ALLORY WEPT MORE TEARS than any creature could conceivably produce given her eleven and a quarter inch frame. Unbearably transported by the ambience on the other side of the wall she pressed against, the grieving Scintillant realised that her tears were for her family and for her lost ones, as much as for the loss she sensed here.

Then, she picked herself up, dried her eyes upon her serami and glanced about. Grief had stolen the greater part of her day. A soft yellow light leached through the tall slit windows, casting barred shadows across the room. Yaarah had not yet returned.

True scintillance must require a brand of joy this Scintillant would never know in her soul again. What else could it derive from?

Thump. Allory blinked. There it came again, that weird inner discombobulation!

No headache.

Thump-thump! Had she not been sitting down, she might have fallen over. The sensation was even more definite this time, somehow striking in a way that shivered her sap-essence or being at a level that did not immediately seem to be physical – not at first.

Were she a magical drumskin, this phenomenon was an invisible hammer.

Disturbing.

The strangest thing, she realised immediately after, was that no-one in an entire city – no-one she could hear, anyways – reacted at all. The sounds without did not change. No alarms, no bells or gongs, no screams. Could it be that she was the only one who sensed this?

Talons of ice stroked Allory’s mind, making her yelp and flinch, but perhaps it was only her imagination because the sensation winked out instantly, leaving her with a peculiar non-headache. A reaction. Nothing of the brutal pain she had experienced before, but rather an echo, a halo … she tasted the realisation without much understanding. Something had been meant to occur but had not. Could it be that she sensed the intention of this phenomenon? What could it have to do with Middlesun – was it powerful enough to create the ‘wobble’ effect Yaarah had been so concerned about before? Could the Scintillant Fae somehow be involved or be impacted as well, their powers being misused to further some evil end?

Allory waited endlessly, but nothing bad happened.

Music?

Ethereal strains of music drifted around the edges of her awareness, tinkling notes like the skilled plucking of a Fae harp … she eyed her left foot suspiciously as it twitched, possessed of an inexplicable urge to dance. No. How could she? Yet the tingling sensation only spread up her calf muscle, similar to what she had experienced at the Sentinel Tree in the overwhelming presence of ariavanae. Her thighs tingled until she took an involuntary dance-step. What was happening to her? Fingers darting to the ariayaenvul soul locket, Allory explored it with all her Faerie senses alert.

Something inside stirred …

It snatched her away into a waking vision.

* * * *

I am the boneyard girl.

All at once, she stood in that familiar place, experiencing a vision she had seen in her migraine dreams since her earliest childhood. Words and phrases she knew, poetry she had scribed and hidden inside the soul locket, tumbled about her as if seeking dwelling places of meaning that could not possibly encapsulate the desolation she beheld here. Weeping over splintered love. Wind keening. A billion shattered bones cluttered this shallow, open obsidian bowl, lying between peaks that jutted diagonally away from the central bowl as if a stone crown had been torn apart by an unknowable force.

They arrived white but became blotched and darkened with age.

She knew this intimately. She had watched the process her whole life, yet here she remained a perpetual child, a Faeling traumatized by this unending horror.

A child’s senses shaped her response.

This was the place of her ultimate fears, the place they lurked. She had no words to describe their nature. Where the chill wind passed, their shadowy presence stirred up thick, viscous clouds of obsidian bone dust sprinkled with the slightest glints of white and grey, which gave off a refulgence Allory had always associated with a spark of undying life; not of death, but undeath. Here, the shadows fed. The slight pulsation of their smoky beings interacted with the bone dust in ways that could only represent an act of parasitic feeding. No question entered her mind.

As familiar as this scene appeared to her, it was also ghastly.

As the shadows passed over, the mismatched bones stirred and their dust screamed in voices that lacerated her soul. These beings feasted upon the undying, or perhaps those unable to die. Perverse, gluttonous and eternal, she had never known this activity to change – except now, as an incongruous, haunting melody slipped in to alter the panorama of pain, perhaps for the first time since eternity itself.

The wuthering wind trembled.

Wondrous melody wove amongst the bones, like glistening dew-dappled threads displaying that peculiar juxtaposition of spider silk, appearing fragile at first glance yet in truth, unknowably strong.

This was new.

The bones settled in awe of its delicate beauty.

Those seven shadows pooled, darkening with palpable wrath, diabolical in their shared intention. No, the novel music was not welcome here. It slipped away, teasing and impudent, plinking light-footed over the mounded piles of bones, fresh and ancient, stealing about the bowl’s sharp rim before vanishing somewhere amongst the ruined, jutting stone plinths across from the watcher.

The Faeling sucked her thumb soberly. Tears tracked unheeded down her cheeks.

At some level, new knowledge percolated into her awareness. This place was real. She had no concept of where it might be, but Allory assumed it must lie somewhere beyond the bounds of Spheris, perhaps beyond her reality altogether.

Had it not sprung from her imagination after all?

Were they linked, secured, ineradicably bound together, this Scintillant Faerie and the charnel-house horror of the boneyard?

