Chapter 9
Beatrix dreamed.
Some took the forms of nightmares, of high towers reaching to the clouds with no windows and no steps and no doors; of dank floors and rats scratching in corners. Inside, she was screaming for someone to hear her, screaming for someone to find her, screaming for her mother and sisters and brothers, all those she had lost.
She screamed in terror of the fuzzily outlined men who came with their vile concoctions, knowing that she had to resist drinking it and always losing in the end, as they cracked open her jaws and forced the liquid down her throat.
Others took the form of quests, with her at the head of a large party of people, dressed in feathers and costumes with wings, she thought sleepily, but then they would morph into wild mythical forms, their noses elongating into beaks and the wildly colored clothing became feathers and soft slippery skin, like that of a salamander or a frog. Their legs were shackled and their wings clipped, imprisoned as was she.
They would plead with her, beg her to lead them to the healing waters that only she knew the location of; to save them from the evil that was poisoning them and wiping them out. The children of these creatures would cling to her hands and kiss them, clutching her skirt and pleading, great rivers of tears spilling down their cheeks. They cried out for help and she promised them aid in return, all the while frustrated that she did not understand what to do.
Time and again she would to lead them out onto the shadowy path leading to the water's edge and every time they would die just before they reached the stream. Time and again she would free them from their shackles, only to have the spectral men show up and bind them all again.
She tried to wake, tried to sit up, tried to call out, for she thought there was someone with her, someone that could help her help the others, but always, as she struggled to wake up, the pain and the fire raging in her blood drowned the effort it took.
Once she thought she felt someone bathe her blistered skin in cool water, soothing the burning sensation and the relief was so striking, that she instantly fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
Slowly, the soft sound of whispered voices penetrated her mind, separate from the darkness. One voice gained a grip on her conscious, showing her a path back to reality. She followed the soothing voice like verbal bread crumbs out of the void she had been sheltering in. She instinctively knew they were voices she could trust, unlike the ones in her dreams. She shuddered and shied away from thinking of them, focusing on the woman's voice. The name Alyssia slid into her mind and she grabbed onto that solid fact and slowly blinked her eyes open.
Brilliant rays of sunlight streamed through small breaks in the green canvas above her head; a pine tree branch. The scent followed the observation and reality returned in a whoosh of memory.
She turned her head and found Alyssia fussing with a tea pot over a small fire beside her. Beatrix opened her mouth to call out but found she had no voice and licked her cracked lips, croaking out a sound that was nothing like speech.
Alyssia glanced over her shoulder and seeing that Beatrix was awake gasped and quickly crawled over to her.
Placing a hand on her chest, she made her lay still. "How are you feeling?" she asked, eyes roving over her form. "You were so sick! Are you thirsty?"
Beatrix nodded her head weakly, causing a wave of dizziness to roll over her.
Alyssia grabbed the water skin that was hanging on a nearby branch, popped out the stopper and then lifted Beatrix' head and trickled some water into her mouth. Beatrix drank thirstily, swallowing every drop offered, until finally satiated, turned her mouth away.
Alyssia laid her gently back down and stoppered the bottle again.
"How long was I unconscious?" Beatrix whispered.
"Five days. We have been camped here since about two hours after you passed out on the back of the horse. Luckily I have had some help tending to you."
At that moment, the branches parted and a man that Beatrix had never met, passed into their shelter. Seeing that the princess was awake, he also hurried over, kneeling beside her and rubbing his palms together, began to move them up and down her body, hovering about six inches from her skin. Beatrix felt a soothing balm on her skin, easing the pain and taking it from her. She sighed in relief and reached up to touch her arm where it itched.
Her eyes shot open and she looked at it in surprise. It was covered in soft, newly fledged feathers, soft as goose down.
"What's this?" she cried out, touching the fletching.
"We were hoping you could tell us," Alyssia said, "because you have gone through some pretty amazing changes over the five days."
"I believe I have some answers for you" said the man "but let me introduce myself first. My name is Morpheus Saffi and I am a middling wizard, one of the few around anymore. And you, my dear, are a Nymph."
