Chapter 28

Brownie looked at the strange deity “are you talking figuratively? Or do you mean in a metaphorical sense,” she asked precociously?

He replied “I mean my dear daughter Brownie, in the organic sense,”
Meanwhile, Elkie stood there in awe as she marveled at the man standing on the rocky bank “you’re Kiren, the god of nature,” she said as if she’d seen him depicted many times in tales of ancient woe and the arts. He answered softly with a smile, as if her diligence at her schoolwork pleased him “indeed, I am little one… indeed I am,” he said as he caressed her plump cheek.

He stood there enigmatic as the ground beneath his feet stirred and the fluvial essence of the stream that meandered over the stones in the riverbank.

“that was you playing earlier, wasn’t it?” He nodded
oblivious to the white noise of the water cascading down and spilling onto the rocks below.
It was even more confusing for the little sprite, “I don’t understand,” she said, as she felt indifference to the question over her pedigree. She was ok awkwardly with being an orphan. But, to find out she was the progeny of omnipotent deities, she felt somehow cold and abandoned. As if whatever excuse for being left behind was thin and transparent and altogether see-through in the cold light of day.

Then…
they sensed another presence, a warm charming presence, like the sensation of swaddling in your mother’s arms, being held to her bosom, hearing her heartbeat in time with your own and feeling protected.

A soft voice spoke, it was among the prettiest of voices the sprite and Elkie had ever heard, almost as if the words spoken were comparable to music “hello my little silk faery, what have you been up to? Do Tell me all about your adventures?”

She looked down at her feet and realized she could not, as her history was altogether alien to her. Whilst she was looking down at the patch of camomile grass.
She felt the soft delicate hand of a woman, they caressed her hair and descended until they found her chin and gently as softly as a kiss to one’s cheek, bought her gaze up to see the face of thee most beautiful women Brownie ever had laid eyes on.

“Your, I mean you’re beautiful,” she curtseyed and smiled the most disarming of smiles, it was almost like sunshine glistening on calm water.

The women had bright eyes, full red lips a round shaped face and rich brown hair, she had a passing similarity to Brownie and she wore the accoutrements of Martian high society. She also had the thinnest of a suggestion of a line that travelled across the bridge of a petite nose which practically appeared like embroidered silk.

It was almost a perfect moment.
However, it only served to remind her of a deeper pain.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you, why can’t I remember you?” She said being annoyed at herself. Elkie stood in her shadow. She heard her whisper “sprite it’s your mum, Times. The goddess of love and beauty try to have a little humility!”
She felt terrible guilt as she realized she was more privileged than that of her companion, the littlest ghost. As she knew Elkie soul sang out to be reunited with her parents one last time, so she could tell them how much she loved them. The winette headed girl wore it as a badge of sorrow it was painfully evident, almost like the nose on one’s face, it happened to be the reason she acted so flippantly all the time.

Brownie sighed hard “why have I been alone all this time? And why can’t I remember you?”
“You were never alone daughter!” Said Kiren. “we have been with you as long as a life age of the world,” Times continued “but we couldn’t stay with you forever!”
In a tiny voice Brownie asked, “why?”
Times replied, “if we had our dear child you would not be here, at all!” The god of nature continued “You were the sacrifice we made for love, You were our perfect wish,” the two deities looked at one another “my wife,”
“husband,”
“I don’t regret it one bit,” he declared as the love goddess took him by the arm.
“Nor do I!” She agreed
“But I can’t say why you have forgotten, but I … I do perhaps know how?”
The great horned god speculated. “Out in the fields of Kalithia among the poppies and the fields of lavender wheat, where the fireflowers grow. it’s said whom so ever drinks the milk of the fireflower forgets. If the conditions are met, by the light of the summer moons,” He looked at her with worried eyes “why were you seeking to forget daughter, it hurts my heart to think you would be so sad to not remember,”

There were so many unsettled questions, whirling turning and spinning in her mind.

