Sleep did not come.
Instead, the past did.
She was seven years old, and her parents were fighting again.
She stood in the doorway of the front room, small and still, watching them argue out loud, hoping it would pass before it broke something.
Her mother and father were standing on opposite sides of the room.
She didn’t remember what had started it.
Her father’s voice rose and her mother’s stayed level, the way level voices could be more frightening than loud ones when you were seven and didn’t understand why.
She remembered standing in the doorway watching through the gap in the door with her hands pressed flat against the wall.
Then her mother turned.
”Elara.” She held out her hand.
“Come. We are going.”
She crossed the room and took it without asking where.
Behind them, as they walked toward the door, her father yelled her mother’s name.
”LYNNA!”
Her mother did not look back.
Neither did She, though she wanted to.
They walked out of Daekhar that day, just the two of them, her mother’s belly newly rounded with the beginning of Kyren.
She was pregnant.
They did not stop walking until Mortheval rose up before them and her aunt opened the door.
Two months later, They were living with her aunt in Mortheval.
Her mother’s sister, a warm woman who had made space for them without being asked.
The house was smaller than what they had back in Daekhar, but it was full of light and it smelled like the herbs her aunt kept drying in the windows and it felt, to Elara, like somewhere that had decided to be safe.
She had been playing outside when she heard her mother’s voice through the open window, low, careful, and slow.
She came to the window and looked in.
Her mother was sitting across from her aunt.
There were bags on the floor beside her chair, not many, packed light, she wasn’t planning to take much.
Her aunt said something Elara couldn’t hear.
Her mother looked at the bags.
Then at her hands.
Then she said something back and her voice cracked on the last word and she pressed her lips together as to not cry.
She was trying very hard not to cry.
Elara understood before anyone explained it.
Her mother was leaving.
She came inside.
She stood in the doorway and her mother looked up and saw her and the look on her face was something Elara carried for years afterward without ever finding the right word for it.
Her mother stood and came to her.
She crouched down.
She said she was going to Azgareth.
That she was going to work.
That she would come back.
That she would always come back and visit.
She had understood that her mother going for a work was needed, she had noticed how they were lacking some things mostly foodstuffs yet, she cried.
She held onto her mother’s sleeve and cried, her mother held her face in both hands and looked at her for a long time then she kissed her forehead and stood up.
She walked to the door.
She picked up her bags.
She left with tears running down her face and she did not look back because she knew if she looked back she wouldn’t be able to keep going.
Elara stood in the doorway and called after her.
Her mother kept walking.
Her aunt’s hand came to rest on her shoulder from behind.
Warm.
Steady.
She watched her mother until she couldn’t see her anymore.
—
The next memory was her mother in Azgareth.
She had not been there for it.
She had only heard it later, pieced together from things her mother wrote in letters and things she said during visits.
But over the years she had imagined it so many times that it had taken on the quality of something witnessed, something she could see clearly even though she had not been there.
Her mother arriving at the palace gates with her few bags and her straight back.
Being directed by an official, impatient, barely looking at her, toward the maidservants’ quarters.
Then she bumped into someone.
The woman she bumped into was dressed simply.
No fancy robes, no heavy jewellery, just a pure white silk dress and a face that was tired in the way of someone who had been ill for a long time and had gotten used to it.
The official beside Lynna dropped into a bow immediately, his face going pale with the fear.
Her mother bowed too deep and immediate, her bags nearly falling from her hands.
”I’m so sorry…
forgive me…
I wasn’t watching where…”
”Rise,” said the woman.
Her voice was gentle.
The gentleness of someone who simply was patient, who had been patient for a long time.
Her mother raised her head.
The woman was looking at her with an expression of mild curiosity.
”What is your name?” she asked.
Her mother straightened.
“Lynna Morganna. Of Mortheval, Your Majesty.”
The woman looked at the official.
“She is new?”
”Yes, Your Majesty.
”You may go,” said the queen.
The official looked briefly uncertain.
Then he bowed and left.
Queen Estella looked at Lynna.
She looked at the bags.
At the careful way Lynna was holding herself, composed, straight-backed, present.
”Mortheval,” she said.
“A long way.”
”Yes, Your Majesty.”
”You have family there?”
A pause.
“A sister. And my daughter.”
The queen looked at her for a long moment.
Then she said, “I have been looking for a new court lady. My last one…” She stopped.
Something moved in her expression.
“Come with me instead.”
Lynna stared at her.
”Your Majesty…”
”Unless you would prefer the maidservants’ quarters,” the queen said, with a slight warmth that was almost amusement.
”No,” Lynna said quickly.
“No, Your Majesty. I…thank you. Thank you.”
The queen smiled.
It was a tired smile.
But it was real.
”Come,” she said.
“I’ll have someone show you where things are.”
—
She was now eight when Kyren arrived.
Her mother was sitting up in bed, tired in the but still looked relief, and Kyren was in her arms, very small, very new, very serious in the way of all newborns.
Elara was allowed to hold him.
She sat very still and looked at his face for a long time.
”Mother,” she said finally.
“Why does he look so much like you?”
Her mother laughed, soft and genuine.
Her aunt, from across the room “Because your mother is the one who carried him. Of course he looks like her.”
She was still looking at the baby in her arms as though still not satisfied.
”He looks like me,” her mother said, “because I’m his mother.
That’s generally how it works.”
”But he’s a boy,” Elara said.
The laughter that followed filled the room, and Kyren slept through all of it, undisturbed.
