Aft spring, Norhill 699
A perfect spring day, crisp from winter but bright like summer, set birds singing and the Forest shivering with life. Cornucopia, tended and guided by the attentive hands of the Dryads. They wove themselves into the landscape, as much a part of the breathing ecosystem as the rains, and guarded everything within that circle from that Outside.
Even their one true city, Capital, framed nature, not excluded it. Marble islands of carved pillars and few walls marked permanent structures, surrounded by homesteads grown from the monolithic trees. Spring nymphs simply encouraged the fauna to expand into roof and wall, a city breathing and fluid.
At the city's center, two squirrels wrestled over winter nuts on the edge of a brook. Glisinda stared at them, entranced by the fluffy tails and wild, tiny hands. Would one of them get dumped into the creek?
Her mother shifted the three year old to the opposite hip and tugged thumb from mouth. "Glee, don't suck your thumb please."
Too old to suckle, Glisinda considered resting her head on Mommy's naked breast anyways. Or maybe she could pretend to need to pee, and Mommy would let her run off to the creek to splash around instead of dawdling in a dumb shrine. Even the pretty murals, the totality of known history, couldn't keep her attention more than a second.
Two elders lectured Mommy's class, their voices slow creaking timber and their words big. Skin wrinkled and droopy, one leaned on a cane. On and on about the shrine: built by the same ancestors who first came to the Forest four thousand years ago as a shrine to the Sleeping Maiden and used ever since as a repository of knowledge in mural and sculpture. The big kids had to sit and listen without sleeping.
Mommy was a teacher, and this was the first season little Glee acted old enough to tag along with her. Girls who controlled their volume and bodily functions could leave the nursery and stay with their parents, but Glee never asked for a dumb trip to a musty old building! Should have gone with Daddy to see the Growers shaping a new bridge out of roots.
As the child drooped, her mother jiggled her in place. "Stay up a little longer, baby. We're almost done."
Several of the big kids stole jealous glances at the toddler who could doze during lecture, but Glee struggled upright and alert, determined to prove herself. Baby indeed!
The elders hobbled into the only room with doors instead of screens, slabs of mahogany inlaid with sparkling gold. In the shrine's final room, a lattice of branches obscured the vaulted ceiling; someone had Grown the surrounding oaks into the pillars, sealing off the walls, and a little light trickled in columns from obscured skylights. A jaybird shrieked at their entrance and shot out one of the windows.
Glee giggled for unrelated reasons. The elders' wrinkled butts looked like avocados. She too was proudly naked. Clothes were for bad weather and stuffy ceremonies, not spring days and fun! Mommy once said that mors had to wear clothes almost their entire half of the year cause of the cold. Not that Glee ever saw a mors. Kids weren't allowed at the Turning each equinox. What did mors look like? What if they were scary?
Mommy nudged her, and Glee removed her thumb again.
"The Maiden has slept on this tablet, undisturbed, for as long as this shrine has stood. Some say it was built around her. She is our angel, our matron saint; as long as she sleeps undisturbed, the Dryad nation will never come to harm.”
Big kids crowded around a tablet of stone carved like a bed. It must be really cold! Glee, from her vantage on Mommy's hip, forgot all about scary mors.
The Maiden slept in peace across the stone, chest rising and falling under a sea of lavender silk. Her feet poked out under a gown more shiny and pretty than anything Glee knew, and tawny, curly hair wreathed her passive face. Her features were slightly ruddy, nose a button, and cheeks dimpled. The pink-skinned girl wasn't a beauty, but she could catch sunbeams in her smile.
Glisinda drifted a moment in the Other-place, the one Mommy and the big kids forgot as they grew up. Even she was almost too old now, but for a few seconds she could see the eyes growing in place of leaves on every stalk of the surrounding trees. Every pupil focused on the figure sleeping there; instead of a well-dressed corpse, there curled a girl not much older than Glee herself with the Maiden's tangled hair.
The girl uncurled and swung around on the marble to stare at the nymph. “Who're you?”
“I'm Glee!”
“Did you come to play?”
“Sure!”
They smiled at each other. Instant friendship.
But then Mommy shook Glee back awake. “Sweetheart, sit up straight. The King is coming.”
Sure enough, a new figure swung the doors wide. He must have been a million years old, all wrinkled and skeletal; he carried a cane but did not lean on it like the elders. He wore the Sylvan Crown, a weathered and twisted vine that twined so tight to his scalp it must really have hurt to take off at night.
“Mommy, I just met a little girl!” the dryad child whispered, not very interested in old people talk between the King and the elders.
“Oh?” said Mommy. “Who was she?”
“The Maiden! Only she was little like me.”
“I want to play now!” echoed the Maiden's voice, petulant.
On the marble bed, the older Maiden frowned, a tiny crease that clouded her face. Only Glee seemed to notice, so she proudly pointed it out. “She's got the icky tummy face!”
Now people noticed, a curious buzz rising. Was she having bad dream?
"Madam teacher, good elders, would you please conclude your trip?" The King spoke in that dangerous, fake-polite adult voice.
Somehow a wind managed to kick up the old leaves in the corners, and several children shared a shiver like spiders on their necks. Everyone obeyed the King, filing out with Mommy last. The elders scowled and muttered between themselves. Craning her neck as the doors began to shut themselves, Glee caught a glimpse of Majesty's face, wrought with grief and determination.
His soft command sealed away the chamber and melded the doors shut, leaving the class in the museum again.
“Why is the King so sad, Mommy?”
“He's very old, baby. Very old.”
**********
Years rolled by too slow for Glisinda's burning curiosity. At six, the first year a child could join the Turning ceremony, Glee ended up helping in the nursery while her parents prepared a last ditch effort to save an ancient sequoia. While the mors rose and began to rove, she was stuck waiting for the call of Hibernation with the toddlers.
The siren song of the Cycle came over children first. As the sun touched horizon on the equinox night, the great Forest settled silent and deep. A fog snuck up Glee's toes, and her soul cried out for the peaceful dark, surrounded by warm family, to slumber with the flower buds and oak seeds till spring returned. Instantly, the babies curled into themselves, scattered across the leaves like seeds themselves. Nannies, yawning behind their fingers, scooped all up to deposit in the Hibernation caves of loam and dripping water. All the vibrant hues of summer drained from the world, or was that just the nymph child slipping across the barrier into sleep? Limp noodle, the girl dreamed or witnessed her parents arrive, felt Mommy's arms under her, and could not summon the energy to investigate the pale ghosts just beyond Mommy's hair.
Hibernation dreams carried an endless trickle of intimate sensation. An unborn flower, ticking away the days until it could bloom in a bed of dirt. Last goodbyes of the creaking sequoia, shivering inside as its defenses failed before the cold. Hunger and determination that drove a fox from its hole, knowing it would die without food. Its prey, fey deer, huddled for warmth, the herd wishing for spring salads.
A deer died to the fox, too weak to properly flee. It met death in hot spurts of blood across the ice, but to Glee outside of time the spurt of violence paled to the dance of life that its corpse sustained. The fox, belly full, who lived another season. The snow-pressed plants that accepted the deer into their soil. Spring apples grew from winter's rest and winter's death.
