Hythe

  Walking down a narrow path covered with leaves, in the middle of a nondescript forest with the rest of her class, Ty couldn’t help but feel she was being punished.

  How was it only the second week of the semester and she had already been ordered specifically by the Headmistress to help with research on the neighboring Ancient village, Hythe? And every Monday, for the rest of the semester, at that?

  “You’re scowling again.”

  Ty dropped it.

  Faris glanced at everyone else trailing behind, expression bored. “You think this is some sort of punishment, but everyone else has to do it, too.”

  She held her tongue, admitting bitterly to herself that this wasn’t entirely a novel idea, and that there were other classes who regularly conducted research in other communities, so perhaps there was more than just spite behind the decision.

  The caster turned back to the front, no village in sight. “They are your people. You ought to be happier.”

  “It’s…not that.”

  “What, is it because it’s on a Monday, our first day back?”

  Ty could not help but pout. Yes, she had often thought about what the class would do once they were back together, like eat or sit around the common room to chat. A small party, even. But all her time had been occupied with writing more reports and reassembling schedules and study breaks to accommodate the change while also figuring out what exactly they were going to do at an Ancient village for three hours.

  That was the second part to it—she was fascinated by the Ancients and their history, and had never been to a village before, but a part of it felt wrong. Why was this necessary?

  “Calm.”

  Ty watched Darius crane his head to the side so that she knew he was talking to her. He was somehow especially eager to join, leading the group from the front when he usually stayed far behind. He had brought no possessions with him, not even his usual bag of tools and tomes.

  “She try to help,” continued Darius when Ty didn’t reply immediately. “Please trust.”

  That was also something she hadn’t yet been able to bring up with Darius—if the outsider from his village was her mother, the Headmistress, then…then what exactly what was their relationship? Where did his allegiance lie?

  “Do they really not care, us roaming around their village and asking questions?” asked Ty with a downcast look, watching her boots barely dent the chilled leaves on the ground.

  “They care,” he answered simply. “But we friend. If we respect, they will understand.”

  Faris’s tone was unfeeling. “They’re a bunch of forgiving people who got themselves into the mess they’re in by being nice. Do you seriously think they have the capacity to treat us with hostility?”

  Ty finally looked up to give Faris a weary look, which he mirrored.

  “You know I’m right.”

  “You know I’m right, too,” the tactician mirrored also, returning to looking ahead and reminding herself of her classmates’ responsibilities: she and Darius would meet with the main village Elder, Cyril and Selene would inspect the trees, Faris and Theo the classroom, Elias and Alex the environment, and lastly, Kor and Callie the people.

  Any support they’d ultimately give to the Ancients would likely be superficial, nothing the magic-abundant natives couldn’t solve themselves. If they were really in trouble, MATS would have their own people dispatched, not mere students.

  “Ah, look. The trees. My people, they are close.”

  In the far distance, she could see a dense cluster of luminous trees, their white, fibrous trunks nearly triple the diameter of a standard tree, starkly contrasting the deep brown of the surrounding woods. Its leaves were a dense, inky black, their edges blurring together into a seamless mass that she could barely distinguish one from another.

  The treasured trees of the Ancients. ‘Souls of the Earth Mother,’ it had always been translated to in the common tongue. These trees that supposedly sprouted from the resting places of all twelve Graces across Chloris were what was used to make tomes—its wood cut for pages, its leaves pressed for ink. It was here, in these Ancient colonies that oversaw and protected such trees, that magic manifested.

  “They’re just like I remember them,” chirped a voice from behind, running up to the front with Darius.

  The Ancient did not seem to be surprised as he gazed upon the small botanist. “Most people do not see, entire life.”

  “When I was younger, my mother brought me here,” Selene mused quietly, lowering her hood and staring up at the white trees beyond, “I remember.”

  “I remember,” echoed Darius.

  The comment knocked Ty out of whatever reverie she had been stuck in as she turned to Faris beside her, wondering if he had caught the oddity in the reply.

  But the caster was busy paying attention to something else in the distance, his brows knitted.

  She followed Faris’s gaze and noticed that down the path was a gate held up by two trees positioned perfectly on each side, barring anyone from advancing. It was simple—two wooden doors that opened in the middle, made of what looked like regular tree logs. It was barely taller than her.

  “Why’s there a gate there, when you could easily just step off and walk around?” he wondered aloud.

  “You should try it out,” Kor challenged. “If you lose a limb or two, Ty’ll write it off for research purposes.”

  The question was soon answered as they approached the gate, Darius stopping first a few feet away. He signaled for quiet by turning to the class and putting a finger to his lips and then turned toward the door, closed his eyes, and bowed deeply.

  Speaking low and stretching out words that blended so seamlessly they sounded like a mantra, his words went on for several minutes as the students waited in anticipation, until finally there was rustling in the distance.

