Somehow, without my active participation, Laclan and I developed a rhythm that might synonymise itself with friendship. Dinners were disgusting evidences of a bond that might have been created, where he’d push potatoes onto my plate and I’d push ham onto his; or he’d push carrots onto my plate and I’d push sprouts onto his. A lot of this was done wordlessly, or while he was in the midst of a conversation with the others, and we’d share our food to create an equilibrium we both better enjoyed. He seemed to know what I was thinking without me needing to demean myself by saying it: a certain scowl meant ‘good morning’, another ‘leave me alone’, a third ‘why have you given me so much soup?’. He would serve as my spokesperson, and he would often be correct, and even when he was wrong I found it never annoyed me.
There was a night when the stars were dull and colourless. He was hopping from foot to foot, burning with too much energy, telling me about an inside joke he had with some of the older boys, something about duelling and fighting and slaying French dragons, when he cut himself off to ask, “You’re off to meditate?”
I was, but I paused. Without turning to look back at him, I said, “You’re welcome to join, if you want.”
He didn’t have the patience for it. He would shuffle. He would shake out his hair. He would hang his head back and let out breathy sighs, like a panting dog. This was the first time I had extended an invitation, and the significance of me doing so wasn’t lost on him, but he clearly was not keen on boring himself for however long meditation would take. “We’re elves.” I reminded him. “We’re Nature’s closest children.”
He opened an eye to look at me. “That’s what my grandma always tells us. Nature’s closest children. She’d like you. You’re exactly what she wants an elf to be.”
The stars, dull and colourless, seemed to lack the inner fire that Laclan always had. Again, he forgot we were meditating and instead began his endless chatter, telling me about the philosophers he was always reading. “There’s this idea,” he said to me, “that we only ever do things through self-interest. This is by the philosopher Luxe de Camillon. He says that virtue itself doesn’t exist, that even virtuous actions are fuelled by self-interest, but that it doesn’t matter because ultimately it benefits the collective. What do you think about that, Avari? About self-interest being in the interest of the many?”
I didn’t respond, focusing on the wind, the trees, the dirt.
“Would…would you like to come home with me? In the summer?”
He didn’t repeat his question despite me not giving it an answer. I let my heart slow to a beat so tender, so mild, that to touch your hand to my chest might mistake me for dead. It was a familiar feeling. Being almost dead? It was a feeling as familiar as he was.
*
“Wolfgang.”
Something about his name in my mouth set off a firecracker of anger in him. He glared at me, then glared at Laclan when Laclan elbowed him. It took some moments before he could calm himself down, his red eyes painfully fading back to their usual silver, and through grit teeth he responded, “Avari.”
“You will take a walk with me after dinner.” I said to him. “By the pond where I meditate.”
I might as well have asked to marry him. Their reactions were overstated and ridiculous. Laclan was overjoyed. Gaspard was hypothesising about a ‘brilliant burgeoning bond’. Wolfgang was very surprised, shocked even, but the annoyance at the other two’s theatrics quickly took over his attention. I expected some hesitance before he agreed, some posturing, but there was none. Just a nod, and a “d’accord.”
We walked in tense silence until we reached the pond. Neither of us were willing to make small talk, because to show even a remote sign of interest in the other would be a defeat. My hair was long, having grown to half-way down my back. I had taken to either putting it in braids, or tying it up completely. Tonight, I allowed it to hang free, and the loose strands flowing in the breeze had caught Wolfgang’s attention, making him stare. I would have opened the conversation with the jibe of, “I didn’t ask you on this walk so you could gaze at me,” but I thought of Laclan and Gaspard’s constant accusations that it was I who was the preventor of a Wolfgang-Avari friendship, and so I bit my tongue. It wasn’t even a friendship I was interested in pursuing, and I still asked Nature every night for a harder heart, and yet…
“The favour you granted me,” I said to him. “I want a sixth of it.”
A topic we hadn’t spoken about since he’d given me his word all those months ago. It took him some moments to recalibrate himself with this conversation path, and then he waved me away. “What is ‘a sixth’ of a favour, you worm? What was the folly that led you to that measurement?”
“I want a sixth of the favour. You can’t say no.”
“I can say whatever I want.”
“You gave me your word.”
“You’re braindead.” He hissed. “You could have asked for that favour at any moment! With Ulyses! With me! And now you ask for a sixth? To do what – so I can brush your hair? So I can do your Latin homework?”