Many times, the little Maiden called her to the shrine. Others too, ghostly shapes she recognized as cousins and classmates. All girls. They would play in the Other-place, always carefully supervised by the trees with eyes. When one or another made the Maiden mad, she would fade away, and by the end of the season only a dozen remained. Glee remembered these events as only the haziest of dreams.
At last, she awoke to a cacophony of urgent pressures. Bladder, ready to quit. Stomach, ready to chew off an arm. Mind still fragmented to the soils and the flowers. All around, adults shuffled about their waking duties. Glee rushed to the potty and returned to her parents' bed. -Something I was supposed to remember...- she thought.
The bed seduced her with warm furs and familiar smells, and she closed her eyes for just a second. Someone shook her, but she just rolled over.
Next moment, many fewer nymphs paced the giant cavern. Except for two nannies, the rest cleaned and tidied, gathering furs to air and reweaving the defenses against pests. In no hurry, Glee sat up and held her hands aloft. The jade of late summer on her skin had blossomed to the light red-green of new growths, and splashes of color would help her blend into the foliage.
Daddy said the mors were snow, bark, and the slate of winter sky, often mistaken for ghosts by the rare winter outsider.
Mors!
Fast as a squirrel, the girl erupted out of the Hibernation chambers, through the marble basement of the building on top, and out into Capital. To the right, a Grower paused from his encouragements to infant flowers to assess her, and down the path two young adults, mocha-skinned and bursting with desire, dashed behind the Maiden's shrine to have sex.
"Child, what ails you?" called the Grower.
"Where is the Turning?!" Glee shouted back.
"It was yesterday."
Glee fought back the urge to use a dirty adult word. "But the mors!"
"They sleep already."
Face green as an apple, Glee stamped, stomped, pounded, and gouged the dirt until whatever invisible monster caused her to oversleep was dead, scattered to the wind. Her tantrum made the Grower chuckle softly to himself.
**********
Fore autumn, Norhill 703
At seven and released from her mother, Glee attended the oral histories and woodsmanship lessons of the Dryad education. The four Monarchs, each living a thousand years. (His Majesty was over nine hundred, and the elders pressed him to reveal a successor.) Preparations for an adult's Forest magic, gathering a fragment of a breath from miles and miles of nature to fuel one's self. Every nymph could summon the Growing, and every mors the Death. Together they kept the world in balance.
Other things too. Wars and warnings against the humans, the last one decades ago and thus irrelevant to Glee's thinking. Why should she care if Norhill blew up? Animals and plants, herbs and remedies for everything from a heavy moonsblood to sinus headaches. She learned how to breathe in time with the Forest, how to control the camouflage of her skin so she could float like a ghost over the land. How to survive the hottest days bare handed, naked, and alone. How to use skunks as a weapon (not as practical, but way more fun!).
A busy year.
The knob-kneed weed of a girl spurted wiry and tall as piano wire as Turning inched closer. She spent more time daydreaming about mors and the festival than watching her step, and that's how she stumbled into poisoned nettles.
About midday, drifting on the trail between home under the trees and the clearing where children convened for learning, her foot snagged a root where none should be, and she tumbled. Curling, she bounced down the incline, and at the bottom tore into a bramble where should have been simple brush. Each barb nipped deep and burned with oily poison. By the time a tree trunk finally haltered her shoulder-first, all Glee could do was retch across the grass.
-Nettles...not supposed to be nettles here...Poisonous...- She forced legs of jelly up. Mom and Dad would be gone, teaching and Growing, and the Forest path was quiet of anyone to hear. If she didn't find an antidote, she would die. Die just like a foolish boar that charged after a cunning hare. -Elderberry...violet elderberry salve...where's home? Which way?- Then she would never Hibernate in her mother's arms again, and her parents would cry at a bonfire in her wake...
Her wounds, though shallow, burned deep. Good. Teacher said that as long as you could feel pain, the poison had not gone too far. Mom said to call the winds for aid. Glee clung to the pillars of simple lessons, breath harsh in her own ears, and cast about for the splash of elderberry violet and its sour stench.
"Wind of the northern cold, help me." Futile – before her first moonsblood, the mana wouldn't react to her command.
The air rippled and swirled around her, a familiar presence.
“Find help...please.”
It wooshed, whistled, and was gone.
The sun rose to its height, but she shivered. The path swam back and forth like a serpent. Where was elderberry? Where was she? She couldn't remember the curves of her familiar path, and her breast ached to see Mommy and Daddy again. How long had it been since the scratches? Too hard to remember!
Glee collapsed.
Big arms scooped her up, attached to a familiar face. Her older brother!
"Serge, you were on a trip," she slurred. The patterns of her skin writhed, colors misfiring in blooms of red and yellow.
"We finally killed the hydra." He smiled, the stable pillar in a sick world. "What happened?"
"Nettles..."
His expression darkened. "Glee, close your eyes. It'll be in your blood by now. We must travel the Green Way."
Wasn't the Green Way dangerous for children?
Then Serge pressed her limp body against harsh bark. The old and strong tree accepted the child, her body melted into the bark, and Glee wanted to scream and puke but she had no limbs, no lungs, just endless light, loam, rain and growth, a prison-world of sap and bark. It stole her away into glowing verdant depths, surrounded by a music made of too many heartbeats. Pressed into the bosom of the Forest, for a second, the poison cleared from her head.
She dreamed of a great Yggdrasil, the tree of heaven spread over the entire Forest. She drifted beside a flamboyant Maiden, form slight and smile quick. Just the two of them this time, alone in the endless summer.
At first, the nymph easily outran the little girl, but the Maiden grew older in a matter of hours. Soon Glee was the child, racing to catch a teenager's strides. “That's no fair!” she laughed. “I can't grow up on a whim!”
The Maiden smirked. “I can grow yet still. Just watch!” Sucking in breathe to concentrate as she prepared to become a full blown woman and –
Sudden lightning, a roaring from watchful Yggdrassil, and great winds chucked Glisinda away. She fell forever into the darkness, pressure building until she could think no more.
**********
"She's so pale..." worried Mom.
"She was nearly out when I found her," said Serge. "At least two dozen nettle wounds."
"Nettles?" queried the King in his old, rich mahogany basso. "From where? The only nettles within a hundred miles of here are in my garden.”
"I know nettle wounds," Serge bristled.
"Mysterious...But regardless, that must wait. Glisinda cannot Hibernate in this condition. I will care for her past the equinox."
Daddy's voice approached bearing news. “Rumors say at least six other children have nettle wounds, but they can't find a sign of any new patches. Most are just pricks, but Sheena's girl Miranda got nearly as much as Glee. Its a bad omen.”
"Worry not. I will apply all my considerable knowledge to their care while you rest," swore the King.
Glee distantly felt her mother's kiss. "We'll see you come spring, sweetie." Her voice hiccuped. "Get better soon."
The nymph child wanted to tell Mom not to cry, but her body would not answer. Soon, supervised by hands wrinkled and firm, she sank back into the dark.
**********
Her fever took many nights of sour sweat, of rooms that rippled and danced, of slithery nightmares and flashbacks to the nettles over and over before it broke. Fall swung in with the wind, and Glee spent her recovery under thick furs. Nights were the coldest she had ever felt. White and almost bare, away from the plants and sky, the room made her shiver more. A marble tomb, cold and desolate except for the two pallets on the floor.
