Erin woke abruptly, sitting up in bed. She hugged her legs tightly as she took deep, slow breaths, trying to calm down her pounding heart.
She had been dreaming about the Mataiths again. She'd already had the same dream several times in the past week. In it, she and Arturyn were in a cave surrounded by a horde of Mataiths, who were just about to close in on them when they were all chased away by a large black unicorn.
This time, though, the unicorn hadn’t come fast enough, and the Mataiths had killed Arturyn before they were driven away. Just before she had woken up, Erin had been watching Kirchel sobbing over his lifeless body.
Looking over at the other side of the bed, Erin wasn’t too surprised to see that Kirchel was no longer there. It was obvious when they got back to their room at the Nirayl palace that she didn’t feel much like sleeping. She had probably only gone to bed so that Erin would.
Sliding out from under the blankets, Erin crawled to the end of the bed and pushed the curtain further back. With the fire no longer burning in the stone basin in the middle of the floor, the bedroom was dark and shadowy, but there was enough moonlight coming in from the garden for her to see that Kirchel wasn’t in the room.
She got down off the bed and walked over to the edge of the garden, her bare feet making no sound on the thick rug. Squinting slightly, she could just make out a dark figure sitting on the bench in the shadow of the tree.
Erin stepped out onto the cool grass and made her way over to the bench, careful not to trip on the rocks surrounding the pond.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Kirchel asked quietly as she approached.
“I had a bad dream,” Erin said, sitting down on the bench next to Kirchel and tucking her legs up under her nightgown. “About the Mataiths. It woke me up.”
Kirchel sighed. Now that she was closer, Erin could see that she was leaning against the back of the bench with her head tilted up toward the starry sky. “This entire week has felt kind of like a bad dream.”
“A lot of it has.... But there have been some good parts, too. Finding your parents was good. And meeting your uncle.”
“It’s pretty much turned my entire world upside down,” Kirchel said dryly. “But, yes, I suppose they were still good things. I might even call them wonderful things if they hadn’t led up to such a miserable finish.”
“Well, it's not quite over, right? Your grandfather isn’t dead yet. And Seiyan said he would try to talk to him some more.”
“Always the optimist, aren’t you...? Yes, Seiyan said he would try Nievar again. But he also said there was practically no chance of it working. And for all we know, he is dead by now. It sounded like he’d gotten quite a lot worse by the time Seiyan came back to get us.”
Erin frowned at her cousin. “You sound just like….” She hesitated.
“Like what?”
“...like Arturyn. When he was telling me that there was no way we could get away from the Mataiths. But we did get away, didn’t we? Even if it seemed impossible at the time.”
“I don’t want romantic visions of overcoming the impossible. I just want—” Kirchel’s voice broke, and it was a moment before she continued, “All I want is to be with the man I love....” She paused again, swallowed, and then went on more resolutely. “But I can’t. I can’t now, and I’ll never be able to. And it’s time I just accepted that and moved on.”
“But—”
“I don’t need you to try to give me false hope, Erin!” Kirchel cut in. Her voice was suddenly louder and had an angry note to it. “This is already hard enough for me to deal with as it is, all right?”
There was a long silence.
“Fine,” Erin said at last, standing up. “If you want to be pessimistic, I’m going back to bed.”
“Erin, I’ve just had the thing I wanted most in the world snatched away from me for the second time.” Kirchel's voice was somewhere in between a sob and a snarl. “I did hope—for the first time in years I dared to hope—and those hopes have all been smashed to pieces! Don’t you think I have some reason to be pessimistic?”
“I didn’t say you didn’t have any reason to,” Erin said evenly. “I said I was going to leave you alone and let you do it.”
She walked around the pond and across the grass without looking back at Kirchel. But when she reached the edge of the garden, she paused and turned around.
“I had shattered dreams, too, only a week ago,” she said quietly. “And now they’re back together again, even though I was sure they never could be. After so many impossible things have happened just in this last week, is it really that unreasonable to hope for one more?”
