2. Rahzlyn
Rahzlyn
The wind didn’t howl or whistle—it sang.
Even in the fiercest storms like the one I stood in now, I didn’t just hear the rain’s furious battering or the trees’ restless whispers. I heard music. Sometimes a voice, sometimes an instrument, but always musical in nature.
A family secret, my grandparents called the phenomenon. You must never tell another about it.
I bared my face to the darkened sky, my long curls slicked into submission as the rain fell in an uneven rhythm around the garden.
The pelting water drenched my dress, its cool touch seeping into my bones.
The earthy aroma of damp soil, splashing water, and whipping winds wove a symphony that stirred something deep within me.
At twenty-six years of age, my love for storms—both wind and rain, but especially when they collided—had expanded into a pastime far less suitable for a grown, proper woman. Something about the rain’s drenching cadence carried by the wind’s music was too enticing to ignore.
“Roselyn Ariti!” my grandmother’s angry voice trilled from somewhere behind me. “What in the name of the stars above are you doing out there?”
I turned, my feet squashing in the cold mud, to find her fists planted firmly at her hips.
The shovel I’d abandoned sank further into the muck nearby.
My grandmother knew I hated being called Roselyn.
Yes, it was my given name, but I’d told her for years how much I preferred Rahzlyn.
She, along with everyone else, never took me seriously.
The sole purpose for my venturing out into the storm had been to secure the herbs and shrubs susceptible to flooding.
I’d started digging channels around the sage and yarrow to guide water away, as they were known to rot at the root with too much water, until I heard it again—the music—and everything eddied from my mind.
The kingdom of Gemini was prone to plenty of rainstorms throughout the year, the result of living next to the queendom of Cancer, whose queen wielded the elemental power of water.
Our king’s air magic often generated windstorms across the kingdom to better distribute Cancer’s neighboring rains across our own lands.
Or to simply show off his power.
An unusually strong storm emerged this morning that we hadn’t properly prepared for. The preexisting mulch, stone pebbles, and elevated beds were not enough to combat the flooding that followed.
“Why are you standing there?” my grandmother continued. “I told you to secure the beds before the whole stars-damned garden floods!”
“Working on it, Nahn!” I called, unable to hide the bite in my tone.
She yelled something in return, her vexed voice almost entirely drowned out by the storm. Though I was nearly certain it was something to the effect of, Foolish child!
Nahn shut the glass-paned doors tightly with one last disapproving glare. With renewed clarity, I retrieved the shovel. My muddy hands slid down the wooden pole as I searched for the shrubs in need of saving.
Our family relied on this garden to keep our apothecary shop running. With us living on a small skyland so close to the royal city of Dioscuri, we’d become one of the most prominent healing destinations in all of Gemini. Thanks to my brother and grandmother’s efforts, of course.
I peered back at our two-story home, to the bedroom window with a small candlelight on the interior sill, to my grandfather. A sadness took hold of me.
Physically, he was alive, but he was a shadow of the man he used to be. Once a father figure to my brother and me, and a prominent language scholar to others, Pahn had forgotten who he was.
Who we all were to him.
Admittedly, losing myself to distractions was easier than facing that reality.
Or the reality that I was a grown woman still living under my grandparents’ roof, still sharing the same room as my brother Basil, and still living with no inherent purpose.
Each time I attempted to prove I wasn’t a burden, that I was good for something, I seemed to prove the opposite.
I grunted in frustration as I shoved the curved metal into the chunks of mud.
Soaked and slippery, the shovel most certainly did not dig where I wanted it to.
With the rain at my back, I thrust forward only for my heels to slide backwards, unable to find any sort of grip. I squealed as I planted onto my belly.
“Oh, for stars’ sake!” Nahn cried out impatiently. “Get in here before you turn into sludge!”
I padded along the cobbled path lined with hyacinths—once my grandfather’s favorite flower—and lingered in the doorway.
The first floor of our home belonged to the apothecary, filled with hanging plants, dried flowers, and walls lined with vials of crushed herbs and assorted concoctions.
I sought comfort near the roaring hearth, its flames soothing the chill that permeated my mud-coated skin.
