Spoiler
Natura Halle duels her brother, Nolen, in the forest, excercising both her control over the earth (special elemental magic unique to her country, Icarthia) and her archery skills. Natura and Nolen return to their village, Parcel, and have dinner with their mother and father. Their father is ill, and unable to keep working, which puts strain on the whole family and especially their mother.
Read it here: Eventide (1)
Read it here: Eventide (1)
Night found Natura sleepless.
She sat awake in her bed holding her legs to her chest, her chin resting on her knees, long chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders. She stared at the open space above the stairway they led from her room to the main level of the cottage, faded images of a nightmare lingering in her line of vision.
She dreamt often; nightmares constantly plagued her sleep. She could not remember when they had come on; they had been so much a part of her life for so long. Only within the past year had they become this strong. Only now did they feel like a threat.
Her skin crawled from the dreamt touch of thin, black shadows curling around her arms and legs. They crept up her body, filling her mouth and nose with thick black air. They suffocated her.
Natura yawned and pulled a thick wool blanket around her thin frame. She hadn’t slept much at all in the past few days with the recent frequency of the nightmares. She shivered and turned her face to the open window. Summer was coming to an end and the autumn winds that shook the treetops of Icarthia had begun to pick up.
As Natura pushed herself from the bed to close the window, a rock flew through the open space and clunked on the wooden floors. She went to the window and leaned her arms on the windowsill.
A young woman stood in the grass between the cottage and the low stone wall that surrounded the Halle property. She held an old lantern in one hand, and waved up at Natura with the other. The lantern cast a soft orange glow over the woman.
“What is it, Christiana?” Natura asked. She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, covering her thin, white bedclothes.
“Haro wants to beat the hunt,” Christiana said. “We’re to be at the shop by sunrise.”
Natura looked out over the village. From her window, she could see the sky above the treetops just beginning to lighten with the promise of day. “Not long ‘till sunrise, Christiana,” she said.
Christiana laughed and began walking backwards across the yard. “Never was one for punctuality,” she said. “Hurry now, I’ll meet you soon.”
Natura pulled the window shut and tossed the blanket to her bed. Alaster stirred and watched her with one eye. She wrapped her arms around herself and pulled a dress from the armoire her father had built for her room when she was born. Little animals were delicately carved into the faded doors.
She wrapped her mother’s old cloak around her before descending the stairs to the kitchen. It was a magnificent, ancient thing, the cloak. Natura had stumbled upon it years ago in Haro’s shop; long before she or Christiana began working for him. She had loved the proud oak – the symbol of Icarthia – embroidered in gold upon it. Her mother had appreciated it less, though, and handed it over to Natura not a year later.
Nolen was in the kitchen when Natura came down. He sat at the table, his head resting on his folded arms on the tabletop. He lazily opened his eyes and watched Natura take a portion of a loaf of bread from the bread basket on a shelf by the hearth.
“You’re leaving,” he said.
“So are you,” Natura said. She watched him from the corner of her eye as she added a piece of wood to the fire in the hearth.
“I’ll be back in a few weeks time,” he said. He reached one arm forward, his head still resting on the other, and ran a finger along his bow that lay on the table.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” she said. “Not a thing to worry over.”
“You’ll be alright?” he asked. He yawned and wrapped his hand around the bow.
Natura went to him and ruffled his hair. “We’ll be just fine,” she assured. She kissed the top of his head and he groaned. “Don’t sleep too long; you’ll miss your first hunt.”
“I know,” he said softly. His eyes closed and he yawned again. “I know.”
Natura picked up the bag she had left by the stairs the night before. It was an old hunting sack of her father’s, filled with patches and smelling of smoked meat. Nolen had been given a new one for his time as a hunter, and Natura had inherited the old. She slung it over her shoulder and went quietly out the front door, leaving a dejected, whimpering Alaster behind.
She went back behind the cottage to the small barn her father had built in his prime to house the family’s horses. She led her horse, a thoroughbred Icarthian that had been meant for her brother, from his stall and through the yard. Arian was a strong horse, and wildly independent. Her father and thought him well suited for Nolen when he came of age. Nolen, though, was not well suited for Arian.
