Another year passed. They made good progress on their vocabulary or their adaptation to a new life. For Elifer and Aljana, it was a time of many discoveries. They started to converse more often. From her, from his family he learned about his new home.
The Arkhis, the flying archipelago they lived in, traveled across Mundus, the world, rotating from East to West around it. It took about three years for these chains of floating islands to complete a full revolution.
In a year, six seasons succeeded one another, none quite similar to the ones he knew in the northern hemisphere of Earth. In fact, he now knew of no less than eighteen different seasons spanning over a three year cycle. The Skýlings cared much about wind and weather variations and used a rich lexical field to describe them.
The first year of a cycle started with Fenrith, five months long season of the northern winds, and ended with the short but terrifying Haglstormer, with its three weeks of roaring thunder and devastating hailstorms. The third and last year of a cycle would end however with the Farvekst, season of all celebrations and rejoicing. It signified growth, harvest, journey, and coincided with the Arkhis departure from the western coast of Amenak. The Skýlings were leaving behind the realms of men and their mild climate, after months of raiding, trading, fighting to fill their coffers and granaries in preparation of the new cycle ahead.
In any case, years were all divided into thirteen months of twenty eight days each, and a day lasted surprisingly … well … a day long. For Elifer, it started to get more complicated to compare with Earth at this point. Skýlings folks did not really measure time the way he used to.
It was on a day of radiant sun that Sara, their older sister, explained it to Elifer. They walked by the town square, just a block away from home, where in its center stood an impressive sundial. Carved in a circular stone, were inscriptions and numbers that a gnomon would cover one by one in its shadow, as the sun moved in the sky.
“Look little Fer, this is the sundial I told you about," Sara pointed at the figures and started to explain. “There are twelve hours in every day. When the shadow reaches a new symbol, an hour has passed.”
First issue: Daytime lengths may not be the same depending on the sun declination ! Hell, back on Earth, it could vary from zero to twenty-four hours on the poles ! Obviously, a five year old would not know about such matters; matters that the people of this world might not even know about themselves...
“What if the sun is hidden ? Or at night ?” Asked Elifer.
“Clever boy !” She complimented him. “Then of course, you use the water clock.” She gestured towards two water tanks nearby. Water flowed from the top one into the bottom one, in a seemingly continuous flow. The bottom tank had two sets of inscriptions, instructions used to convert the water clock time into sun time depending on the month of the year. As the water level rose, one would count the marks remaining above water, and convert that number in daytime hours…
Second issue: The water clock was neither precise nor portable at all !
“What time is it now?”
“It’s six hours on the clock," answered Sara.
Elifer’s eyes sparkled for an instant. His face split into a large grin as he understood the implications. “Lunchtime !” he exclaimed in haste.
“When is it not time to eat for you ?” Sara rolled her eyes.
“When it’s time to sleep.” He replied in a cheeky tone.
The twelve years old girl stared at her brother. He ate so much that he measured a good half a head more than a five year old should. She had caught him, and his other badly behaved twin, stealing food a few times. Funny things always seemed to happen around them.
“How about that Elifer, since I am leaving home tomorrow, I am treating you to pastries !”
“Soufflé ?” enquired the greedy boy, eyes shining in anticipation.
“Yes, berries soufflé, your favorite,” she said.
“Deal !”
Sitting on a bench by the town square, biting and swallowing large mouthfuls of a delicious baked batter sprinkled with berries and covered in poppy seeds, the two ate merrily, until not a single crumb remained.
Sara had taught Elifer many stories and showed him the ways of the Skýlings. Eleven year old kids in this realm showed more maturity than some young adults he used to call friends. Yes, their knowledge of the world was limited, but the harsh conditions of life made them responsible beings early on. In many ways, he was fascinated by the girl. Quick-witted and kind, she reminded him of his real sister, Pearl, eight years his junior on Earth. Except, their roles were reversed. He had been the one storytelling back then.
“Sara, can you bring me with you tomorrow ?” Elifer requested with a serious look.
“What would yeh even do there ?” She smiled. “You’re a big boy. I know you’ll miss me but I will visit you often !”
“I want see magic school.” He stared intently at her thin almond gray eyes.
“Apprentices can not get visitors, you know. Once I'm a mage, you will be able to come by anytime you want.” said Sara in hope to comfort her brother.