Yet an older Allory observed the responses of her younger self with eyes that somehow shifted through time, the older counselling and comforting the younger, the younger whirling as if she sensed the older presence alongside.

No, it was only the music, enfolding her tortured soul with a new, thrilling twist to the tale:

I am the boneyard girl. My music is my own. I dance …

With that, the seven shadows came tearing across the boneyard with preternatural speed, raising a soundless wave of bone dust in their wake – but all they found was a scintillant chuckle expiring upon a chill wind.

Transported by that virtuoso melody, she was already long gone.

* * * *

Allory emerged from her waking vision between blinks. A blink within a blink. So fast did her reality change, she found herself ducking from ravening shadows no longer in existence, curling up, chilled to the bone.

Nothingness.

Just a cold stone room in a Human city and a fresh memory that must be consigned to the locket.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Touching the ariayaenvul, Allory summoned the spark of her creative essence and formulated words, familiar in cadence, format and origin, with the ease of one more than accustomed to the task. She must have done this … oh, ten thousand times or more. Easy as breathing.

Deftly plucking

His fingers caress my soul

Harp melody unbinds

My emancipating

Dance

Easy, until her heart wholly skipped a beat and then sprang into life again as if stung by a wasp.

Suggids! She pulled her tingling antennae in perplexity. Quite the ghastliest chill pooled in the pit of her stomach. What under Middlesun itself had she just consigned to the soul locket?

His fingers caress my soul, emancipating dance?

Good, but a terrifying sort of good, if that made any sense at all.

How could she dance? Be set free? Not a jot of music remained within her, no trace of joy, not the slightest inkling of what used to enrapture her soul. The one thing she had imagined she could do well, despite a congenital frailty that limited her outbursts to mere seconds at a time. She had been able to sing just a little. Dance? No. That day she lost her family had ripped the heart out of her.

Another impossible fragment.

Another demand she was in no way suited to meet.

Always, these visions had majored upon the boneyard. This scene was what she was accustomed to, not all this other nonsense that had invaded her mind recently, yet Allory was also aware that the tenor of this poem was as out of place as if she had discovered she had grown a third nostril overnight. Fizzing Fae-sap! Who – who in all Spheris – was this ‘he’?

Was he the composer of this unnerving melody … a master harpist?

Where could he have sprung from?

Outrage at this unforeseen, bewildering violation of her deepest secrets faded into puzzlement, then into a vitriolic spurt of self-loathing. She knew this Allory. Aye, she did. All she wanted was for someone strong to come save the poor, pathetic Faeling – right?

Can I go any lower than dreaming up an omnipotent mythical protector?

Why did she always need to be saved? Demoralising. Nothing new about this Allory, was there? Nothing new under Middlesun.

Her shoulders slumped. She had dared to believe she was becoming stronger?

Setting aside the conundrum of that music, she secured it inside the soul locket and focussed on what was real and important. The garden. That unendurable sadness. Suppressing a pang of Allory-typical trepidation, the girlfae hopped up to the windowsill once more and peeped out.

Time to focus outward. Take another step forward, no matter how tiny. Time to snap these contemptible chains of cowardice.

Her lips formed a soundless ‘O’ of surprise. Puffs of Pixie dust! The garden was transformed. Someone had lit four large yellow brazier lanterns in the corners of the square courtyard, hanging from inward-sloping tiled red roofs that protected a covered walkway around the four sides. The warm yellow light transformed the previously insipid cream walls into towering stone bulwarks sparkling with an inner sheen she had not detected before. Traces of the old bursting greenery still clung here and there, now withered unto death. Yet she counted no less than three Human couples each walking around the square arm-in-arm, one young, one of middle age and one elderly couple who kissed fondly as she watched, the hems of their azure full-length cloaks flirting in a sweet echo of their long white hair touching as they shared a joke or perhaps a fond memory together.

A courtyard for courting. How quaint.

What drew these couples here? Could they truly remain oblivious to the immedicable woe this place cradled in its bosom, the resonance of an ancient sorrow that was never meant to be?

Allory bit her lip.

Realisation made her judder so hard her gossamer wings buzzed briefly, pressing her away from a fall. Grief was her gift to share. She knew the essence of sorrow. This was wrong. The wrongness she sensed, this awareness of profound historical injustice, centred upon that small, isolated tree.

She knew it as certainly as Middlesun stood in Centresky.

Wobbling – oh no! Why go there? Why now?

Because I promised the Felidragon.

Well, she had only promised him she would keep a low profile. Allory clenched her fists. Was she or was she not a jungle creature? Dubious on the intelligence front, considering the nature of her new plan, but definitely jungle-craft sneaky.

An irresistible imperative drew her through the crack in the open window. Gasp! Pant. Dropping immediately onto the red tiled slope below, she scooted down to the gutter in a flash and ducked into a delightful bath of organic sludge left over from the last rain. Three, two, one … bushes! Allory wriggled into hiding, acutely aware of how the nearest Human youngster glanced in her direction. Light brown hair framed attractive green eyes. A quizzical smile touched the girl’s pink lips, painted with a crimson flare that reached from the upper lip to her chin. Face paint? How barbarous!