Beatrix frowned at the word, rolling it over in her mind. Nymph. She had been dreaming about Nymphs.
"But Nymphs don't exist, they haven't been seen in forever" she said, looking at Morpheus questioning.
"It's true...they were thought to have become extinct during the Troll Wars, nearly a five hundred years ago. But perhaps they are not extinct after all. We know that there is at least one in the world...you."
Beatrix pushed back the blankets, examining her new body.
Not only had she grown feathers on her arms, but they were also on her torso and feet, and the backs of her hands. She attempted to over onto her back and found that she could not, as something was protruding from her back. Alyssia helped her to a sitting position and reaching around Beatrix's back she unfolded a large feathered wing and drew it out so that Beatrix could see the appendage. It was covered in glossy blue and green feathers, dripping with sunny yellow tips.
She stared in amazement and flexed the muscles on her back, sorting out the how and why of their use. When she spread them, she could see that they spanned her wings to six feet from tip to tip. She folded them back on her back and beamed at the two before her.
"They are beautiful! Oh this so makes up for not being able to walk! Do you think I can fly?"
"Oh yes" said Morpheus "I imagine you can soar like the eagles and I wouldn't be so quick to assume you can no longer walk. Look at your legs."
She glanced down at them again and noticed that they were much, much longer and more - adult in appearance. She also became aware of the fact that her night dress was little more than a shirt now, exposing all of her leg to view.
She looked back at them. "Exactly how tall am I now?" she asked apprehensively.
Morpheus beamed back at her. "You appear to be a healthy young woman in her twenties, by human accounting of such things, a prime young female nymph. And I think I know not only what you are, but more importantly, who you are. But first let's get you something to eat then I will tell you a story. Any particular cravings now that you have this body?"
Beatrix thought and found that she was craving berries and nuts and fish. She didn't realize she has spoken the words aloud until her stomach rumbled. She opened her mouth to speak again and before she could utter the words, Morpheus swept back his cloak and produced a packet of blueberries from an inner pocket. He unwrapped the parcel and handed it to her, with a flourish.
Grateful for the sweet offering, she popped the sweet juicy berries into her mouth, devouring the entire contents of the pouch. She sighed around mouthfuls and licked the wrappings when finished.
"Thank you, that was perfect. How did you know?"
Alyssia got up and went to the entrance of their camp, retrieving a bucket with water and bringing it back, refilled their water skeins. Morpheus settled down beside the princess, his eyes absorbing all the changes.
"How far back can you remember? Do you have any memories before the tower?"
"No. It seems that my entire life has been in that horrible place."
"Can you remember your mother and father? Sisters, brothers...anything?"
"No, there is nothing. My earliest memories are the same as every day since, lying in a bed in the tower, awaiting my attendants."
Morpheus frowned, thinking. "I was hoping that your transformation would have brought back your memory also, but it appears not. Very well, I will tell you what I know, but it may be hard for you to believe."
Alyssia handed Beatrix a full water skein and settled down cross legged beside Morpheus to hear what he had to say.
"About five hundred years ago, a severe drought occurred that lasted roughly fifty years. It was later dubbed the drought of the century. The nations of the world fought over the declining reserves of fresh water. Most of the readily available water was found within one nation, a nation that is now part of King Aurelius' realm of Catania. Freshwater streams and lakes abound there and even with the severe drought, they suffered little, relative to their neighbors."
"Meanwhile the kingdom known as the Thespian Isles suffered greatly. Not only did grand cisterns and elemental springs of the island virtually dry up, but the lakes on the mainland suffered greatly, as the heat on the marshes intensified and the lakes were not replenished by the monsoon rains."
Beatrix took a drink of the sweet water and listened, fully absorbed in the history lesson.
"Meanwhile, the Troll nations of the north prospered, even while the Mammoth range forced the clouds to squeeze out all waters they evaporated out of the lands to the south. Water was plentiful and the Troll nation prospered. The leaders of the southern lands warred back and forth, with heavy casualties on both sides. In time banners of Truce were drafted as they realized they could not continue without annihilating each other.
