On the far side of a long and narrow cobblestone road stood a trembling figure; a child, draped in dark blue cloth, staring with closed eyes at the sky. She would appear part of the sky had you not looked closely; the dark cloak of night extended a covered hand to touch the earth; or so it would seem.
The road was called Destiny Road, and, (although the road did not know it), the child’s future depended on Destiny Road. Destiny Road ran next to the child’s home, many miles back.
She had been walking all night. She ran, unseeing, at first. Pain gripped her heart in an iron grasp, trying and failing to hold her back. Could anything hold back this child, whose emerald eyes were dark with things seen too early? Whose body was unharmed despite the blows dealt to her soul? Perhaps memories could; a memory of her fallen father, a memory of her broken mother, a memory of a house that was home.
Agony suffocated her, sorrow blinded her, and pain cut her like a cold knife, slicing into her existence, slowly numbed by the stifling heat of the summer night.
It started out as a quiet, everyday evening. The child’s father sat by the jumping flames in the hearth, smoking his pipe. Her mother played a flute as the girl sang.
The glass cups and plates in the cabinet began to shake and rattle uncontrollably.
A high-pitched, metallic shriek of inhuman hatred resonated through the small cottage. Elvora’s mother dropped the flute to the ground as if it had shocked her, bringing her hands to her face in astonishment. Elvora’s Voice ceased to Sing, nearly choking on the words lingering between her lips.
Fury filled her soul. An equal scream of hatred built itself in her aching throat, longing for escape. Her mother had her hand over her daughter’s mouth, pleading with her eyes for her to be silent. She knew what the girl was feeling; her muscles strained, her other hand clenched in a fist, her arm fixed tightly around her shuddering torso.
As quickly as it had come, the scream of hatred along with want of her own, had left. She thought they were unscarred. She thought the evening would go on just as before. Elvora was staggeringly wrong.
Her father had his hand held out to his daughter—the hand that had held his pipe.
“Elvora,” he whispered. She looked into his eyes and saw fear.
He struggled to say his last words.
“I love you.”
The last he would hear:
“I love you too, Daddy.”
The pipe dropped to the ground, and Elvora’s father remained in a stone still position. His eyes were glassy and glazed over, sightless. She felt likewise as her mother bent over her husband and began to wail convulsively. Elvora was frozen in a nightmare too horrible for any child to have ever dreamed of.
She had traveled far and for many hours before the sky gave up. A flood fell from the heavens. She hugged the precious bundle from her mother against her chest under the cloak, also from her mother, so as to not get it wet. She paused in her walking to feel the rain.
As drops fell on her face, she realized her own flood was waiting underneath her lids, ready to escape. Elvora could not hold back the torrent of tears as memories of the night entered her mind and demanded attention. She focused on the less painful memories; her mother, giving her instructions before she had left.
Elvora’s mother told her bad men had come to take her away. When she asked why, she said it was because they wanted to use her. She did not understand. How could “bad men” use a seven-year-old girl?
Elvora’s mother told her she had to leave. She didn’t understand why her mother didn’t come with her. She begged her to come.
She answered with, “I will stay with Father. I hope to sustain them long enough for you to get far away from here.”
She gave her a roll of cloth full of unknown items. Her instructions followed, “run down this road until you are unable to run. Then you must continue on by walking.”
“Where am I to go, Mother?” Elvora’s eyes were wide as she stared at the few buildings separating her from the fast-approaching men on horseback.
Her mother then told her to travel along the road until she came to a village. There she would find a wagon going to Mocale. She was to get inside and let the people handle her. They would take her to her new family.
“You must remember this, or else the bad men will find you again and take you away. You must not Sing ever. You must wait until your sixteenth year. On this day the bad men will not here your voice as distinctly different from others’. Only in this way will they never find you. Do you understand?”
Elvora was by herself in the rain, but she said to it, “Yes, Mother. I understand.”
