CHAPTER 36
brAX
Three years after the Sundering
“Muri!” Nurai shouts, a wide smile breaking upon her face as she waves her arm in the air, the wild motion near flailing.
Her cheerful exuberance is enough to draw the attention of the female standing among the many brightly decorated stalls.
The market bursts with all manner of fea creatures, haggling and bartering amidst the stands full of handcrafted earthenware, farmed goods, and wild foraging’s.
Brownies and gnomes weave beneath the feet of satyrs, dryads, and every kind of woodland fea, shouting with raised fists when the occasional clumsy foot lands too close for the comfort of the tiny fea underfoot.
The forest of Brax sings as she breathes.
Her deep lungs heave in slow and even bursts that temper the otherwise hot and humid summer day.
The songs carried from deep within her lungs are those of the creatures residing within her.
Many sing of new awakenings and hold the promise of hopeful beginnings, while others profess ancient tales of a time long ago.
“Nurai!” Muri beams, embracing the tall, slender female, the long tresses of her pitch-black hair shining in the light of the morning sun. “I did not expect to see you until another moon had passed.”
It’s impossible for Nurai to hide her disappointment when she admits, “I would have liked to stay longer, but my host seemed impatient for me to return to Brax.”
A puzzled look forms on Muri’s lovely face. “I thought the human king was the one who invited you to La’tari?”
“He was,” she replies, taking Muri’s arm and pulling her from the path of the heavy-laden fruit cart being pushed through the market. “But even the king is subject to the wishes of his people.”
“Such a strange species,” Muri scoffs. “As if each of them was born with the need to destroy something beautiful in the span of their fleeting life.”
Nurai nods, as though she had drawn the same conclusion, and says, “Their king did ask me to return, but I’m beginning to wonder if my attempts to bond with his people are in vain.
I fear that the sundering may have only fueled their desire to see what remains of the fea purged from the land.
Despite my hopes, I am not sure diplomacy will change that. ”
Muri studies her friend carefully, piecing together all the unspoken words she holds behind her tongue.
“But you think you know something that might?” Muri asks.
“Or someone,” Nurai says, her hesitation creating a palpable tension as she hooks Muri’s arm and pulls her behind a large cart piled high with wild forest mushrooms.
The satyr working the cart eyes the females curiously until a gnome saunters up, producing a large bundle of red moss from a small satchel tied at his hip.
The rare herb is never harvested except on the night of a full moon and only grows on the foothills of the eastern mountains.
Thankfully, it’s enough to entice the satyr into a distracting barter.
Behind the cart, her voice dropping to a whisper that all but vanishes amidst the lively bustle, Nurai says, “I thought I might ask my brother to accompany me, if I choose to return to the human court again.”
Muri’s eyes widen, the shock of what her friend implies clearly written on her face. “You would ask him to use his gift to persuade the humans?”
With a reluctant sigh, Nurai admits, “I am considering it.”
“You can’t,” Muri says, tearing her arm from where she is joined with the female. “And even if you did ask him, he would never go along with it.”
“Wouldn’t he?” Nurai asks, raising an eyebrow in challenge. “You know better than most, the things we will do to help the ones we love.”
Muri can’t help the wince that follows the statement. She knows all too well the cost that often comes of granting such a request.
“I do know,” Muri says, taking a step forward. “And I would not have either of you burdened by the guilt of such a thing.”
A sadness passes behind the icy blue of her eyes, her gaze settling on a tree at the edge of the forest. It’s a tall oak, and long ago had been a sturdy and thriving thing. It had been nursed by the fea as a seedling upon the fertile soil of Terr.
Hundreds of years it grew in this forest, casting its branches out to offer the protection of its shade.
Its trunk is twisted, as if it spent its lifetime dancing as it spun, reaching for the sun beyond the thick canopy overhead.
But its leaves are too golden in the midsummer heat, and many are cast to the ground from the gentle breeze that stirs them.
A hollow in its trunk, where no doubt countless squirrels raised their broods and hid their hoards for winter, now cracked and fissured. Less a home than it was before.
“Is something wrong?” Nurai asks, her brow drawn with concern.
“No. Nothing,” Muri says, with a small shake of her head.
Muri clasps her friend’s hand as she pleads, “Threats are not the answer, Nurai. Don’t our own histories tell us enough about the atrocities committed in the name of peace by both human and feyn?”
“You are right,” she agrees with a gentle squeeze of her friend’s hand.
Muri sighs, the relief she feels clear upon her face when she says, “We will find another way.”
They walk about the bustling market for some time, each considering all that the other has said.
“It might help you to know,” Muri says as she runs her hand down the length of an artfully painted silk panel, hanging among many in the stall of a young feyn, “that Arda, Nix, and Vos have already tried to convince your brother and failed.”
With a deep sigh and the shake of her head, Nurai replies, “I’m honestly not surprised they would try. When the humans took the life of your mother, I thought we lost you all to that grief. Stars know that most of the human lives taken by the feyn have been in vengeance of such things.”
