Prologue - last part

The sun chased away the clouds throughout the following days, reigning imperially in the spotless blue sky as though it were still full summer.

“Laima play games this year,” was the chatter that floated through the village.

Sora didn’t have much energy to wonder about the childishness of fairies. He hadn’t much news of his mother, but she was due to be on the road back to Ves any day now. And still someone was lying in their small house (he had had to set her up the secondhand cot, in his and his mother’s room, because their main room was more frequented than the village square, and she had showed no sign of wanting anyone else but Sora know of her existence).

He had tried to stop thinking about the way she moved around and seemed to feel no pain at all, even if her wounds, which were healing well, but not miraculously so, would keep anyone else he knew in bed for a while.

At least the sword lying on her folded clothes had not moved. He’d never even see her look at it.

In the meantime, he had tried a few times to start conversations with her, to try and extract some information out of her. It wasn’t as hard as he’d thought; he ended up learning she was from Tieve.

At that point he decided it was safer if he knew as little as possible. He had no desire to be caught up in the fishy, shadowy political mess of the capital. Maybe it was overreaction, but she was suspicious enough that it wouldn't surprise him if she were involved in Tieve's plots and mysteries.

They had since discussed the weather and village talk, and occasionally she would enquire about what Sora was doing. The hardest part of it all was to keep the kids out of his hut who found nothing better to do with their free school break time than run around Sora like bored flies. It didn’t bother him in the least usually; actually he would have been pretty lonely if all his friends had just decided to occupy themselves elsewhere when he was stuck in the village. The only problem was, of course, Satsuki.

“Soraaaaaaa,” Dusan’s head materialized at Sora’s window, giving him a heart attack and almost making him drop the precious glassware he had recently gotten from Ɉenda.

“Uwaaaaaa..! What do you think you're doing, are you crazy ?!” Sora clutched the bottles to his frantically beating heart, trying to recover from shock. Not that this was unusual coming from the teenagers, he was just a little more freaked out than normal because of Satsuki in the room next door.

“Sora’s mad,” the top of someone else’s head poked over the windowsill, trying to peer inside as Dusan’s ridiculous height enabled him too. Dusan just grinned down at the braided girl with a slightly mean, joking look on his face.

“What, you too ? What do you guys want ?”

“Sora’s cranky,” Reimei continued from somewhere under the window.

“Come on and get out of the house sometime,” Dusan cut in. “Break’s almost over, are you just gonna stay cooped in while we’ve got this incredible weather right while we’re on vacation ? Even the field work is suspended !”

The fieldwork was actually what they were supposed to be doing during school break, readying for the rainy season with their family. But because of the unusual absence of rain (where had that storm gone from just a few weeks ago ?) they were left trying to entertain themselves, hence become a nuisance to Sora whose own work did not depend on Laima’s whims.

“We’ll even help you later if you come out,” chimed in Reimei.

As if that would happen. Sora would be crazy to let them near his mother’s work and especially that second room.

“I was outside all morning already.”

“Going out to work at dawn doesn’t count,” Dusan immediately counterattacked.

“Just look at the sun !”

Sora glanced briefly at the wide open window to the bright blue sky, then to the door to where Satsuki was. He sighed and safely stored away the glass bottles.

“Okay, I’m coming out. Stop making such a fuss. But I’m not staying out till dark, got it ?”

“You know you’re a workaholic, don’t you ?” Sora couldn’t see Reimei but he could clearly hear the playful contempt in her voice. “You’ll get grey hair by the age of twenty and worry your mother till she finds a cure to your masochism !” she declared, and ran off. Sora leaned out of the window just in time to see her whisk around the corner of the house.

“Geeeez, with that name and those braids, you’d think she were a cute little girl. But actually she’s got a nasty temper,” Dusan contemplated in the small astonished silence Reimei left in her wake.

“...And you just like her more for it,” Sora teased him.

-

Despite what Sora affirmed earlier, the sun was setting by the time he separated from the others and made his way home. The weather had been gorgeous, just as Dusan and Reimei had promised. The sun and open fields alone knew how to make him forget about being the village herbalist’s only son, forget about the stranger whose life he had miraculously saved, and for a moment he was a simple fifteen-year-old boy who knew nothing but the vast, unbroken landscape of the plains and the breathing of the earth and shifting of the seasons. Then of course he would always come back. He would always, when the line was erased somewhat, redraw the thin border he put between the farmer’s children he cared for and who thought of him as one of them, and the reality in which he filled the vacant place left by his father. He set himself apart, for his mother.

