The cave tunnel opened up to the rounded top of a grassy hill. Which would have seemed to me, at least before today, to be a physically improbable scenario. But I’d accepted by now that common logic didn’t hold much weight when it came to the workings of Flux-related things. Point in case, the end of the tunnel, which was capped off with the same shimmery, translucent film as the opposite end of the illusion. Stepping through that film dropped us off on top of a hill, from which no tunnel could be seen. Behind me was only an ovalish patch of shimmering, glittery air and no sign of the cave I’d only just been in.
It took me a moment, but I eventually brushed that off – there wasn't really much else I could do anyway – and turned to survey the view the hill granted us. The top of the hill overlooked a vast, bustling village, and an expansive plain beyond it. A towering tree stood firmly in the center of the circular village, its deep purple canopy providing shade for almost half the massive village.
Although, to be fair, the term village hardly did justice to the immense size of the place. It stretched out at least a kilometer in every direction, and there were hundreds of people who walked about within the spacious roadways that wound their way through the buildings, like the many paths of a massive maze.
The only aspect of the village that could be remotely described as ‘village-like’ was its construction. The massive wall that encircled the place was similar in design to the wall of Najam’s camp, and the buildings within were all of wooden and thatch design. The roadways in between were made of yellowed dirt paved only by the hundreds of feet that traversed them daily. Only the larger paths near the center – where the buildings were also markedly larger – were cobbled with actual stone.
My eyes lingered on the village for only a moment, though, because the rest of the strange land we were in was far more catching to my eye. Save for the side we’d come out on, the area surrounding the village was simply a flat, grassy plain, blanketed with tall green stalks that ripped in the wind. The plains stretched out at least a couple kilometers in each direction, but it was what stood proudly at the edges of the plain that caught my attention.
Ringing the entire plain were absolute behemoths, mountain-sized trees with the same deep purple canopies as the one in the middle. The sheer scale of the sight rendered me speechless. It would have been incredible to behold a single tree of their immense size, but I counted a total of eleven from where I could see. And the fact that it only took eleven of them to ring almost three-quarters of the massive expanse of land spoke volumes of their size. The highest of their branches reached high into the clear blue sky, easily enough to pierce through the clouds, had there been any.
“Those are our Purple Evermore trees,” Maya explained as she saw my attention snag on them. “This is the oldest grove of them in the entire forest,” she went on, explaining her home with more than just a hint of pride. “The land here is the best for hunting and farming anywhere in the forest. The land in a grove of Purple Evermore trees is always the best, but this is the bestest of the best. And it’s the hardest to find of them all, too. Every entrance to this place is hidden and protected with an illusion just like the one we just used. No one except my people knows how to find this place.” She paused there for a second, her face working as if a thought had just occurred to her. “Well, my people, and you guys now, I guess.”
I smiled at that. “Well, don’t you worry about it. As long as you guys wish it, I’ll keep this place a secret that I carry to my grave. We will keep it a secret.”
Maya brightened as she heard my promise, the worry on her face draining away.
Ren, however, gave an amused smile in response. “You might believe us,” he said to Maya, “but I have a slight feeling your people may not be so giving.”
I frowned at his words. Embarrassingly, the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind till he mentioned it.
But Maya shook her head vigorously. “No no, I’ll tell them that you can be trusted. They’ll believe me.” She spoke with utter conviction, enough that I didn’t have the heart to challenge her on the topic, but the dread in my heart was far from assuaged.
Still, there was little else for us to do but forge on at that point. Maya would hardly let us leave without coming down to the village, and I wasn’t the sort to run like that anyway.
And so we trekked down the large hill, wading through the waist-high grass single file, with Maya on my shoulders. She’d wanted to lead the way, but her small form was almost entirely swallowed up by the grass, which annoyed her enough that she eventually relented and resigned herself to being carried back home. Still, at her urging, we set a quick pace, and within ten minutes, we’d descended from the hill and crossed the field, finding ourselves on a cleared road leading all the way to the massive doors of the village’s gate.
As we got closer, I noticed that the wall of the village was far larger than the gate at Najam’s camp – which, I supposed, only made sense. Najam’s camp was, after all, only a temporary place, whereas this had been the home of Maya’s people for centuries.
The logs that made up the wall were at least twice as tall, and watch stations had been built intermittently along the entire length of the circle. As we approached the gate, with Maya now eagerly leading me by the hand, her eyes unerringly fixed on the gates, a man suddenly popped out of the watch station at the top of the entrance.
“Who goes there?” the man yelled down.
Instead of responding, I hoisted Maya up as high as I could reach and presented her to the man, who peered down curiously at the girl. “Hi Uncle Tammy!” Maya yelled up before letting loose a small giggle.
It was hard to make out the exact expression of the man, even with my enhanced eyesight, but the general body language of the man was clear enough. He peered over the edge of the fence of his watch station so far I was afraid he’d fall off, before leaning back and wiping his eyes, and then peering over again, as if he could not believe what he was seeing.
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Finally, after a long moment of silence, the man yelled down again, in a voice of absolute incredulous shock, “MAYA!??”
Maya responded only with another giggle, but that seemed enough of a confirmation for the man. He instantly, and without a moment of hesitation, threw himself over the edge of the fence and fell the entire height of almost six meters to the ground. He landed in a graceful crouch, his gaze still stuck on the girl in my arms. He instantly sprang back up and ran over to me, moving with the agility of a man at least twenty years his junior, and certainly not of a man who’d just fallen a height of about twenty feet. His body’s resilience was shocking, even for a mage. I’d have survived a fall like that too, of course, but my knees and ankles would have hated me for it.
