turf toward her. His pure white coat shone with a lustre that lit the forest around him for tens of feet. His horn was white crystal, a needle-sharp spear of unadulterated ariavanae. As her sparkles blinked in astonishment, he reared toward the skies and voiced a whinny that shook the Deepwoods to their core.
In resonant tones, he neighed, “Hail the Life-Weaver!”
She honoured him numbly. Now, at the nadir of her life, it was back to the titles? “Hail, great one.”
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“I am Fahi-Shahn Lightmane the Seventy-First, Great Stallion of the Unicorn Tribes of the Deepwoods. I neigh again, all hail the Life-Weaver!”
It was all she could do not to fall over backward as the mighty stallion bent his foreleg and made obeisance, touching the tip of his horn to the grass. A mighty ripple of enchantment sped from that touch, causing her to sway as if struck by a beneficent breeze.
Almost, Allory began to weep once more. Why? Why were they doing this to her?
He cried, “Rising unto service, I must endeavour to strengthen thee and to offer wisdom for the journey ahead, o Allory Fae, bearer of the verimost light that brightens every Unicorn’s soul. Will you receive my offering?”
Her sparkles dangled much like her jaw would have, given the chance.
She must. Somehow, she must move forward and this was one such step, hard as it was. Accept the past. Step toward a better future. Admit her incapacity, her faults, and accept help.
Allory quavered, “Humbly and gratefully, I receive.”
At once, the Unicorn cried, “Since time immemorial, the purposes of our paramount enemy, the creature called the Wraith, have turned against the Suylas Deepwoods.” A shrill whinny proclaimed his disdain for the entity. “The Deepwoods embody an ancient bond between Spheris and its own life-bringer, whom we call Jhayshommeria-Iquabir in our tongue, the Bringer of Light. Should this bond be sundered, the last protections of our Middlesun would be stripped away – indeed, perhaps she should already have fallen save that you, Allory, have become her principal bulwark and defender. Hear the wisdom of the great Herd of Unicorns. Be neither dismayed nor cast down. Arise and fight for our souls, o Life-Weaver, and the restless strength of Unicorns shall be your portion!”
“I am honoured.”
Prancing toward her, he added, “Touch my horn.”
Rising, she drifted toward that focal point of ariavanae. Allory hesitated, but the impetuous Unicorn whickered breathily before thrusting his horn right into the middle of her sparkles. Strength crashed into her soul, impossibly potent yet somehow not devastating. Suddenly she knew the proud curve of equine necks, the thunder of hoofbeats upon hard forest soils, the play of gleaming herds in midnight glades. Their profound understanding of the magic of the Suylas Deepwoods astounded her. That she could ever grasp the half of it …
He flicked his neck, tossing her high and far. “Onward!”
“Eep!”
Allory rocketed across the night sky on the impetus of his horn toss, leaving a trail of blazing sapphire, silver and azure sparks in her wake. They settled upon leaf and limb in a perfect marker of where she had flown, be it few leagues or many, she knew not.
The Elemental Fae plummeted into a secret grove deeply hidden amongst a dense growth of immense, hoary overarching tynamis oaks. Allory found herself drifting down into a thicket of slender silver birches, a sacred grove of the Elves, unless she mistook its ambience completely. Innumerable saffron Wisps danced amongst their softly gleaming trunks and lofty, long-limbed crowns. This was a grove unlike any she had ever imagined, a place that breathed enchantment.
Wonder upon wonder!
She watched the Wisps for a time, entranced by their dignified dance, by the way their outspread, mushroom-like filaments captured and radiated ariavanae with delicate facility, attuned to its subtlest nuances. Yet everything of their unearthly dancing struck her as melancholy, as if the weight of memories in this place was almost too great to bear.
Softly, the Wisps surrounded her. A breathy voice tickled her mind:
The Wisp nation welcomes the weary Traveller who bears an inconceivable burden to this place, a haven where a solace of remembrance may be found. I am Inazasriume, the many who are one.
“I am Allory Fae,” she said, smiling at the gentle warmth of this welcome. Perhaps she was the one who was many, both many sparkles and many lives? A stranger truth unfolding before her budding understanding, she had never imagined. “I am delighted to meet you, o Inazasriume.”
I speak with the voices of myriad, joined to one true purpose. Learn from the Wisps, o Allory. Scraps of aether we may be, nearer to nothingness than any other Fae creature, yet in our unity lies great strength and wisdom, and it is to the core of our wisdom we delve to offer you counsel. Will you allow it to lilt in your inmost heart?
Unreservedly, she thought back.
Liar. Reservations she had, but she must deny them all in order to receive their gift.
Wisps drifted through her Scintillant being, first by ones and twos, and then in a great tingling rush. For a brief, breathless moment, she sensed her own unity with the Wisp nation, who treasured things of yore, often forgotten, who lived in the past and present simultaneously.
Words came to her. Wisps indwell the past, endlessly coursing toward the present. Know that the past holds unimaginable power, o bearer of souls, yet only that power which you allow it. Though it may be the hardest thing in all the times that have been or ever will be, the choice in the end ultimately lies in you. Memory moves souls. Forgiveness releases them. Oftentimes, one chooses on account of memories to remain bound, but she who would serve perfectly, must do so out of perfect freedom.
Allory pulsed softly, This is a hard lesson, o Wisps.
It is indeed, yet because of the past, we are never alone. All who were and ever could be exist in perpetuity in the place you call the boneyard. The answers you seek lie within. Into your pure scintillance, their spirits are immutably woven. This is what it means to be the Life-Weaver.
A terrifying lesson. The onus was on her. She had never asked for anything in her life yet here it was. She could protest that no Faeling could have known what she accepted that day charge of the ariayaenvul had been passed to her … but for all she knew, she herself had made the artifact in a past long before that day! Sigh. Did she believe in a working of fate that called her the Scinntarinae? Did she want to throw ‘why me’ questions about the Deepwoods until she was blue in the face?
The question was, what would this shrinking jungle blossom do with this power which had been granted to her?
Shrinking? she castigated herself at once. The first thing I’ll do, is not shrink! Or shirk! I will – eep!
Apparently, her travels were not done yet.