Silence followed.
Then Aiko reached beneath her clothes.
“I have something.” She removed a small wrapped bundle.
Kyren recognized the markings almost immediately.
“No.” Aiko frowned.
“You haven’t even seen them.” “Memory records.” Arkin leaned closer.
“Whose?” “My grandfather’s.” Kyren looked at her.
“Yrpin?” Aiko nodded.
Yrpin had been one of Delasai’s guardians.
He spent months at a time outside the forest.
Most elves assumed those absences were patrols.
They were only partly correct.
Unknown to much of the village, Yrpin had spent years searching for allies beyond Delasai.
Somewhere his kin could turn if the forest eventually failed.
He never found what he wanted.
But he saw the world.
Forest elves could preserve fragments of memories after death.
Images.
Sounds.
Sometimes emotions.
The practice was heavily controlled.
Kyren looked at the bundle.
“We’re not allowed to have those.” “Grandfather gave permission.” “Can he come back and tell the elders that?” “He’s dead.” “Exactly.” Arkin reached toward the records.
Kyren slapped his hand away.
“Don’t.” “You’re scared?” “Yes.” Arkin blinked.
Kyren continued, “Fear is the part of my brain currently trying to prevent my execution.” Aiko almost smiled.
“Nobody knows I have them.” “That’s what everyone says immediately before someone discovers they have them.” She placed the records on the branch.
“Don’t you want to see?” Kyren stared at them.
Yes.
More than almost anything.
Aiko touched the first inscription.
“Ready?” “No,” Kyren said.
Arkin said, “Yes.” Aiko whispered, “Mairis.” The world changed.
Eranis remained beneath them.
Leaves still moved in the wind.
The twenty moons remained overhead.
But another place unfolded before the three children.
At first Kyren thought he was looking at a lake.
Then the memory widened.
Water.
More water.
It stretched farther than anything should have been able to stretch.
A gigantic wooden structure floated upon it.
Kyren frowned.
“What is that?” Arkin stood.
“A building?” “Buildings don’t move.” The memory carried sound.
Timber groaned.
Ropes strained.
Waves struck the wooden hull.
Great sheets of cloth filled with wind above the deck.
A ship.
None of the children had a word for it yet.
Kyren walked closer to the memory.
“Where’s the other side?” Aiko did not answer.
“Where does the water end?” The vision expanded.
Still water.
Horizon.
Nothing beyond it.
Kyren’s face changed.
Every body of water he had ever known had boundaries.
Lakes had shores.
Rivers had banks.
Pools ended.
Everything in Delasai ended against something else.
This did not.
“There has to be land.” Arkin whispered, “Maybe there isn’t.” “That’s impossible.” Yet the memory did not care what Kyren considered possible.
Waves rolled toward a horizon that refused to become shore.
Twenty moons reflected upon the surface, their light breaking into trembling paths.
Aiko stared without blinking.
“It’s beautiful.” Arkin whispered the same word almost simultaneously.
Kyren said nothing.
For once he had no sarcastic answer.
The sea frightened him in a way vampires never had.
A vampire was something the mind could understand.
A creature.
A body.
Something occupying a place.
The sea was scale without explanation.
It made Delasai feel small.
It made Kyren feel smaller.
The memory shifted.
Yrpin stood aboard the vessel.
Across from him lay a feminine figure.
Or something close enough to one that the children initially assumed they understood what they were seeing.
Her eyes were covered.
Even with half her face concealed, there was something deeply unsettling about her beauty.
Not perfection.
Something more primitive.
Her appearance seemed capable of reaching into instincts before thought had time to intervene.
Arkin leaned closer.
“Who is she?” Aiko shook her head.
“I don’t know.” Kyren watched Yrpin in the memory.
“He’s afraid of her.” “How can you tell?” “He never looks straight at her.” The memory shifted again.
Cities appeared.
Roads wider than the largest paths through Delasai.
Buildings of stone.
Towers.
Markets filled with races the children had never seen.
Horned beings.
Winged beings.
Scaled creatures.
Others impossible to classify from a few seconds of memory.
Lights burned without the forest’s magic.
Languages overlapped.
Another memory showed mountains.
Another showed open grasslands without a single tree large enough to hide beneath.
Another returned to the sea.
The three children watched in silence.
Their entire lives, Delasai had been presented as almost the whole meaningful world.
Outside meant vampires.
Jorogumo.
Predators.
Death.
The memories did not prove those warnings false.
Yrpin had seen bodies.
Attacks.
Creatures hunting travellers.
But he had also seen cities.
Ships.
Markets.
Civilizations.
Beings living lives that had nothing to do with Delasai.
The final memory disappeared.
Wind moved through Eranis again.
Nobody spoke.
The forest below remained exactly where it had always been.
Yet it felt different.
Smaller.