Nahn swathed me in a linen cloth like a babe. “You’re lucky it’s still Tempus and we aren’t open today, otherwise the whole town could have seen you like this.”
“And you say I’m dramatic.” My teeth chattered as she rubbed my sides to ward off the shivers wracking my body. “I don’t care what the town thinks of me.”
“You should.” She scowled up at me. The firelight cast orange hues to her gray hair. She did a much better job at taming her curls than me, using a variety of oils and a bright yellow scarf to secure them in place. “You are a beautiful woman at a ripe age—”
“Please don’t compare me to a grape in need of plucking, Nahn.” I grimaced. I’d been thoroughly plucked more times than she needed to know.
Nahn’s hands slowed. Despite the constant frowning I caused her, her fair skin had aged well. Thanks to the age-defying serum recipes passed down from the women on her side of the family, Nahn could pass as my mother despite nearing the end of her seventh decade.
The wonder of what my mother looked like was fleeting, as was that of my father.
Nahn and Pahn rarely talked about either of them, and when they did it was only to warn Basil and me away from the topic.
My grandparents were the only family we needed, so there was no point in dwelling on a past that never existed.
Still, they’d been on my mind lately more than usual, accompanied by thoughts of leaving the family business altogether.
“I wouldn’t need to compare you if you did what you were told,” Nahn said exasperatedly, bringing me back to the damp present. “What were you even doing out there?”
“Listening,” I murmured, my gaze shifting to the rivulets of water streaming down the glass-paned doors. To the wind that sang and rattled the windows.
“Listening.” Nahn tsked. “To what, yourself catching pneumonia? The drowning shrubs in the garden? The Geminian king himself using his air magic?”
There was no point in contradicting her.
Not when she pretended the wind’s music didn’t exist in our family.
Pahn had explained it to be a rare gift from the Astrals to be kept secret for our own safety.
If word were to spread about our ability, we’d be shipped off to an Academy as specimens for studying, if not worse.
We didn’t know why or how the gift worked, only that the four of us could hear what others could not. Unlike Nahn, though, the wind was impossible for me to ignore. I sought its sounds wherever I went.
“I ask one simple task of you,” Nahn continued, clucking her tongue. “And you can’t do that without acting ridiculous and making a total fool of yourself. I don’t know why I expect anything different from you.”
Tears stung my eyes at her harshness. I tried not to let her words affect me, having been deemed too sensitive all my life. Her rubbing hands intensified, but I shook as a different chill overcame me. The chill of disappointment.
Her hands stilled, her eyes catching mine.
I averted my gaze down to my muddy toes, but her fingers caught my chin.
“Enough with the tears, Roselyn. I don’t say these things to make you cry.
I say them because no man is going to take you for a wife if you are always running off into the rain, dancing barefoot in the mud, and crying over silly things. ”
My jaw clenched firmly despite my trembling, shoving the emotions down where Nahn deemed they belonged. “I don’t want a husband.”
“No one does. But you, my child, need one,” Nahn insisted, hazel eyes hardening.
“What you want doesn’t always matter. Not when life is hard, especially for the unwise ones who live by their heart.
I’m only making sure you will be taken care of once I’m gone.
You will have Basil, but he will no doubt start a family of his own. You will become a spinster unless—”
“Spinster,” I huffed. “Because I couldn’t possibly take care of myself and build my own life?”
“Hard to do when you spend your spare coin on ales and spare time dancing at seedy taverns,” she remarked pointedly.
Only the crackling fire filled the already heated silence.
But her silence was long enough to inflict pain over the ever-present scar on my heart where her words, or lack thereof, had sliced so many times before.
“These are dangerous times,” she continued.
“The apostai are running the royal cities amok—”
Three sharp knocks sounded from the front door and defused the rising tension. Nahn released my chin and scurried to the window. “Stars above us, what is the baroness doing here?”
I wrapped the cloth tighter around me. “Basil said we’d have a visitor today.” I reminded her of my twin brother’s dream from last night. “It’s the final day of Tempus, and in the middle of a storm no less. Shouldn’t she be on her way to a temple?”
Nahn whirled around, resting her back against the wooden door as the baroness knocked incessantly. I never understood how my grandmother put up with that woman after what she did to our grandfather years ago.