They conferred and agreed to combine their respective forces, eyeing the northern mountainous home of the Trolls. The generals recruited one large army under the human flag and then brought war to the peaceful Troll population, anxious to conquer and take their resources for themselves."
"The human army first attacked an undefended nestled in at the foot of a mountain pass, close to the crystal clear waters. They slaughtered everyone except for one, a boy of about fifteen who they sent back to the central Troll kingdom missing all the fingers on his right hand and a letter nailed into his left with a long spike, declaring war and challenging the Troll armies to come meet them in battle at the pass."
"This is where you come in, my dear" said Morpheus, now proffering a packet containing whole nuts in their shells. Beatrix took the parcel automatically, raising it to her nose, sniffing at the food. Her stomach growled in response and Morpheus produced a large rock and a flattish stone to crack the shells on. Alyssia took the rocks and began to crack open the shells, revealing the meaty nut centers and offered them to Beatrix, which she ate hungrily.
"The humans were not aware or willingly disregarded," Morpheus continued "that there were sentient non troll species that relied on the mountain waters and woodlands for their survival. The trolls knew this and accepted these species as a part of their kingdom, a part of their peoples and when the human armies approached, they rose up in defense of all the peoples of their realm."
"The histories are vague on what occurred during the wars that ensued. Much was lost in the intervening years. At first the Troll kingdom defended then increasing began to take the battle to the humans, culminating in a final massive push of Troll men and women, taking up arms to no longer just defend, but to bring an end to the kingdoms of men."
Morpheus stopped talking and gazed off into the distance, a frown knitting his eyebrows into a solid line of concentration. The silence lengthened until Alyssia, unable to bare the pause a moment longer, burst out saying "So what happened?"
Morpheus shook his head as though trying to rattle the marbles into their proper holes.
"No one knows. The histories are all gone. No book remains to tell what happened."
He looked back at them and the moustache above his lip dipped downwards.
"It has been my life's journey to seek out this information. I have traveled to all the lands of this world, to the libraries in the greatest cities. I have wined and dined with the wealthy and the influential, just to have a peek at the books in their collections. I have sat with the sages and the priests and discussed history until dawn split the skies. I've searched in every nook and cranny of the most obscure places in the realms. There is not a shred of information to be found anywhere."
Morpheus took his hat from his head and fiddled with the ornaments on the rim. He fingered an ivory carved figure of a man sitting cross legged and holding a book open in on his knees, his gaze focused on the charm.
"The only place I have not been able to search is the libraries of the troll kingdom and the ancient wizard's keep which happens to be found in the mountains of in the troll kingdom. To this day, people do not venture into the troll lands."
He gazed back at Beatrix and smiled. "Perhaps now is the time, yes? I have reason to go north and you would like to see your homeland, I believe." His head turned in the direction of the mountains and although they could not be seen, he traced the path in his mind.
"But what happened to all the books?" Alyssia grabbed Morpheus' sleeve and tugged his attention back to her. "Someone must have recorded what happened. Obviously we won or we would not be here, right? I mean the trolls are back in the north where they belong."
Morpheus sighed and placed the hat back on his head. Beatrix spoke before he could answer.
"If the humans won, what happened to my people?" She turned back to Morpheus. "Are there any other races like mine that are missing?"
"I am afraid there are, but as the knowledge of them has passed into the realm of myth, it cannot be certain which stories are real and which were legend from the beginning."
"If there is one thing that is certain, my dear, it is that you are very VERY real."
Beatrix studied his grey eyes, searching for honesty. "Am I the last of my kind?" Her voice quavered for a moment over the question and she hastily took a drink of water to hide the tremor, to hide her fear of the answer.
"Once again, I am afraid that I must answer I do not know." He reached over and took one of her hands in his. "I do have hope that there are others to be found somewhere, especially now that we have found you." He patted her hand and she smiled back at him, blinking back a shine of tears.
As he let go of Beatrix hand, a branch cracked, the sound loud and sharp in the brief silence.
A pair of low growls emanated from the underbrush to their right. Two pairs of glowing yellow eyes stared at them, yellow fangs dripping with saliva.
Comments (1)
See all