Without waiting for an answer, she went back to bed.
----------------------------------------
There was a knock on the bedroom door very early the next morning.
Erin, sitting up and blinking sleepily, saw that light was just beginning to creep in through the garden. Looking over, she saw that Kirchel had finally fallen asleep. The knocking hadn’t woken her up, which wasn’t too surprising, considering that she had been awake most of the night.
Erin got quickly out of bed and went to the door as the knock came again, sounding louder and more urgent. She opened the door to find Arturyn and Seiyan, both fully dressed and looking much more awake than she felt.
“Erin, is Kirchel awake?” Arturyn asked, his expression serious.
Erin glanced behind her and saw that Kirchel had finally woken up and was just getting out of bed. She looked back at Arturyn and nodded, then moved aside so that he and Seiyan could come into the room.
One look at Seiyan’s face was enough to tell her that something was wrong. His skin couldn’t really get any paler, but his face had a greyish cast to it, and he looked haggard and exhausted. He also had a slightly lost expression, as though he didn’t quite know where he was or what was going on.
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“What is it?” Kirchel asked, moving quickly toward them. She looked alert, though her eyes were bloodshot and had dark shadows underneath them. As she walked, she waved a hand over her nightgown and made it melt into a tunic and pants.
“I’m taking you to your parents,” Seiyan said, sounding as tired as he looked. “I’ll explain when we get there. Let me take off your trackers.”
He pulled off Kirchel’s tracking ring and then Erin’s, making them both fly back to rest on the bed. Kirchel hurriedly changed Erin’s clothing the same way she had her own. Then the three of them held onto Seiyan while they experienced another lightning trip across Raylmiyr.
The sun was already mostly visible above the horizon when they arrived at the cottage, which must mean that it was further east than the capital. Kiari and Edward were obviously up already because both of them appeared at the cottage door right away.
“What’s wrong?” Edward asked, looking concerned. “It’s barely past dawn. We weren’t expecting to see you until this afternoon.”
They all looked at Seiyan.
He swallowed and opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He closed his mouth again, and shook his head, seemingly unable to speak. Kiari walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders, looking into his eyes.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” she said softly. “Father’s gone.”
Seiyan closed his eyes and nodded silently.
“Oh, Seiyan…” Kiari whispered. She put her arms around her brother, and they held each other tightly.
Glancing at the others, Erin saw that Kirchel and Arturyn had both gone pale at hearing the news. Arturyn was staring unseeingly down at the nearest flower bed, his expression grave. Kirchel had her hand pressed against her mouth, her eyes also on the ground.
Edward, though, stepped closer to Kiari and Seiyan, his eyes full of sympathy. He put a comforting hand on Kiari’s shoulder, and she turned her head to give him a small, appreciative smile. There were tears streaming down her face.
“When?” Edward asked Seiyan quietly.
“About two hours ago,” Seiyan said, his voice slightly unsteady. “I couldn’t get away any sooner, and I can’t stay long now, but…but I had to let you know.” He glanced at Kirchel and Erin, who were both standing near him. “And…I thought it was best if they could be here with you.”
“Thank you,” Kiari said, smiling weakly through her tears.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Edward asked.
Seiyan shook his head. “The funeral arrangements are already being taken care of. And for me….” He managed a faint smile, looking down at his sister. “It helps just to know that you’re here. That I’m not alone….” He took a deep breath. “I should go. But I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Kiari nodded, and she and Seiyan gave each other another hug. Then he took a step away from her and was gone in a swish of wings.
Kiari let out a long sigh.
“Well, let's go inside,” she said, looking around at the others and wiping the remaining tears off her face. “I’ll get some breakfast ready. Even though I don’t think any of us are very hungry right now….”
They all followed her into the house.
Edward added more chairs to the kitchen table so that they could all sit around it. Kiari sliced one of the loaves of bread she had baked the day before and put it on the table, along with several jars of jam and some kind of soft cheese. There was also a pitcher full of a brownish drink that tasted very much like hot chocolate, though it had some added flavoring that Erin couldn’t identify.
