2. The Cleric
The Cleric
Flora groaned and rubbed her eyes open.
“Huh?” she said, feeling that the scrape on her brow was now gone.
Little Flora was standing in just about the same place she had left the day before. She looked down at her soggy socks and sighed.
“AH!”
Flora jumped at the sound. “Oh,” she exhaled, deflating back into her half-awake state. “It’s you again. You must have chores today.”
“WHAT? How’d you...” he stuttered and trailed off. Noec was sitting on her left, just at the edge of the water, gaping as if a ghost had appeared before him. “Are you a pixie?”
“No. Why?”
Flailing his hands, he stuttered, “Well, you just… poofed like a dandelion yesterday... then you just appeared... like, just now.”
“Oh. I don’t know.” Flora shrugged. “I guess I finally fell asleep. Took long enough, with Mom snoring in the next room.”
Noec’s thick brows came together, and he looked her up and down. “You don’t look asleep to me.”
Flora rolled her eyes. “I’m asleep, and you’re my dream.”
“What?” he said. “I feel pretty real, thanks.”
“Look. I was in my bed, then I fell asleep, and as soon as I fell asleep, I came here.”
They watched each other in mutual confusion.
“Okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay.” Noec inhaled sharply. “She’s okay.” He sighed, stood up, then beckoned, “Come with me.” He took one step, then looked back and added sternly, “And no poofing this time. Pixie.”
Flora peeled off her socks and followed him. He led her along a path that went away from the spring, delving down into the valley.
“Where are we going?” Flora asked.
“To the village,” he replied. Noec pointed on ahead, where Flora thought she could see faint structures jutting out of the valley greenery. “Where the cleric can help us make sense of…” He gestured vaguely toward her. “... you.”
“The cleric?”
“Yeah, the cleric’s like…” Noec trailed off.
“You’ll see. She just got home from her apprenticeship a few months ago,” he added, and with a spark of restrained excitement, he continued, “She’d gone away before I got here, but now that she’s back, she knows everything about all the weird stuff in the world—collects knowledge like a crow collects shiny things.
” Noec studied Flora out of the corner of his eye, then shrugged.
“And, I don’t get paid enough to figure this one out. ”
Flora cocked her head. “You get paid for finding lost kids?”
“No. No, I don’t.” He thought for a moment. “Definitely accepting tips, though, since you’re offering.”
Noec waited expectantly for a laugh that didn't come. Flora was deep in thought.
“I don’t want to see the weird specialist,” she said after a moment.
“Why?” He paused and turned to face her. “Don’t you want to know what’s happening?”
“I do know,” she replied. “I’m dreaming.”
“Nope. You’re not. I’m real. This place is real. And I’m mostly sure you’re real. And crazy. The cleric can help us.” He pondered for a moment, then, in an attempt to lure her, he added, “Sometimes, she has a bowl of honey swirls.”
Flora scoffed.
“Oh, boy,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry. I forgot about your candy thing.”
“I don’t hate cand—Bye?” Flora said as he was already trotting ahead.
Flora hurried to catch up, then grabbed his wrist with both hands, glancing fearfully behind. She felt remnant panic from the day before, as if the screeching creature in the dark forest was now a monster living in the shadows between trees.
“How about this,” he offered as he led her along the worn-down path. “When we get there, I’ll go in and talk to her, and you can wait outside.”
“Fine.”
He grinned at his victory as the lush greenery passed them by, opening up to a bright clearing along the path ahead.
Flora was beginning to make out clusters of thatch roofs through the breaks in trees.
Soon, they were greeted by the ruins of a stone gate.
Flora stood in the shadow of an ancient, crumbling structure.
From the rotting wood and mossy stone of the old arch, a fading red banner swayed in the wind.
Stitched in white was a feline, winged creature.
It was strange yet familiar, sleek yet jagged.
Upon the stone wall to the right of the gateway was a sign that read: “Sanao Village”.
Squinting, Flora read, “Sun-ay-oh.”
“Close enough,” Noec replied. “Most of us just call it the Shrouded Village, because we’re in the shadow of Night Sky Forest.”
“That name sounds cooler.”
Noec nodded in agreement. “Nia says the city folks think we’re ‘mysterious’.” He fluttered his fingers at her, an unconvincing display of his own inherent spookiness. Flora rolled her eyes, but held tighter to the older boy’s other arm.
He explained that from Lunara’s Spring came Crescent Creek, which stooped down into the valley and cut through the village, intersecting the path at a wooden bridge ahead.