All Elven eyes were luminescent in the dark, a by-product of night-vision, but his eyes were eery. Gaspard’s blue eyes were lit up with inner blue light. Mine did the same with green. But Wolfgang’s silver eyes were lit up with that red anger that always seemed to be festering within him. It was as if he were glowing, as if a fire had been set ablaze somewhere between his chest and the crown of his head. I had always wondered, does it hurt? To be so carelessly angry, to be so constantly angry? In another one of my internal questions, I wondered if emotional pain, like this anger, could be interpreted the same way physical pain could. If I touched a wounded deer, I would immediately know they were in pain without even seeing the cut. If I touched an angry boy, would…?
He froze when I took his hand, when I hooked my arm over my cane so I could hold his hand in both of mine. I pressed my thumbs against his palm, traced against their lines, and found that yes: emotional and physical pain wore the same costume. That yes, his careless, constant anger was causing ceaseless, sizable hurt. But there was nothing I could fix. No wound I could close, no blood clot I could resolve, nothing. I knew there was still much about Healing that I didn’t know, knowledge that I couldn’t learn within the confines of a Military Academy, but I had never heard Ivra discussing emotional healing. I could soothe him and see if that worked, but before I could try, he was pulling his hand away from me and pushing me back, making me stumble, a stumble that then made me fall.
It was some awkward seconds as I struggled to get back up to my feet. He didn’t offer his help, not that I would have accepted it. “This favour,” he said, brushing past the whole incident entirely, refusing to acknowledge it beyond the deeper red light behind his eyes, “what is it?”
“When it’s dark, you will go to the stables, bring me a horse, and ride with me to the forest. I’ll complete the rest of the journey myself. But then, when I’m done, you will ride with me back.”
“What?”
I didn’t have the dexterity to sneak out a horse from the stables at night without potentially waking the entire compound, and I was unsure how much of my energy would be drained by horse-riding before I could complete whatever the main aspect of nature’s call into the forest would be, and so I needed, against my will, a ‘chaperone’. As a child, I could have completed this mission on foot, by running and walking, but I had lost that. Wolfgang’s favour would guarantee his participation; and Wolfgang’s distaste of me would hopefully guarantee minimal interest.
“How would I know when you’re done?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“By screaming?”
“I said, I will let you know.”
“And what are you going to do in the Forest?”
I didn’t give him an answer. He didn’t push for one. “A sixth of the favour, you said?” He looked out past the pond, to the forest itself. “When?”
“When everyone is asleep.”
“What, tonight?”
“Of course.”
We hit an impasse. He was visibly biting the inside of his cheek, still focused on the forest, refusing to ask further questions because he clearly didn’t want me to mistake his curiosity as interest, or to even mistake his curiosity as curiosity. When we were with Gaspard, which was most often, we all spoke in French for his sake. When it was just me and Laclan, or me and Wolfgang, they spoke to me in Elven, as if it was an automatic default for them to switch over. I could understand that Laclan, who had no French blood in him at all, who was from a household where the majority only spoke Elven, could speak it to the level he could. But Wolfgang? The Elven of the other French boys at the Academy was as rudimentary as Gaspard’s, but the only affectation in Wolfgang’s Elven was that it was heavily French-accented. He was perfectly fluent. How? Why? I didn’t want to ask because I cared about his linguistic history: I wanted to ask because for a French noble to speak Elven so fluently felt disrespectful to the Elven language itself.
I didn’t ask him. He didn’t ask me.
“Wait two days for the new week to start.” He told me eventually. “Sunday marks the beginning of la semaine d’échange. It’s always opera on the first day, and so we’ll all be crowded into the hall to listen to the opera singers. It’ll be easier to sneak out then, and you will have more time.”
La semaine d’échange. I would have to ask Laclan or Gaspard for the specifics of whatever this week was, but the reasoning in his postponing was sound. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of my agreement, but I forced myself to nod once. Fine. We would wait two days.
“A sixth of a favour.” He held his hand out. “Okay.”
I shook his hand, again feeling that surge of inner discomfort. Before he could let go, I held up my cane and pushed at his chest, knocking him down to the ground just as he’d done to me. He was so disoriented from the push that he just sat there, on the ground, eyebrows knotted in confusion. Anger never flickered through him. He was staring at his hands, at the lines on his palm. “Bastard,” he said, more to himself than to me. Slowly, he stood back up. “That was a good hit. You’re not as useless as you first were.”