“When will it be ?” he asked, interested.
“Oh — well, it takes at least six years of training and learning to become a real mage.” She sighed and muttered, “If I can do it…”
Elifer nodded. He could see her concern and the pressure she put onto herself. In an attempt to cheer her up, he searched his memory for any meaningful but simple inspirational quote that he could think of. Or at least that could, maybe, potentially, come out of the mouth of a youngling. He rose to his feet, faced her, and said, “yes you can !”
It did not seem to have any impact… He tried another one. “Just do it !” he said in a snap that sounded almost like an order this time.
“Oh I am going to miss you little Fer !” Sara laughed at how passionate he was.
As they headed back home, Elifer kept pestering her with questions on magic. Questions that for most, she could not answer. How does magic work, who can become a mage, what are the risks and so on…
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “That’s why I am going there; to learn !”
But seeing how curious he was on the subject, she tried to explain a few things she had grasped.
“When you’re older, around nine or ten, you will be tested by a mage. If you pass, you become an initiate. Initiates don’t do much. For two years, a mage visits sometimes and checks how you develop.”
“What test ?” he asked.
“The mage examines your body — here” she put a finger on his lower abdomen, on his right side. “He checks if you can absorb the magic of the world. You can, or you can’t. It’s this simple.”
He would have to be satisfied with this much for the moment…
“Right — if you want to know more, you should ask grandma Eilwine. Or granduncle Jerd. Do you remember them ? Old uncle Jerd is a scholar ! He is a teacher in the Magic school. He sensed that I could become a mage when I was around six. But they said it was not common and too faint or early to really be sure back then”. She digressed, recalling how exciting it had been to see her parents so pleased and expectant...
“But grandma, she was a great battle mage. Before she injured herself....” She paused, as a wide, prideful smile emerged on her face. “Dad says she was the coolest in the Arkhis”.
‘I think I see where she gets all that pressure from now.’ Thought Elifer as he observed Sara. Head tilted back, chest puffed out, hair down, she looked ready to face whatever would come on her path to become a mage.
***
Aljana held a book in her hands, ‘A History of the Sky’. She had sneaked once more into the parents room. She could have probably asked the dad for the book directly, but what for ? Of course, no one knew the five year old could read. Yet for the last two months she had been working on it. Whenever someone read a story to her, she would analyze the sounds, the letters, and remember the words. She had broken the code. With an alphabet and a language so close to her own, she was able to decipher enough words to understand the general meaning of a sentence.
She had picked a random page near the end of the book. The segment she was reading told of a victorious raid taking place on Hyverian empire lands.
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‘There is a large river, they call it the Cure, that splits the fertile and open plains of the region. It is in the rich country of Hyvara, which has heavily equipped legions of men and women. Hyver is divided into five provinces, and Hyvara lies at its center. It is the heart of this empire of humans. Here in Hyvara, the people are cautious, if not just cowards. They stay far from wars and conflicts in the safety of their walled cities, while the truly brave ones are gone to defend against their neighbours. It is known however that they have more advanced and dangerous weapons. Their wizards are powerful but concentrated in a few places only. Their main armies fight on the borders which lie to the west, or with their fleet, in their southern coasts, but they leave armed garrisons to protect their wealthy cities. The general that defends this land is the son of Marcus Lurio whom once defeated high chief Svart the Black. He has four thousand men camped along the Cure. They are expecting us.’
Aljana put down the book, catching her breath. She had finally found a piece of information she could relate to. Marcus Lurio had died in her time. She knew his son very well, general Titus Lurio. She had served under his orders before she became a Chosen and general herself. She had even fought against the Skýlings around that time. They were skirmishes only, but she had precise memories of them.
‘The wind raiders decide to make a grand sacrifice for the gods before taking flight. There are not many accompanying warchief Grimar. They have five drake riders and 3 wind gliders. Four drakkars carrying as few as 200 raiders to keep room for the treasures and trophies they will earn. They fly with the rising eastern sun, hidden in its blinding light. The scouts have spotted a strong detachment of Hyverians on its way to reinforce the city of Autoen. Grimar divides his forces in two, to lure away the detachment from the forest that protects it with a small force. They take the bait. As the Hyverians advance through the open fields, encumbered with the equipment they carry, the rest of the force conveys a full strike. Two drakkars have landed, and the warriors, lightly equipped, charge while the wind mages sweep the plain and the drakes throw turmoil into Hyverian ranks. A great part of them is crushed in a matter of minutes. By noon, three hundred enemy soldiers either lay dead in the dirt or hide for their lives back in the forest they came from. The gods are pleased with Grimar, who on the third day of year -107CE, sacks a walled city of Autoen deprived of a large part of its garrison and brings home a great treasure.’
