Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

“Perhaps it only is visible when you need it to be,” she suggested, patting the mare on the flank.

Oelendra shrugged. “Perhaps,” she said, and she squinted, looking into the forest again. Then she turned and took Rhapsody by the shoulders. “There is something you need to remember. Time does not pass there the way it does here. I was within their realm for hours, perhaps days, when they were working on Gwydion.” The reflection of a cloud passed in her silver eyes, or perhaps it was just the irony of the memory. Oelendra had taken the news of Ashe being alive with a solemn silence, back when Rhapsody had first returned to Tyrian, seeking her help with the children of the F’dor. She had often wondered what the Lirin warrior was thinking, but Oelendra never shared her thoughts about it. “When he—after there was nothing more I could do, and the Lord Rowan sent me back, nothing had changed from the moment I had entered, Rhapsody; my saddle was still warm. You may find yourself staying for a very long time, months, years perhaps, but when you come back it may only be a moment later than when you went in. It may be hard for you to find your place in Time again.”

Rhapsody patted her hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I know where I will come first for help if I lose my way.”

For the first time since they had entered the wood Oelendra smiled. “Well, that’s a lesson you have learned well. My door is always open to you, dearest. My home is yours. Now, I will wait here with the children, and him.” She gestured toward the gladiator, propped up in the saddle of the roan Oelendra had led, his eyes bleary in the herb-induced stupor. “I hope you find them.”

Rhapsody swallowed hard. She tried not to think about what she would do if she couldn’t. Slowly she drew Daystar Clarion and held it before her, watching the twisting flames whisper up the shining blade, gleaming with the light of the stars. She ran the tips of her fingers through the fire, feeling the humming pulse in her skin; at her touch the flames leapt and roared, quieting into a windy billow a moment later. Then with a decisive jab she plunged sword, tip first, into the snow to serve as a marker and walked away without looking back.

She had walked for what seemed like a very long time, stepping in the ankle-deep snow, leaving almost no trail. The wind blew gently here, and the breeze was warm, even in the depths of winter. Though she had no idea where she was going, and barely knew from where she had come, Rhapsody did not have the sense of being lost. She closed her eyes and drank in the song of the forest, deeper, more solemn, than the song of Tyrian she had come to know so well.

The song resonated louder to the west, and she followed it blindly, her hands outstretched before her. It was a deep, warm melody, like the song of miners in the depths of the hills, what the Earth itself sounded like when she heard it singing while traveling along the Root. It undulated on the wind, growing stronger in one direction; Rhapsody turned toward it and opened her eyes.

The air before her and all around her was shrouded -in mist, thick with silver vapor. The droplets sparkled in the air, reflecting the light of the rising sun. It was like standing within a cloud, with the sky and forest no longer visible. She put out a hand to brush the mist away; it did not move, but rather hung heavy in the air, like rain that had frozen in time.

Rhapsody wandered for a while, trying to find the other side of the misty Veil, but the fog was ever-present, inviolable. She called out every few minutes, but heard nothing; no voice or birdcall answered her. Directions became difficult, then impossible, to discern. She began to fear losing her way. Finally she sighed, the sound swallowed by the thick layers of vapor, and turned back to Oelendra and the children again.

She could see them at the very edge of her vision after a few minutes, clustered around and on the horses in the distant part of the fog. Rhapsody quickened her step, trotting through the snow, until she came within clear sight of them. She stopped in her tracks.

The children of the demon were as they had been when she had left them. The person holding the reins of the roan was not Oelendra, however, but rather a slim, pale woman with hair as white and silver as the mist, dressed in a plain white robe. She smiled and held out the reins of the mare to Rhapsody, who took them as if entranced, then turned and walked off into the thickening fog. A moment later Rhapsody shook her head as if shaking off sleep, and followed the woman, leading the horse and the children into the mist.

After a long time the fog began to dissipate. At first Rhapsody didn’t notice it, she was too focused on following the woman in white and the children, but eventually she became aware of a few trees here and there, then some denser patches of woods, until at last the mist evaporated like smoke in the heat of the sun rising in the sky above them. Rhapsody found herself in a forest not unlike Tyrian, except that it was spring or early summer. The ground was green, as were the leaves and new shoots of the trees, many of which were white birches, ashes, silver maples, and pale beech trees, their ivory bark giving the woods an otherworldly appearance.

The children, who until then had been solemnly silent, began to talk softly to each other, then laugh, and finally to run about, enjoying the sun. It was as if an enormous weight had been lifted from them; now they felt as if they could fly, and so they tried, extending their arms wide and dashing in between the trees and up small rises, leaping and giggling.

Rhapsody smiled as she turned to survey them all and caught the eye of the Lady, who had been watching her intently. She colored under the stare, and the woman smiled. Then she turned toward the deeper part of the wood and two young men appeared, dressed as the woman was, in white robes. They took the semiconscious gladiator down from the roan and led him and the horse away toward a settlement of small huts, visible to Rhapsody for the first time only in that moment.

Rhapsody turned back to the children and her heart leapt to her throat; they were gone. Only the woman in white remained, and she approached the Singer slowly, her hands extended. Rhapsody took them in her own; they were warm, as her mother’s had been as she brushed Rhapsody’s hair before the fire in childhood. Aches and pains she did not even know she had been carrying vanished, along with the raw, black patches of frostbite, leaving her feeling whole and rested, though not entirely awake. The pale woman spoke. Her voice was like the soft sigh of the warm wind.

“You need not fear, they are well attended. Come; I will show you your place here.” She led Rhapsody by the hand over the rise of a hill to a small thatched hut, the same as she had seen in the settlement. She nodded to it. Rhapsody blinked in her inner fog.

“But what if they wake in the night, crying?” she asked. She had not even thought of the question; it was as if it had been placed directly into her mouth, bypassing her mind.

“They never will,” a voice answered behind her. Rhapsody turned to see a pale man, attired in the same type of robe, but the color of night. His eyes were black as pitch, and deep; Rhapsody felt she easily could fall into those eyes. They were crowned with black thundercloud brows that gave way to snowy white hair. Suddenly she realized that the question had been put into her mouth so that she would hear the answer. She felt the heavy sleep fall off her shoulders like a woolen cloak, clearing her mind at last.

“Thank you for taking them in, m’lady, m’lord,” she said. “I will do whatever I can to help in any way.”

“Good,” said the man. His face was solemn. “They will need your help more than you can imagine.”