He turned out to look at the forest. Slowly, I turned to do the same.
*
La Semaine d’Échange – Exchange Week – sent 7 of our finest Class A boys to tour some of the other ‘notable’ academies, while these academies sent their best to us. “To foster relations,” Gaspard had told me, which was interesting, because the Alchemist Academy had never sent any of their students anywhere, not unless it was the Healers being sent to heal the sick and injured. This week of entertainment, of friendship – the Alchemist Academy had been entirely exempted. Instead, Sunday morning brought the arrival of 3 opera singers, a pianist, and a composer in a huge white and silver carriage. They were met with several students standing on guard, rifle in hand, their gazes blank and severe, and it made the singers flush and whisper and giggle. “I swear the prettiest girls go into music. Or hunting.” Laclan whispered to me as we watched them, as they were led by the Baron and some officers inside. “Look at the girl with white hair. She’s incredible, no?”
Laclan wasn’t the only boy who thought so. By mid-morning, the white-haired girl and her two opera-singing friends were being shown around the grounds by some Class A boys. Laclan ran over, bowing to the girls and introducing himself. He kissed their hands politely, listened to their names, and frowned a little when one of them laughed at how ‘young’ he was. “15, 17, and 19.” He told us afterward. “The white-haired girl is 17. Her name is Jol Sudxio.” An Elven name. “What does that mean, ‘young’?”
“It means you’re a baby.” Wolfgang said, completely disinterested in the whole event. He was lounging on Gaspard’s sofa, eyes closed, looking lazy and content. “Avari has a better chance than you. They’re all staying in his wing.”
“Ugh, what does Avari care for girls?” Laclan whined. “He’s only ever in love with his plants. They should stay in the Residence Halls with us, like usual.”
“So that we’re all victim to another rushed wedding between some young baron and the pretty singer with the ‘suspicious belly’?” Wolfgang smiled to himself. “Bah, I don’t mind that actually. I enjoy weddings. Have you ever been to a wedding, Avari? Do you even know what they are? I assume it’s not something they bother with in bastard houses, or there’d be no bastards at all.”
“Wolfe.”
“I can’t even make a joke without you jumping to his defence. He’s not some helpless ant. You both baby him and it’s disgusting. He’s our age. He’s not invalid. Avari, talk. I won’t argue on your behalf. Talk.”
Why? They argued just fine without my help. Like Manon and Ivra before them, there was never a real need to involve myself when other people were arguing about how I should be treated. I had long since realised that whatever interjection I made had little effect. Why bother?
“We shouldn’t talk about things like that. Bellies. Bastards. Suspicious weddings.” Gaspard said quietly, on the other side of his room, annotating his maps. “It’s improper.”
It was the best response, because it united Wolfgang and Laclan in their mockery of him. Laclan, cackling, doing his best to provoke Gaspard by giving a list of vulgar actions and demanding he rank them on a scale of ‘improper’ to ‘Gaspard-approved’; Wolfgang, smirking, accusing Gaspard of being more than capable of charming all the visiting girls with just one glance, ‘as he was prone to do’. I stared at the maps on his wall. They were…strange. I couldn’t understand them. He had a huge map hung up by his bed, an official one from the Royal Cartographer of the King’s Court. It didn’t match up with the maps I knew. And I had accepted that a lot of my knowledge was outdated, but there were huge leaps in development that were unaccounted for. When had entire territories to the North been completely annexed? When had the South expanded? Gaspard didn’t even understand the premise of these questions, because all he knew now was all he’d ever known, but I was missing decades of history, decades of political development, and no one could explain why.
At least, I now knew where the Low Midlands were. I could point to it on a map, easily.
