The Truth of Things Unseen

Sintarael

As I followed Fen away from the wall, the grass grew taller and we walked a narrow path between waving green stalks that came up to my waist.

Butterflies chased one another through the slow drifting leaves. Fat bees shuttled from flower to flower. Bright splotches of colour hung, dense as constellations, above me and below in every direction. The trees stooped low, and there was fruit, though it was not autumn.

“If you sit here in the long grass,” said Fen, “no one can find you for hours.“

She held my gaze, and I felt a strange little warm bump in my chest. Then she was running, dashing between the fruit trees, silvery hair flying about her shoulders.

I chased after her, but she was faster than me. The blood hammered in my ears. My breath quickened into cool bursts. Still she ran on ahead of me like a little white deer. She glanced over her shoulder, wide-set blue eyes smiling.

“Slow down, Fen!” I called, and she did, coming to a stop in a clearing and sitting on a massive fallen trunk. I perched next to her. She was gasping for breath, nostrils flared. Fine strands of hair stuck to the sweat on her forehead. I waited while she got her breath back.

“It’s nice,” she gasped. “That you came through... I wasn’t sure... If I would be brave enough...” she paused, breathing hard. “To bring you...” Then she was laughing, and I was laughing with her.

She had a sideways look about her, like a child doing something naughty.

“I say, don’t let anyone see you,” she said, glancing around.”.

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll kill you, silly.” Then she was laughing again, like me being killed was the funnest adventure.

Truth be told, it was. Right then, in that moment, I felt like even if I died right there, it would have been worth it. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time. I understand now that I was feeling the first heart-kindling of love.

Would that I had been wiser. True love never goes unpunished.

“Tell me of the outside,” she said, resting her chin on her hands and leaning in.

“What of it? It’s plain and ordinary.”

“Don’t tell me that,” she frowned. “For you it is plain, but for me it is marvellous. I hear that sometimes the moonlight catches on the sea, and the little ripples look like black writing on the pages of a book. Is that true?

I thought of the distant ocean, bright as a shield from the top of the bluff.

“Aye, It does shine.”

“I hear the mountains wear crowns of crystal snow, like salt, and the green trees are like the bubbles in your bath when you put your knees up. They cluster and they try to climb, but it is too steep for them, so the rock is naked as your knees, save for goats and pouncing lions. Is that true also?”

“You would like walking out there,” I said, picking up on her enthusiasm.

“Ha! Ha! Yes, I would!”

Her voice changed, becoming low and serious. “Tell me now of the old days. What stories do they whisper of us?” She was tangling a piece of her hair around and around her fingers, glancing at me sideways out of the corners of her eyes. Pretending not to glance at me. “What do they really say of the Aden folk, out there in the world?”

“Oh, you know,” I tried to make a joke of it. “Catch a fae, make a wish. All of that.”

“Make a wish!” She snorted. “What do they say of the ancient time, before the Breaking.”

“Oh,” I hunted for words that would please her. “They say your people were as beautiful as they were wise, and that you made marvellous things, and then you left.”

“Pshaww. What do they really say? The blood time. When the worlds were one and the Sintarael walked.”

I thought of the stories, dark stories whispered around fires after the ale had settled. Of Lillidel and the Darkling king, of armoured witches and dragons made of smoke. Of Kisme’s daughter broken open on the road. I thought of the Feather and the Knife. Of Stone Breaker and Little Grey Dove, and I spoke.

“They say you ruled the land with fire and metal. They say you had witches made of iron, that could walk as tall as trees, and rise on the wind, and throw fire onto cities. They said that if a man displeased you, you would nail his whole village up crying to the trees in a clearing, nail them up in a big ring, and chain him there in the middle to listen to them curse him, and then, once the clearing grew silent, you would blind and deafen him so he would never hear another thing and set him a-walking with a curse on him, never to die until he were old.”

“Hah, she said. ”It’s good that you still whisper these things. Fear is all we have now. Mother says fear is a shield.”

“Is it true? Did you have armoured witches?”

She let the coil of hair spill off her fingers and unravel.

“They were the Sintarael. You took a favoured person, and you cut out the heart, and you put a black stone there instead, and then they had all the power of the flame right there in the middle of them. They were not metal, they were, like a folding, like an outside-inside in the shape of a person.”

“Are they here?”

“No.” she laughed and shook her head. “I never saw them, only dreams and stories. I was born here, and I expect I’ll die here.”

“You said your aunt could stand as tall as a tree, and your Grandfather buried her heart under the city wall.”

Her eyes narrowed, blue glitter. “Sometimes you think too much.”

“Were your aunts?”

“There was a war,” she interrupted. “That’s all you need to know. My Grandfather killed them all, that's... there's nothing more to know.”

“Is your mother? Are you...?”

“No!” She snapped the word out with a finality that brooked no rebuke. “If we had power like that, do you think we would be hiding here? Here in this,” she flapped her hands, seeming to take in everything, the wall, the trees, the little birds, “this outside-inside broken off little place?"

