Summer is ending -- soon will come autumn, and with the autumn will come the leaves. When I was younger, I'd look forward to that time of year the way a farmer does his harvest. Every morning, I'd look out my window and see if I could make out the beginnings of the leaves' darkening, their fading and brightening into a thousand rustic colors.
The weather would grow cold, as well, but I relished it. I'd wrap myself in an old, oversized coat that once belonged to my grandfather, that bore brown buttons and the smell of pipe-smoke, and I would go walking. I've always loved trees, and it was at that time of year that I found them the prettiest. The leaves were most brilliant before their fall, not unlike man, if I wished to be morbid about it.
I would sit among them, a book in my lap, and read. Some days write, when I was feeling particularly bold. Always in the cold, always with that coat -- the smallfolk often whispered about how I was my grandfather come again. Whether they meant that as compliment or not I do not know; I paid them no heed. I was busy reading. Listening.
There are a few particular days of autumn, when the leaves hang just loosely enough on the branches, and the wind blows just hard enough. On those days, you can hear the ocean in the trees. I closed my eyes, and listened to the rustling, and I was at peace. There were moments when the breath of the wind on leaves sounded no different than the lapping of waves on the shore -- and I relished them.
I found out one year (I was perhaps thirteen) that I was not the first person to frequent that particular grove, that particular circle. It had once served as hideaway for a young couple. Mirian, Roan, those were their names, if I still remember correctly after all these years. As I remember that circle of trees today, it is their story that stands out the most in my mind.
One year thirteen, the next fourteen, they came here in spring, summer, and fall alike. It was where they could be alone from the world. No one suspected anything less than marriage from them.
Then there was some conflict, some war, I do not recall precisely what it was. Mirian promised Roan that she would wait for him among the trees, in their place -- so it would be like nothing ever came between them at all.
Roan died. But Mirian did not stop going to the grove. For hours every day, as sure as before, she could be seen there, by herself. Just sitting. Listening, perhaps.
An old man, a local man, was the one that told me the story. Wyndham. He spoke of it before a fire, the smoke from his pipe wafting up in wispy tendrils to the ceiling. Mirian's family had asked him to speak with her, to try and make her see reason where they could not.
"I went to her," he said, gesturing at me with his pipe. "I just stood there, and she smiled this sad little smile, gave me a nod of her head. I did the same. We stood there like that for maybe a minute -- felt like five -- just looking at each other."
He took in a deep breath, and his eyes found the fireplace. "'Come home,' I told her. And she shook her head.
"'I promised him I'd wait,' she said, 'No matter what happens.'
"And so it went. I'd come, ever day. I'd tell her to come home. She refused.
"One day, once she was used to me, I asked her: 'Why stay here like this? What does he gain from you martyring yourself for him? Why don't you live for you?'
"And she laughed this airy little laugh, and she said: 'True love is sacrifice. I promised him I would wait. If I did not come here for him, it would mean I've forgotten my promise. And if I've forgotten my promise, I've forgotten my love.' I just...looked at her.
"'Our love was true,' she said. 'And so I sacrifice. I suffer. For him.'"
Some days, I wonder: What if I died? What would happen to Aliyyah, to Lia? What if I were to tell them I wanted nothing more of them? I do not know. The woman I truly loved has been gone for a long time. I nearly loved another, and she took her own life. Nothing less than divine will opposed me.
Some days, I wonder if I'll be the one waiting. Fading, like the leaves.
Posted by Aanson at 11:34 AM
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"Aanson," Dana whispered to me, her hand cupping my cheek, "Wake up."
"Is it morning already?" I groaned and flopped an arm about. The slightest opening of my eyelids was an epic struggle. "It can be morning later. In the afternoon."
She pinched my cheek, hard. "Come on, get up. This is no way for a lord to behave."
"Ow!" I jerked upright, clutching a hand to my now-reddened face. "I'm up! I'm up!"
Dana smoothed out the skirts of her dress. "Mm. Good. You've a long day ahead of you." She might have been smiling, but I couldn't quite tell.
"Urk," I pointed out. At length, I asked, "Where's my mother?"
"'My mother,' he says." Dana gave a smirk and rose from the corner of my bed. "Such formality. I always did like it."
Dana succeeded in baiting me to remain awake. "You're never up this early. And you're only like this when you're plotting something." I groped about on the nightstand for my glasses. "You've got a reason for being here, don't you?"