“Did you think we left you, or that it was your fault, we died?”
His last remark left her cold, how could they have died and still be here, it led her to the notion they were not real at all but merely interactive phantoms? Unawares a tear rolled down her face, you’re not here she thought. It was as if her heart had been pierced once again as images of walking between the poppies under the pale moon and the yellow moon in the summer eve perforated her memory. She caught a glimpse of herself walking through the fields and towards the banks of the river Ylla. As she recalled heartbreaking sorrow, the like of which she had never ever before experienced.
“You’re not real are you?” She asked dispiritedly
“We are dreams, stories, songs. We have preserved them here for you ,daughter,” said Times “so you might remember us!” The love goddess’s eyes twinkled as she studied the lines and curves on her face, as if she were preserving the image and putting it into a perfect photograph
“remember, we loved you very much, even more than life itself,” more tears streamed down her face as she began to feel weak at the knees. She sniffled and said tearfully “I promise father, mother – I’ll never forget you ever again.” Times held her in her arms as she softly spoke, “isn’t that what immortality, Truly is after all,”
As her father included, “remember…. because of you … we lived,”

And then they were gone.

Times and Kiren images faded away into the ether until again there were only the two gaseous wisps of the Aurora Feya moving skyward between the fleshy singular leaves of the wyne trees and away into the heavens.

Brownie felt saddened so saddened that her mind raced and was verbose, until she laid her eyes once again upon Elkie, and she realized that the simple kernel of truth was she felt pure sorrow the type of which the little ghost had endured all along.

She felt two cold hands hugging her, and she saw Elkie looking after her like a little sister trying to console her older and wiser sibling.

“Please don’t cry sprite,” she said,
“Can’t help it!” Sobbed Brownie as she sat in a heap on the grassy knoll.
“Please stop, you’re breaking my heart!”
“I’m sorry!”
The little ghost looked at her closely, Brownie could see the freckles on her rosy face as she tried her best to smile so hard, it might have actually leapt at her and forced a smile upon her. She was broadcasting as hard as she knew how. Other more enlightened people may have coined the term action at a distance, but even that was of little help.
“How, do you do it?” She scoffed
“Do what?” Asked Elkie befuddled
“Carry on through so much pain!”
She closed her eyes and thought as she slowly opened them once again.
“Well, It’s like in that old story papa used to tell about the boy who learned the name of the wind,”
Brownie listened on through the tears to Elkies secret
“even though, I was too small to really understand, what it was all about, but I… I know … I understand now. The Boy in the story, he had many chances of giving up, only he didn’t! it’s daft really!”
“Go on, please,”
“Against many odds, naysayers and all the people that prophesied failure. The boy, he believed in something bigger than himself… that compassion is stronger. He loved people just enough, to believe he could be, the change in the world, to save them, the meek and the powerless, and in so doing ……… he saved himself.” Elkie put out her hand and helped Brownie to her feet.
As her tears abated, she swept her eyes and said, “do you think they’ll make stories about us,”
She paused and considered her own mortality “we’re all stories in the end!”

Brownie realized how prejudiced she had been. She realized the words of Li Kay and knew that Elkie understood it better than she ever did.

There was another voice it was the dulcet tones of the moon princess standing alone in the shadow all this time…. behind them as if she’d appeared from nowhere “I think at last I understand you, Li Elkie, now my niece, we have much to talk about,”
“And we shall your eminence,” she added obsequiously.

After the tears had dried, and the stirred up echoes of the past had settled.

After much time spent with the moon goddess,
It was time to go.

the Duo tried to find the way back to the door, with little clues about which way, they had entered.

Why don’t you use your key said Elkie, “I’m not so sure it would it work, with the two of us?”
“there’s only one way to find out,” said the ghost optimistically.
Brownie took the key from under her cloak and held it in her hand. It was cold to the touch even though it had been tucked beneath two layers of her clothing. The key, itself seemed altogether eclectic as it glimmered In Her palm. She paid a moments attention to her reflection in the redness of the painite ruby before closing her hand around it and pressing it to her breast as if she were holding onto a crucifix. Elkie held onto her free hand, and the two of them laced their fingers together. They took one look at each other as the only sounds were the little bells jangling from the hem of Elkie’s pashmina in the slight breeze, Jan Jiri, they peeled like wind chimes, in a forgotten corner. The anomalous Silk Faerie pictured mentally the entrance to the chamber.

They stood in the quiet blackness for a time. A strange feeling encroached upon them… It felt like they were being lifted and carried by a stream of Imperceptible wind., they saw themselves from the spot changing into a ball of light like a slow comet that sparkled with a tail that belonged to the yellow light and the blue-light spectrum. Then they flew across the distance as they witnessed space being folded, it was almost incomprehensible, maddening.. and then it was over, before it had even begun.