The last genuine love for her eternity was the last genuine love the child would know for 9 years, and it was felt through an embrace of warmth that would last forever, engraved in her soul.
As she turned her back on her home, leaving her mother to die, she heard two shrieks; that of the bone-chilling variety, and that of the heart-wrenching, which Elvora knew belonged to her mother.
Elvora sat up quickly, hitting her forehead on a wooden beam. She fell back against her pillow, moaning and rubbing the soon-to-be-bruised spot. Tears were rolling down her pale cheeks, but not from the previous bump.
“Happy sixteenth birthday!” yelled Callie, who swung up from the bottom bunk and grabbed Elvora’s bunk frame to smile at her.
“You remembered!?” Both an exclamation of surprise and a question; Callie barely ever remembered anything.
Callie snorted. “Forget my best friend’s birthday? What kind of friend would I be?”
Callie’s dark blue eyes perceived the tears and stopped jumping up and down on her bed.
“What’s the matter?” Callie asked, frowning. “Aren’t you happy to be sixteen?”
Elvora choked down a sob and replied, “Of course I am. I—I just had a bad dream.”
Callie frowned, unsatisfied with her reply, the determination on her brow a sign that she was going to get the truth. Haesel woke and stared at Elvora across the gap between the two bunk beds. Elvora and Haesel had top bunks, and Jaine (who was still asleep) and Callie had bottom bunks.
“You are 16 today,” Haesel finally managed to say.
“Yes,” Elvora replied.
Callie looked back and forth between the two girls. “Am I missing something?” she asked, confused. The youngest physically, but perhaps the oldest in mentality, Elvora was not one to complain about age.
Jaine, who had awoken in the midst of the conversation, gazed solemnly at Elvora and answered Callie, “Elvora can Sing today.”
Callie’s breath came in short gasps. The room became utterly silent. The ceiling, which was the floor of the room above, creaked as students got ready for the day. Peals of laughter and talking could be heard outside the door; however, neither could be heard inside.
The silence of her room was unbearable, and the pounding rain called to Elvora through the window. The rain had been her friend ever since she had been seven. The rain was her dearest friend now as Elvora ran out of her room. The rain drowned the pain that still, even now, cut her.
Jaine, Callie, and Haesel watched Elvora run down the hall and through the courtyard. She scaled the gate and jumped down the other side; into the protection of the forest.
She was quickly on the mountain, out of the trees, running up one of the smaller mountains in the range, taking one of her favorite routes. Her choice course was also the fastest. Most of her means of getting to the top of the mountains were usually the hardest ways, but today Elvora just wanted to be there.
She ran up an old road that led to an abandoned mine and rotting wood buildings. Once a silver mine, it was deserted after a wild guess had been proven wrong. Elvora scrambled up a shale hill and dashed along a game trail to a saddle between the mountain she was currently climbing and another mountain.
She climbed the broad southwest ridge, which was slowly narrowing. At the top of the mountain, the rocks were at their greatest, with barely any dirt to cover them.
Elvora leapt across the rocks along the ridge, silhouetted against the dark, grey clouds as lightning flashed behind her. Her feet were carefully placed on the rock as the rain pounded around her.
It was in rare moments like these when Elvora felt peace. A deep serenity possessed her, and Elvora did not fight. She simply had no reason to; her head was as clean and innocent as the child’s she had once been many years ago.
She finally came to her destination: a white, twisted limber pine. It had taken root in one of the only patches of dirt on the mountain. The limber pine’s branches were spread like a blossoming flower, reaching out to something lost to them; they hung out high above the rock, stretching out over it.
Elvora paused beneath the limber pine to search its roots. After some digging, she pulled out a navy blue bundle hidden in depression nine years ago. She unwrapped the blue cloth and draped it over her shoulders. It was a cloak, her mother’s, and Elvora was now tall enough to wear it.
A feeling of passion coursed through her. So intense was it, Elvora fell to her knees, unable to stand the crippling ache in her chest. A single tear left her eye, and then she was crying out in anguish.