*
For the day and a half that the musicians would be here, they would be occupying some of the many vacant rooms in the Healers’ Wing. My door was firmly locked whenever I wasn’t in it. At first, I had been surprised when I’d been allowed a room with a lock and a key, that I was entrusted with the key at all. “You’re not here as prisoner,” the Baron had told me, giving me the key, “You can trust us. En plus, it only locks from the outside.” The lavender was as invasive as the air we breathed. Despite its multiplicity, there was one lone spot that served as the ‘portal’ to Alluviale, a portal I hadn’t ventured through since my last visit. Despite the assurance of a lock, despite keeping the curtains permanently drawn, I didn’t like this idea of sharing my usually empty wing with some singers, a pianist, and a composer. I didn’t like this idea of sharing at all.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
I could hear their voices through the walls. “Did you see how the headmaster was looking at me?” “The married headmaster?” “Jol, they’re always married.” The three opera singers were sharing a room, and as annoying as it was to hear their soprano voices in idle conversation, I had never seen an opera singer before – I was only vaguely aware of their existence at all. “How do you think your mother pays to send you to the Academy? You think her precious marquis is ‘unmarried’?” “Don’t say it like that. Did you see the boys here? I think they’re much nicer than their headmaster. Much, much, much.”
Lunch came. To Laclan and Gaspard, I demanded: “You pay to be here?”
Laclan laughed. “You think the Academies are free?”
Yes. Of course I had thought that. “What if someone can’t pay?”
“They get a sponsorship from someone who can. Not everything will kill you, granted. I doubt a random farm boy could afford to be sent to this Academy without having some secret alliance with a Duc, but if he wanted to specialise in agriculture, his family might be able to afford that alone.”
“And the Art Schools?”
“The Art Schools.” He looked over at the opera girls, who were sitting on a table close to the window, sunlight streaming in and painting their pretty faces a pretty gold. The white-haired girl had paired off with one of the older boys, who was grinning at her, his arm around her, making her blush and smile and giggle. “For the girls, it helps to be pretty. For the boys, it helps to know a girl who can be pretty. Is it the best place?” He nudged Gaspard. “Is it the best place to go to marry in?”
Gaspard was looking over at the girls, and even if he was bashful, he was as enthralled by them as most other boys here. “Definitely.”
“The King has a soft spot for ‘the arts’.” Laclan was still staring at them. “The poets, the singers, the dancers – they find it easy to be recruited to Court, and once you’re at Court, it won’t be hard to find at least a gentilhomme who will marry you. If you’re especially beautiful, or especially talented, or both if you’re lucky enough – you could even marry a Comte.”
“Or a Marquis.”
“Or a Duc. Imagine that. A humble girl who is favoured enough to gain a scholarship studying, say, poetry, marrying into a peerage. Imagine that. Putain, that white-haired girl is incredible. Look at her in the sunlight. Look at her.”
Gaspard and Laclan were both already 15, having had their birthdays earlier in the year. It wasn’t until 16 that most of the younger boys here were taken seriously by the older boys: invitations to join them at whatever Dei Fura brothel/tavern they spent their Saturday nights in had an unspoken rule of 16 and older. And so 15 was a restless age: old enough to experience these thoughts, these temptations, but too young to be able to act on them. “Where’s Wolfe?” Gaspard asked Laclan. “Still with the pianist?”
“Probably. You know what he’s like with those types.” Laclan was sliding out of his seat. “I’m going to talk to her.”
So he did. He sat himself down on the girls’ table and gave them a bright smile. The older boys might have frowned, might have muttered to each other, but they didn’t send him away. I could read his words from his lips as he spoke to Jol Sudxio: “Mademoiselle, pardonnez-moi, mais vous êtes incroyable…”
*
One of the younger boys, aged maybe 10 or 11, handed me a sheet of paper. “From Monsieur de Montaigne.” It gave a time and place for tonight’s adventure. 22hr, meet me by your pond.
*
Of course, ‘by the pond’ was a stupid place to meet. I would have immediately been accosted by a supervising officer and escorted into the hall, where everyone was stood to watch the musicians play their music. I could hear the soar of a soprano from my hiding place behind some bushes, the heavy melody of a piano, the occasional applause from their audience. I could hear chatter close by, a boy being reprimanded by an officer, questions of: “What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you in the hall?”, answers of, “A walk, sir. Some fresh air, sir.” He’d suffered the fate that I might’ve if I’d followed his advice: him being out by the pond, without cover, had caused an officer to spot him immediately. “What is your name? You will go to the hall immediately, and this misdemeanour will be noted and remembered. What is your name?”
“Roqueforte-Cilliac de Montaigne.”
Wolfgang joined me in my bush some seconds later. The officer, at hearing his name, had immediately let him go without further reprimand. “I said by the pond, casse-pied.” He elbowed me painfully. “Do you know the difference, hmm? Do you know the difference between a bush and a pond?” He scoffed. “That major must be new. He didn’t know my name from my face, can you believe that? Idiot.”