The Human said to her escort, “Did you see that?”

“One of those azin sparrows, methinks,” said he, clasping her elbow in a way that made Allory wish she had a handsome swain to clasp her arm with such zeal. “Fear not the wicked beasts of the night, my darling.”

I’m the wicked beast around here, I am, the Miniature Fae snickered inwardly. Eleven inches of pure terror.

Undoubtedly.

Chuckling at her impudence, the Fae girl warned herself to be even quieter and more cunning as she worked her way around the untended undergrowth toward the pond. Plenty of hiding spots for a creature of her diminutive stature, one whose height did not even measure up to one of these Humans’ knees. No-one noticed as she slipped lightly between the reeds, finding a concealed spot from which she could peer at the small, bent-over tree.

Well, the middle-aged couple were far too busy kissing one another to notice anything at all. Unlike the Pixies, the Human style did not appear to involve mauling one another’s ears. Squeezing a companion’s buttock in public, however, was no shame to these Human creatures. Ew. She goggled at the spectacle.

Stop that. Focus.

Allory narrowed her eyes. About halfway up the tree, where the trunk split into three, she spied a patch of deeper shadow, perhaps a cosy nook or hole where a dinky Faerie could curl up – if she was quick. If no-one was looking. Swivelling, she surveyed the area through the reeds. Human eyes were swift and curious. Maybe a distraction? Stooping to find a pebble beneath the shallow water, she flicked it against a window over to her left.

Clack!

Every eye jumped. In a blur of wings, Allory skimmed across the surface. Hug the tree! She swarmed up into the shadowed hole and caught her breath. No-one raised a peep. Now to hope she had not just made an enormous mistake.

Her fingers explored the bark delicately. I’m Allory, a friend. Friend to trees, aye. Best friends with sundry forest creepy-crawlies. Snuggling down, she added, Tell me all your burdens.

What was one even supposed to do with a dead tree? Act on instinct?

Listening could be a strangely difficult discipline. Her mind kept wandering to the murmuring voices engaged in their stately perambulations about the courtyard, to the shrill, forlorn cries of night birds flying somewhere above the Human city, to a faint clanging that reminded her of blades clashing. Perhaps footpads and rogues battled in the sordid back alleyways? As Allory drifted toward a deeper consciousness of the garden, a cut-off scream curled her antennae. It took several long minutes for her to resume breathing steadily. She pressed her left ear against a knob of bark and closed the other with her hand. There. Better. What secrets did this tree wish to convey?

After a long while of boring nothingness, a cramp developed behind her left shoulder. The Scintillant shifted her position, sighing heavily. Perhaps it was too old. She did not know what to listen for. Hmm. As she had done for her shoulder, she should shift her tactics. Instead of listening for what no ear could hear, Allory bade herself focus deeply on that knowledge of wrongness, upon her desire to make whole whatever injustice had been perpetrated here.

Without the slightest warning, pain rose like the tentacles from an unseen grave to grip her being in their mortal coils. For the longest moment, she could not draw breath, nor cry out, nor even twitch a muscle, before the agonising attack resolved into a sound: a strangely low, single note that resonated in her consciousness. It was not music such as she had heard before or even understood, except that the droning was like a million voices compressed into one, a distillation of her earlier awareness of something that should never have been, a crime, a tragedy. The note thrummed through the sap of her bones. It poured up into the base of her skull, setting her teeth on edge. It made her flight muscles spasm unbearably.

Was this the cost of empathy?

Fight it? No. Her instinctual response was to embrace the strange phenomenon and to bid it encounter her unendurable longing to redeem what was lost. The two fused and became one.

New music swelled within. Her soul ached to dance.

She could not.

Allory did not know how the change came about, only that it had something to do with her determination to heal this agonising brokenness. She was not special. If anything, she was the least able tool for the job, the bluntest dagger in the armoury – but she had the audacity to imagine that goodness must surely win the day, that the ariavana desired to join her cause and make this right. There must be a greater striving for goodness, in her worldview, for what would life’s purpose be otherwise?

That was the moment something changed. She knew not how or why, only that she invited it and it did.

Glory blossomed.

A deep, plangent song rang throughout the garden, a melody unlike anything she had ever known before. Each note was alien yet astonishing, a feast of richness lavish beyond understanding.

How no-one else responded to the sound, Allory could not fathom. The gorgeous music became her world. Awe-inspiring yet not devastating, a feast for a soul which could never be slaked. Nor did she grasp how long it had been before she returned to her senses wondering what under Middlesun had just walloped her between the antennae. An unfamiliar form of white migraine struck, blinding her sight and triggering a violent ringing like the pealing of bells in her ears.

Too much! Too enervated. Too afraid. Touching the tree one last time, she fled unheeding and unseeing back to the room, somehow entering the open window without splattering herself upon the wrong pane.

Casting herself upon the blanket, Allory surrendered at once to oblivion.