Character name pronunciations:
Elai= EE-lay
Teirin= TEAR-in(tear as in "she cried tears")
Deirdre= DEER-dray (deer as in the mammal that eats grass
) Obstinacy
2
***
Elai huffed in irritation, staring up at her brother’s back. It wasn’t fair; he’d promised her after all! She gnawed on her lower lip, one habit among many that she’d grown into ever since their parents had died. Teirin leaned down, studiously ignoring her, and hefted three burlap bags of potatoes from the ground in front of Deirdre’s house over his shoulder with a grunt. Elai stayed where she was, her face lifted, trying to drill holes in the back of his head with her eyes despite the blinding sunlight that stabbed her vision.
“Teirin, you promised! Let’s go look in the forest already!” She whined in the cutest voice she could muster, the voice he always had trouble resisting. It was an art, manipulating her brother.
“No, Elai, I’m not budging on this! It’s early in the morning, and you know I have to work to pay for our food. I can’t just abandon the guys at the ranch just to baby sit you.” Teirin growled, peering over his shoulder to regard her with one predatory brown-black eye between locks of his ebony hair, driving his point with that one stare.
She pouted at that look he gave her, about to whine again, and he halted her breath in her throat by the subtle narrowing of that eye, turning his gaze into an unholy murderous death stare which made her skin crawl and her hair stand on end. Elai may be talented in getting her way, but he’d mastered the ability to glare so venomously that you’d swear you face would melt off from the intensity of it. They always had silent arguments like this, and Teirin always won with that demonic gaze.
Teirin turned wordlessly, walking lopsidedly due to the weight on his shoulder, dust rising from his boots upsetting the dry dirt, his blue tunic swishing. Elai watched him go, gnawing even harder on her lip, her eyebrow twitching. Seventeen or not, older brother or not, he should at least help his baby sister out when she had something important to do!
“Elai,” A soft motherly voice soothed, “Why don’t you help me out in the house; I could use your help.” Elai turned, the bells in her hair tinkling, to look at the source of the voice.
Deirdre, a soft woman with sandy brown hair that rippled past her shoulders was standing in the doorway of the small thatched house next to Elai, holding her huge bulging belly tenderly, her lavender dress as baggy as a circus tent. Elai automatically put on her best face, beaming at the delicate pregnant woman.
“Of course I would, Mrs. Deirdre, anything to help you in your condition.” Elai cooed, trotting up to the woman, the bells in her hair chiming like bird laughter.
“I’m not that delicate!” Deirdre teased, smiling warmly, stepping aside for Elai to enter her home and shutting the wooden door behind them. Elai had always liked Deirdre and her husband’s quaint abode, the warm cluttered feel of it and the constant scent of some sort of delicious food baking.
Elai stepped around a carved bench next to the door and walked to the center of the room to lift herself into a tall chair of a square wooden table. Deirdre walked over to a wide spacious down bed behind the table and leaned down with notable difficulty, a small open window painting the woman’s back with glittering yellow light as she wrapped her slender arms around a pile of clothes on the bed.
“You can help me by taking apart all of these old clothes to re-use the cloth. Maybe I’ll even let you make a dress for yourself or a pair of breeches for your brother.” The kind woman hummed, laying out the pile of clothes on the table in front of Elai, “Your brother is so kind, bless his heart for carrying all of those potatoes to the storehouse for me. You and that brother of yours are always so helpful to everyone in town. I wish the other ungrateful children would learn a thing or two from the pair of you.” Deirdre set a small pair of scissors in front of Elai, then turned and waddled to the small kitchen on the opposite side of the one-room house.
“Thank you Deirdre. Maybe I’ll make Teirin another tunic; that old white one he’s so fond of is stained so badly you’d never know it was supposed to be white!” Elai mused, slipping the slender metal point of the scissors under the stitching. Elai was tempted to tell the truth of why they were always helping the other villagers, but stilled her tongue; life was hard without parents to support them, and there was always some benefit to helping, such as the prospect of free clothes.
“You look tired, dear. Did you have a nightmare?” Deirdre asked, rolling a big wad of dough against the wooden counter top with a practiced rhythm.
“I did have a dream that upset me, but it wasn’t a nightmare, exactly.” Elai replied, eyeing the snowy white cloth of the shirt she was dismantling.
“Ah, that’s natural for one your age. Let me guess; was it was a dream about a boy?” Deirdre murmured, smiling knowingly at Elai.
“How did you know that?” Elai gasped, nearly dropping the cloth.
“Every child in this village has dreams like that when they’re seven years old. It’s usually a dream you can’t remember that scares the wits out of you, but at some point you'll get a dream about that boy, and what the dream is about varies from person to person. Your brother never had those dreams because he wasn’t born here.” Deirdre stopped kneading the stickiness of the dough, her eyes distant and her smile wistful, “I remember what my dream was, and I often dream about it from time to time but it’s never the same as the first.”
“What was yours about?” Elai whispered, transfixed, her green eyes lightened with intensity at the chance of learning more about the Voice of the Forest.
“Ah, my dream was that we were dancing on stage.” Deirdre turned, eyes looking into that distant memory, “I’d never imagined what it was like to dance for a crowd; I’d always thought it would be embarrassing. But that rush of adrenalin in our veins and our limbs moving with uncanny confidence and grace was pure joy… You’ve never felt the pleasure we felt from seeing the crowd cheer and women scream our name, nor how amazing our voice felt to soar out of our throat so loud our tongue was numb.” Deirdre began to spin carefully around the room, humming a catchy tune, her baggy dress spiraling out around her like the great petals of a flower opening.
“But why do kids in this village have these dreams, and why do they all have that same boy in them?” Elai demanded, pulling the red ribbons out of her hair, the small gold bells on the ends jingling and bit the ribbons between her teeth, combing her long blood red hair out.
“Nobody knows.” Deirdre answered anticlimactically with a shrug, spinning back to the dough and continuing to knead, “My guess is that the spirit of that boy lingers in the village and memories of his life touch children during the seventh year of their life. It makes sense; it’s the holy number of the Seven Gods, and the holiest year in any Silvan’s life is when they are seven years old.” Deirdre paused, mouth pursed, “But I’ve always gotten the impression that that boy was more special than we ever gave him credit for… oh well, it doesn’t matter; he’s not going to be telling us any time soon.”
Elai stifled the urge to bite her lip while her ribbons were in her mouth, quashing her disappointment with Deirdre’s answer, combing her small fingers through her hair. She knew that the boy was indeed far more important than anybody knew. She could feel it, in some small part of herself that could be called a sixth sense. That boy was important to the Voice of the Forest, but she wasn’t sure how.
A gust of wind billowed into the house, ruffling Deirdre’s dress and playing with Elai’s hair, tousling the wildflowers in the vase on the table, and Elai froze. There was the softest voice lingering on the wind, so soft that nobody but Elai and her long ears could possibly detect it. The voice was singing a soft lament in an unknown language, the voice weaving in and out of incredible notes like a bird before fading away as the wind calmed.
It was the voice of the Forest.
Elai, her mouth still full of ribbons, stared out of the window, making an oath to herself. After finishing at Deirdre’s house and making her brother’s new tunic, she swore to find the Voice of the Forest. That same sixth sense of hers told her that she would find it, despite all of the past failed attempts.
It would be today that she could ask the Voice why it was crying.
Let me just give you a few suggestions.