Which meant, I surmised just as the middle-aged man reached us, that he had a body that was of at least the same caliber as mine, if not better.
The older man slowed substantially as he got closer to us, dropping his pace down to a reverent walk as his glistening eyes surveyed Maya.
“It is you…” the man muttered, almost as if to himself. “It really is you…”
I let Maya down from the air then, and she immediately broke into a run as she aimed for the man’s waiting arms.
I got a good look at the man as Ren and I waited patiently – and just a smidge awkwardly – for the pair’s emotional reunion to run its course.
He was middle-aged, but definitely leaning towards the older end, judging by the lines the years had left on his face. He sported a long, brown goatee and an, oddly, even longer mustache. He had a wiry frame, with long and thin limbs, loose and simple cotton clothing, and an intelligence in his eyes.
At the moment, though, his eyes dripped with tears of relief as he hugged the little girl tight. Maya almost disappeared into his embrace, and she seemed no less emotional than the man.
“I thought you were gone forever,” the man whispered, his voice tight with emotion.
Maya didn’t answer to that, only nodding into the man’s shoulder. Eventually, though, she pulled back just enough to look at the man’s face. “Where’s Mama?” she asked.
The man smiled at the question. “She’s in, of course. Probably at the Hall now, stuck in some meeting or the other. She’ll be so happy to have you back, Maya. She was distrau-she was so sad, Maya, when you didn’t come back that day.” His voice broke near the end of his sentence, his face twisting as if recalling memories he didn’t want to remember. “She’ll be so happy to have you back…” the man repeated, his voice once again a hushed whisper.
“Can I go see her?” Maya asked quietly.
“Why, of course! She’ll drop everything when she hears the news. She’ll probably throw a great banquet to celebrate you.” He pinched the girl’s cheeks as he spoke, a large smile drawing itself like a veil over his face, burying the sadness of before. “But first,” he said again, picking himself back up from the crouch he’d been in, “I believe introductions are in order.” Looking down at the little girl holding his hand, he asked, “Maya, why don’t you introduce me to your two friends here?”
Maya’s face brightened visibly as she remembered our existence once more. “Of course! Uncle Tammy, this is Ruby,” she pointed to me with a great big smile, “and this is Ren! They saved my life in the forest, and took care of me, and brought me home! And they’re gonna save the clan!”
The last bit elicited a chuckle from both the man and me, which confused little Maya, who’d been perfectly serious when she made the statement.
Moving past that, the man stepped forward with a warm smile and stuck his hand out. “Well,” the man said as he clasped my hand in a firm handshake, “it would seem my people owe the two of you a great debt.”
“Oh no, not at all,” I replied, shaking my head. “It was our pleasure. Maya is a precious little girl.”
“Quite precious, indeed,” the man chuckled. I could sense that he’d made a joke, but it went clear over my head. Seeing my confused face, the man raised an eyebrow at me. “You don’t know of Maya’s identity?” he asked.
Ren and I shrugged in unison. “No idea,” I said.
Genuine surprise flickered in the man’s eyes, and, oddly, the respect within them rose a degree as he heard our answer. “Really?” he said in surprise. Then, turning to Maya, he asked, “And you didn’t tell them?”
Maya grinned sheepishly and shook her head. “I totally forgot to,” she answered.
The man shook his at her, smiling as he did. “Though, I suppose,” he said, “it does make sense. After all, you’ve probably never met anyone who didn’t already know who you were.”
I was shocked at the man’s statement. “Wow, Maya!” I exclaimed. “You’re famous? What are you, a princess or something?”
The man chuckled at my joke, but his answer was entirely serious. “In a sense, she is, in fact.”
I fell silent at that, the answer completely beyond my expectations. “Are you kidding?” I asked doubtfully.
The man shook his head. “Not in the slightest,” he answered. “Little Maya here is the daughter of the Clan Chieftess. And given the prestige and respect both her mother and the clan as a whole wield, at least in the surrounding area, Maya receives quite the treatment of a princess in the nearby cities. Not to mention,” he added with a meaningful glance at the girl, “little Maya is quite special on her own, too.”
“Really⁉” I asked in incredulous surprise. “I didn’t know I was escorting royalty. That’s amazing! Maya, I’m honored that you let us be the ones to take you back home.”
Maya giggled and flushed at my words, painting an adorable picture as she looked away in embarrassment.
Chuckling at the little girl’s antics, the man tousled her hair and turned back to us. “Well,” he started, “as much as I’d love to continue chatting, I’d feel terrible if I kept Maya away from her mother any longer. Her mother will probably kill me for taking as long as I have already. Why don’t the two of you follow me in? Once we spread the good news to everyone, and everyone has had their fill of hugging Maya again, we’ll see if we can’t fix up a reward worthy of bringing our princess back to us.”
“No, no, we couldn’t possibly take any kind of reward for that,” I protested. “Like I said, it was our pleasure. Maya’s a friend, and I couldn’t take a gift from a friend for something like this.”
The man grinned at me, a twinkle in his eye. “We shall see, then,” he answered simply, before walking back up to the gates of the palisade. Leaning one hand gently against it, he pushed just slightly and the massive double doors began to open themselves up with a groan and a soft whirr.
As the doors pulled back to reveal the village – Maya’s home, at long last – the man turned back and gave us a warm, welcoming smile. “Welcome..." he said with the grandiose of a showman, "to the Fiercewater Clan.” Then, lowering his eyes to meet Maya’s, he smiled again, a softer smile this time.
“And welcome home, princess.”