Her small fists balled, and her brightness rose until I could see it, even under the sun.

“Hah!" she barked out. "Nasnarieth, the king of leaves, went mad and murdered his daughters! And if father hadn’t been there, mother would have died too! That’s all there is to say about that! Hah!"

She spoke in short, clipped sentences with space between, each one shouted, as though translating from some alien grammar. I was afraid I had offended her. I sat by her quietly, afraid to speak in case she noticed what a worthless creature I was.

After a minute, her breathing stilled, and her shoulders slumped.

"Mother says we’ll go back one day when we’re strong enough, and Grandfather is dead. She says it’s never cold there, and everyone is happy.”

“Sounds nice?”

“Oh, It’s all a lie of course,” she waved her hand airily as though shooing a bee. “We’re never going back. I’ve heard my parents arguing about it. Everything they say to me is a lie. The only time I hear anything close to the truth is when they fight and they think I’m not listening. We’ll be here forever, and then one day, Nasnarieth will find us out, and then he’ll break down that wall and kill us one by one, and it will hurt - a lot, more than you can imagine, for longer than you can know, maybe he will make it hurt for a hundred years. Maybe it'll hurt forever.”

She broke off. “I didn’t mean to tell you this. It makes everything a lot less fun. Flowers and fireballs and honey wine, and maybe a kiss. That’s what a boy comes here for, not some stupid story about how miserable I am. I expect you’ll want to go soon. I’m sorry, I’ll shut up now.”

I touched her on the shoulder. She was trembling. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing, and neither did she. Behind her, a little bird was flitting from branch to branch. It paused, tail flicking, eyes bright, then leapt off the branch and disappeared. I blinked, but the bird didn’t come back. I thought I sensed a strange wrongness in the place where it had been.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “He’s hunting for me, Tam,” she said, wide-set eyes round and blue. “Can you imagine being hunted, and there’s nothing you can do? Every single day, he might come, maybe today? Maybe next week? When he gets me, it might take years for me to die. It might take a hundred years. It might take forever, and I just don’t know what he’ll do to me. I think about it every day, Tam, every morning when I wake up. Do you know those dreams when something is coming, and there’s no way for you to get out of the way? It’s going to hurt really a lot.”

“I’ll fight him.”

“You can’t fight him. My aunts tried to fight him. They had armour and swords, and Meriviell was as tall as a tree when she wanted to be, and Fentallion could move like a ghost with knives, and Llenadriel shone like yellow gold, but he murdered them all, and he would have killed Mother too if Father hadn’t been there to save her, and now he’s coming for me, and the only thing I can do is hide here and hope he doesn’t notice. Can you imagine that?”

“Then we’ll go, get away.”

“How can I!” She cut me off, eyes wide with sudden fury. “You're so simple Tan. Look at me!” She gestured to herself, her pale hands flickering over her bright skin, her eyes, her white-blonde hair. “I’m Aden High House, anyone can see it. I shine Tam. I can’t go anywhere.”

She gripped my arm.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to shout at you, I know it’s not your fault. Please don’t go.”

“I’m not going to go. Why do you keep saying I’m going to go?”

She stared down at her hands “Father always goes,” she whispered, barely audible. “There’s a fight, and then he leaves, and we don’t see him for moons and moons. Then he comes back with presents until the next fight.”

And suddenly she was crying. She made no sound, it was an efficient affair, tears running quietly down her cheeks. I didn’t know what to do, so I patted her back. I felt awkward and stiff, touching her. Her tears soaked into my tunic and made my shoulder warm.

“Sorry. Sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t leave. Sometimes I just say things. It’s not your fault. I invite you in and then I shout at you, and then I tell you all my problems, and then I cry, and what must you think of me?”

“I ain’t leaving,” I said, still patting her. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just stayed sitting by her until she was done, and kept on stroking her like I might stroke a sick animal.

“I’m sorry Tam. Maybe it would be easier if you did just go. I’m sure you have more important things to be doing.”

“You should stop saying that.”

“Maybe you should anyway. I told you, I’m not really safe to be around.”

She sniffed and dabbed her eyes.

I tugged out my good iron blade with the rust spots from the rain.

“I got a knife, see? I ain’t afraid.”

She laughed through her tears and snot, and it was like the sunshine cutting through the clouds halfway through a storm. A tinkling sounds like a bell, and then a little snort.

“Maybe you’re not so simple anyway,” she said. “I mean, here you are, in an Aden ring with the Miradel of Erin. Some would give kingdoms just for a glimpse of me. I suppose you can’t be such a moron.”

I executed a little flourishing bow. ‘Moi lady’

She curtseyed and took my arm. “M’lord.”

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I am rather special, you know,” she said. “You actually are quite lucky to be here.”

I thought of the little bird, disappearing into the air, and the strange sickness in the place where it had been. I thought of it, and I watched my footing.