Arrens.net

Chapter 1.


When I was little, the open sky was my roof and canvas tents my shelter. The earth was my floor. I would like to say that simple living brought peace, but I cannot; I was never suited to the life to which I was born, and for me, peace was a rarity.

The Darkmoon are a people of wanderers. For those who do not know them, the name invokes images of dark, exotic beauty, brazen deception, squalor and tawdry mysticism. As one who has belonged to them, I can truthfully say that only two things can be claimed almost universally of the Darkmoon's diverse tribe: they are hardworking, and deeply superstitious.

The Faire was only quiet in the early mornings just before dawn, and this was when I liked it. I saw only my own people then, bright costumes hanging over their shoulders as they finished preparing their stalls and games for another day and ate the morning meal standing up or sitting on mats, or on the tall stools behind their tables while they arranged their wares. Their mugs steamed with a drink the Darkmoon love, a pungent, syrupy brew made from roasted leaves. Mama said I tasted it once, when I was small. My eyes went wide "just so," she would say -- and here she would open her own beautiful dark eyes until they swallowed me whole -- "and then they stuck that way." I was a mirror of her in those days, a perfect miniature. Only my blue eyes were my own, yet I envied hers, the color of coffee swimming with flecks of gold.

Mama told fortunes. She wore her wealth on her body, gold loops circling her wrists and ankles, chiming softly halfway up to her dark elbows; coils of hammered gold with ruby eyes, like snakes, wrapped themselves around her thin upper arms. I made myself small and hid in our tent while she made herself a dusky oracle for strangers. Men and women, young and old sat spellbound before her, helpless as I was helpless to resist the pull of her spirit and those soulful eyes. I crouched in the corner and stared at my bare feet, dark with sun and dirt. I smelled the earth and incense and my mother's perfume, enthralled by the lulling and husky tones of her voice.

At night, long after I first slept, Mama would scatter her bowl of spent incense across the entrance to our tent to ward off demons and evil spirits. Then she would lower the heavy flap of canvas that served as a door and undress, peeling off the rustling red and orange silks, the peacock velvets and cinnamon satins, all woven through with threads of gold. She left them hanging like shed skins over the crates and chests that were our tables and chairs and held everything we owned. She came to bed in simple nightclothes, made for warmth, and there she would wake me, curling one of her bangled arms under my head in the dark. Sometimes she spoke to me, sometimes she sang the old lullabies the Grandmothers taught her, and sometimes she merely watched me until I fell asleep again, my eyelids heavy under the weight of night.

I loved her.

Chapter 2.


Whenever we traveled, our home stacked neatly behind us on the graying slats of Midan's wagon, I sat quietly beside my mother on the seat we shared. Midan drove. He was my mother's uncle, a big man, dark and quiet with great white whiskers. I was afraid of him just as I was afraid of everything, even though he took care of Mama and me. He sweetened me with treats, always silent as he made his offerings of cake or candy in the rough palms of his enormous hands, and I would steal them like a mouse, heart hammering in my chest. Now that I am grown I see how like him I am. Sometimes I wonder what he thought of me. He only spoke when words were needed. I never saw him smile.

Mama was dead eight months before word reached me. I was living in the desert then. My shoa came to me during meditations, rousing me with a firm hand on the shoulder. It was one of only two times he ever interrupted the sessions he himself prescribed, and I knew even before I opened my sun-stung eyes what news he bore. The paper was brittle from much traveling and changing of hands; the ink was smudged, no doubt from the damp of some dewy eden worlds away. I can still remember the hot, sterile sand shifting over the tops of my feet (always swathed in leathers to the knee, a desert-dweller's humble protection against the scorpion's sting), the sun baking into the crown of my head as I carefully unfolded the fragile note and began to read. Ever brief, Midan's letter was quickly read even though I was only just learning my letters. Take heart, he'd written, she suffered well. My heart mourned. I understood why she had begun creeping into my dreams, returning always to those balmy Faire nights when I slept in her arms. Only in my dreams, I held her.

To this day I can feel his overwhelming pride as I refolded the letter, solemn but tearless, returning it to the man who had become my teacher, my mentor, and my guardian. He was not yet my lover, not in those days. He had made me strong, and like Midan, he did not speak often, but his satisfaction and displeasure were as unmistakable to me as my own when he permitted me to see. Soon there came a time I could read him as though he were written on paper, whether he allowed it or not. This, he said, was my power.

It made me valuable.

((Thiyenn isn't really sticking with a chronological order on these. I do apologize for any confusion this may cause, and will try my best to keep things as ordered as they need to be for the sake of coherence.))

Chapter 3.


Mama. It was all I would say, through the weeks we traveled over the sea, then through valleys and over mountains, through forests so dense we could hear rain above but never saw so much as a drip. Without mama, I was lost. I had no axis, no tether. I was a planet without orbit, flung out into the void. My shoa understood, but he did not pity. His goal was to make me strong.

There was no room for pity.

"Eat," he said. It was raining, but he had found shelter for us in a hollow in the base of the mountains that towered over us to the west. It was a shallow cave, full of spiders. These he burned away with a torch, and the vaguely meaty smell of roasting insects and smoke made our bellies growl. He depended on the world to feed us; we rarely ate what few rations he carried in his packs. Sometimes he conjured bread and water from nothing. This bread was dry and simple, the water flat. It sufficed to feed us when nothing remained.

"Mama." I wanted to be home. I wanted Mama, not bread; nor did I want the soup he made of herbs, grubs, and tubers he dug out of the rich, mineral-smelling earth. I refused most food, I had grown gaunt. His patience, too, wore thin.

"Eat," he said.

"Mama," I cried.

My tears angered him, and when he set aside my portion and took my chin in his hands, I wondered if he might harm me. My bones were twigs, my body small, and he, who in those days seemed so big I felt puny in his shadow, could have broken me into pieces if he so chose. Instead, he knelt before me where I sat leaning against the cool granite, and held my face so I could not look away. He filled my vision, I felt his warmth.

"You must give up such things as tears and sadness. Your family has given you over to accomplish great things. You must not disappoint them with weakness. I am your family now. I am your uncle, I am your father and mother. I am all the family you need." His hand tightened on my chin and his steel-grey eyes would not let mine go. "If you choose to wither and die, their hopes die with you, as do mine. Do you understand me, girl? Will you spite me with selfishness and take your blessings to a grave in the cold clay?"

I trembled.

"Will you allow me to guide you to a greater destiny than you can imagine? These are the days that will decide you. These are the trials that will temper you and show me your worth." Gravely, he released me and pressed the wooden bowl into my hands. "Now eat, little one, your bones are not yet finished growing."

I ate, though it was so much ash and dirt in my mouth. I ate, and it pleased him. I found that it pleased me to please him; his disapproval was a dagger in my chest, a weight on my soul. So began my studies, though I did not know it then. We had many years of training ahead of us.

As for my bones, they would finish their growth within the season. I was no more than fourteen years old.