‘Three hundred Hyverians killed ? What a bunch of lies. There were only a hundred’. Aljana remembered this episode. Every few years it was the same refrain. No matter what they did to anticipate it, the raiders had the advantage of the speed and dominion in the sky, allowing them to strike weak points before fleeing and regaining their floating rocks loaded with spoils of war. At least she now knew that year -107CE corresponded to year 1303 of the Hyverian calendar.
Hands shaking, she closed the book. It was the second volume. She could not see a third one anywhere, but another history treatise caught her attention instead, gathering dust and lying at the bottom of a pile of old books. She gasped at the view of its title, ‘Empires - Rise and Fall’. Flipping quickly through its pages, she soon found mentions of the year -107CE only halfway through the book. Her heart sank and a dark look loomed over her face. Her hands shaking a bit more at every new page they turned, she contemplated, devastated, the tragic history of her people. The hegemonic Hyverian empire that once ruled a third of the world known to humans had collapsed and disappeared over the course of just a century.
Her whole world, foes or friends alike, had crumbled. None of the three empires, be it Hyver or its enemies, Oru and Westwald, had survived the one thousand and one hundred years that now separated her from that past. Having been born at the beginning of the year 1000 of the common era, she now understood that she had come back a milennia too late.
The news came as a true shock for her. She felt hit by a horse galloping at full speed. Except, that horse carried on its back the weight of a thousand years of history. Despair slowly wiped every bit of resolve she had gathered these last five years. There was no hope left. No hope that one day, she would reunite with her family. Frozen, alone, in the middle of an empty room, she held onto the heavy book as centuries old tears rolled down her cheeks to fall on its leathery cover.
Girda stumbled upon her crying daughter around that moment. She came to her, asking what had happened, trying to comfort her, checking for injuries, but the girl seemed completely absent, inconsolable, devastated. “Silia”, “Leonim”, she was muttering gibberish words that sounded like foreign names.
“Oh Jana — My sweetheart…” Girda held her tight. “I will teach you how to read the books, okay ?” She whispered, thinking she had understood what bothered the young girl. Kids would sometimes cry for the most absurd reasons after all. But as wrong as she was, her daughter’s distress was very real…
At that moment, had Girda known that her daughter was a thirty two plus five year old lady; that she once held enough power in one hand to decide the fate of a province; she would not have given it a single skìtak. She took Aljana’s face into her warm hands, drying her wet cheeks, and staring deep into her reddened eyes.
“It’s ok now honey. It’s ok.” The girl had stopped sobbing. She still trembled like a leaf. Girda took the book away from her, and she buried the small head in her chest. Aljana had not felt this weak and vulnerable in decades. She ended up bedridden for days, feverish and struggling to eat.
***
With Sara gone to a new horizon, the twins now shared her bedroom. Before Aljana had grown distant and sickly, they had indulged in long conversations, in the secrecy of their room. They had begun discussing what befell on them, the whole reincarnation thing, or whatever it was called. They had exchanged stories of the past, often lacking the vocabulary to go into details. Besides the obvious language barrier, the cultural one added an extra layer of complexity. How could they evocate concepts or technologies that did not even exist in the other’s world ?
Still, Elifer learned that his sister came from an empire called Hyver. It ruled the third of a continent on Mundus, the world they now lived in. He also knew that some weird magic she could not explain, or at least not in simple terms, had brought them in this situation.
On his side, he had tried to talk about his home, Earth, where magic was just a word used to qualify the inexplicable, where true magic, however, was being able to master the elements and rules of the universe so well that you could destroy your own planet. It all felt so distant now.
The fateful encounter that led them to this strange situation was probably the only thing they shared in common. Aljana, almost thirty three years old at that time, had lived the life of a noble lady and walked the path of a military commander, just like Adrig.
On the other hand, Elifer had never graduated from being a young adult. At the age of twenty three years old, he had hardly started discovering the words independent, accountable or responsible. Paying rent, working part time, learning to fail and to get up, letting your childhood dreams go, these were new concepts for him.
