James Davis - The Restless Shore

“It’s like she knew this house was here, just waiting for us,” Uthalion mused, his eyes narrowing as he turned to the farmhouse’s interior. He watched the ceiling and the walls as though they might come to life.

“Maybe she did know,” Brindani replied. “But, at this point, does that really matter?”

“Actually, I think it matters more now, the further we get into this,” Uthalion said, returning his endless stare to the empty view out the window. “The further it pulls us in …” he added in a hushed tone.

Us? Brindani thought, a flash of covetous rage briefly tightening his hands into fists, but he let it go as quickly as it had come. He’d not heard the song the last two nights, not since Uthalion had decided to guide them across the Akana. Though he feared the missing song had been his own fault, Uthalion’s words left him wondering.

“She’s dead, I imagine … Ghaelya’s sister,” Uthalion continued, his stone cold face split by moonlight and shadow.

“I don’t recall you having the best imagination,” Brindani replied, easing himself up into a standing position against the wall, still measuring his actions carefully and attempting to seem casual. “But I do remember you as being more of an optimist.”

“Well, live and learn,” Uthalion shrugged, grinning slightly. “The more you hope, the harder the fall. Better to just keep expectations low.”

“You don’t think we’ll find Tessaeril,” Brindani said, more to himself than Uthalion. He was unsure of how the idea sat with him after so many nights traveling with Ghaelya, with little to go on but her mysterious dreams.

“On the contrary, I’m certain we will find her,” the human replied. “And I’m sure we’ll do our best to deal with her remains respectfully, and then we’ll … be on our way.”

Uthalion’s pause caught Brindani’s attention. He sounded unsure, as if the human hadn’t yet thought of much beyond finding Tohrepur. The half-elf edged closer to the door, his breath coming quick as he ignored the growing pain in his abdomen. Pale moonlight lit the cracked boards beneath his boots as he tasted the night air and let it cool the fine beads of sweat on his brow.

“It’s a long way to walk just for a funeral isn’t it?”

Ghaelya’s voice startled them both, but Uthalion did not turn to look at the genasi standing in the hallway. The energy lines of her skin flared in the dim light, and her arms were crossed. Brindani had known her long enough to judge the slow boil of anger that steamed in her blue-green eyes. Uthalion merely heaved a deep breath and grinned a bitter smile as Brindani quietly excused himself and stepped outside.

His darting eyes could not find the stealthy Vaasurri, and he breathed a sigh of relief, swiftly hopping down off the edge of the porch. Waist-high grass and weeds surrounded him as he studied the weathered and overgrown exterior of the old stone windmill. Despite his pain, he crossed the distance to the darkened mill as silent as a ghost, leaning on the stone and listening for any sign of life within. At the sound of raised voices from inside the farmhouse he ducked inside the narrow tower, pushing through cobwebs and thick ivy, searching for enough dark to shelter his secrets.

8 Mirtul, the Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR)

The Akana, Edge of the Wash, Akanul

My sister is alive,” Ghaelya said.

Uthalion watched Brindani walk across the old porch and noted the swift shadow of Vaasurri following the half-elf, before responding. He casually ran a thumb over the hilt of his long sword, not sure of what to expect from Ghaelya or the half-elf, but prepared for anything.

“I don’t know that,” he replied coolly. “And more importantly, I don’t believe you know that.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath, felt her eyes pierce his back from across the room, and sensed a strange familiarity in the experience. Though there was dust on the windowsill, and the curtains had rotted away, he half expected to blink and find the green flower print curtains he remembered from his old life, the sill clean and smooth beneath his hands as Maryna’s voice sang to him from somewhere else in the house … He blinked, and the farmhouse remained as it was, the genasi approaching him from behind.

“I know it,” Ghaelya said, her voice rising as she strode into the room. “I’ve always known it, ever since-”

“How could you possibly?”

“I’ve seen her!” she yelled.

“It’s not enough!” he answered in kind, turning to face her and shaking his head in disbelief. “Dreams? This is what you follow, Hells, what you ask us to follow to Tohrepur?”

Even as he posed the question he felt some small part of himself want it to be true. Though he had little faith in or desire for his own dreams, his nightmares, he hoped that somehow Ghaelya’s dreams had some meaning or truth to them. Despite that faint hope, he was too familiar with the nature of reality to invest in her faith. And he had his own reasons to suspect the nature of her dreams. As she stood in the center of the room, glaring at him, he could almost hear the distant murmur of singing. But this time he could not determine if it was memory or something else.

“I didn’t bring you here,” she said through clenched teeth. “Brindani didn’t bring you here, and my dreams didn’t bring you here … So why are you here, Uthalion?”

The question slid into him like a boning knife, the kind his wife wielded so expertly on the fish he would bring home for dinner, fresh from the spring. His wife’s voice asked him the question again, echoing across the years, her thin shoulders slumped as she leaned back against the dining room table in the lamplight, their daughter fast asleep in the back bedroom. Uthalion blinked, and she was gone. He turned away from the angry genasi with a scowl as fresh pain erupted from old wounds.

“Save your questions and your breath,” he answered gruffly. “I have no apologies or excuses for you … or anyone.”

His hands balled into fists, Uthalion felt stretched between anger and exhaustion. The silver ring was heavy on his hand, and he feared sleep-true sleep-was not as far away as he had hoped. He relaxed somewhat as Ghaelya fell back a step, leaned against the east wall, and let the sudden weariness settle into his spent body even as old resentments boiled to the surface of his heart.

“You know, I see someone running, it’s not where they’re going that makes me curious,” Ghaelya said, quieter, but he still felt the edge of anger in her words. “I’ve got to wonder: what are they running from?”

Sighing, Uthalion looked at her over his shoulder with a sly, tired grin.

“I think perhaps, on that point, we seem to understand one another,” he replied knowingly. He looked away, the answers still only half-formed in his own thoughts and muddled by memory and beguiling song, obligation and compulsion.

The chirping of crickets and the buzzing of spring-beetles filled the quiet between them, though Uthalion knew she wouldn’t let things go. There was a youthful stubbornness in her that he envied; or rather, he envied the memory of feeling the same way when he’d been young, leaving his grandfather’s farm in far away Tethyr.

“She is alive,” Ghaelya said at length, breaking the silence between them. “In the end, I will prove that to you.”

“Keep your hope alive,” he said. “And I will consider that feat enough, no matter what happens.”

She turned away without another word, her footsteps diminishing down the short hallway and slowing cautiously on the stairs at the back of the house. He glanced out the window looking north and wondering how much farther he would have to run before he could turn back, find his family, and try again to be the husband he’d once been, to be the parent he’d never had.