As Kiari had predicted, none of them ate very much. Kirchel and Arturyn both picked unenthusiastically at the bread and jam Kiari set in front of them. Kiari herself didn’t eat any at all but merely sat and sipped her drink in silence.
None of the others talked much, either. Arturyn was looking uncomfortable, as though he didn’t feel like he really belonged there. Erin could sympathize with him.
She knew that the others had just lost a family member, however strained their relationship with him might have been, and she wanted to be considerate. But at the same time, it was hard for her to feel very sorry that Nievar was dead, aside from what it meant for Kirchel and Arturyn. She’d never even met him, after all, and nothing she'd heard about him had been very endearing.
After they had finished their gloomy breakfast, Kirchel went out to the garden with her mother, and Erin and Arturyn both followed Edward out to a large shed behind the house. Inside the shed was a wooden pen that held about a dozen small, goat-like animals covered with long, thick fur.
“These are paeyns,” Edward said as the animals all came eagerly over to the side of the pen, making strange little mewling noises. “They come from the mountains here in northern Raylmiyr. We get milk from them, and Kiari weaves their fur into cloth for clothing and blankets."
Arturyn helped Edward scoop bucketfuls of grain from a large covered bin near the pen and pour them into a long trough inside it, while Erin let the paeyns sniff at her hand. Their hair was soft and light, like feather down. They seemed very friendly, nuzzling Erin with their velvety noses and wriggling happily when she scratched their ears.
When they were all eating contentedly, Edward took a clean bucket from a shelf over the grain bin and started to milk them, while Arturyn cleaned the dirty wood shavings out of the pen and put in fresh ones.
Erin sat on the side of the pen and watched them. She would have been willing to help, but she didn’t know how to milk, and Arturyn was using magic to clean the pen, which made it look quite easy. Besides, she had the impression that both men were glad to have some work to do.
When he had finished with the milking, Edward opened the door of the pen to let the paeyns go outside. One by one, they finished eating and wandered out into the sunshine.
“Don’t they get into the garden?” Erin asked, surprised that he was letting the animals go freely like that.
Edward shook his head. “Kiari has them very well-trained,” he explained. “They stay on the grassy area near the forest all day and then come back in the evening when it’s time for them to be milked again. They never wander off. A Nirayl’s magic has more influence on animals than any fence or lead. We only keep them penned up at night to make sure they’re safe from bad weather and other animals while we’re asleep.”
“Makes sense.” Erin glanced around the shed. “Where did Arturyn go?” She had been watching the paeyns and hadn’t seen him leave.
Edward looked around as well. “I guess he went outside?”
They both went to the shed door. Just outside, they met, not Arturyn, but Kiari, coming toward them from the garden. She still looked rather tired and melancholy, but she smiled when she saw them.
“How are you doing?” Edward asked, moving forward to kiss her on the cheek.
“Oh...I’ll be all right.” Kiari put her arm around his and leaned her head on his shoulder. “It’s not like we weren’t expecting Father to go, after all. And you know he and I never got along all that well. I’m more worried about Seiyan having to go through all of this. And even more for Kirchel and Arturyn....”
“Where are they?” Edward asked. “Arturyn was here with us just a few minutes ago.”
“Taking a walk,” Kiari said, nodding toward the forest, where the figures of two people were just visible, moving through the trees. She sighed heavily. “I think they need a little time alone.” Her voice broke slightly. “To say goodbye....”
The three of them stood for a moment in gloomy silence. Then, without speaking, Edward and Kiari both turned back toward the house.
Erin started to follow them. But then she hesitated, looking back toward the forest. It was hard to tell from that distance, but she thought she could see Arturyn reaching out to take hold of Kirchel’s hand while they walked.
“Hey, Wraith...I think we need you to use some more of your creepy magic to make everything work out again...” Erin whispered, blinking rapidly to keep back the tears that were suddenly stinging her eyes.
There was no answer.
Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Or maybe he didn’t know what to do any better than the rest of them did.