Across the floor, another nymph girl shared the same stink of sour sweat and nettle poison. The King arrived regularly, leaning over them to spoon-feed broth. Many meals marched by before Glee felt up to talking.
"When will I see Mom and Dad again?" she finally mustered.
"Spring," replied the King. "I could not allow you to Hibernate so injured."
She shivered. "Cold."
He laughed. "Yes. Winter is."
"But how can it be so hot in summer and so cold in winter? How come the plants don't get hurt?" One thing to brush against the winter, like dipping toe into icy water, safe and warm against your parents. Another entirely to face the wind's chill knives alone.
"Because this is the heart of the Forest," replied the elder. He tugged her up for an exam, poking and prodding as he spoke. Her body responded so slow, weak with too much bed. "There are places in this Forest where snow hides in shadows all year. Places where it never turns winter at all. Some where the trees rise out of bog waters deeper than you are tall..."
"Like where Serge was," she interrupted.
"Yes."
"Where he fought the monsters?"
"Yes."
"Where do monsters come from?"
"Who knows? Havoc, I suppose." The King moved to check Glee's companion, murmuring to himself, "Miranda, your wounds finally drain. I was worried for a while there."
"How much longer?"
"Not much. A friend will be by tomorrow to fit you into some clothes."
"Clothes?!" She would rather waste away in bed!
"I did not nurse you to health to have you die by a cold on your bare rear. Now...to finish your question, the seasons vary because the center stabilizes the whole wheel. Capital is the linchpin for the entire Cycle, guiding the whole by absorbing bits of all. We experience winter like the north, and summer like the south. It protects us."
"From what?" Glee asked.
"From the chaos and madness that rule so much of this turbulent world." He kissed her forehead (he smelled like a hundred colors of falling leaves) and tucked up her comforter. "Rest, Glisinda. Tomorrow, you might just meet a mors."
Once both children slept sound, the King slipped away to a midnight glade to watch the snow as it drifted and clumped. Tugging a nettle seed from his pocket, he turned it over between withered fingertips.
“Oh, to be spared the Choice...” He sighed, frail shoulders stooped. “Young, each candidate, and no more ready for the weight of this burden than I was. I must find the best among them. These old bones will not last another generation should I fail.”
Perhaps the Forest replied with a mournful howl, or perhaps the wind just teased.
**********
A nagging little girl's voice forced Glee awake. Squeaky as a mouse, insistent as a badger, it wouldn't let her sleep till the warmth of day.
Except that the last leaves fell outside, and the Turning was months past.
Groaning, the nymph opened an eye...to stare at her first mors. No less than her twin! Same slender figure, though the twin cuddled up in furs; same delicate features; same hazel eyes, staring back like an owl.
No, but the mors' skin was the pale silver of moonlight on fresh snow. Her raven hair hung in braids to her rear. Most shocking of all, Glee's twin sported horns, delicate spirals from her temples that arced to sharp points.
Glee suppressed the urge to run her fingers up the ridges of such pretty horns. They lent the girl an air of majesty that made her burn with envy.
"I've never seen a nymph before!" babbled the girl, and all illusions of noble maturity shattered. "I'm Thanata."
"Glisinda." Was her own voice that mousy? She blushed.
"Why do you look like me? I mean, you're green – which sticks out very badly right now - and of course you don't have horns."
"I wish I did," muttered the envious nymph.
"That would be awesome! Maybe you'll grow some now that you're awake at winter?"
Oh, she hoped so! She'd be the talk of Capital - a nymph with onyx horns.
The two shared a silent moment, born on wings of fantasy, and savored the meeting of a strange world.
Miranda jerked up! The duo shrieked, sound blending into one voice, and leaped into a fearful embrace. (Both secretly wrinkled noses at the other - one reeking of the sour nettles, the other swaddled in old furs.)
"Gotta pee," Miranda whispered, hoarse as a goat. Nine, chubby, and already beginning to hint at curves, the bark-skinned nymph staggered towards the exit on wobbly knees.
"Wait! The King said no going alone!" called Thanata, rushing over. They hobbled together out through the curtains.
Alone and clear-headed for the first time in months, Glee fought back a rush of wanderlust. The room stank, and despite the cold, Glee sighed with desire for the stars above to count and watch. What would the trees sing for a nymph when snows came? Would her body adapt, or would she be a green beacon in the snow?
Miranda returned shivering, and Thanata saw her cozy back in the pallet before dressing Glisinda. It was an awkward and unfamiliar process. The furs swaddled and encased her, puffed up to rooster proportions and very warm. Shod and gloved, the nymph mourned bare feet and nimble fingers until they two trod outside.
Ah, open air! Her Forest! Only...it wasn't. Mountains of marble unchanged, but the emerald profusion of life Glee knew hid under a sea of dead leaves buried in turn by a foot of snow. The sweet, chill air caught her breath and made it into a cloud, and the smells told her of the deepest slumbers for animal and plant. The people bore a twisted reflection of her world - though pale and adorned by horns, the mors waltzed through the same chores and play.
Thanata proved to be salvation. She held Glee's hand through the whirlwind of names and faces, showed her how their traditions differed, and warned of winter's new dangers. In two days together, she and the nymph could have been sisters. In a week, they were soul mates, drawn together by a bond as close as their looks.
Soon Miranda recovered, and the three staked claim to the snow-covered backwoods of the capital. Their mors led, confident and spry on ice or snow, while the other two slipped and slid all about like newborn colts.
With so much to explore, the days passed in a blur of learning. At night, though, the cold and the wind so unfamiliar ached with loneliness for her family and her summer world. Even Thanata's tales of mors heroes who braved the cold to find great treasures could not ease her, and so Glee would sneak to the Maiden in that frozen marble bed and cry out the homesickness. The Maiden accepted tears and wailing both, placid and steady. More than once, the King would arrive before midnight, stay the night, and never ask for an explanation.
Sometimes she would feel a hand on her shoulder, a comfort in the dark.
Glee kept the Maiden's visits from that Other-place a secret, something for her alone. Sometimes the girl would come as a voice, others as the plain girl in lavender silk who smiled like a constellation.
One night Glisinda came to cry at the shrine and found Miranda already there, talking to the Maiden, and a jealous fury flared in the nypmh. How dare she! She flung curses at Miranda like spears. “Get out of here! You aren't allowed to talk to her! This is a sacred place!”
Only worse things came out after that, and their friendship ended as quickly as it had begun.
**********
At last, twice forever and again, the Forest bucked the ice from its veins, snow from its back, and stretched fronds high for warmth and life. The spring Turning arrived, and Glee jumped into her parents' arms crying like a baby. She latched onto her father's side and accompanied them both to the Turning.
At the moment of season's change, a mors youth of twelve handed over the preserved seed of a nimbus flower, chosen the fall before. A nymph of twelve accepted it, stiff with nervousness, and coaxed the the seed to full bloom with a flourish of Growth. The King cradled the flower to the garden in front of the Maiden's shrine, and there they planted it in the soil of thousands of previous cycles. Then all shared the best part - the feast! Fattening up for Hibernation or recovering therefrom, Capitol bustled with the rushed conversation of friends who only met two days a year. Glisinda bawled again, her eyes puffy, when Thanata's time to disappear into the caves of sleep came.
"We'll see each other again soon," swore her mors twin. "Promise."