“Oh, Mother! Oh, Father!”
She gripped the ground; her steady, loving ground, and was so thankful for everything she had been given.
She remained there, the smell of the dirt and watered-down air surrounding her.
Elvora stood. I am not alone. I am no longer afraid. Thank you, Mother and Father. I will make you proud.
She was left with the original package. She tucked it under her arm and grabbed the sturdy limbs, swinging herself one-handed into the tree. She proceeded to a branch near the middle of the trunk, walking out on it, and then sat down with her back against the trunk.
Elvora’s bare feet dangled in the air, and she realized she had forgotten her boots in the dorms. She would have to go back to get them.
Elvora pulled the hood over her damp, dark chestnut brown hair, and with trembling fingers slowly began to open the package. It was wrapped in brown leather, and it came off easily.
The first thing to be found by Elvora was a dagger. The blade was a diamond shape; a slight angle that sloped to taper into a point. The guard was slightly curved, the grip wire-wrapped, and the pommel was spherical. The blade was still sharp, and it glinted in the lightning flashes.
The sheath caught her attention: carved into the plain leather was the word Aer’ihet.
Elvora blinked—the only outward response she gave the sheath. The word looked familiar, but Elvora couldn’t say why; she didn’t know. Elvora shrugged, deciding it was the given name of the dagger, and strapped the sheath to her belt.
Next was a necklace. It appeared to be a simple thing; completely undecorated except for a silver pendant hanging from the silver string. The pendant was round, with ivy vines entwined around each other engraved on it. The necklace was a sacred symbol to Elvora- her mother had worn it, every day, and was considered her family’s most valuable item. She clasped the necklace around her neck and covered it with her bed tunic, which she hadn’t bothered to change out of.
The last item in the leather was a flute. Extraordinarily beautiful carvings ran its length: leaves, flowers, vines, trees, fruits, and even tiny faces of little people. It was the flute of her mother; the one from her dream.
Elvora raised her eyes to look at the valley below. She was higher than the cottages in the little village, which was home to parents of students at Mocale, higher than the dorms, higher than the stone turret of Mocale itself.
The rain, lightning, and heavy clouds drifted away, leaving behind a cool, misty fog. It crept through the mountains and lay in patches on the ground, which seemed so far away. Elvora brought the flute to her lips, placed her fingers accordingly, and blew. She closed her eyes, and played a song of the mountains; a harmony with the mountains rather than a melody of the mountains; for Elvora was simply playing to accompany the tune the mountains were.
A wind raged through the trees, the leaves rattling as they were thrown around. Clouds appeared, and thunder crashed. The sky was a violent storm; but to Elvora it seemed pure; for all a storm knows is wind and thunder and lightning and rain. A tree was hit by the lightning. Sympathetic pain rang in every note of Elvora’s song. A rain drowned the fire that would have otherwise spread fast through the forest.
The flute sang of the rain as it went from pummeling bullets to a quiet drizzle. The rain slowly disappeared, and the sun came to its position in the sky. Drops of water glistened like diamonds, and meadowlarks sang.
The tree previously hit with electricity lay blackened in the mud. A soft wind carried the ashes away. The storm was over, as was the song.
Elvora opened her eyes, and was surprised to find the sun rising over the Eastern mountains. She smiled at the sun, squinting her eyes, and tucked the flute in her cloak. She grabbed the branch she was sitting on and swung off to land in a cat-like position on the ground. She jumped off of rocks and over fallen trees, sprinting to get back to Mocale in time for the sun welcoming.
The sun welcoming was the way the Sisters started and greeted the day. All of the Sisters gather together on a knoll outside the gates of Mocale and Sing together as the sun rises. Elvora reached Mocale to find the gates open wide for early students. She ran across the courtyard until she reached the dorms, where she ran down the hall, flinging open the door to her dorm room and shutting it behind her.
to be continued in Part 2 of Chapter 1