The torch-lighters had for the most part already made their way through the village when Sora crossed through its small streets. He bid farewell to the few others who had headed back with him at an intersection. A few street bends later he ran into a torch lighter who was still standing in the already lit alley, fire lamp in hand. He turned at the sound of Sora’s footstep.

“Ɉana,” he greeted the young man.

“Oh. Sora.”

“Have you just finished your torch duty ?”

“Yeah,” Ɉana responded distractedly. He turned his face back towards the sky, which he had been staring at when the young boy had turned around the corner.

“What are you looking at ?”

Ɉana didn’t immediately respond.

“There’s no stars.”

“What ?!” He followed Ɉana’s gaze towards the sky; it was true, the first stars that should have followed the sunset were not to be seen. There was another small silence.

“There’s cloud coverage ?” Sora tried to suggest.

Ɉana’s eyes came back down on him, with a slightly surprised look on his face, as if he’d just been jerked awake.

“With the weather we’ve had ?” Sora shrugged. There was another small silence, in which Ɉana stared at the boy instead of towards the heavens.

“Ah... maybe...”

“...Are you heading home ?” Sora nodded. “Here, take this, and don’t go through the trees like you usually do, use the path and the bridge or you’ll break your face in the dark,” Ɉana distractedly reached into his pouch for a beeswax candle and handed it to Sora, then walked away back into the village leaving the boy standing in the middle of the street, without fire. Sora stared after the young man, unlit candle in hand, slightly dumbfound. He quickly glanced at the sky, then turned heel and headed home.

He could have really put use to Ɉana’s unlit candle: it was a very dark night. At least the path was familiar enough to be found in the shadows, among the whispers of the leaves and of the small stream under his footsteps.

A strong breeze grew, swaying the tops of the trees and tall grass as he reached his front door and felt for the latch. Finally, once inside, he slid it to a close behind him, the locks clicking shut with a dull, but satisfying “thunk”, as if to seal out the black night. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness inside as he peered into the room. He took an intake of breath in surprise as he discovered the outline of Satsuki standing in front of the window he had left wide open, her white hair in eerie contrast with the shadows.

“What are you doing up ?” he snapped quietly, not daring to speak louder than a whisper. “Go back and lie down !”

“Shhhhhh,” she urged him.

“What !?” Sora’s nerves were slightly on edge, what with Ɉana’s peculiar scene, and now Satsuki.

“Quiet.” She seemed pretty intent on the darkness outside.

“What is wrong with you ?!” Sora set down the candle, and went searching by the tips of his fingers for some fire.

“I said be quiet.” The authority in her voice was crystal clear.

He found his matches, and was now fumbling with them, trying to light one.

“Satsuki, what are you playing at ?!” he whispered exasperatedly. Small silence.

“........Something’s wrong...”

“What, d’you mean the stars ?” Her hair swished as she abruptly turned her head towards Sora, where he sat on the ground with his matches. He stopped playing with them for a moment, staring back at her in the darkness. She turned back to the window.

“Something’s happening.” Now she sounded urgent.

At one point Sora was going to lose it.

“What exactly—” he finally managed to crack his match, and shadows danced around the corners and over the walls as the flame flared up “—is wrong with all of you tonight ?!”

The light illuminated clearly the panicked look on Satsuki’s face as she sharply turned back around.

“Put out that match !” she yelled.

“Wha...”

“PUT IT OUT !”

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU ?!”

Sora didn’t have the time to do as she said, or react any further, as the match’s flame danced higher and filled the hut with more light, more than was natural, and burned brighter than ever. He let go of it with a yelp even though there was no heat, then backed up against the wall and fell to the ground in panic. Satsuki crouched on the other side of the room, her snarling face lit by the blaze.

Water! I need water... his disorganized thoughts urged him to move, to do something, but he was frozen with his back against the wall, mesmerized by the phenomena taking place before him. The flame had disappeared, swallowed by incandescent light that left no shadows. The darkness outside the window still pressed down, seeming to fight against the unworldly beacon. A small laugh floated through the air, like a child’s.

“Sa...Satsuki ! Do something !!”

She crouched lower, her face contorted in fear, with eyes wide open despite the brightness.

“Satsuki !!”

“Be calm, little boy, have peace,” the laughing voice echoed through his mother’s house, neither soft nor strong. There was a small touch, a caress upon Sora’s cheek. The muscles of his body tensed by adrenaline relaxed, one by one, as he eased open the eyes he had screwed shut because of the brightness. He felt calm.

“Come,” they said, and the touch on his cheek took his hand, and pulled him in. Sora had no idea where. It didn’t matter. He followed the small, soft tug at his hand into the neither cold, nor warm, colourless brightness.