"I do, I do." Dana laced her fingers together and rest her hands upon her stomach. "Get dressed and we'll talk about it."
By the time the door shut I was already halfway to my dresser. I quickly shunted aside all thoughts that a woman some seven years my senior was going to confess her undying love for me (she was nearly my SISTER, after all), and set about donning my clothes. It was early in the morning; I could hear songbirds twittering their melodies beyond my window, and the light that filtered in was young and pale.
Hardly a soul could be heard stirring outside. It would be a sleepy day outside our manor, in the farms. Every day was a sleepy day, of course, but that was the way most of us preferred it. Would that the rest of the world could be as languid -- keeping our stomachs full relied in part upon the perennial boredom of others.
I cracked open the door and bellowed down the stairs. "Do we have any callers?"
"No! The sun just rose! Get your bloody clothes on!" That was Dana, of course, not Mother. I don't even know why I asked; Father always handled business involving bookselling, so as to better impress (extort) his customers, and he didn't trust me to go anywhere near the smallfolk. One of these days, he'd let me. And then he'd be impressed, indeed.
I must admit, however, that impressing my father was of less concern to me at that moment than impressing Dana. Tall, witty, golden-haired and ivory-countenanced, she was all the sorts of things that made a young man think stupid things, and I was just growing old enough to think them. "Have you seen my glasses?"
No answer came.
So, I appealed directly to the object in question. "Counfound it all, where are you hiding?" I must have spent ten minutes wading in the books and dirty linens that littered the floor, but my glasses evaded me as surely as the gift of sight.
Dana's voice drifted in again. "Hurry up!"
There they were, nestled between two stacks of particularly aged books. "I'm coming," I promised, flinging open the door and nearly rolling down the stairs.
Waiting at the bottom was Dana, sipping at a small teacup. "Welcome back to the realm of the living, m'lord. Care for a spot of tea?"
"I haven't a taste for it and you know that," I murmured, dodging around her to head for the kitchen. I whirled between an aging pastry, two mugs of water and a slice of bread before I found myself sitting across from Dana at the table.
She let me eat for a few minutes before speaking. "I was told an interesting story, a week or so back," she began, crossing her legs. "One of the villagers told me."
I took the cue from Dana's pause and asked, "What was the story?"
"You know Gregor, I'm sure." She gave me a small smile that leaves me wondering to this day if she knew just how well Gregor and I were acquainted. "He'd taken a midnight jaunt into the old forest just behind the schoolhouse, out being a boy and doing whatever things boys do when they're supposed to be helping their father tend the farm or sleeping. Well." She took a dramatic pause and sipped at her tea. "It seems he found a stranger out there. Being the proper, upstanding vassal of Lord Doraster's humble lands that he is, he questioned the man as to his destination and business."
"Mm," I supplied, digging into my bread. This was not going to end well for me.
"Alack!" Dana threw up her arms. "The stranger flung forth his hands and conjured simmering balls of flame! Gregor barely escaped with his life!"
I nearly choked. "...I don't know if I believe that."
"He's told that tale to every farm within miles; it gets wilder every time. And that was when it was only him telling it. Housewives want for gossip, you know, and a wizard moves beyond gossip into the realm of mortal danger." Her foot began to bob up and down. "Last I heard, the stranger summoned a firenewt that pranced around and growled while Gregor fended it off with an oxman's plow. Or a pitchfork. I forget. Oh! There was an elf in it, somewhere, too."
"Th-that's all you wanted to tell me?" I dreaded whatever came next.
"You did the magic," Dana declared, jabbing a finger at me. "Don't think I haven't noticed the loss of my spellbook. What were you thinking, precisely? WERE you thinking? I told you that fire-calling is a terribly dangerous thing to practice on your own and I don't CARE how much talent you think you've got, but if you made even the slightest slip you could very well have set your hair or someone's homestead on fire or even immolated Gregor." Dana breathed, slowly. "And if you must engage in such idiocy, what possessed you to do it so close to that farm, mm?"
I smiled a weak, nervous smile, and brought up a hand to rub at the back of my neck. "Well...I, er..."
Dana grinned, then. She reached out to pat my shoulder, and asked, "More importantly. How big a fireball was it?"
Posted by Aanson at 01:13 AM
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