Her father squished Glee close and wiped her cheeks dry. "We held vigil over you whenever we could, all winter long.”
"How'd you do that?"
"You're getting pretty grown now. If I teach you, do you think that will help you feel better about Thanata going into Hibernation?"
She nodded.
So Mom brought Glee to the secluded glades of Capitol and explained. "Hibernation sleep rises and falls just like the normal kind. When its at its lightest, we can pull away from the rhythm of the winter and coast through the shadow of the Forest to find you. We're blood and blood, drawn together. Well, you and Thanata have a relationship too. You're Cycle-twins: two sides of the same coin. That's why you look like twins, though you were born exactly six months apart. Only one or two pairs is born each generation, and that connects your souls in a very special way. As special as mother and daughter, or even sisters."
"But I never noticed her before!" Glee protested.
“We'd meant to introduce you two at a proper Turning,” apologized her father with a pat. “You didn't think that every nymph had a twin on the other side, did you?”
“Well, why not?” Glee muttered defensively.
He laughed. “Not quite.”
"We'll teach you what to look for next winter, I promise," assured her mom.
So once the hot months passed, intertwined with the lessons of the elders, and the Turning sank her into the Hibernation between her parents, the eight year old found her soul's twin by the glimmers of dark, renewed soil and culled branches. Neither would be alone ever again. As Thanata played the mors games, sledding and skiing down icy brooks, snow ball fights and tracking her peers, Glisinda glided along as well. They shared a bed at night and the wrinkled nose as the season wore long and the food shifted towards gruels. When summer came, her twin nipped after the nymph's feet as a playful wind. Over and over, for five years the Cycle bound them ever tighter even as one of the pair slept.
If sometimes the Forest echoed to her of dark places, of chaos, war, shame, guilt, and blood, Glee dismissed the chill winds as dream bubbles from beyond the safety of her world. She did not speak of it. Hands full with her twin, she more and more rarely visited the Maiden.
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One autumn equinox, she and Thanata stumbled upon something related as they sprawled out in post-feast lethargy.
"Thanata, this may sound weird....but do you ever dream of the Maiden?"
Long past surprised when Glee spoke what she thought, Thanata just nodded. “Not so much anymore, I guess. A lot when I was little. When I told the elders, they told me I was imagining it."
"What do you do in your dreams?"
"Play. Talk. She sometimes shows me new places. Remember that little fish pond I found last year - the one with the rainbow trout? She's the one who revealed it."
Now Glee leaned forward, eyes burning. "Thanata...sister....did she ever give you a name?"
"Sorry," Thanata whispered. "Not so much as a nickname.”
Glee sagged. Somehow, the Maiden couldn't be complete without a name.
"Why do you think we dream of her?" the mors pondered.
"I don't know."
"Have you ever met anyone else who does? There has to be someone!" Neither girl really remembered nearly a decade ago, when all the children seemed to be in that Other-place too.
"I stopped trying," admitted the nymph. "My parents used to think it was cute, but now they just smile in that tolerant but annoyed way.” She tried asking her friends, but they seemed more interested in boys than mysteries now a days. Miranda bloomed into womanhood, and suddenly Glee found herself the ignored one.
They sprawled across the grass. Clouds peeked through the trees, and autumn had not yet made its chill presence felt. The bugs knew better than to nibble.
"Who are you gonna apprentice to?" asked Thanata.
"I don't know."
"Me neither."
"I mean, we're twelve. How are we supposed to know what to do with forever?" Glee groaned. "What about the world outside the Forest? What's that like?"
"What's it matter?" Thanata mumbled, almost bitter with yearning. "We can't leave. We're chained to Hibernation, the Cycle, and the seasons."
Lapsing into silence, they shared the dreams of strangeness far beyond the glades and seasons they knew.
Then arrived the Turning festival, and Glisinda wreathed in ivy and flower buds handed the season's last seed to Thanata in robes of dyed silver and white. They slipped away after the planting and kissed each other's cheek.
"See you next Turning," Glisinda promised.
"Sleep well, sister."
The nymph sank into the deepest slumber, and soon her spirit whistled along the eddies of falling leaves, searching for her soulmate.
Thanata felt her touch like a reassuring hug and smiled. "Come, sister. Much must die. We have to make room for the spring."
**********
Deep under winter's spell, the Forest groaned, shackled in ice and smothered in snow. Without sun or moon, the mors floated across the land, touch bringing final cold to weary limbs. This season was harsh, and many snowdrifts hid the stiff body of a half-eaten deer or the remnants of a great tree. Even the haggard wolves satisfied themselves on frozen meat as the kills dwindled.
By her mother's suggestion, Thanata apprenticed under a hunter, a taciturn old man whose traps and arrows brought home warm meat when even the predators starved. He set her against the wild cold, tracking deer, boar, and pig, but would not allow her to join the hunters' squads yet.
So it was that on the day of childhood's end, Thanata swam across the snow, scent dampened and furs purest white, after an ancient boar-king. Air so cold it threatened to freeze eyelashes drove the tired bull into a snorting frenzy, and the mors apprentice held back warily. Thanata focused every inch on herself on avoiding brittle twigs, staying downwind, controlling the camouflage of her skin, crossing the frozen brooks and gullies without footprint or disturbance, and maintaining pace on the beast. The boar hustled for what it believed to be the ripeness of fresh fruit - in reality, the pit lined by hunters intent on a meal. If it deviated or scented the trap, Thanata would be the one to keep its track while the party reset the trap ahead.
Glisinda, drifting on the snowflakes, spied danger, but her whisper could not break the mors' concentration. -Thanata! Sister, the branches!-
Masked by the boar's crashing hooves and snorts, icy, thick limbs bent double, triple, ready to break. The girl crawled just underneath, most of her too numb by cold to feel the ice slivers pelting across her back.
-Thanata!-
Cracking sharply, the thick branches and their burden of ice wrenched free to crash down on Thanata. A white cloud buried the young woman, and the startled boar charged directly to its death over the hill.
In the shouts of hunter and prey, no one heard the shallow gasp for help from one girl except Glisinda. Her sister coughed blood, the branches buried deep inside her gut. Through liver, kidney, digestive track - no less a healer than the King could save her, and he was so far away...Her fate would shortly be sealed.
"Glee..." she whispered, hands wrapped around her impalement. Fog rose from her blood meeting the air.
-Hold on!- Glee swept to the hunters and screamed with all her might. -Help! By everything that's holy, you've got to come to Thanata!-
They didn't hear, all rimming the pit, intent on their spears and their quarry.
-Help, please!-
Nothing!
Crying now, the ephemeral nymph soared back to Thanata's side. -Don't die. This can't happen. Don't die!-
Thanata gasped, too weak to push off the mound of ice. "Glee...death is natural. Remember, silly? Its just like a long nap..." Then her wise facade broke, and she gulped down tears too. "But I wasn't ready to go...wasn't ready at all! Glee, its cold!"
-You won't die!- If only she could touch or scream or anything!
"I'll miss you, sis..."
Death licked its chops. Every breath drove the impalement deeper, blood stagnating where it should flow, organs surrendering to the winter. Glisinda witnessed the faltering flame of life, and she knew that she would rather die too than live as half a person.