It was unnecessary to retaliate, and I could accept that if it were anyone else, I wouldn’t have demeaned myself with retaliation, but I elbowed Wolfgang just as painfully as he’d elbowed me, and so he pushed me into the dirt, and I pushed him. The bush rustled with our movement, movement that yes, I would agree was unnecessary. I might accuse the uselessness of many of our fights on youth, on an inner spirit that was resistant to all forms of correction. I might, but Wolfgang and I would never truly outgrow these fights, even with wisdom, even with age.
He was holding my shoulder down, mocking me for my weakness, when we both stopped. A branch snapped some feet away, then it snapped again. Voices speaking, whispering to each other despite the quiet of the night. A boy and a girl. A boy we both knew.
Gaspard.
“They believed you were sick?”
“Of course. I cough like I sing.”
Wolfgang sat up, a villainous smile spreading across his face as he lifted his head to peek over the bush. “That scoundrel.”
I looked over the bush too, seeing Gaspard and one of the opera girls – the 15-year-old – by the equestrian grounds. They were both flushed a bashful pink as they spoke to each other. Throughout the day, I had found her far more striking than Jol Sudxio, and, evidently, so had Gaspard.
“I’m part of the First Riders,” he told her. “That’s how I secured my place at this Academy, through riding.”
“Oh. Then why not a hunting school?”
“Well…Hunting and the Military, they’re very different, no?”
“Such a stupid question,” Wolfgang whispered, but he was thoroughly amused by this turn of events, even impressed, “why would a Villieu, a family of politics, go into hunting? That sly bastard. He told us it was a ‘lapse’. The last time he did this, the last time he charmed a girl just by looking at her, or whatever he does, he told us it was a ‘lapse’, a ‘one-off’. He’s done the exact same thing.”
“Will you write to me, when I leave?” She asked Gaspard. “Will you wait for me?”
They were walking off now, towards the Residence Halls. We watched them. We watched them sneak around the corner, then disappear. Wolfgang urged me to my feet, and we walked over to their previous spot on the equestrian grounds. He snuck over the fencing, lightly jogging over to the stables, and then I lost him for many minutes as he retrieved a horse. I hadn’t ridden horseback since I’d lost my energy. A strange anxiety pricked my fingertips, as if I could have forgotten how, as if something I’d done so often and enjoyed so much could be a lost art to me now.
Wolfgang’s mood was surprisingly pleasant and jovial, uncharacteristic and personable. He was whispering conspiratorially with the horse as they quietly approached me, and despite the lightness of his spirits, when he smiled it was as sardonic and biting as every other smile he was capable of. There were some more moments of fighting as he helped me onto the horse, as he secured my cane to the horse’s side, and then he climbed up also, in front of me. “I’ll take you as far as the first tree,” he said to me, “then you and Brigela are on your own.” Brigela, apparently, was the name he’d just given this horse. “Whatever sign you’re planning on, I better receive it by the end of the night, or I’m leaving you in whatever state you’re in. You could drown for all I care. In fact,” he chuckled to himself as we began a slow trot, “I’d be happier for it.”
His good mood was his own distraction. He didn’t ask further questions about my mission. He didn’t speak to me at all. He was humming pleasantly as he rode us to the forest clearing, and I occupied myself with looking up at the stars while, in the back of my mind, assuring myself that I could ride this horse alone. He didn’t notice the soft wind that was accompanying us on our journey, or how the plants nearby would straighten up and then relax. I nodded at them, and they nodded back at me. “Bon, on est arrivé.” He descended the horse, landing softly on the dirt ground. “I’ll be in the vicinity. Don’t call me too early.”
And then he walked off, his humming having turned into a whistle as he turned a corner and disappeared. I didn’t commit my gaze to following his movements, instead solely focused on the forest in front of me. “I know, I know.” I said softly, as the wind picked up now that it was just me and Nature, as the leaves rustled loudly, as that undercurrent of water that ran under the earth, alerted to my presence, increased its call for me to join it. I rubbed the top of Brigela’s head, and she neighed agreeably. “Okay,” I said, “let’s go.”
But I stalled.
