CHAPTER 116 – Forest Families

You will doubtlessly recall that the wood elves and the spirits of the woodlands each beheld the other as closer to the gods; what proceeded from the sanctification of Saphienne should therefore be no surprise.

Her intervention against the dragon had been formally recognised as the will of the gods by the regional consensus, which had in turn been enough for a majority among the sylvan matriarchs to determine she was holy. This was taken seriously by the elven faithful, and within days fervent offerings were being left at the shrine near the lake, thanking the gods for Saphienne — thanks received as vindication by the bloomkith and woodkin who trusted in her state of grace.

She’d expected this from the moment she’d spoken with Holly and Ruddles, for the woodland spirits magnified what the wood elves believed. Whether or not she actually held faith in the gods was irrelevant: she was to be their exemplar.

How did she respond?

In much the same way as Hyacinth.

 

* * *

 

Saphienne paced back and forth across the sand within her ritual space, hunched forward with her arms folded. The gross perceptual veil she’d raised around the hillock was sufficient to cause the elves and spirits who made pilgrimage to her home to overlook where she hid, affording her meagre privacy as she brooded on her future.

There would be no escaping politics now. One faction among the religious bloomkith and woodkin wanted to forgive and release their imprisoned sisters, using Saphienne to lend weight to their apologetics, while the conservative minority would do everything within their power to prevent that from coming to pass. She anticipated that those who wished to uphold the ancient ways were even now intent on destroying her reputation, her vilification necessary to prevent another conflagration.

And why shouldn’t they? Without intending to do so, she’d publicly aligned herself with the cause of mercy for the ancient apostates. How eloquently she’d made her speech in the garden! How perfect the image: the elf who had been condemned as wicked, showing herself to be virtuous, absolving her detractors, embraced by an initiate who dedicated herself to the goddess of proving one’s worth.

Saphienne fumed. She’d really fucked herself over.

All she’d wanted to do was earn some respite, hence her forgiving the bloomkith who’d taken part in the attempted assault. That alone wouldn’t have caused problems… but she’d gone straight from that performance to meeting with the elders, where she’d been so focused on her goals – on winning – that she’d neglected to consider the larger view.

“‘…In awe of the will of the gods made manifest…’”

Those who’d valorised her hadn’t been aware of what she’d done five years ago. Even Almon didn’t know the full context, and he was hardly politically minded. She’d been the only person in the meeting hall who could possibly have foreseen how their lofty acclaim would be received by the spirits, and she’d missed it.

But Ruddles had been prepared. She must have been laying the groundwork ever since the dragon departed. Who else might have organised the floral display at her house? Who else but Mother Marigold would have then seized on Saphienne’s magnanimous act of compassion, making detailed plans for her beatification? How delighted the bloomkith must have been, when the elders accelerated her timeline! There was simply no other way that everything could have progressed so quickly.

Veering to the edge of the room, Saphienne leant her forehead against the cool stone.

If she was right, then her life was about to become very ugly.

What would Mother Oak do? Ansuz would likely go to High Master Lenitha to enlist her aid, for she was almost certainly the elder who’d been informed when Saphienne freed Tyrnansunna. The Luminary Vale could be depended upon to do whatever was required to uphold the ancient ways.

And Lenitha had influence, or perhaps total control, over the investigation into what had occurred between Saphienne and the dragon.

Lightly beating her head against the wall, Saphienne groaned. “I’m fucked.”

Should the investigation find that Saphienne wasn’t the hero that everyone believed her to be, everything built on her deed would topple. She had enemies among the spirits who wanted to tear her down, and Tolduin – while not quite her enemy – would assist their agenda by appealing the decisions of the regional consensus.

What could she do? Nothing. Pleading to Lenitha was out of the question: showing weakness might embolden the High Master to take decisive action against Saphienne. As sympathetic as Lenitha had been, there could be no trusting that she would privilege that compassion over maintaining the integrity of the ancient ways.

Yet even if the investigation was conducted impartially, Saphienne hadn’t fought off the dragon. The truth could be just as damning in malevolent hands, regardless of whether those elven hands were possessed by spirits.

“Utterly fucked.”

She didn’t dare seek advice, either. Not from anyone other than…

Opening her eyes, Saphienne turned and leant back against the wall, gazing long on the undisturbed sand.

