Chapter Twenty-One Alder
Chapter Twenty-One
Alder
Alder was flying but it wasn’t the peaceful experience he always dreamed it would be. He couldn’t control his movements and he flew chaotically back and forth.
‘Alder!’ He looked up. Lettle was there, and he wasn’t flying, he was swinging on a rope.
Heights had never bothered Alder, but to find himself suspended next to a rushing waterfall without knowing how he got there was enough to stop his heart.
‘Lettle? What’s happening? Where am I?’ He began to struggle, his skin pinching where a harness–which he didn’t remembering donning–dug into his pelvis.
His movements drew him closer to the waterfall.
Water filled his mouth, his nostrils, and Alder thought he might just drown.
Panic seized him and he began to struggle harder.
Then he was moving upwards, pulled by Lettle’s strength. A god above him, lifting him out of this nightmare he’d found himself in.
‘You’re all right, you’ll be all right,’ she said.
Tears and water streamed down his face. ‘Help me,’ he said to the goddess above him.
Sure hands gripped him. Relief washed over him and then, once again, he knew no more.
—
The nightmare repeated itself and he woke an immeasurable amount of time later in the same harness, swinging from the same spot.
But this time Lettle was below him.
‘You’re safe now,’ she said, but he didn’t feel safe.
‘Where am I?’ His stomach lurched and a wave of vertigo struck him. He squeezed his eyes shut as the world spun.
‘We’re behind the waterfall in Caperly.’
‘Is this a dream?’ he asked.
‘No. Now listen, there’s a foothold on the wall opposite. If you step onto there you can remove the harness and jump down to me.’
He opened his eyes and saw the ledge she was referring to. It wasn’t far, a couple of feet away. He had done more dangerous jumps when stringing up the Nomads’ sky camps. And that was without a harness.
Something moved on the path by Lettle’s side. He recognised the obeah as Ajax.
‘I remember Ajax following you through the pool,’ he said. ‘How long has it been since then?’
‘Three days. It took me some time to learn the spell. I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.’
He’d lost three days. The rest of Lettle’s words were nonsense to him.
‘How did I get up here? Where’s Dart? And Mia?’
There was a tightness in Lettle’s face that he hadn’t seen before. She looked forlorn.
‘What is it? Oh, don’t tell me they’re dead.’ His throat began to burn with grief.
‘No, no. They’re in Caperly. The sooner you get down, the sooner we can see them.’ She paused then added, ‘I found out the truth of your origins, Alder.’
Alder gripped the rope until his knuckles turned his skin white. He contemplated staying up there for ever.
Then, before he lost his nerve, he lunged for the foothold. A few steps later he was by Lettle’s side on a path that curved behind the waterfall.
Spray from the rushing water left a misty haze around them.
Lettle looked deep into his eyes as though searching for something before throwing her arms around him.
Even though he could feel her tears on his shoulder, he didn’t hug her back. ‘What’s going on?’
She pulled away, dashing her tears away with the heel of her hand. ‘There is a lot to tell,’ she said.
For a minute it looked like she wasn’t going to speak again, but then she did…
…and Alder wished she hadn’t.
As the story unfolded he felt his reality blur. He cried through most of it and asked her to stop often. But the brief silence filled his mind with more questions and he begged for her to continue, even though each word was a knife, each sentence bleeding him dry.
When she told him of his children, he fell to his knees.
‘I-I had twins?’
‘Yes.’ She rested her hand on his back.
And on the story continued, a tale more horrific than any he could have ever conjured.
‘I am evil,’ he whispered.
‘No,’ she said, ‘you were a person who did heinous things. I cannot say that you were innately evil.’
Alder was surprised. She sounded as though she’d liked him, the other him. When he questioned her, she shook her head.
‘No, I cannot like someone who made the choices he did. But I admit sometimes it was difficult to hate him deeply, especially while he wore the skin of my friend.’
Alder felt as though she had wounded him once more. ‘He doesn’t wear my skin, I wear his. What am I? A spell? An absence of his memories?’ Something frightening occurred to him. ‘Do I even have a soul?’ He started to pant, panic squeezing his lungs.
Lettle wrapped her arms around him, tight. ‘Yes, you have a soul. You are whole, Alder. You are whole.’
He could barely catch his breath to say, ‘How can I be when I don’t even remember my own children?’
His world had been shattered so completely that he was glass turned to sand, his identity just particles in the breeze.
‘But you remember me. You remember the Nomads, you remember Golan. We are your family.’
He let himself relax into her arms as his sobbing grew in pitch.
‘We are your family,’ she whispered over and over.