  Everyone looked up beyond the gate, even Darius.

  Barely hidden behind a tree was a tiny figure whose eyes were inquisitive and bright.

  They have an aura, Ty thought to herself in surprise, having been so accustomed to seeing it only on Darius. It was faint, but it was there—a pulsing, pale blue light.

  Light blue…clarity, openness, melancholy.

  Darius said something aloud in the Ancient tongue, and the figure nodded timidly before approaching the party.

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  “Welcome,” the small girl spoke in the common tongue, steps from the gate. Her eyes were deep brown, almost black like the leaves of the Ancient trees, her long, waist-length hair the same. “Expected.”

  Solemnly, Darius nodded.

  And then the girl raised her arm and palm toward the wooden gate, moving her hand in a circular motion as if to clasp the magic tightly before letting it go.

  When her hand dropped, the gate disappeared entirely, opening the path. She stepped back onto the grass to clear the way and waved her arm in the direction of the village behind her.

  Without pause, Darius led the way, walking past the gate and the curious girl, leading the class deeper into the forest.

  The students did not speak, even after the initial moments of stupefaction; they were so quiet, in fact, that Ty had to double-check everyone had made it in when she caught the piercing eyes of the child, who had already reinstated the gate and was now staring at her.

  For an inexplicable reason, she knew exactly what the child saw.

  “Come on, you’re staring,” hissed Kor uncharacteristically nervously, nudging the tactician.

  No, she’s staring, she wanted to reply, but then decided against it, turning back around to make her way into the village.

  And, like magic, it was as if a veil began to lift, and they could now see beyond the walls of infinite green and into the darkness: the ground under them was no longer littered with leaves, the path pristine and soft. Small lights were present on the sides of the walkway and in front of every structure—the Ancients’ humble grass huts and tents, all made of sturdy wooden poles woven through unbelievably large leaves, their long blades caressing the ground and protruding from the top of every abode, of which there were so many one could not even begin to count.

  From where they were standing under the dark canopy, the brilliance of the white bark of the sacred trees could barely be seen hugging the rectangular buildings closest to the trees, which appeared to form a perimeter around the beloved skyward Souls of the Earth Mother. And as shocking and terrifyingly beautiful as this all was, in this hidden community full of some of the most powerful people in Chloris was one singular thing that shocked Ty the most, something that only she could see.

  The auras. Every Ancient under the canopy was illuminated by their auras, colors that Ty couldn’t even put a name to. Some sparkled, some waxed and waned, some were so faint you could barely tell they were there. Some were white like the trees and lights, and some were even an intense, muddied gray-black.

  It was no wonder they didn’t mind living in the shade. Everyone’s souls were laid bright and bare for everyone to see, for everyone to read; they didn’t need candles or artificial flames when all they needed was life.

  Yet despite the vibrancy, the pulsing beat of life, how still it all was. How silent. Their feet made no sound as they walked on the soft sand; there was no rustling of leaves, no wind blowing, no birds that flew through the trees. All sound was deafened under the shade of the Earth Mother.

  “Come,” whispered Darius.

  Everyone’s heads turned to the class Ancient, whose voice seemed louder than usual as they continued shuffling down the path in their now-clamorous gear, watching villagers move aside to let them pass.

  As they made a loop around the community, which appeared to have only one main path surrounding the sacred trees, it was easy to see where Darius’s simplicity came from, why he got along the best with reticent Selene, why Alex and Theo were so enamoring to him. The Ancients were simple, quiet people.

  “Ty,” he called quietly to the tactician after going around full circle, stepping off onto the side of the path to show that he was done leading everyone around.

  Having run through what they were going to do beforehand and the Headmistress’s expectations, Ty nodded and addressed her class. “Okay,” she tested her voice quietly, trying to avoid the stares from the Ancients near them who had stopped to watch. “Entrance in three hours?”

  Everyone nodded, and Ty watched them all slowly disperse in pairs, leaving a single classmate who looked meaningfully at her before turning around.

  Following the Ancient until they reached the northernmost point of the village, where there was a tent just as indistinguishable from the rest, she remained silent as the Ancient exchanged a severe look with her. “Bow, then kneel.”

  * * *

  “I am sorry. Next week.”

  Ty brushed her hair out of her face and semi-limped forward, not even caring about the pain anymore; she just wanted to get back home.

  “It couldn’t have been worse than what happened to Selene and me,” breathed Cyril, who heard her small sigh from behind. “Seriously, what did they do?”

  “I…” Ty began, trailing off as she recalled herself bowing when entering the tent, kneeling, and then…

  The village Elder. Yes, it was the Elder. The Elder with an emerald-green aura. She and Darius had exchanged a few words in the Ancient tongue before switching over to the common one so that Ty could understand.