 

* * *

 

Alas, when the magician finally worked up the courage to trace a circle and make the proper invocation, Hyacinth didn’t appear.

Saphienne tried again, and again, repeating the name of the bloomkith nine times — all to no avail. Either the spirit was embodied, and so unable to hear, or she was deliberately refusing the call.

“…I can’t blame her.”

Hyacinth had been present in the mind of the dragon when Saphienne had referred to her friend as her possession, and so had witnessed the momentary madness with which she’d sincerely meant what she’d said. Before then, on their last meeting, and in the depths of despair, she’d commanded the bloomkith to surrender to her, intending to change her nature so as to separate them from each other forevermore.

Nevertheless, Saphienne needed Hyacinth. She had no one else she could confide in; other than the spirit, only Parthenos knew the full extent of her fraud.

An intercession was required.

She wielded the spell that moved the enchantment on her left hand, interlinking her fingers. “…Ruddles, Ruddles, Ruddles.”

Delayed by the fascination veiling the hillock, Mother Marigold eventually descended in a warm breeze that Saphienne invited within.

 

* * *

 

Briefly, as Saphienne beheld herself on the steps of her mental library, she was startled to see glimmering scales–

Over which she reasserted her previous, elven form, remaining calm as the field of marigolds before her wove a garment for the spirit coming to meet her.

Ruddles tilted her head as she descended the hill. “Perchance I sensed a change?”

Saphienne shrugged. “I prefer to talk with you in my festival clothes.”

This amused the matron of the woodlands, who bowed as she approached, her long auburn hair spilling about her shoulders. “I recall when they were your most comforting form. What has succeeded them?”

“My robes.” Technically, she was only lying by omission.

Ruddles’ smile was warm as the red sun hanging in the sky. “In sooth, I am touched that you wish to be less formal in garb. Would you have me be the same?”

Saphienne squinted. “…If I say yes, you’ll appear naked, won’t you?”

“Covering myself is an affectation. We who are wind have no need of dress.”

Despite the clouds hanging heavy over the library, Saphienne smirked. “Mother Marigold! Whatever would Laelansa think of your flirting?”

The old bloomkith blushed. “Fie! Why must you elves oft conflate nudity with lust? I would not lie with you.”

Mischief stirred in the reprieve from her brooding; Saphienne grinned as she stepped out onto the field, her dress shed to bare her body. “Why not? To one who has seen so many elven beauties, am I not desirable?”

She placed her hands on her canted hips.

Flustered, for the briefest moment Ruddles stared in what Saphienne felt as admiration…

Then the bloomkith laughed, uproariously, and shed her gown of marigolds upon the breeze as she seated herself on the flowers underfoot, her ample curves flushed. “Wherefore hath come about thy bold jesting, fair girl? Truly, Laelansa told me right: thou art transfigured by thy contest with the dragon.”

Saphienne dropped to sit cross-legged. “I am joking — but I can’t help but notice how you duck my question.”

Ruddles grinned. “You are comely enough that I considered putting curls in my hair; mayhap I would, were it not that I teach Laelansa.”

Delaying from business, she let curiosity guide their conversation. “I’ve wondered about your relationship with her…”

“If you please, ask what you will.” Ruddles shifted to lean on her arm. “I shall not betray what has been shared in trust… but it is not a betrayal to say that Laelansa has confessed she loves you, Saphienne, and told me much about that love.”

Why was Saphienne blushing? She supposed it was only fair recompense. “I love her as well. I’m only just beginning to understand how much she means to me… but that’s for me to think about.” She moved on. “A year ago I was teasing Hyacinth, and I joked that I might walk with another spirit at the festival. When she asked who else might take her place, I flippantly said your name–”

Ruddles chuckled.

“–And Hyacinth said something that I’ve wondered about.”

“That Laelansa would complain?”

“She said that Laelansa wouldn’t embrace her teacher. Yet Laelansa walks with you–”

The bloomkith held up her palm in pause. “You are seeking perspective on the intimacies of elves and spirits?”

She nodded.

Hot grew the air; Ruddles glanced down at herself. “Appropriately attired we are, for such talk…” Her ruddied yellow eyes twinkled when she raised her head. “You would be wise to speak with a priest after me — for the elven view. Yet before I tell how I and my sisters see affairs of roots and heart, a telling question I must ask you.”

Saphienne shallowly frowned. “Go on…”

“In trust: do you love Hyacinth?”

