Chapter 5 The Wizard Considers Raising Chickens
The Wizard Considers Raising Chickens
The legend of the Isle of Malys began thusly.
One moment, Wrate did not know of himself.
The next moment … he did. Wrate was all the waters of the world and he was alone.
He wanted to know what else he could make of himself, and so he threw his skin into the water and it stretched into the Isle.
He tossed his bones onto the land and they became the white trees of the Ulva Wyldes.
He tore out his teeth which became the Aatos Mountains.
He plucked out his hair which became the Vale of Sylke.
He pulled out his eyes and buried them in the ground where they became the Glimmers.
His spit flowed across the land and filled the Famishing Sea.
And when Wrate had made something of his unmaking, the last of his longing became the Silent Lakes.
But for all this, he was alone. And when he realized that he would always be alone, he wept.
The steam of his tears became the clouds.
When the clouds scudded across the sky, veritas swans sprang into existence and they became beings of truth, sorrow and exquisite beauty.
In their song, Wrate understood what he must become.
From Wrate, two lives emerged. For mortals, the first life was spent in a human body.
Upon the first death, one could elect to live a second life in the form of a tree, rock or flower.
The first life was for living and movement.
The second life was for remembering and stillness.
And in the second and final death, all returned to the endless waters of Wrate bearing slivers of life’s truths.
In this way, Wrate was both a mundane multitude and a sacred singularity. And thus, he would find peace.
It was said that when Wrate heard the song of the veritas swans and understood the nature of his existence, he shed a single tear.
This tear took the form of a lake which became known as the Dole.
To submerge in its waters was said to summon forth one’s potential, to hasten destiny’s footsteps and to force the very hours to gallop toward the next day.
No one knew where the Dole might be found, but Demelza and her sisters had long been convinced it was not only in the Silent Lakes district, but also no more than an hour’s walk from Hush Manor. Their reasoning? None whatsoever. But it was a fun way to pass the time.
Besides, Prava—who knew everything about everything—could not prove that the pool was not the Dole, which only cemented the little pond’s mythical status in their childhood imagination.
When they were little, the girls would pretend to claw their way out of the Dole while screaming at the stars for “the cruel vicissitudes of fate!” And then taking turns dying and being resurrected.
It was all very amusing. They did not really know what any of the words they used even meant, but they were fun to say.
And even when they grew older and no longer played at dying and being ravaged by destiny, the Dole became a place where the sisters shared their deepest fears …
their deepest wishes … in the hopes that if something was listening, then such good fortune would quicken its pace to find them.
At the bottom of the valley, the Dole appeared hardly bigger than a bathtub.
It was tear shaped and its stone sides sloped with unnatural smoothness.
Fuzzy tufts of dark blue hushbane grass swayed in the windless air.
Demelza paused, gathering her breath. The wyvern hopped beside her, ears flattened against its body.
“You know I hate being far from the library,” it said.
“I did not force you to come with me,” said Demelza.
“You are my pupil!” huffed the wyvern. “Rogue knowledge is a dangerous thing when one is clearly charged with emotion!”
“Dangerous,” muttered Demelza. “Is that why she wants me gone?”
Get rid of her.
Demelza did not want to think of her mother’s smell.
She did not want to think of her cool hands checking her forehead for fever.
Or the little boxes Araminta would hide under her pillow, full of candied aphids and sugar beetles.
You are beyond precious to me, my little one.
When had that changed? Demelza had read tales of heartbreak, but she had never known it.
She had thought heartbreak was loud as a thunderstorm, but what she felt was far more quiet.
Sinuous. It was a venom slipping into the cracks of herself, corroding memory and shadowing words.
Bit by bit, the poison exposed a gleaming and terrible question:
What if Araminta was right? What if Demelza was a stain upon her family? What if she was better off … gone?
“You have not finished your thought!” said the wyvern. “Who wants what gone?”
“My mother wants me gone.”
The wyvern huffed. “Don’t be foolish, my dear.”
“I know what I heard, wyvern,” said Demelza.
“Let us assume you heard correctly,” said the wyvern. “Let us also assume that your thoughts on incinerating a parental figure after an argument remain outside the realm of possibility?” It looked at her almost hopefully.
“You assume correctly,” said Demelza.
The wyvern looked disappointed. “Well then, why haven’t you confronted them?”
“Who said I wasn’t going to?”
“You are marching with great determination toward a dried-up pond,” said the wyvern.
“It’s tradition,” said Demelza.
“I suppose you expect me to say something wise here, considering my status as an ancient, mythical being and whatnot,” said the wyvern.
“Are you ancient?”
“Oh yes,” said the wyvern. “I take great care of my fur though, so you would not be able to tell.”
Demelza touched her bare neck, imagining the weight of a small, silver key.
A few years ago, one of Demelza’s sisters, Evadne, had been caught pretending to sing during morning music practice.
Evadne had been complaining of a sore throat that morning and so instead of singing alongside her sisters, she merely opened and closed her mouth and figured no one would notice.
But Prava saw. As punishment, he twisted her key and would not let her turn into a swan for a month.
Evadne was scared of heights and she often complained that flying through the cold, thin air made her eyes water.
But when Prava twisted her key, she wept every day.
She wept when she walked to breakfast with Demelza and she wept as she rubbed her back along the stones as if she might coax out her wings by sheer force alone.
“But you don’t even like being a swan,” Demelza had said, trying to comfort her.
“I know,” said Evadne, miserable. “But now I feel wingless, Demelza. I feel like someone has manacled my feet and told me to fly. I feel like time has forgotten about me and refuses to pull me from one hour to the next and so I am trapped in this airless purgatory.”
Obviously, Evadne was their poet. Although she was prone to exaggeration, Demelza felt the truth of each word.
She was trapped. Not in her body, but in her spirit. Trapped in a way that made time seem terribly endless.
Demelza had excelled in her studies. In some areas, she had even surpassed her sisters. But where Demelza’s accomplishments were impressive, her sisters’ skills were important.
Each of her sisters had been sent on assignment to further their father’s pursuit of everlasting life and endless power.
Her sisters were powerful, their lives full of purpose.
And in her heart of hearts, Demelza did not simply want to join their ranks, but soar beyond anyone’s imagining.
She dreamt of dragging renown in her wake.
She dreamt of being looked at, instead of overlooked, to be draped in jewels and not reeds and for her name to be exhaled on a gust of wonder.
Do not fear, my strange little bird, her father had promised. I will find use for you yet.
But it seemed her father had lied. Demelza would never have the chance to prove all that she could do. She would be sent away and all for the crime of not being enough.
“What is it, child?” asked the wyvern.
“I feel … wingless,” said Demelza, at last.
The wyvern blinked at her, its fiery eyes aglow in the dusk. “If that was meant to be profound and cryptic, I’m afraid that to me it reeks of intellectual flatulence.”
Demelza rolled her eyes. By now they had reached the Dole.
It had rained a few hours before and the usually bone-dry pond was now muddy.
Demelza daintily lifted the hem of her gown, slipped off her sister’s satin shoes, and jumped into the Dole.
It was a short and thoroughly anticlimactic hop.
No thunder clapped. No lightning shattered.
No wind blew. If this was ever a place where destiny itself might hasten forward, the world gave no sign of it.
Demelza looked up at the sky.
“Please,” she said.
After a few moments, she climbed out of the Dole and began the walk back to Hush Manor.
She knew that the pond held no magic and that if anything it was a farewell to the place where she had hoped against hope.
If Araminta’s desire was granted—as Demelza was certain it would be, considering Prava never denied his wife—then she knew she would never see it again.