Many things came easily to Nolen. He was a fine student at the tiny schoolhouse where Parcel children were educated, and an excellent tracker, but breaking a horse was something he didn’t have the patience for.
Natura took her chance when Nolen stormed out of the barn after one particularly difficult try at saddling the stubborn horse. He responded slowly to her, but after weeks of persistence she made it through to him. Nolen waited and inherited their father’s old steed when he grew too ill to ride.
At the bend in a road on the opposite side of the village, Natura and Arian waited. Parcel was small, tiny compared to most villages in Icarthia, but this particular portion of her home felt so far from what she knew. This was where Christiana lived.
Arian stood beside Natura, leaning his head against Natura’s shoulder. She absently rubbed his nose with her hand as she watched Christiana’s cottage. It was at the far end of the road, just within sight. Christiana had made her promise she would never go near it.
She had gone against her friend’s trust only once. Once evening when Christiana rushed home after dark, she didn’t notice Natura following her along the darkened village roads. She had been in a hurry to return home. She was late. She kept repeating that. She was late.
Natura had been suspicious for several years, but she never had the nerve to break her promise until that night. That night she crept through the shadows, finding a place to hide that allowed her to see through the dimply lit kitchen window.
That night, Natura watched as Christiana’s drunken father hit her and threw her against the stone bordering the hearth and she burned herself on hot coals. She watched as her friend was sent away from the house. She was frozen as the beaten girl jumped the crumbling stone wall behind her cottage and run into the forest like it was a routine.
There was nothing Natura could have done. A man in Icarthia had the right to treat his family however he pleased, especially if he lived on the dirty pot-holed road hidden behind the old Parcel Inn.
Natura sighed and fiddled with Arian’s reins. Moments later, Christiana came running around the side of her cottage and up the road.
“Good morning!” she called, a smile plastered to her cheery face. Her dress was wrinkled and ripped in two places, and she had one of her father’s old hunting sacks slung over her shoulder. That was something about this part of the village; the only reason most of the lying, cheating, drunken old men who kept their families there were tolerated was because they were some of the most skilled hunters and tradesmen in the village.
So long as they weren’t more of a burden than an asset to the tiny village, any person was welcomed.
“Good morning,” Natura said.
Christiana ran her hands through her disheveled hair, multicolored hair. Strands of every color, red, green, blue, purple, yellow, curled around her fingers as she attempted to straighten herself. Roots of her natural chestnut – like Natura’s – showed at the top of her head, and she did her best to cover them.
“Someday,” she always said, “I’ll leave Icarthia. I’ll go to the Great White City in Lindai and find someone to put real colors in my hair, not just what Haro can find me and what I can make myself.”
Natura grabbed Arian’s reins and gave them a short tug. “Let’s go, Haro will be waiting.”
It was too early for most villagers to be out, especially with the hunt departing that day. Families were keeping their men to the last moment before watching them leave for the next few weeks. So, much to Natura’s relief, they made it to through the village square and down the thin alleyway that led to Haro’s shop without delay.
Christiana was a subject of rumor in Parcel, and while Christiana didn’t mind having eyes on her Natura ached for her friend. A small village like theirs that clung to tradition as a lifeline didn’t know how to live with a young woman like Christiana. She was talked about both behind her back and in her presence, and Natura couldn’t bear to hear what people said about her dear friend.
As the years went by, Christiana became adjusted to a pattern of being out in the village only in the early mornings and the late evenings when it was dark. She only went about in the day with Natura at her side.
The alleyway leading to Haro’s shop was only the small space between the village bakery and the carpenter’s shop Natura’s father owned. Crates were piled against the two buildings, as well as trash and other refuse that was pushed aside from the village square. Rats and other small creatures scurried between crates as Natura, Christiana, and Arian squeezed down the small path.