The forest was an abyss of darkness. The minutes I spent motionlessly staring into it could have exceeded a million. The wind picked up again, a heavy gust urging me and Brigela forward. I didn’t want to find the words to express my hesitance, to express my possible weakness, but the wind continued, and the plants rustled themselves together, and I hung my head down, embarrassed. The forest was an abyss, and I was on a horse I might not even be able to ride, and instead of meeting the challenge with fortitude and bravery, I was cutting my palms open with how hard I was squeezing my fists, I was delaying the journey, I was being emotional, in a way I should never be.
The wind blew roughly in one direction, then roughly in the opposite, urging me to lift my gaze, to begin riding in. I couldn’t find the words, or even the thoughts. Not an ‘I won’t’, but a more pathetic ‘I can’t’. I didn’t trust that I had the strength to ride this horse, to enter this forest, and I didn’t want to prove myself pathetic by trying and failing. The forest was an abyss, and it was an abyss, and it was-
A single leaf fell onto Brigela’s head.
Analogies were beyond me. Metaphors were the same. Nature spoke in the non-verbal ways that it could, and I had accepted that a lot of it was beyond my understanding, and yet when this leaf fell onto the horse’s head – an orange leaf, large and singular, autumnal despite the spring season – it wasn’t that I could suddenly interpret its symbolism. It wasn’t that I could decode its hidden literary message. It wasn’t even something to decode, to interpret, to learn. It was as Gaspard had asked me, “how did you learn Elven?” – I’d never learnt. It was automatic and unthinking – it was a thought itself – it was the leaf landing on Brigela’s head and me instinctively knowing what was being said. A million things feeding into me. Less than a conversation. Less than a word. Less than my skull being sliced open and this leaf landing directly on my brain. You’re okay. It’ll be okay. You’re fine. It’ll be fine. We’re with you. You’re with you. You’re with us. There’s nothing to fear. You must fear for nothing. You can do it. All Elves can do all things.
Like realising the sky is blue – it wasn’t a realisation at all.
“So sentimental,” I muttered, even if I myself was a little overwhelmed by the warmth that was blossoming inside me, even if I was eerily reminded of what it had been like to sit with Delphia, to hear her tell me that same thing: “You can do it. All Elves can do all things.”
“Okay,” I accepted, “let’s go.”
*
The spring moonlight had plunged the forest in an iridescent sort of silver. We made a slow walk, going down paths that had been marked out by previous riders, undoubtedly the other boys venturing to Dei Fura for their Saturday nights. On foot, I could have cut through the smaller groves with the dense bushes and purpling flowers, where the hissing of grasshoppers and other night time insects were loudest, but I continued on the main path. Our walk turned into a trot. There were three competing rhythms in my head – the trot of Brigela, the pulse of nature, and the erraticity of my own heartbeat. I didn’t fear the forest – I never could – and I was more at ease on Brigela, and yet my heartbeat remained irregular. Substantially, rationally, I knew there was nothing to fear. I knew stupid memories of running through this forest on foot, my blunt beginner’s sword in hand as Laclan either chased after me or was chased by me – I knew these weren’t tangible, they weren’t scary, and beyond their existence in my head, they weren’t real. But I continued to think of them, to think of running through this space until my lungs would give out, to think of Laclan raising his sword in the air and jumping around with it, to think of a pain so unimaginable, a violence so fatal, that for me to have survived it at all was a payment I would always have to pay.
But the quiet of the forest was worst of all. To think of myself laying in the dirt, my body stiff and cold, my eyesight gone, my lungs filling with blood, waiting in a prolonged, brutal pain, keeping myself alive out of sheer obstinacy, but as the hours had gone by, as the pain only deepened, I had begun to think that it might be a better choice to let myself die.
Our trot turned into a canter.
I decided it was a useless thing to be made nervous about and a stupid thing to be affected by. There was no Laclan here to menace me, and even if Laclan had been here, he wouldn’t have menaced me at all. I exhaled deeply as I attempted to calm down the growing pounding of my heart. I thought of Romilio’s words: of the futility of emotion, of the weakness of my temperament. The reaction I was currently having to being in this forest was irrational, and yet I was having trouble calming myself down, as if this panic wasn’t conscious, as if it were a cloak the forest itself was layering over me, without my asking, without my permission. I couldn’t take it off. This cloak of panic, of remembrance, of…of stupid, irrational, damning emotion. I thought of Delphia, I thought of Romilio, I thought of Manon Cotillard, and I thought of the boy I had been, a boy who could run and jump and live.
