“How much for this vial?” she asked. He was whittling. The voice made him hope. Hushed straw hair. Familiar blue eyes.
Earth looked up. The young woman who eyed him intently, though not unlovely, was not Lyf. When he did not respond any more than to stare back at her with unspeaking eyes, her smile vanished.
“I’m not certain,” he said, looking back to the clunky block of wood in his hands. “Let me call my sister.”
Synu, on queue, stepped from behind the curtain at the rear of the stall. Now a woman fully in her prime, her smile shone both delicate and strong.
“I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about our oils.”
The sale finished, three of the vial in question plus seven various others, Synu returned to hover over her brother with a disapproving scowl. He made it a point to not look at her, whittling somewhat more furiously, as if bits of splintered wood and hasty thumping might drive her away.
It didn’t work.
“Yes?” He said at last, still not willing to look up.
“It is the finest Cor Blossom Festival of them all, yet my brother, the day of his Eve of Aging, most eligible bachelor of the south Ambra Coast by my rankings, handsomest man in perhaps the entire world I shouldn’t guess, sits at a boy’s task, making valiant effort to pout in the direction of every pretty girl that passes his way so that the whole village of them are full sure that he finds their very existences an aggravation. Truly, if you will not do these many good customers even the courtesy of smiling, would you at least spare your sister the torment of having to clean up after your messes? This is a shop, after all.”
Earth grinned a little to himself, but he still did not look up from his whittling.
“You are a funny one,” he said.
The flick flack of the knife sent more chips flying about, a minor hurricane of flakes and dust.
“Did I really almost ruin the sale?”
“Of course not.” She sat beside him on the crate. “Old men may come to buy ‘Anirea’s Oil’ in order to ogle at her virgin daughters, but young women do not seek out our booth for its potential romantic company. Not even yours.”
She wagged her finger. “But this does not change the fact that the Dance will begin within the hour, yet you look all the world as if you’d rather be chewing on pellets of brimstone than anywhere near anything wonderful at all, including that piece of wood. Earth, you have always loved the festival. Can you find it in your heart to tell a dear sister what has come over you?”
“I don’t know.” He stopped, now meeting her eyes with earnest disconcertion. “It is something the Mistress said to me, months gone now. You know her as well as I. She is ever full of riddles and hidden things. But what she dolled out as a hint with each passing day shakes me deeper. The more I resist, the more I search, the wider the vacancy becomes. It is an infection. My soul aches. Late afternoon shadows haunt me, and the foretelling of evening brings me no hope.”
“Well, that’s a desperate sort of thing to say.”
“Oh, I know how silly I must sound.” He looked down at the figurine in his hands. “My whole ordeal is childish fancy, I’m sure. The Eve of Aging is here, but I fail the truer test. Nothing is happening. Nothing at all. Really. At least, I don’t so. Everything is set to right. More right than it’s ever been before. But that is not what I feel. Somewhere beyond what we can see, my passions move me without my control.
“What would you have me do?” he went on. “Press a smile to my face and walk about with a handful of winter dried corn, reminding myself of all the past years and their joys? Would that not be a vain hypocrisy? Shall I force daydreams and the phantom of joy while my heart even so walks back to this corner of dark perplexity?”
“Are those wings?”
“What?” He was nonplussed.
“Wings,” she smiled, motioning at the unfinished project in his hands, “What is this thing anyway? It looks like some fantastical beast, if there ever was one. Who would ever imagine a horse with wings?”
Earth stared at his carving for a long moment, then shook his head, tossing the blocky thing into a corner where it clattered against the stall post and settled.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Synu draped her arm across his back as she sat down beside him on the crate he was using for a chair. “If the Mistress has said it, then whatever it is, I for my part believe it. Such woes are rightly enough to doom even the handsomest man in the realm to gloomy posture. But they are not enough to keep him from what certainly appears to be his very last Dance of the Cor Blossoms before the end of the world, and let me tell you why, dearest brother.
“Even should the day after tomorrow the sun itself fall into the sea, should Dark Mystics or the Madgyi of old secretly conquer us and rise as dread overlords, should abberations from the sunken world crawl up through every crack in the land to scorge us with weapons made of molten ash, you shall go to this festival and dance with the fairest maiden in all the Ambra Coast, perhaps in the entire world I shouldn’t guess!”
“And how should you know that?” he laughed.
“Because you shall dance with me!” she rose to her feet, thrusting her finger in the air and waving her hand about as if standing at the heart of an army that hung on her every word. “Nay! Fair brother, I say that even should abominable Reanai himself, vilest foe of mankind, banesayer of the Forgotten himself, announce his presence by mail to be our dinner guest tomorrow, you shall enjoy this dance.”
Earth’s smile brimmed from ear to ear at the sight of his sister’s good spirit. She know it too, for she nodded like a fine politician, puffed out her chest with encouraging mirth and went on.
“Forsooth, chosen man! Oh, melancholy one! Desperate, darkest, dreariest Earth!” A giggle glimmered through the mask of sovereignty she dawned as she lifted her nose to the sky. “I have never encountered such boreish ignorance that I cannot elevate it by the spell of a smile.”
“Have you not?” he asked. “Well, we shall see if I cannot prove your match in vigor.”
She paused, regal patience displayed with the fine wrinkles in her forehead.
“A wager then?” she asked.
He nodded once.
“So be it!” she shouted.
Now it was Earth’s turn to rise and prance, gesticulating about the booth. “Damsel daughter and virgin craftswoman of the most legendary lilac oils, wilt thou condescend to dance with an ig’nant and des’prate melancholy bore, though he be unable to mend his ways and must needs scowl the whole night long?”
“Oh, Earth,” she nodded with all the seriousness of a four-year-old. “Most verily.”
To be continued…