Past the alley, an ancient Lindian Elm stood proudly in a small clearing. It was rare to find plant species of other countries, especially one as rare as the Lindian Elm, in the central region of Icarthia – where Parcel was found. This tree had been in this clearing for ages, though, and Haro had built his home around it.
Haro’s Curiosity Shop inhabited the front part of the structure Haro had built around the towering trunk of the tree, while Haro himself inhabited the back portion of the building. The roof was poorly thatched, gaps could be seen even from outside, but the branches that extended over the building – only inches above the roof – protected the building through most seasons.
Christiana ran to the door of the shop and threw it open. “Haro!” she chimed. “Your girls are here!”
Natura tied Arian to a wooden post outside the shop and stepped inside the dimly lit shop. Dust hung in the air, now illuminated by shafts of light from the rising sun that seeped in through the open doorway and a partially unobstructed window. Stacks of crates and piles of shadowed stuff formed a complex mountain range in the shop.
A crash somewhere in the back of the room caused Christiana and Natura to jump. An exasperated sigh followed the echoing sound.
“Haro?” Natura asked. She coughed and waved dust away from her face that Christiana kicked up from knocking over a box.
“Ah, my ladies!” Haro’s voice called from the back corner of the room. “I knew you’d be here sooner or later.”
“Are you alright, Haro?” Christiana asked. “There was a crash.”
“Oh, nothing to worry over, Miss Christiana,” he assured. “Nothing more than a scratch.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. She climbed onto a crate and peered into the shadowed mess covering the back of the shop.
“I… I seem to have…lost my way,” he admitted, chuckling to himself. There was a frantic tinkling as wind chimes hit the floor on the opposite end of the shop.
“Haro, where are you?” Natura asked. She looked around, trying to place his voice in the mess.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t have a better clue if I owned the place,” he said. He chuckled to himself again.
Christiana shook her head. “Haro, you do own the place.”
“Well how about that,” he said. “Well, I do recall taking a left turn at one of those boxes of old arrow heads, and going past a stack of those books in Senain... Here are some bird cages. Did either of you know we even had bird cages?”
“Don’t stop talking, Haro,” Christiana said. She jumped down from the crate and started to push aside a pile of fur coats thick with dust. “I’m coming to find you.”
“Oh nonsense,” he said. “I’ll be out in a moment.” He began to sing something in the old Icarthian tongue. Christiana slumped onto the floor with a groan; Natura leaned back against the doorframe and listened. She couldn’t understand the words; most Icarthians had long forgotten the old tongue, most of the world had adapted to the universal Ascensian language. Haro still knew the old tongue, though.
“Here we are,” Haro said as he emerged between two coat trees.
Christiana jumped up from the ground and clasped her hands to her chest. “Haro, we thought you were gone for good!”
He laughed and grabbed her up in his arms, spinning her around the small open space by the door. Grey dust shook from his blonde hair as their spinning turned into a graceful waltz. His hazel eyes shone in the dim light. He had a strange youthfulness to him, in his looks, but Natura saw a wiseness of the ages in his eyes.
The two young women had often debated Haro’s past, and how old he truly was. In the years they had known him he had never offered the slightest detail about his life before Parcel.
Haro set Christiana down and pulled Natura to him for a hug. “Shall we then?” he asked the girls, gesturing to the open doorway. “If we leave now we will reach the city in only a few days time.”
Natura looked out over the shop. “Haro, I don’t believe you want to bring more stuff into this shop. Where will you put it all?”
Haro wrapped an arm around the shoulders of each girl. “It is for that very reason I have two capable young ladies working for me.” He winked and laughed. “Come now, let’s be on our way.”
***
Two days had passed, and the sun was again sinking below the treetops when the travelers met with the first signs of the city. No longer where they the only three on the road, but few of many as they neared the city gates.
“The Ascensian Academy Trials,” Haro explained. “The Icarthian Trials are being held in the next few days. Young people from across the country are traveling here to compete for a spot at the Academy in Lindai.”
Natura knew of the Academy well. At one point she had been slated for the Trials, many years ago, before her father had fallen ill.