-You won't die, sis. Sun, moon, and Maiden, help me!-
She never learned the human word for Havoc, but her soul understood what it meant to dive into the great unknown and blindly call for aid. Any aid at all!
Distantly, a presence old and powerful stirred in lethargy.
Glisinda sank into her sister's flesh - into that golden flame - and connected their hearts, wrapping them together with steel determination and burning love. Time distilled to individual heartbeats. All that mattered was that her breast beat for both.
Not enough. A catastrophic shudder fractured the world, and in a horrible empty moment Thanata died. Glee hung to a straw of life, cradling Thanata's flame to her own. Her physical body bent like a bow, arced taunt and convulsing. The Havoc powers would not be enough to save the only one who really mattered.
-Sister- croaked Thanata. -Soulmate, you can't hold two people above death. Let go, or you'll come too.-
-No! You can't leave! If we can't both live...-
A distance away, the King looked up from his book, eyes clouded with disbelief. Was his old mind gone addled at last, or did he see these things?
-If we both can't live, then we'll have to become one!-
She let the deepest barriers of her heart dissolve, and golden fire seared away all thought, all self, all existence. Still not enough - they would die.
At the precipice of everything that the soulmates were and ever would be, someone caught them. They found themselves face to face with a plain girl whose smile caught the sun. Each beam speared them, knitted them closer by the moment. Finally, held above the deluge of memory and sensation and mind all tumbling into a single being, they found a name. The angel, the one who held them cupped in her palms from the Dark. The one who reshaped Havoc into something that shone through the darkness of Death in defiance.
"Talia."
Then the angel deposited them (her) into their (her) bed, and bid them the sleep of the just.
**********
Deep winter, Norhill 708
Glisinda/Thanata jerked upright, cold and stiff, in the damp darkness of the Hibernation caves. Was she dead?
No, her sister saved her.
-No? I saved my sister.-
Her parents (her soulmate's parents) were comfortably nuzzled together under the furs, but she felt no tug of winter sleep. Her stomach churned and cramped, empty and annoyed. There was something sticky on her thigh.
Thanata caught sight of blood on her legs and panicked, remembering too well the jagged wrongness of impaled wood and ice. Then she was Glisinda, wiping the crimson fluid away. That smell...not death or injury, but monthly cycles of fertility.
-I'm a woman,- she thought dumb-struck.
But how could she menstruate now? Hibernation suspended the bodily cycles. Hair did not grow; women did not bleed; babies waited patiently for spring to be born. Yet, here she was, alone and awake, past that indelible threshold of childhood's end.
The mors nanny heard Glisinda stir, and the wrinkled matron bundled in her furs hobbled over from her chair. Hibernation guard was an easy duty, gifted to the elderly to spare them strain.
"Oh, my. Something wrong, little one?" crooned the pale elder, smiling. "Come. Sleep. Its not quite spring yet; I will sing you a lullaby." The rocking melody died on her lips as she spied Glisinda's stain. "Oh, my!"
"I have to see my body!" The young woman found her limbs surging with all of Thanata's vigor, and she sprang past the matron. Down the cave paths, through the atrium where pale light filtered in with idle snowflakes, and naked into the face of a frozen day. Cold could not touch her, and she ran atop the snow, leaving not track nor dent behind. The stench of death tickled her mors sense and led the way to where she (her soulmate) had died.
-Who am I? I'm Glee. I'm Thanata. I'm both and neither! I should be asleep - I should be dead!-
Pain blossomed at her temples as if the Forest reached deep into her skull to yank the bone out. She stumbled, lost her footing, and sank waist-deep into the frozen embankment of a stream.
Lights flickered before her eyes, and her skull was about to crunch like an egg. Skin split like overripe fruit, blood in twin rivulets framed her face, and bone ground, twisted, stretched.
She screamed, an ugly, animal howl.
Before its echoes could resound, the pain vanished. Her scalp mended around two jutting spires that parted her hair at each temple. Onyx horns that came to a sharp point inches above her hair.
She gaped at them in her icy reflection. Moments later, her camouflage shifted from summer green to winter silver - the color of pale moonlight on snow - traced with brown wiggles like bare branches.
Finally, the scar manifested across her belly. Six inches across, centered just above her belly button, and healed to skin slightly rough.
A stunned moment later, the hunters arrived to investigate. Her rush of adrenaline tapered off, and she started to shiver hard enough to clatter.
"Thanata!"
That was her. Except when it wasn't.
"Half of Capitol is looking for you! Why in all the hells are you running around naked?!"
Dazed, the nymph (mors?) let herself be dressed - blessed warm! - and carried to the shrines. Cries of relief and utter confusion abounded as everyone in sight chattered, and soon Glisinda learned why. The hunters set the girl down beside her own body. The King knelt over it, a hand on its chest. Washed wounds gouged too deep through too many vital spots.
Dimly, Glisinda realized her resemblance to Thanata, horns, camouflage and all. Yet all she could absorb was her own body dead on the marble steps. She could see the pasty colors of her viscera exposed to the air, the stains where her lifeblood drained, and her own face twisted in a final expression of horror and pain.
"You have done a miraculous thing, Glisinda," whispered the King. He knew. "A thing of power and love."
Her own body laid out as a corpse while she breathed right beside it...
"You have done enough. I will explain to everyone. Sleep, young lady. Sleep." His voice rolled with ancient power.
Suddenly so tired...and she sagged to the stairs, out cold. In dreams, she wept against Maiden Talia for hours, sobbed until the terror, pain, and queasiness all passed, but she would not remember on waking.
**********
No one spoke on it, but Glisinda keenly felt the chasm between her and the others. All those courtesies once part of daily life evaporated. Gossip circles didn't have room, and the elders didn't stop her at lunch for stories of ancient days. Childhood playmates treated her like a complete stranger. The mors simply willed her away, ignoring Glisinda like the dead as they buried her other body.
The King announced Thanata's death and her soulmate's miracle to the assembled nation on Turning. Only three people really believed it - Mom, Dad, and Serge (home for a few days to relax and enjoy the spring). The rest smiled shallow and tolerant of the crazy girl...as long as she was crazy quietly. Just one more strike against the King for encouraging that kind of nonsense in his favored pet. That night, her body reverted to nymph in all ways but one - the horns tall and proud that still graced her temples.
Her parents meant to provide unspoken support, but somehow their coddling just inflamed the nymph girl's resentment. She left the house in a silent storm more often than not, caught in a tangle of loneliness and anger that made her ever-prickly. Serge disappeared on her soon enough, back to the Border Guard far away to chase monsters. She spent much time roaming the Forest alone, pushing the boundaries of the Capitol
She turned thirteen without an apprenticeship, but the elders did not nag her to choose a path.
Miranda grew ever more popular, a snotty little princess in a circle of Glee's old playmates. People (mostly the elders) gushed praise of her independent mindset and strong will, for she did not much care for the King. Neither did many Elders, after all.
The King did not find the Elders' displeasure of much concern, for they ruled the people, and he ruled the Forest. One day, Miranda returned from a hike in the woods bearing a strange, burned stone. On it, distilled mana flickered shades of violet in the shape of runes. The King all but snatched it from her in his astonishment. He refused to mention its purpose, but afterwards kept a very close tab on the girl. Very quietly, talk of succession began...
Meanwhile, Glisinda meant to spend time with the Maiden who gave her so much, but somehow she slipped too easily from that Other-place. Half the time, she couldn't remember what happened while inside it upon waking.