I got down from the horse, throwing out a breathless sorry, sorry, sorry to Nature and to Brigela, and I sat by a tree and pulled my knees into my chest, and I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed as best as I could. The cloak was heavy on my heart and tight around my neck, and no amount of squirming, or staying still, or pleading, or silence, could push it off my body.
I was reminded of a pulse.
A pulse beating in the very grass I was sitting on, the tree I was leaning against, the plants that were leaning over to touch my arm. A pulse that was steady, rhythmic; a pulse that could remind me what it felt like to breathe without being choked by panic. I followed its rhythm. Breathing. And listening. And breathing. Despite how long it must have been before I calmed down, Brigela was patient, grazing on the grass that she could freely access here, grass that didn’t grow on the clay ground of the Academy’s compound. I leaned my head against the tree’s trunk, still breathing deeply, but no longer in the deepest throws of panic. “No, don’t apologise.” I waved away the caress of the plants’ leaves. “I’ll be better. Less emotion, I know. I’ll be better. If I was granted a hard heart, then…?”
This was, once again, refused. I sighed, then stood up. It took a considerable, tiring amount of effort to climb back onto Brigela, and once I was on her, I had to rest against her back for many moments. “Are we close?” I was given a non-committal response. I straightened, brushed behind Brigela’s ears, and we continued.
The torture of memory didn’t necessarily subside, but breathing with Nature’s pulse prevented another intense spike in my heartbeat. We resumed the canter as we made our way through the forest to a destination I hadn’t yet received the honour of knowing. Despite this, I found myself enjoying the ride, that it even almost prompted a smile as we rode under the moon. Even if we needed to stop every so often for me to regather my energy, it was fun. It was just as fun as it had always been, even with my difference. Our canter turned to a gallop, and as I eagerly raced ahead, suspicions began to arise. I felt I was being tricked into some sort of moral lesson: see how you can still enjoy your activities! See how this forest is still beautiful, how you still love horse riding, how Nature will always be there for you! See, see, see! “What I don’t see,” I countered, “is how this relates to the lavender portals.”
Meanly, I was unanswered. Our gallop picked up pace, and soon we were flying through the forest grounds, the surroundings becoming a blur. The wind was running right alongside us. It was incredible, like running on air, like floating on speeding clouds, but I still had no answers, and despite attempting to slow Brigela down, the pace only increased. Faster, and faster, and faster, until I realised I no longer had control of Brigela but had instead lost her to the wind’s instruction, and I realised that the wind had no interest in stopping, or even slowing down. Faster, and faster, and faster, until I was yelling in alarm, until I was caught between trusting the wind and throwing myself off the horse to save myself from collision.
We were approaching a thick cluster of trees, with no space to ride through unless I got down and carefully guided Brigela through some lower bramble on foot. The fear that was sporting through me was instinctive, automatic, a natural fear of danger, and yet it was Nature who was guiding me into this fate. I was scared, but against my own logic, I was trusting. I was mentally yelling at Nature for subjecting me to this hellish nighttime adventure, yet I had full trust in the wind, the grass, the moon, and the water running undercurrent the whole ride here. There were trees, and this would be a crash, but I was stubborn and trusting and squeezing my eyes shut as we got closer, and closer, and-
It was a hard fall. I was thrown off Brigela and launched up several feet, experiencing enough air to move my limbs around in a vague figure-eight as I desperately tried to soften my fall. The fall was, of course, not soft. I crashed onto the ground and groaned in pain, holding my sides and rolling around. “You threw me into bramble.” I accused, my own air having being knocked out of me. “Into…”
Into no bramble at all.
I sat up.
Brigela trotted over to me, looking at me pleasantly. I looked up at her, rubbing her nose when she lowered her head, but narrowing my eyes at my surroundings. My heart might never settle again from all that I’d put it through, because I knew where I was. I wasn’t in the Military Academy’s forest. I hadn’t fallen into the bramble-covered ground that had just been in my path. I was somewhere else entirely. I…I unfasted my cane from Brigela’s side and pushed myself up to standing, slowly ambling through. I walked, and walked, and walked, at whatever speed I was capable of, until I got to the clearing.
I knew where I was. A 3-day journey from the North District, I had somehow returned to the forest of the Alchemist Academy.
“The lavender ‘portal’.” I breathed out. “It’s…it’s not about the lavender at all, is it?”
No. It wasn’t.