Elkhana
Thirty days is not very long. It’s long enough to grow a lettuce in the earth. Long enough to watch the phases of the moon pass once. Long enough to feel my body ebb and tide through a full cycle. It should not be long enough to watch your parents waste and wither and die. It should not be long enough to watch your childhood friends grow grey with age.
I feel ancient, though for me it’s been but a month. If anyone had told me I’d spend my days sitting around unable to speak while insects crawled all over me – well, it might have been harder to get me into this cage.
I can’t speak at all. It’s not that it isn’t allowed – I just can’t physically do it. When I open my mouth, mayflies come out and they are most certainlynotin there before I open it, so I keep it shut as much as possible. No one likes the idea of bugs crawling out of their mouths.
Sometimes, I feel as though I have measured every grain of sand, every drop of rain, cataloged every human expression, read every word in every book. Other times I feel like life is passing me by while I sit in this prison.
I see … everything.
It’s exhausting. It’s so much worse than I imagined when they came to my father’s house and demanded me as the sacrifice.
“She’s the right age, and a virgin and you know how hard it is to find a girl who fits the requirements,” the mothers said, and my face had flushed hot because of course, they were right but how did theyknow? That alone wouldn’t have convinced me, but they didn’t stop with my qualifications of being female and too busy to get married. They followed it up with guilt and threats.
“She’s always understood her duty,” one of them said, giving me a significant look. “Look what a benefit she has been to her family.”
And I knew what that meant – that my family would suffer if I didn’t come quietly. Maybe they’d even die. And I’d still end up in their clutches. I’d never liked the mothers with their secrets and manipulations and scheming. But I’d never known hatred as I did then.
I’m sure my father wanted to protest. But what could he do? He’d broken his ribs in a skirmish with the neighboring clans and he could barely stand, never mind fight off the Lund King. I’d put my hand on his arm and told him it was okay, and I’d managed to keep from crying until the mothers put me on the ship, and I watched my mother wave to me for the last time.
They say I drift and dream and there is truth to this. I am a sailor charting a course for my ship and the islands we visit are now and before, later and never-to-be. I see it all – but understanding, sorting, sifting? This is too much for one mind. And so, I drift and catch little bits and pieces and shards of truth. My people come to me and I give to them what they need.
But during the days that they bring me back, I remember. I remember how much I have lost and that they took not only my girlhood but all of my humanity. And thirty days just isn’t very long to deal with all those kinds of thoughts. Even now, when I see them, I can barely keep the tears back. I want to hate them, I really do. But they’re the only people I see. Without them, I’ll sit here alone forever.
What’s worse? Being surrounded by enemies or being alone forever? I don’t know yet. I might know someday.
Friends. Family. Kin. They come to me every day and they ask to journey with me and through a fog of mayfly wings, I try to clasp their minds in mine and take them where they need to go. I try not to take too steep a price – though that really isn’t my choice. It’s their own memories that hurt them, crush them, ruin them.
The vast land of possibilities is no journey for the timid. The seekers bare themselves to me without realizing what they do, and through their layers, I read hate and jealousy. I read love and care. I taste their every thought and word and action – both what has been and what will be and what never was. It is just like my journeys through the sea, though these are smaller ponds. I know everything, and yet finding a single detail is like sifting through grains of sand to find a seed.
This morning, I wake to find something different. A different taste. A different pond entirely. It’s like leaping into a familiar farm pond only to find you’ve leapt into a glacier.
This glacier is sharp and powerful. It’s overwhelming. I try to hold on as I hurtle through bursts of bright scent and cloying colors, brushes of music, and the clasp of old pain. I’m surprised to find that under the layers of sharpness, violence, and bitter cunning, this pool has a core so brimming over with compassion and swirling with deep hurt that it nearly melts me. It’s all I can do to keep a grip on who I am. All I can do not to melt away to nothing at the core of this burning soul.
I blink, trying to remember if I’d noticed who this was before they began to kneel – but no, the mayflies had blinded me. He was just one figure among many.
I grasp his heart’s hand blindly and kick us to something safe – a glimpse of something inoffensive. It’s his wish I am seeking, but he stops suddenly and what he sees instead is something that perhaps is more than a wish. Perhaps it is something that verges on a prayer.
Every detail of this memory that is not a memory overwhelms me right down to the way I shiver as he strokes my hair and whispers something that makes my cheeks heat.
And I was right that he’s something unknown to me. He’s a story come alive – an actual fae lord of legend. It would be impossible to believe if I hadn’t become a legend, too. In the memory, I reach up and caress the tip of his ear and heat flushes through my face and throat, filling up my chest until it feels impossible to even breathe.
And he’s beautiful, of course, but I hardly even care about that because I don’t see faces or bodies anymore. I see cores – souls, I suppose – and his is bright and sharp and sleek. I want to keep seeing it and seeing it. I don’t want to stop.
But this vision cannot be true. My duty is to bring my supplicants clarity and wisdom – no matter how they wrenched that commitment from me – no matter how easily they gave me up and how quickly they forgot I was anything more than just a tool. It is not for me to be the woman in the dream he sees. It’s not for me to be anything other than my people’s Mayfly Seer.