“You're leaving me,” the Maiden accused her in one. “You're growing up, closing up, forgetting.” Her voice wavered. “You're leaving.”
“That will never happen!” Glisinda swore.
Upon waking, she would forget her promise.
On bad days, after the dreams evaporated, the young woman couldn't remember which one she really was - nymph or mors. Or was she even truly Dryad any longer? She kept a wreath of flower buds at the Shrine, watched Talia's breast rise and fall beneath its purple dress, and waited for the Maiden to rise and make everyone see the truth of things.
By the autumn Turning, the young woman would have settled for the Maiden's slightest rustle to disturb the endless sleep.
At the ceremony, the chosen nymph fumbled and dropped his bud. It cracked on a pebble between his feet. A dark omen, it set scowls deep as the nymphs stomped to the caves. Glisinda accompanied them all in, kneeling in the dark while the Hibernation claimed every other person with yawns and droopy eyelids.
She wasn't tired. Not even drowsy enough for a nap..
At the strike of midnight, her skin changed to winter white again. That horrible scar crawled across her abdomen, and the memories from life among the mors surfaced. Thanata did not know why she was sitting in the nymph Hibernation chamber, and drifting in a trance she slipped past the guard and across the town to her own home. The bole where she learned to walk, sing, and respect the keen pain of death in all things. Just past the creek, up the hill and under one of the oldest sycamores in all Capitol...
Thanata's mother rang out, "This is a cruel trick from a cruel child!"
She stumbled, the trance shattered. -I'm Glisinda too! Oh, I shouldn't be here!-
"Do not remind us of our daughter lost!" sobbed the woman, fists clenched. "Be gone! You look too much like her for a mother's tender heart to bear!"
"I-I'm sorry!" Glisinda gasped. Legs of jelly took eternity to flee across the hill and bury the vista from sight. -I'm so stupid! So stupid! We're identical....of course I look too much like her! I am Thanata!-
Again, her memories or the Forest played tricks, and somehow the silver-skinned nymph found herself in front of her Hunter master. The old man with hands gnarled to iron sat her in front of a small fire to counter the dusk. A fragment of courtesy, but far more than the others had offered in months. His home was an outcropping of rock, fortified on three sides against wind, rain, and snow, with oiled cloth forming the last wall. He swaddled old bones in three layers of fur; Glisinda wore a single long pelt, yet barely felt the autumn chill (her youth, certainly, and nothing special or unusual about her).
"Teacher, please let me continue my apprenticeship."
He sighed. "Glisinda, your sister died in training. I do not think I could bear another such tragedy, and best you not meet the same fate from inexperience."
"But I am Thanata! I know all your lessons by heart!"
"I teach the Hunt only to mors."
"But I am mors!"
"No, child, you are not." Spoken flat and firm, it smacked her harder than a blow.
Tears welled in her eyes, and all her careful arguments washed away. "You don't believe. You don't believe that I'm still Thanata!"
"I believe that everyone deals with loss in their own way," he whispered, tone dancing on ice.
"I'm a nymph with horns and silver skin who isn't Hibernating!"
"...I understand that you reached your womanly cycle rather early," he murmured. "Its the time when a young woman can first reach into the true magics. You already know that enchantments can forestall the Sleep."
"You think I did this to myself?!" Her voice rose, too squeaky and juvenile even to her own ears.
Prodding the fire, his deep scowl kept Glisinda cold. "I think that sometimes, when we are hurt, we can wish for something so bad that mysterious parts of ourselves respond. Even places that normally require years of training."
"What about the King? He supports me!" Shouting now. The wind snagged a profusion of red leaves and scattered them across the other mors dwellings. People would be eavesdropping. So what!
"Your father won a Growing tournament as a youth and impressed our monarch. Your family has known his indulgence ever since. Child, you have enjoyed an altogether casual relationship that distorts your image. Understand that our King is a politician, five times older than the eldest alive, and incredibly adept at manipulating people. In the past, he has used such opportunities as your own for deception if he deemed it necessary....though I confess, I cannot find his reasoning in this matter. We respect his judgment, as well as that of the Forest for which he is sworn voice, and so none have rejected your claim..."
But none accepted it.
How could this glacier of a man be the same hunter who taught her the snow-walk and the measured gait of predators? Maybe if she demonstrated all Thanata learned, if she tracked with his party...but the flint in his eyes said it wouldn't be.
How could her own people be so unwilling to believe?! She saw it as a matter of truth, inviolate. The girl could not understand the adults' concerns: magic could replicate horns, scars, and immunity to Hibernation, but no magic could return the dead or merge two souls into one.
Oh, to Hibernate forever! To wash the lonely months away in visions of the Forest, cradled beside her parents. Instead, the young woman wiped her eyes, bowed stiff and shallow, and departed from the hunter's home. Rickety knees supported her halfway to the Maiden's shrine before the tears weighed too much. What could the Maiden do? Talia slept, far beyond her reach, and pretty corpses told no truths.
She wailed to the dying grasses.
Finally, tears run dry, the young woman lurched to Talia's deserted shrine. She passed the frescoes and the inner doors. Everything doused in leaves red, yellow, brown and orange, an endless storm. Talia on her alabaster bed slept under a blanket of yet more leaves like a forgotten statue.
Glisinda brushed them off in annoyance and dusted the Maiden's dress. Then...no one was watching...she shoved the Maiden over a tad, hopped up, and slouched on the bed beside her. Talia was warm and supple like any living thing.
"You will not believe my week..."
So Glisinda unloaded about the Hunter's rejection, disbelief and rejection, stabbing loneliness; the trance where Thanata took over and led her to unwelcoming places; the Turning, its shattered bud omen. "The King descended into the secret places to commune with the Forest. Maybe its mad cause they're all being such idiots to me? Wouldn't that be neat? The very trees would rise up and show those snide bastards who they're dealing with!"
Peeking through the skylights, the moon cut everything into silver-white relief. "Thanks for listening, Talia. I'll be back soon." The nymph squeezed the Maiden's listless hand and thought, -You're my only friend now-
She departed to hover at campfire's edge and listen to mors legends that she simultaneously knew by heart and had never heard before.
Minutes later, a message delayed by vast gulfs of consciousness, the Maiden's hand squeezed back.
**********
Several miles out, the Guardian stones ringed Capitol. Glisinda could count on one hand the number of time she had passed the stark white boulders, every one in the care of Serge. Days after the Turning, though, she could stand no more of the mors' frigid brush-offs and stormed beyond even the farthest dwellings. Forsaking the boulevards, she waded into the dense thickets, headed no where in particular. She followed a random deer trail, never noticing the ancient magics that cloaked a hallowed place, and wandered into the Eldest stone's retreat without a clue.
At the center of a clearing, shaded by trees all around, the oldest of the Guardian Stones towered to the height of four men. Cracked, worn, and rugged, it whispered rocky, sonorous echoes of times long past. As long as this land had stood, so had this rock. So long as the Forest grew, so too would the Guardian Stone remain.
Glisinda remained in the clearing for an hour, absorbing the Stone's slow tale of changing earth and sky. It spoke in images that bubbled slowly out of the depths of silence when she held her own mind clear. Yet this was a place of meditation, and her restlessness soon grew too strong. It propelled her past the boulder and onwards. The Stone's enchantments felt like spider webs of lightning that clung to her fingertips, trying to draw her back into the protected circle.