They passed by dirt roads leading to forest-concealed cottages, and soon came upon the towering, stone city wall as the lamplighter lit the torches on either side of the gate. The big wooden gates stood open, allowing the steady stream of people through the archway into the city.
The cobblestone streets of the city were flooded with people. Everyone was busy doing something. People were buying and selling goods, chatting with neighbors, haggling with shop keepers, men played stringed instruments on street corners, and foreign-looking street performers - both male and female – entertained passersby.
In Parcel, the village slept, while the Grand Icarthian City was just coming awake.
Natura glanced at Christiana. She sat in front of Haro on his horse, wondering wide-eyed at brightly colored decorations strung over every surface, blooming flowers filling window boxes, and the street performers. Her gaze held longest on the performers. They wore light, brightly colored fabrics, had colors in their hair, and ink on their skin. Women performed side-by-side with men, often wearing short skirts and heavy jewelry.
They made their way into the city, and the crowd grew heavier. At the center of the city, the streets were almost immovable around the large, circular city green. Dark wood – too dark to be from an Icarthian tree, and more than likely imported from Rivalon – was piled at the center of the green for a bonfire. Shirtless, muscular men set up long tables and benches around the edges of the green.
“The Opening Celebration,” Haro said. “For the Trials. It’s comforting to see tradition is still alive in a place as busy as this.”
Natura nodded. The big celebration, filled with food and dancing, was purely Icarthian. Even in Parcel, the small village came together for celebrations on the appropriate occasions. But the dark Rivalonian wood, even Parcel didn’t import much of its wood anymore. Icarthians had long since given up the sacred nature of the trees and brought them down when they needed wood.
The Grand Icarthian City was a circle, with this green at the center. Haro led the way around the street that encircled the green and south on the road that cut back toward the outside of the circle.
They stopped at an inn right on the edge of the city. The crowd in the streets went from a roaring river to barely a trickle; the city was near the southern border of Icarthia, few travelers came up this way for the Trials.
The building sat on a slant, with one side leaning unevenly against the city wall. A faded sign swung slowly, creaking as it did, that distinguished the place as The Maiden’s Folly. A plump little man ran out of the inn and hobbled down the rotting porch steps. “Hello!” he wheezed. He stopped just in front of them, dabbing at his sweaty forehead with a dingy handkerchief.
Haro dismounted his horse and shook the man’s sweaty paw. “Good evening, Sir,” he said, bowing his head respectfully.
“Oh my good man, call me Renald!” he said. He eyed Natura and Christiana as he dabbed at his sweaty forehead. “How many beds can I do you for?”
“Three,” Haro said. “If it isn’t much trouble.”
“Oh, no trouble at all!” he said, waving his grimy handkerchief in the air. “Come on inside and I’ll get the keys.”
He started waddling back towards the inn.
“Sir, could you point us to the stables so we may board our horses?” Haro called after him.
“Call my grandfather Sir, call me Renald, my good man!” he shouted as he struggled up the stairs. He stopped in the doorway and turned back, dabbing at his forehead with the handkerchief again. “And nonsense, Erik will take your horses to the stables and your luggage to your rooms. It’s all the boy’s good for.”
He leaned in the door and cupped a thick hand to his mouth. “Erik!” he bellowed. “Boy, get out here and do your job!”
A young man, hardly any older than Natura and Christiana, appeared at the door. He squeezed past Renald and jogged over to where they were still with the horses. Haro lifted Christiana out of the saddle and nodded politely to Erik.
Erik nodded, thick dark hair shading his eyes. He stopped beside Arian and held a hand up to Natura. “Miss?”
“Oh, no, I’m fine on my own,” she said.
“Please, Miss, he’s watching.” He tilted his head back slightly, a subtle gesture to where Renald watched from the doorway.
She looked at Renald, and back to the young man’s pleading eyes. She placed her hand in his and let him hold her waist as he helped her to the ground. His hand lingered on her waist, a half smile crossing his lips. “Thank you, Miss.” He nodded once more to Haro before taking the reins of both horses and leading them away around the side of the inn.