—
After three years, She had been eleven.
Kyren had been three, running in the way of three year olds, which was to say in all directions at once, with the absolute confidence.
They had been in the garden.
She was running after him, which she always ended up doing, and he was laughing and not looking where he was going, which he always did, and it was the kind of afternoon that was just an afternoon, ordinary and warm, with nothing particular to mark it.
The door from inside the house opened.
Her mother stepped through it fast, not her usual way of moving.
She looked at her sister, who had straightened immediately at the look on her face.
”What is it?” her aunt asked.
”We need to pack,” her mother said.
She was already moving.
“All of us. Now.”
”What???”
”Càhir.” Her mother was opening the drawer against the wall, pulling things out, her hands moving quickly but carefully.
“He wants us back. He sent letters.”
Elara had stopped running.
She stood holding Kyren’s hand.
He had stopped too, looking between the adults with the baffled attention though she doesn’t understand the conversations but understands the feeling and listened.
”Daekhar?” her aunt said.
”Yes.”
”Lynna…”
”He wants us back.” Her mother’s voice was flat.
“He’s asking.”
Her aunt said something low that Elara couldn’t fully hear.
Her mother answered it without stopping packing.
Elara walked inside.
”I thought father didn’t like us,” she said.
“Especially me.”
Her mother stopped.
She turned around and looked at Elara for a moment, a long moment.
Then she crossed the room and crouched in front of her.
”He never hated you,” she said.
“He is… he is a difficult man. Hotheaded. But he is asking for us to come home.” She held Elara’s face in her hands.
“It will be okay. Go pack your things, so we don’t make him wait.”
Elara looked at her.
She looked at the flatness in her mother’s voice that said one thing while the words said another.
—
They left in the late afternoon.
The weather had turned dark and gloomy while they were inside, the air carried the smell of rain not yet arrived.
The breeze moved through their hair as they walked outside.
Elara walked with their bag on her back, her mother carrying Kyren, her aunt standing in the doorway to see them off.
”Take care of yourselves,” her aunt screamed loud as she waves.
Her mother turned and nodded.
Elara walked a few steps.
Then turned and looked back at Mortheval, at the familiar road and the familiar house and her aunt’s familiar shape in the doorway, one hand raised.
She waved back then she turned forward and followed her mother.
She kept looking back again for her aunt, until she couldn’t see her anymore.
—
The last memory was the dark.
She had been running for a long time.
She didn’t remember exactly when the running had started, there had been a lot of things before it, sounds and voices and the particular feeling of understanding something terrible before you are able to name it, and then she had been running with Kyren’s hand in hers and the trees had been all around them and she had not stopped.
She was still running when she found a place to stop.
The trees were thick enough here.
She pulled Kyren against her and pressed his face to her shoulder, covering his eyes with her palm, and through the dark and the distance she could see the figures clearly enough.
Her father’s silhouette.
The way his arm extended.
He had raised his swords and pierced it on her mother through her chest.
Her mother did not fall immediately.
That was the part that stayed with Elara.
Not the sword, not the sound, but the moment after, when her mother seemed to simply become still.
The way her eyes stayed open even as she sank.
The way she died in shock, as though she had truly not believed it would happen until it did.
Her mother went down.
She lay on the ground with her eyes open and her blood on the ground.
Elara closed her own eyes.
She felt the tears come and pressed her free hand over her mouth to keep the sound inside.
She held Kyren against her and she held herself together, she did not make a sound.
When she opened her eyes again there was a woman standing where her father had been standing.
Dark robes, embroidered.
She couldn’t see the details from this distance, only the shape of it.
A veil, dark, covering her face entirely.
The woman looked at the place where her mother had fallen.
Then she turned and walked away.
Then her father’s voice came through the dark, loud, roaring, the voice had no regrets of his actions.
*Find them!
Make sure to kill them!
Go!*
Footsteps.
Many of them.
Moving toward the trees, where they were hidden.
Elara took her hand from Kyren’s eyes.
He looked up at her, three years old, her mother’s face, entirely trusting.
She stood, took his hand in both of hers, and ran.
Mortheval was dark when she arrived.
The markets were empty.
The roads were empty.
The rain had finally come, and it came in full.
Soaking through her clothes, plastering her hair flat, running cold down the back of her neck.
Kyren was asleep on her back, his cheek warm against her shoulder despite everything, his small hands loosely fisted in her collar.
She stopped at the entrance of the road when she saw the horses, a dozen of them at least, riding out with speed, moving away from her.
She did not know who they were and where they were coming out from.
She pressed herself still and waited until they had passed, and then she ran the last distance to her aunt’s house.
She stopped.
Ahead of her, she could see…light.
Too much light for this hour.
The wrong colour.
Not lantern light.
She walked forward until she could see that…
The house was on fire.
The fire had not waited for her.
It rose from her aunt’s house, large and unhurried, the way large fires are, past the point of panic.
The rain fell onto it and yet the rain did not matter.
If there was anyone inside, they would not come out alive.
She stood on the road with Kyren heavy and sleeping on her back and she watched it burn.
The rain was coming down around her, it had started somewhere during the run, cold and steady and she was drenched through, her hair plastered against her face, her clothes soaked entirely through to the skin.
The rain was not enough for the fire.
Kyren slept peacefully on her back not knowing any of it, not knowing what had been lost today, not knowing that the world had become something different in the last few hours and neither of them had any say in it.
Tears were running down her face.
You would barely have known.
They had mixed with the rain.
—
leave me a comment!