A small flock of crows hopped from tree to tree behind her, staring. They measured her distance from the Stone. The little one had to get far enough away from the Stone that she could not depend on its power, yet not so far that the abomination would catch her without a chance.
The Forest preferred not to kill its prodigies during tests, though of course it always calculated for a certain amount of error.
Release the abomination.
Glisinda, walking on top of a fallen log, froze by instinct. The very air seemed to buzz with sudden malice.
A monstrous worm crashed into view, three times the size of a horse. It thrashed over the underbrush, a stain of angry colors with a circular, barbed maw and several clusters of eyes boiled out of its head. The central cluster swerved to focus on her, thirty yards away, and she froze. Was it more like a snake, tracking heat and movement, or smarter, searching for her with active hate?
It huffed, crushing the brittle limbs of the fallen tree, and a hare shot from the destroyed cover. It charged after the rabbit, and Glisinda split for the Guardian Stones. The monster impaled the hare on its outermost teeth and, without chewing, swerved to give pursuit of the nymph. She could weave through trees like a deer while it had to barrel forcefully through foliage, but even so it began to gain.
With the trial safely underway, far enough along that they would not disturb it, the Forest redirected the Border Guard back onto the path of the creature. No reason to let the abomination live past its immediate usefulness.
The Border Guard soldiers jerked about and joined the chase.
"How the hell did that thing evade us?!" bellowed one.
The eldest summoned his magic. "The Forest says its chasing a child! Faster!"
Glisinda abandoned the ground, vaulted into the tree branches, and scurried across the canopy like a squirrel. The rippling monstrosity pounded at the trees underneath, mouth held open and ready to eat a falling nymph. Little bits of rabbit still twitched on its fangs.
-I'm not afraid,- she thought as foot and hand found each a hold to stay an inch ahead. -I should be, but I'm not.-
The ancient trees endured, and the thing howled its frustration.
-I belong to this world, this rhythm. I belong to earth, tree, and sky - and this monster does not.-
Heartbeat in her ears, her eyes locked onto the spearhead of white stone coming into view. The branch under her feet sagged dangerously low, and the beast's topmost triangular tooth tore into her calf, almost hamstringing her. She ignored the pain, focused, strained, felt her hip crack and tear, and vaulted over the beast for the Guardian Stone.
-Thanata would never die here!-
Palms first, she struck the Stone and Called deep, through the boulder into the bones of the Forest. It responded; lightning roared through her, lighting her blood on fire. Pivoting on one hand against the Stone, she swung her entire body into the thing's squishy, slimy jaw. More force than just a girl could muster sent it flying backwards, bruised and limp, onto the spear-end of the broken tree. Impaled, it could only gurgle until it died.
As Glisinda slid and scraped to the ground, the hunters - no, the Border Guard by their silver emblems - arrived. Several plunged spears into the monster's body to ascertain death, and the youngest knelt before her.
-I know him.- Her hands started to shake. -One of Serge's friends. He's been to our home. He sat beside me at the Turning meal!-
"You ran like the wind, girl. Good job." He smiled without recognition.
All the sudden, all Glisinda's terror collapsed across her, doubled by bruised body and bleeding calf, and she sobbed to her knees. "O-Odyssey, right? Serge's friend!"
He blinked in confusion.
A mors spoke, probably their leader. “At least the Guardian Stone activated. Too close for my tastes.”
Two winters ago, she'd have missed it, but now Glisinda caught the whiff of reprimand in that comment. That tiny seed of annoyance, less-than-voiced accusation. Adult speak, never straight forward.
"Yes, sir," replied Odyssey carefully. "I've never seen one that could disappear like that." He turned to the nymph. "Child, what is your name?"
Her tears stopped, but she shook like a cornered mouse. "G-glisinda. Don't you recognize me?"
Touching her horns, he chuckled. "Oh, yes! You sat with Serge's family at the Turning feast!"
"Serge is my family!" she wailed.
Odyssey hesitated...but his eyes did not retreat into disbelief. "Can you explain to me what you mean?"
"Did you see the Guardian wake for battle, child?" interrupted the commanding mors, his mien of command undermined by a gleam of curiosity.
-I bet he wouldn't believe the truth.- It was an unfair assessment, projecting all her resentment of adults onto the commander until he seemed like a sadist.
"Y-yes," the young woman lied. "It saved me...in an arc of fire and power." Close enough to true, leaving out her own part.
"Amazing. You are truly blessed. What was it like? Perhaps you have an insight into how we could harness the Stone against other monsters?"
Coughing, Odyssey saved her the interrogation. "Sir, we should probably let the girl rest." He emphasized girl, another bit of adult talk.
"Ah, of course," said the commander. "See to it."
While the others built a fire to burn away the abomination's remains, Odyssey led her off to a corner and asked quietly, "Could you explain to me what you meant earlier?"
She did. In fact, everything spilled out - from meeting him at Turning feasts as a nymph to Thanata's death to Calling the Stones to help her.
He listened, and he did not condemn. At the end, he said, "That's some story. I'll be honest. I don't know if I believe it...but I want to. You are something else, madam Glisinda."
"So I'm told," she replied, smiling. The young woman wasn't quite old enough to really flirt, but she made a start of it.
"Is there anything I can do to repay your help?"
"Yes..." She watched the final ashes of the monster drift away into the afternoon. "Tell me everything of the Border Guard."
The Forest, watching as the mors began his dissertation, was well pleased. Half a dozen strong candidates remained even at this stage. A very successful generation indeed.
**********
Fore Spring , Norhill 710
When her family woke next Spring, Glisinda declared that she would follow her brother's steps into the Border Guard. She brooked no argument, arms crossed and face set, ready for trouble.
Father gave none. "Glee, darling, we've known for a long time that you weren't destined to be a teacher, a Grower or a lorekeeper." He brushed the hair from her face, fingers moving up to stroke her horn.
Mother cried even as she accepted his pronouncement. "You'll find a much larger world beyond, but our home is always open."
They sent a letter along with the next messenger to the far lands to inform Serge, but otherwise kept the information to themselves. Thus the King's visit after dark on the night after Turning took them all by surprise. "Glisinda, may we walk?"
Spring new, the night was chilly enough for Glisinda to wrap a shawl over her body. Womanhood peeked through, her silhouette rising and falling like the tide. For a moment, she paused at the edge of the family grove, netted in a feeling of monumental shifts all around and inside. -More to growing up than the moon's blood...I gotta move on, but I already miss what's passing.-
The King waited, letting her soak the wonders of home. If only he was younger, he would champion the miracle of her reforged soul until the people admitted its truth. Nay, his bones were brittle and breath short. When the crow cawed, he heard his name - long buried under the ubiquitous title - in its voice. The Chosen must be near, if not born already, and the duty to find her kept old muscles creaking along. This cycle would be a woman, come to balance out the last thousand years of a man's rule. After her, another man. All things in pattern, in Cycle, to weave their nation's heart.
He kept track of all the candidates, no matter how unlikely, and his favored one joined him then on the matted grass of the path.
"The Border Guard is a lonely path," he rumbled, ambling towards the river. He carried his cane over his shoulder like a much younger man; he would never us it till the day his legs failed.