He let her hold him for some time. When he was spent with his grief, he pulled himself out of her arms.
‘My affinity to the earth makes sense now,’ he said. Another terrifying thought struck him. ‘Can I manipulate the earth?’
Lettle shrugged. ‘I imagine so. You share his soul so are earthbound too. Try it.’
Alder shivered, petrified of his own power. He lowered his hands to the earth and tried to coax a flower from the soil.
Nothing happened. His relief was immeasurable.
‘Maybe it is like magesight, and you must attune to it,’ Lettle said.
Alder shook his head. ‘I don’t want to attune to it. I would rather the power lay dormant.’
Ajax let out a sigh. He was tucked tightly into Lettle’s side.
She noticed Alder watching him. ‘He travelled with us all the way from Mosima,’ Lettle said with a smile.
‘Mosima,’ Alder said the word slowly. It meant freedom according to Lettle. He let out a little laugh. ‘The city was never a curse, it was a safe haven, a place where Afa could not reach his children.’
‘Yes.’
‘My children,’ Alder said with horror. ‘Those of the Jani dynasty are my descendants.’
‘Yes,’ Lettle said again. She had tears in her eyes now.
But though Alder’s eyes burned, he did not cry. He laughed sardonically. ‘You were right, I do have family.’
Lettle tensed, then looked away, and Alder wondered if he had suddenly looked like Afa.
She spoke her words to the waterfall. ‘Family does not have to be blood, it can be the other parts of us too: our breath, our bones, our heart.’
When she looked back at him, she was smiling. ‘And it is time to return to those parts of us. We did what we set out to do. We found a way to remove the boundary and bring back the humans.’
Alder nodded. It was true, but the victory was bitter. ‘But what of Afa? He was content to never return? I am free to be Alder for evermore?’
Lettle hesitated. ‘His whole purpose in life was to help bring back the humans. Whether that is as Afa or Alder, I do not think it matters. As long as the spell is spoken.’
Alder felt uneasy. He did not like thinking that it would only require a few steps to cross the sanctuary threshold to turn him into someone else entirely.
‘I’ll never go back,’ he said.
‘I would not let you,’ Lettle replied grimly.
He squeezed her hand in the silence that ensued.
They took comfort from each other for a moment before Lettle stood. ‘This path should lead us down into Caperly. I am sure everyone is very worried about us. We should go.’
Alder walked to the edge of the path where the water crashed down into a pool below. He ran his fingers through the water and thought about jumping.
Not to death, for he knew now that it would elude him, but just to feel the rush of fear. To be afraid of something physical, and not something that prowled in the shadows of his mind.
Is this the start of my madness? Do all roads lead to Afa?
‘Alder?’ Lettle sounded scared too, but for his safety, even though he could not die. Her care brought a part of him back to himself.
He reached for her and squeezed her hand.
‘Let’s go.’
—
They walked down the cliffside into the belly of Caperly in silence. It wasn’t a long walk, no more than half of an hour. As they approached the first of the city streets, Alder noticed a figure in the road. They lay prone on a sleeping mat.
‘Is that…Mortah?’ Lettle said.
She woke as they approached.
‘Is it you? Is it Alder?’ she asked. Her eyes were bloodshot.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’
Mortah looked to Lettle for confirmation and she nodded. The older lady sagged with relief.
‘Thank the three gods, Mia was going to flay me alive if I didn’t come back with good news today.’
When neither of them answered she raised a brow and said, ‘It is good news, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Lettle answered quickly for the both of them. ‘We got what we came for.’
‘How is Mia? And the babies?’ Alder asked.
‘There was a moment when we thought they might be coming early, but Mia has made a good home for them, and they have stayed put. Though she’s on bed rest.’
Alder chuckled. ‘I bet she is taking that well. Have you been sleeping here these last few days?’ He helped her pack up her bedroll.
‘Mia threatened to do it herself,’ she said with a snort. ‘And with Farhan still bedbound too, I was the only choice.’
‘How is Farhan’s ankle?’ Lettle asked.
‘Bandaged and healing. He is sharing a resting room with Mia and Dart. Poor Dart has become a healer’s apprentice.’
They started making their way into town. Mortah’s limp slowed them down some, and Lettle moved to her side to help her.
‘I’m sorry I lost your cane,’ Lettle said quietly.
Mortah’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s all right. Did she go down in battle?’
Lettle swallowed, her gaze slipping to Alder’s and then away. ‘She did.’
It was then that Alder realised he would never know the full extent of what happened for those three days in that cave.
And though Lettle loved him, he wondered if there would always be a wariness buried deep in her love, if Afa had irrevocably damaged the purity of their friendship while wearing his face.