What a strange phenomenon thought the little sprite. As her ears rung with a high-pitched sound that was almost too high for her to hear.

They had been pulled across space, to a giant black marble archway that was altogether odd an angular, a geometric shape of some note, mathematically it obeyed some unknown formulation of Physics. Although it was on the land, it seemed to be somehow unusually erected in a puddle. The reason for this was beyond either of them.
They could not tell where the highly polished black flooring and the puddle began, and the perpendicular alignment of the construct ended. It was too dark.

They gazed up at the structure They could see the cosmos reflected in its smooth glabrous surface, it was obviously put here because the moon goddess’s confession about this not being real reality, but was this any-less real, or was it the dimension of infinite possibilities?
“This is not right,” uttered Elkie as she gesticulated and flapped like an old hen. The little sprite nodded in agreement
“I reckon this must be, like … where the doormouse brought us, where we need to go,”.
“As opposed to where we want to go,” Elkie said finishing her sentence.
Studying the magnitude of the black Arch Brownie concluded
“this must be the Mariners’ gate,”
“But we still have to get back for the mission,”
“Grozettes counting on us,” said Elkie reminding her of her duties. Brownie wondered what was the fate of the wizardess, and mentally decided that she would not leave her to her fate, however onerous that was.

“Picca,” said the little sprite as she remembered Grozettes clockwork doormouse, she put her hand into her pocket.

As Elkie nodded in agreement.
“Just as a matter of interest,” said Brownie
“what is…. the name of the wind,”
“Elkie!” She replied with a grin exhibiting the dimples in her cheeks
“Really!”
“Ah huh,” said the little ghost as she confirmed her suspicion
“Why am I not surprised?”

She took out the clockwork doormouse, it was in a state of hibernation, as once again he looked thoroughly mechanical. she wound his key a few turns to coax him to her aid, remembering the instructions from Grozette warning about not over winding him, as they waited for him to spring to life, away he scurried as the two girls followed him to the exit and towards the spider Jn Joro, who stood patiently at the entrance.
The spider had not moved
“why that was mightily quick,” she said.
“But we’ve been gone almost 24 hours,”.
“I shouldn’t wonder, Time must run differently in there,” as the humanoid spider inebriated on Jinku looked into the darkness which was almost as black as her own eyes, but not quite.

They walked away, and the door closed behind them, with the sound of rumbling thunder.

“Right we have to go” no sooner had they finished their words, when they heard the flutter of wings as an intense light entered into the main atrium of the temple, at first they couldn’t look into it, but slowly as their eyes adjusted they felt the light on their faces as they looked on with squinty eyes to see what they made out to be Eulin. “Wow so bright,” said Elkie as she appeared almost see-through in the intense light.
“I’m sorry I will try to not shine so bright,” he said apologetically.
As the light got dimmer until it was back to its natural brightness.

“Eulin,’” said Brownie “your glowing!”
“Why thank you again,” he looked at Jn Joro “are we taking in more strays,” he said, “now now, there’s no need for that,” she said reprimanding the whitebird.
“This is Jn Joro the keeper of the temple, she’s been helping us,” she looked at joro “this is my dear friend the whitebird Eulin,” She said formally introducing them.

———

On the outskirts of the old fort at Aranmore beneath the half-buried head of the now-defunct sentinel.
Tumjai waited at the spot, upon his shoulder, he wore a cylindrical hold-all that he kept maps in.
He looked up at the noon sky as he wondered where his afternoon appointment was, “where is that bothersome young man now?” He said thinking aloud, no sooner had the words strayed from his lips vee vee appeared He looked at Jai and pointed at his beard that had grown “your beard It suits you,”
Tum Jai replied “don’t try to charm me, because of your lateness,”
“WHAT!,” said vee “I would never do such a thing,”
“Right!” Exclaimed Jai unconvinced
“Jai, tell me what are we here for?”

“We’re here to chart these underground tunnels,”
“Why,” the young man asked bewildered,
“because knowledge, is an advantage we need,”
He looked at Jai blank.
“C’mon I’ll get you back to her in one piece I promise,” he said with a hint of devilish satire in his voice as he followed the black executioner into the mouth of the cave where the tunnels were located.