"I'm never alone," replied Glisinda.
She meant Maiden Talia, but he thought of Thanata.
"It is dangerous."
"I survived monsters before." Stubbornness, half childish petulance, colored her tone.
"Ah," he danced with care. "Outran an abomination to the Stones. I heard. Did you perchance see the Guardians in action?" His voice fell into a dusty lecture to cover intense interest. "Did you know that those Stones are as alive as any man? They were no more than rocks once, but the magic of Cycle and Turning reinforces them each year, maintaining their strength. In times of need, they activate with the roar of an earthquake. Yet legend also whispers that in the rarest, most dire emergencies, the Stones can impart their powers to the blessed?"
Glisinda almost told him the truth, the Call and the blow struck from her legs with a boulder's force...but she remembered the Thanata's hunter mentor and his callous words. "That must be something."
The King glanced at her, then away, and sagged a little in defeat. "Yes. Not seen in nigh a millennium. Not since I was a youth, rash and headstrong." When the Queen before him saw a body still virile summon the Stone's power to protect his family, and she proclaimed him as Chosen of the Forest. Heir to the Sylvan Crown. Most important of all, the one task kept a secret for him alone:
Guide.
A weight that dwarfed all the nuisances of overblown elders, so convinced that they knew best when they did not even understand the source of their own Cycle.
"Tell me, Glisinda. Are you doing this because you want to serve and protect your people or because you want to run away?"
"Both," she admitted. "Is that cowardice?"
-What a Queen she would have made,- he thought. But if she could not summon the Stones, then she could never be Guide. "No, I don't believe so. Go with my blessing, and take as long as you need. Just remember, Glisinda, you are always welcome to return."
"Thank you, Majesty."
The nymph bowed, horns glistening in the moonlight, and left the King to gaze into babbling waters, retracing the bittersweet years of his reign.
**********
The Forest was vast and Capitol tiny. A world in microcosm of every kind of tree, from singing willows to bloodthirsty stranglers, the proud, pricked cactus to seas of kelp floating on marshes, and in all that dryads sparse as jewels on the beach. The whole of Capitol could tuck into the territory Glisinda watched as a rookie, and some masters could oversee untold miles, live and breath it all like their own heartbeat.
Of course, rookies patrolled the calmest glades, far from caves and swamps where strange, secret monsters bred. Serge, assigned as quick-footed messenger between the great abomination hunts, frequently snuck into the training lands to help hand out tricks. So easy he dealt with the fate of the nation on his back! Yet Glisinda fretted and tossed at night. What if an abomination surfaced in her lands? What if it escaped her and wrecked havoc? What if she missed a crucial detail, bumbled at the worst time, hindered instead of helped...
Quite simply, what if she messed up and someone died?
Thought the nervousness never faded, over the seasons it slowly metamorphosed into an almost overpowering sense of purposeful vigilance. That hardly left room for her to befriend the other trainees. After the first Turning, that didn't matter. She studied all year while half the Guards slept, and they woke to find her months ahead.
One day Serge put into words what her blooming mind felt. "You listen to the land. You talk to it. You give everything to it. Usually, that's more than enough, and you hear problems before they step foot past the first bush. Sometimes, though, its not enough. So what? You can't blame yourself for the ways of the world."
Before long, she escaped the nest for the true wild land. Her body blossomed slender and athletic from stalking lithe through shadows. Fingers callused and hair grew rowdy, sporting a leaf here, a twig there. As the Capitol nymphs were wild, almost mythical creatures to men, so Glisinda became the distant, elemental specter to her city kin. She helped birth foals - the creatures recognized her as guardian and never shied. She tracked maddened beasts and lured them with snacks of bloody meat into death. Rife with memories of her mors childhood, she nestled through the winter with ease. Her magic came to life, lacing into the Forest tapestry. No poison or predator remained hidden from her sight.
Nymph magic was a gift from the Forest. The life and mana of every thing in her domain responded to her call - hers to take, even if killed. Yet the Forest provided balance for all, and the dryad who siphoned without respect risked the land he served turning hostile. Their race bred slow and spread slower still, kept well within bounds; the land wished the guardians to remain few. Glisinda's idea of the "grand army of the Border Guard" would send a human general into fits of laughter. He may not laugh as hard once the trees uprooted themselves to crush his camps.
Monsters came. Nymph or mors as the season demanded, the Guard gathered. They did battle without rest until the creatures were ash. Choking shadows without bodies, snakes and spiders grown like mountains, things like nymph or man in skin, parasites that burrowed under the flesh and ate their fill while their victim lived - she was not the front line, but her hands still got dirty.
When she asked where the monsters came from, the answer was many useless theories and a general shrug of the shoulders. They were nasty things, sure, but as natural to the Cycle as a man's dung.
If the other Guards never befriended Glisinda the Horned Waker, they respected her errless hunting and discipline. If she cried in the boughs under moonlight from the knife of loneliness, she reached for Talia in dreams and her parents' legacy in the emerging adulthood of her body. As often as not anymore, she couldn't reach the Other-place to see her sleeping friend.
Serge visited when he could. News, jokes, teasing - usual big brother, a slice of home - he refused to let her disconnect from the greater nation. Still, he could only circle the posts half the year (less if called to hunt the monsters); the mors messenger, though polite, never offered so much as a handshake with the letters of home.
By sixteen years old, after a scattering of family visits and a dozen assignments, Glisinda guarded true Forest border. She could climb the diminutive trees, nothing compared to the age-old oaks of Capitol, and spy from their limbs the abrupt gash where foliage ended and a smoldering expanse began. A straight line of trees formed a barricade physical and mystical, pressed against a deep furrow like a moat from the northern horizon to the southern, and the Wastes sulked on the other side. That land was jagged, volcanic black sprinkled with struggling islands of pale grass. Even after half a century, the Norhill volcano belched lava onto the earth several times a year. A pale shadow on the far horizon, to her excitable imagination the mountain became an austere general, marching troops of soot and stone against the Forest. Two generations ago, Glisinda's post needed six Guards to monitor envoys (and spies!) from the oldest extant human civilization. Not anymore. Who would cross a country of ash to trade with forest ghosts?
"I would much like to meet a human," the nymph mused. Below, a deer and her fawn grazed in the summer's morning cool. A hot wind brought with it a very strange song, all pops of burning wood and searing heat, that made Glisinda shift to the leeward side of a tree.
-Half of me is always ahead, and half of me is always behind.- Nymph witnessed birth, growth, breeding, and life, following in the wake of life ever-expanding. Mors slipped ahead as a shadow, anticipating the stench of rotted meat and spilled blood, the journey into food and soil. After so long, she could scarce remember what it felt like to have only one soul. -If I had not died that winter, what would I have become?-
The Forest only hummed its bustling contentment. Like listening to a melody underwater, received from a thousand bubbles yet recognizably a whole. "All is well," it sang. "All is natural."
-As it should be.- Glisinda nestled against a flat rock. Wood ants crawled over her ankles, tickling, and a zephyr danced from thousands of leaves. It pushed the sulphuric stench back and kept the day's heat waiting a moment longer. All a part of her, and the woods never cared if she was Nymph, mors, both or neither. -Its not a bad life. Not really. No...its not bad.-