The creek was littered with ramshackle planks for crossing and lined with wildflowers.
Earthly homes were pasted together with masonry of variably sized stones, some houses looking as though they were carved from the hills themselves.
Small round windows were adorned with hanging potted plants and sparkling glass charms.
Noec pointed to a pair of stubby toddlers playing in the river and said, “That’s Zana; the girl next to her is Mari.
They’re twins. That’s their mother.” He waved with a big smile to a young, red-haired woman, sitting cross-legged on one of the planks laid across the river.
Plump and beautiful, she offered a friendly wave back, but there was a despondent veil over her eyes.
Noec sighed, glancing back to Flora. Quietly, he explained, “My uncle says she lost her husband to the Forest.”
Finally, Noec stopped at what must be the cleric’s residence. There was no door, just a frame cloaked in strings of dangling beads carved out of stone, wood, and bone.
“Be right back,” he said, waving as he swatted and vanished into the sea of clattering beads.
Flora felt a pang of anxiety being left alone. Sitting with her back against the dark wood of the building, she twirled a blade of grass in her fingers while she waited.
“Hello, little one,” a voice said, interrupting her focus as she carefully tied her blade of grass into tiny knots.
Flora looked up from her project. “Hi.”
Above her stood a curious man. He had brown hair with speckles of gray, and his eyes were far more youthful than the creases of his face would imply.
“May I ask what your name is?” he said, extending a hand at her. The man offered a gentle smile, one that didn’t make her uneasy the way some smiles did.
“Florabelle,” she replied.
Carefully, the man sat down on the ground across from her with his legs folded. “What a lovely name,” he said. “Well. Hello, Florabelle. I’m Heron.”
Flora’s eyes widened.
Not a fish. Not a bird.
“You’re not still gonna kill Noec, are you?” she asked.
He raised a curious eyebrow. “For what?”
Flora stuttered, realizing she had said too much. Her face turned ruby-red.
Heron chuckled. “I’m just messing with you, little lady,” he said. “Noec told me everything yesterday. Just more than happy to see you safe.”
“Safe?”
“Well, my nephew comes running home saying he found a little girl lost out in the woods, only for her to vanish into thin air down at the spring. We all went looking for you. Just about gave up. Folks go missing around here, there tends to not be much left to find.”
The girl’s terrified eyes returned. “Why?”
Heron paused, as though he had perhaps said too much.
“Young Florabelle, let’s just say it’d be for the best that you stay out of those woods from now on.” After a thought, he added, “And don’t trust anybody you see walking out of them, either.”
“Or in them,” a familiar voice added teasingly from around the corner. “‘Cause that’s how I ended up stuck with her.” Noec emerged from the clacking beads with a coy grin.
Heron met his eyes with a stern glare, and Noec’s face quickly sank.
“Only this once, we have made an exception,” Heron said. “Because of your mistake, Florabelle here is safe. But never, and I mean never again will you set foot in Night Sky Forest.”
“Yes, sir.” Noec stared at the cracks in his leather boots.
“Now,” Heron said, rising from the ground, much to the dismay of his popping knees. “Seems like you have important business to attend to. Mind if I join you?”
Flora followed them though the noisy mess of beads.
She was pleasantly surprised to find no skeletons or voodoo dolls with pins in their heads, but a single room colorfully adorned with vining plants and the faint scent of lavender and lemon.
Dried leaves and tinctures in colored glass bottles poked up at random heights on every desk and shelf.
The walls were busy with etchings of various labeled herbs, wedged between anatomical drawings, with arrows drawn in red connecting the two in various places.
“Forget something?” a low, buttery voice asked Noec. She wore a wild and beautiful smile.
“Just brought her to meet you,” Noec replied, pointing proudly at the graceless girl struggling to untangle a string of beads from her hair. He added hopefully, “... and maybe you could re-explain some of that stuff you said?”
Smoothing down her floof, Flora waved nervously. “Hello.”
The cleric was in her mid twenties at most, but she carried herself with a grace and dignity that most only find with age.
She had wavy, almost black hair that fell past her waist, secured neatly in a low ponytail that hung over her shoulder.
Her smooth, caramel skin was decorated with gorgeous freckles that made Flora start to appreciate her own.
The woman wore a long, deep violet dress, embroidered with dark green accents.
Sitting cross-legged on a cushion at the edge of the room, she rested one tattooed hand on an ornate leather-bound journal, holding a pen between wooden rings in the other.
The journal sat on a short wooden stand, adorned with flashes of amethyst and one large opal.