Pine Needles and Strange Stars

Sayun’s legs dragged one after the other. The hours of the day flickered in her mind as flashes of fogged memory. She had hobbled past the eastern doorway to the edge of the wood. How many kilometers she did not know, only that her bad leg had stiffened painfully before her eyes finally found the family of three she sought. No words were spoken. Carlin’s wide eyes stared into Sayun’s with a trust only found between those souls who have brushed against one another. She slipped her hand into Sayun’s, and instinctively, Sayun’s fingers closed around the girl’s, so like the sister she had left behind.

She swallowed back the sob rising unbidden to her throat.

Carlin’s parents followed Sayun with greater trepidation. Could they believe in the honor of a child who’d passed all her years in the heart of a mountain, whose people had readied to murder them?

Few maps existed among the Orons. Her father kept one or two Sayun pored over since her childhood, tracing lines and names of places she imagined yet never thought to see with her own eyes. She could not know how accurate they were now, made so many generations before. All the earth could have changed since those days, especially after the closing of the worlds…

Was this what it was like, Sayun wondered, when nothing exists in the beginning of something, and one cannot know where the yet-empty path would take her? Her days until this day had followed one after the other in stubborn consistency, each so predictable she sometimes wished to scream at its futility. Yet in the unfamiliar shapes and shadows surrounding her now, she longed for the comfort of such mundane tedium. Here, all the world was strange. She felt like a little lost child again, wandering the tunnels after dark and calling for her mami.

Sayun’s head turned almost imperceptibly back toward her home. The festivities would carry on long after the sun bowed its head. Orons knew the passage of time only by the doorkeepers dowsing the light as they completed their duty. Extinguishers would then race along the tunnels to complete the work until few remained to illuminate the tunnels.

Never had she seen such colors in the sky. The Council did not permit anyone to leave the tunnels after dark (and rarely before). Shades of reddish purple peaked through low clouds. The high noon sun had been all she had known, the shapes of the scant vegetation stored to memory for the long hours she’d have to spend in shadow. The path she now traversed was no path at all, but a faint guess and hope it led to some haven, whither she did not yet know. Trees loomed over them—thick, tall, ominous. As they passed beneath their boughs, pines fell before her feet in oddly familiar patterns.

Was Nawi still waiting for her? Would he understand? She feared the punishment the price of her family’s rebellion would cost.

It was not yet too late. She could leave this family to find its own way, return to her own. She had never walked such a distance and pain had been shooting up her calves for hours. If only Hila could see her now, she thought with a wry smile. At her slower pace, how could they hope to flee, their hours-long advantage notwithstanding? Her father believed the council would never leave the safety of the caverns to pursue them, but how much would fear change what once was predictable?

Stories from her upbringing wandered freely in her mind, of heavy wages paid for venturing too far from the threshold of home. Evil wights prowling behind boulders, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting wanderers. Sayun could not stop her mind from wondering if such tales indeed held any truth. As nightfall welcomed moonlight, they did not seem so outlandish or ancient as Sayun once scoffed. Any manner of eldritch being was made possible in rising darkness. They were fortunate; a full moon had risen to light their faltering steps.

“Sayun?”

Carlin’s voice broke through the mire of her thoughts. Sayun’s hand tightened around Carlin’s before releasing her fingers.

“My apologies, Carlin. You must be scared.”

“I’m alright. It’s only that you seem tired. Shall we take a rest?”

Sayun looked behind them at Carlin’s mother and father. They had not spoken all this time, but they nodded their agreement with their daughter.

“Your leg must ache,” the mother spoke for the first time, a slight rasp in her voice. “Forgive us, we have not told you our names. I’m Tallulah. My husband, Garrett.”

Heat flooded Sayun’s ears and she thanked the gathering darkness for hiding her humiliation. Her hip was indeed stiff from the hours of walking. “We have already moved too slowly because of me.” Not for the first nor the last time she cursed her lameness.

“But where are we going?”

Sayun hesitated. She could not be sure herself of what lay at the foot of the mountain. Tales of her childhood crept unbidden into her thoughts once more. Mutilated corpses, badgers, a world without light. Her mouth went dry. What place could welcome such a group as theirs; what home could they turn to when theirs is ashes?

“We are Groths,” Tallulah said. “We are no longer welcome in the north. There is no home for us to the south, east, or west. Are we to wander the wild?”

“The border between the northern and southern kingdoms,” Sayun whispered, her own voice seeming to come from a distance. She sank to a nearby boulder, relinquishing her hold on Carlin. The girl grasped her arm and helped her down. Sayun’s joints screamed with the shifted position, yet the boulder was already warm. “Perhaps if we found a way west…”

“We would have to find a way through the occupied land,” Garrett said. He paced across the ground, pine needles scattering at his feet in his agitation. “They are enslaving us wherever they find us. Our villages, our towns.”

Carlin’s hand tightened on Sayun’s shoulder.

“Who is enslaving you?” Sayun’s question was met with blank stares from all three.

“Do you not know?” Garrett said at long last.

Sayun felt a flash of annoyance. “It is difficult to receive news of the world below when we are trying to hide from it.” She sighed. “Forgive me. It’s been a long day.”

Carlin’s mother knelt beside her. “No, please. You have sacrificed much to bring us to safety.” She laid a hand on Sayun’s knee—warm, soft—the sensation made Sayun’s heart twinge. Would she ever see her own mother again?

“You know the land’s history? Of Calatiel and Lyos?”

“Only a little. It has been long since Calatiel took Lyos for its own, that I know.”

Tallulah swallowed and blinked rapidly. “Yes,” she whispered, “long indeed.”

Garrett cleared his throat. “Now is not the time for a history lesson. We are not yet safe. The Calats have grown bold in their long occupation of Lyos. No longer satisfied with taking the first of our harvest, the best of our animals, they have begun pushing us from our homes, too. We have nowhere to go.” He slammed a fist at a tree trunk. “Would they drive us from the land itself?”

Carlin began to cry—loudly, messily. Tallulah ran to her, shushed her with empty promises that they would be alright, that they would one day return home, while turning reproachful eyes on her husband. Sayun rooted to the boulder, her knee cold without Tallulah’s touch. No, her whole body had turned cold with Garrett’s words. She had seen the horror, felt it in Carlin’s memories. Yet this, the wretched anguish and rage torn from Garrett’s throat differed somehow. Shards of ice crept beneath her skin. 

A bone-deep weariness dragged at Sayun. She did not know how to help this family that had fallen into her clumsy care. Again, her childish wishes to leave the safety of the mountain now seemed to her reckless, even insane. Such little knowledge of the outside world did she possess; how dare she have presumed to enter it?