When Aljana had been leading armies to defend the borders of her empire, he had been guiding a legion of intoxicated students to an ‘orientation’ weekend at the beach. When she had been fighting in the mud, shedding the blood of her enemies, he had been playing video games, card games and drinking games, hands covered in pizza sauce. When she had been marrying, giving birth, and strengthening her family influence, he had just started to leave the family nest, discovering the joys of chasing after girls and of watching dating shows on desperately hot islands…
The tale of his achievements paling in comparison with hers, clueless about the ways and dangers of this world, stranger to the mysterious forces that drove this different place, he kept pestering her with questions, hung to her every word, hoping to prepare as best as he could for a situation that still felt so unreal…
“Alji, are you asleep ?”
A thin thread of pale blue, silverish light, had pierced through the wooden shutters of the bedroom, splitting the room in two, and plunging it in an eerie atmosphere. Diwès had turned its bright aquamarine gaze on the dark night sky of Mundus. In this dim-lit chamber, Elifer could barely catch a glimpse of Aljana’s figure under the furs that covered her bed. She had curled up on herself, in body and in mind…
“Alji, what’s happening ? You sick ?“
Receiving only a muffled grunt for answer, he chose not to press any further.
“Good night… Sister. ”
He rolled on his left, achieving a somewhat comfortable position on his wool stuffed mattress, and tried to shut the flow of thoughts that kept harassing him. After more than five years stuck in this place, he knew that for every answer he received, two more questions would arise. If he could not get Aljana’s insights, he might as well just fall asleep.
“How do you do it ?” The young girl’s voice broke the silence.
“Do what ?”
“How do you keep smiling, Elifer ? You have lost everything…Everyone you knew.”
He sighed, not sure how to respond himself .
“I have. I am like puppy dog. You take from family, and you give new family. It’s sad start but happy life still.” The boy turned his head right, glancing towards his sister. She was facing him now, eyes welled up with tears that she held back, the same way she refused to let go of her past. “And you, why you cry now ? You are strong person. Maybe you find your family back.”
“No Elifer. I am more than a millennium old. They are all long gone. My home is ruined.” She sobbed. “They lived without me. My daughter grew up without me.”
“How you know ?”
“Books. I read”.
“You know read ?” Surprised, he could not help asking. He paused, then added, “I am sorry”. What else could he say ? Here they were, adults crying with children's words, or children crying over adults’ memories…
Teardrops had covered her pillow in the end. Whoever was crying now, be it the woman she once had been, or the little girl she had become, Aljana could not help the wet and salty droplets from sliding down her round cheeks.
“It’s my fault — I should never have trusted Hastad. I let them down. I left them...”
“Guilt, no good Alji. Burns you inside. We let go past. We go forward.” Elifer tried to drive her thoughts in another direction. “Who is Hastad ?”
“Hastad, the ‘Caretaker’.” She whispered, pronouncing his title in Hyverian, a language that, of course, he did not know. “He is god of Hyver.”
“You talk to god ?” He gasped, unsure what to think of that.
She replied with a simple nod.
“How you do it ?” Inquired the dubious boy.
“I was a ‘Chosen’.” She had used the Hyverian word for it. “Anyway, can’t do anymore”.
“What is a ‘Chosen’, what they do ?”
She sighed. She lacked a lot of the words required to explain the role of a Chosen. And even if she had them, what would she tell him ? The official version ? The one they told common folks ? Or the true version… that truth she only uncovered after years of fighting and serving as one?
“A ‘Chosen’ helps gods talk to people, and protect people”.
“Oh — it’s like priest ?” He frowned as he tried to understand.
“No, not priest. Warrior and priest maybe” She answered, uncertain that he would get the right image.
“I see ! A champion ? It’s first time I meet someone who talks to gods !” he exclaimed, before laughing it off. “Hmm, so what Hastad god do to you ?”
“Lie to me. Use me. Break promise. Send us here. Need more ?”
“Alright, I get it”. He would need to dig up more on this… later. Elifer saw that her dejected look had returned. “Need hug ?”
Aljana scoffed in disbelief. He had seen her hugging their mom once and would not let go of it anymore. Aljana froze. She noticed she had just called Girda ‘mom’. Her real mother, Eledora of Costillac must have been rolling over in her grave !
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