“That boy, Renald said. “He’s just about useless. If he wasn’t my son…” He shook his head. “Perhaps the trials will do well for him. Now, follow me and I’ll show you to your rooms.”
Natura grabbed Christiana by the arm as Haro followed Renald into the inn. “I’m going to see that Arian settles in. He’s never made a trip like this before.”
Christiana winked. “Sure,” she said. She gave her a little push toward where Erik had disappeared around the inn and winked again. “Go see to Arian.”
Natura shook her head as she followed Erik’s path around the inn. A long, decrepit barn stood crammed behind the inn. Natura frowned. There were nicer stables where Christiana lived back in Parcel. She pushed the door at the closest end of the stables open, cringing at the creaking of old rusted hinges as it swung.
The stables were empty, except for a handful of horses. Erik had already gone, without much thought to the horses. Natura wandered the row of stalls, searching for her friend.
She had gone halfway down the barn, and was peering into a stall that held a little pony she had never seen the likes of before when a stall door swung shut, banging loudly. She jumped and spun towards the sound.
A young man stood at the end of the barn where Natura had yet to search, having just emerged from a stall with shovel in hand and his shirt unbuttoned and hanging down loosely from where it was tucked into his pants. Dirt and sweat coated his bare skin; straw fell from his dark hair as he ran his free hand through it.
He turned, locking eyes with Natura. “Oh,” he said, freezing in place with eyes wide. “Can I help you, Miss?”
Natura turned her face away from the half-naked young man. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m, uhm.” She cleared her throat. “I’m looking for my horse.”
“One Erik just brought in? Right down here,” he said.”
Natura turned her face slightly to glance back at the young man. His shovel leaned against a stall door and his shirt was on; though he seemed more interested in rolling the sleeves of the once-white shirt to his elbows than he was with buttoning it to conceal his bare chest.
He looked up at Natura. “Is he one of these?” He pointed to the two stalls nearest him.
She walked towards him, and peered into the stalls from as far a distance as she could manage. She was glad to find Arian in the first.
“Hey there,” she said softly. She slid herself close to the stall door and reached a hand in to stroke his nose.
“That’s one fine horse, Miss,” the young man said. He stepped up beside her, his chin resting on his hands on the handle of the shovel in front of him. “And he’s a good bit calmer now that you’ve shown up. He seemed a little uneasy before; I was clearing out another stall for him, but he seems fine now.”
Arian stepped forward in the stall and nuzzled Natura’s cheek.
The young man held a hand out to Natura. “Rigel,” he said.
Natura looked up at him and took his hand. It was rough, calloused from long days of working in the stables. “Natura,” she said. Her voice cracked as she spoke.
“Here to compete, Natura?” Rigel asked, ignoring the growing redness of her cheeks. He gripped the shovel under his chin and leaned forward.
“No,” she said. “Business.”
“I see,” he said. “Husband bring you along then? What’s his trade?”
“No, no husband,” Natura said quickly, waving a hand in front of her. “I help a shopkeeper in my village, and came along to keep his sense while he does business.”
Rigel raised an eyebrow. “A working girl, huh? A little rebellious are we?” He gave her a wink and laughed. It was a warm, inviting laugh that Natura couldn’t help but join. She shook her head, leaned against Arian’s stall, and stroked his nose.
“A working girl,” Rigel said again, more to himself this time. He smiled at Natura, showing off slightly crooked teeth typical of an Icarthian.
“I should be going,” Natura said. She took a step backwards, letting her hand fall away from Arian’s nose. ‘Work to do.”
“Oh yes, I ought to be disappearing as well,” Rigel said. “I’m not supposed to be here today, you see.”
He bowed his head to her as he backed away. “Pleasant meeting you, Natura.” He set his shovel against a stall, turned, and strode out of the stable.
Natura went to Arian and stroked his nose once more before turning back for the inn.
I apologize for the length, but I don't want to break my chapters up. Hopefully it doesn't deter reviews.