  You are the child? she had asked in an unimpressed, scathing tone. Our Hope?

  Yes, she had whispered, head bowed to the floor with her knees bent, prostrating herself to the Elder like Darius had taught her.

  You must stay until you hear name, he had told her.

  But the Elder spoke Darius’s name only, continued to speak to him in the Ancient tongue, and then returned to her chair. Darius left her side, but did not leave the tent as far as she could tell.

  Almost three excruciating hours later, all feeling having left her body—as she was afraid of using her powers in front of the village Elder—she could feel a familiar presence from the side of the room move.

  There was a tap on her shoulder, a single word.

  Tyche.

  For a moment, she couldn’t get up. She had been kneeling for so long that she was stuck. Falling flat on the floor would be disrespectful—not to mention shameful—and she couldn’t trust her legs and ankles to do their job.

  We must go.

  Eventually, with some help from Darius, she had gotten up unsteadily. And while she had wondered the entire time what she was going to do once she could finally meet the Elder’s eyes, what she’d say to her, all she could do when she looked up at their bored face was bow her head again.

  “It was nothing. I tripped,” she answered, like she had done several times that afternoon. “What happened to you two?”

  In disbelief, Cyril walked out of their formation so that he was walking backwards in front of Ty. “What!? Look!” He held out ink-stained hands and looked at them with even more disbelief, crying, “‘Go into the hut,’ they said. ‘It’ll be easy,’ they said. Look at my hands! How am I going to get this off?”

  “Have you—”

  The healer pointed to Theo beside her and threatened, “If one more person asks me if I’ve tried using magic, I’m going to go insane. Even—even Selene—Selene!”

  The tiny botanist, lagging behind at the back of the group, perked her head up from behind Kor and stopped laughing. Likely because Kor was piggybacking Selene, and most of the class’s attention was now being drawn to that fact.

  That didn’t faze Cyril, however, who continued yelling despite seeing Selene’s expression visibly darken.

  “Selene!”

  Alex groaned from behind Ty and Theo, rubbing her forehead. “Come on, Cyril, please. You’re giving me a headache.”

  “Come on, Selene, you’re giving Alex a headache!” he continued yelling, “Selene!”

  Ty sighed and tried to focus on walking without relying too much on leaning on Theo while Selene mercifully jogged up to the front to see what the big deal was.

  “What?” she snapped in her small voice, holding up her hands for the three to see.

  They were dusty white, like she had been playing with flour all day and forgot to wash up.

  “It’ll wash off later, big deal,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  Cyril had never looked so betrayed.

  “Thank you, Selene,” smiled Ty, feeling her heart lighten—she should have foreseen such an outcome, pairing them together. “You can go back now.”

  While Selene returned to the chemist’s side without another word, and Cyril dejectedly fell back in line beside Alex, Theo finally seized the opportunity to get a word in. “I likely have a tome to fix that up back in the dorms. I’ve helped my teacher make spellpaper, I know how to get that off.”

  Cyril didn’t even have enough motivation anymore to let any noise other than a grunt escape his lips.

  “There, there,” cooed Alex compassionately, shaking her head and doing the healer’s job for him. “You’ll be okay—it wasn’t all bad, was it?”

  “Mmrgh.”

  “Oh yeah, didn’t you mention some pretty flowers near the village? You did a sketch of one in your book,” she said in an attempt to placate the upset student. “They were so cute.”

  “Mmmyes.”

  Ty’s ears perked up, and she craned her neck to listen in.

  Alex had the most mischievous-yet-delighted smile on her face. “Let’s show Ty—what are they called again?”

  “Hellebores,” mumbled Cyril, reaching into his bag and taking out a leather-bound book, which he then opened to a page to offer to the tactician. “The lady brought us to a small garden on the edge of the village…I did some sketching and asked about them. I feel like I’ve seen them before, but I don’t recall where…”

  Ty took Cyril’s sketchbook and looked at the scene he had drawn, jaw almost dropping at how professional it looked. The lines were confident and precise, showing no signs of being corrected, and the shadowing was intricately done. He had even sketched out some of the grass huts in the background. And the centerpiece—the hellebores, they must have been—a group of white, overlapping five-petaled flowers sporting a yellow, light-green center.

  “These…these flowers. I’ve seen them in the Academy forest. They’re winter flowers,” she breathed.

  “Oh. Huh, that could be it.”

  Handing back the book, with the winter flowers from the Academy stark in her mind just like the memories of that past winter, a winter she would never forget, Ty continued to walk. Feeling better as she listened to the chatter and everyday distractions her students afforded her, their words and liveliness that filled up the emptiness that she had once called normal.

  If pain is the cost…she thought to herself absently, taking step after step, I would gladly pay it.