Muri nods, unable to hide her sorrow upon recalling the memory.
Eventually she says, “Arda and Nix mourned for many years; they still grieve her. I don’t think feyn were made to endure loss the way that the mortals do.
But Vos, I never saw sadness in her, though I’m sure it was there, buried deep. All she ever showed me was her rage.”
“I remember,” Nurai says, absently smoothing one of the silks folded neatly in the stall.
“There were days when I thought she might end the entire human race herself. She was so consumed by it. And then,” Muri says, a small smile forming on her face as she recalls it, “her belly began to swell, and all that anger vanished. I could never explain the joy I felt at having my sister returned to me, how it felt to see her smile again. It was as if she forgot what it meant to live, and with that life growing inside her, she began to remember.”
Muri bites her quivering lip as she continues, “If anything happened to that child, I think she might have drowned all of Terr in her sorrow.”
“Luckily,” Nurai reassures her, “the fates knew better than to take the child from her, and that is a world we will never have to live in.”
Muri nods, her smile now seeming somewhat less.
“Now tell me, how is your sister enjoying motherhood?” Nurai asks.
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Muri says, “Her world begins and ends with that child.”
“As it should.”
Muri nods her agreement, and the friends wander into the stall of a bog sprite, overflowing with bushels of rare flowers and herbs only found in the marshes deep within the Braxian forest.
The sprite shuffles forward, her short crop of fine green hair flowing about in the air as if she were underwater.
The tangle of mossy branches protruding from her head are adorned with the coveted white lilies that grow upon the marshy wetland of her home.
Her skin shifts in the light as she moves.
At first, it’s patterned in a glistening array of scales that shimmer in the sunlight, then fades to the dull thick scales of some of the larger and less likable beasts that inhabit the waterways.
Finally settling into a skin that is a perfect reflection of the weather-worn, moss-laden trees of her home.
She rummages through a nearby basket, producing a large seed from under a dense layer of flowers.
“Rue tana hi rin thi’le meh,” she says, handing the seed to Muri.
Muri’s brow dips curiously as the feyn replies in the sprite’s own tongue, “Vareh?”
No sprite had ever taught Nurai their language. In fact, Muri was the only feyn she knew of in the veil that the sprites deemed worthy of the honor.
It gnawed at her. For some reason, she was not enough. She could not help but think that she must lack something vital to the fea, as did nearly all feyn, or the sprites would have accepted her as eagerly as they had the female beside her.
Perhaps it is only vanity and selfishness that she wants them to accept her in such a way.
Stars know that they are the most meddlesome of fea.
She should be relieved that it is Muri and not herself that they had taken to.
But the sprites seemed to weave the fabrics of the fates’ design, carefully stitching the pattern as they went about their lives.
On the whole of Terr, in every veil, there would never be a friendship more coveted than that of a sprite.
The sprite’s pale green eyes flick to Nurai and the conversation shifts, the fea’s words lost on the wind to all but Muri.
Nurai steps away from the pair, giving them the privacy the sprite clearly desires.
She peruses each bushel of herbs, gathering up a handful of the rare and more difficult to find.
She tries her best to remain distracted and to be anything but curious about the conversation happening only a few feet away—or offended by being cut off from it.
Muri nods her head at the sprite in clear agreement about something.
“I’m sorry,” Muri whispers under her breath when she returns to Nurai, laying a hand on her arm, clearly concerned about how she might feel about the rejection.
“It’s all right,” Nurai says, offering her friend a smile and showing the sprite all that she selected from the stall.
The tiny fea folds one of her arms behind her, resting it on the small of her back, as she taps her chin with a finger, eyeing the herbs thoughtfully.
“H’tesh,” she says with an all too eager smile.
Muri can hardly contain her surprise as she translates, “She requests a favor in exchange for the goods.”
“What favor?” Nurai asks in true curiosity.
It is rare but not unheard of for bargains to be bartered in such a way. Still, though young she may be, she is well aware that a fea bargain should never be taken lightly.
“Ma’rei heth la’vei ma nesh ei’le,” the sprite answers.
“She says, she will tell you when she has need of you.” There is a question in Muri’s voice when she says it, clearly confused as to why the small fea would demand such a high price for the bundle.
Nurai considers the small handful of herbs, none exceedingly rare, only potentially difficult to obtain.
The herbs would be most valuable in trade to the humans, and she had not made up her mind about whether she would return to their court.
While the pink flowers could be dried and powdered to color the mortal’s faces and the others used for healing, the feyn had little use for such things.
She lowers her hand toward the basket, prepared to settle the bundle back among the rest and abandon them. An unnamed bargain is unwise and could be the highest of prices. And yet her hand falters before she can release them, a question forming in her mind. Why? Why would she ask such a price?
Perhaps it is no more than youthful arrogance when she clutches the herbs tightly, turns to the sprite, and agrees. Or perhaps it is the will of the fates when she feels the bargain etched upon her skin, weaving her into the loom of their design.