She blinked — and kept distant the maelstrom of emotions provoked by the asking.

Yet Ruddles was studying the clouds that thinned – then darkened – above the library, divining from them the semblance of sentiments too intense to share. “You are conflicted…”

“What you ask is complicated–”

“Thus, you do.”

Saphienne fell silent.

Ruddles gently held her gaze. “Say that I lie?”

Indignity sparked anger within her heart… but she refused to catch on fire, aware that her aggression was concealing her unwillingness to be honest with herself. She shut her inner and outer eyes, let her deflecting aegis fall away, allowing herself the vulnerability implied when she’d stripped bare.

Saphienne knew she shouldn’t. Hyacinth was younger than her, but she’d been Saphienne’s senior when first they met, and she’d played on old pain to goad her into doing the very thing that had brought about her current predicament — manipulating her to serve the spirit’s personal agenda. She’d abused Saphienne.

…Except…

Hyacinth existed because of Saphienne. The bloomkith was distinguished from other flowers by being cultivated to make Saphienne ever more an individual unto herself, thereby to nurture her wyrd and hasten its fulfilment. She’d been planted and watered specifically to influence her in service to that design, and all the worst qualities embodied in the spirit were reflections of her own.

…Stood beside the circle in the sand, Saphienne felt her eyelids fluttering…

Not that all were bad. Hyacinth was bright, was opinionated, was fearless, and so she pursued what she believed to be right. She was also kind – in her own, achingly genuine way – and loyal to what she loved.

She loved Saphienne most of all.

…Saphienne began to pace the perimeter…

And while that love was inherently narcissistic, so pure was her devotion that Hyacinth had hurled herself against a dragon without hesitation. Nor could she have done otherwise: she couldn’t resist who she was, not even after she’d endured existential terror in perceiving her own, limited nature.

Whether or not the bloomkith became a familiar, she was in thrall to the magician.

Then, was Hyacinth truly a person?

…Saphienne slowed…

Did that matter? She felt. She suffered. She yearned.

There lay the crux of it.

Whoever had wronged whom; whichever of them exerted the most influence over the other; however incomplete and imperfect the faculties possessed by the spirit; none of that changed what Saphienne experienced whenever they walked together. No history, no philosophy, no art could refute what was true.

Hyacinth lived, and she loved.

And she had been loved; and so she was loved.

…Saphienne stepped into the circle, moved to its midpoint, and sat.

They were bound together. Not by the bond of abuser and victim, nor self and shadow, but the bond bequeathed to them by the intimacy of shared trauma. Although she wasn’t able to express what she’d long surmised in Hyacinth, too threatened by the pain of contemplation, there was no doubt within Saphienne: the spirit could only have been made to share her weeping through the infliction of a singular wound.

“Yes,” she answered Ruddles aloud, feeling tears she couldn’t ascribe to any one emotion rolling down her cheeks. “I love her. I love her spiritually; I love her romantically; I love her erotically. I love her in ways for which there are no words… and she feels the same.”

Ruddles was smiling when Saphienne returned her attention to the scene inside their shared mind. “You are afraid of that love.”

Unbearably. “We’re bad for each other.”

Her admission wilted the smile of the bloomkith, and Mother Marigold clasped her wrist in distress. “Saphienne, forwhy do you believe that falsehood? Are you scarred by what transpired between you, when she led you to free our sister?”

Saphienne froze.

“Be not afraid: I know.” Ruddles squeezed her tightly. “We spirits loose the passions of you elves. Through no other means might mercy have been accomplished. I say in sooth: Hyacinth was planted to bloom for you, willed to arise by the gods, and she shares in your halo as your nimbus. There is no other way Tyrnansunna could have been freed, but through elf and spirit joined in deed.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“…I don’t believe in the gods.”

Mother Marigold was not incensed, rather mirthful. “Ay — and that leads only to your suffering! You cannot trust that They are immanent, and do not see how the passion within you acts in accordance with Their will.” She nimbly rose, her head silhouetted by the bloody sun as her shadow fell blazing across Saphienne. “Yet whatever necessary madness Hyacinth stirs in you will not be refused. No force in this world can restrain it.”

Did Saphienne shudder in awe, or in dread?

Ruddles offered her hand. “Dry your tears and join me.”

Unsteadily, Saphienne tried to decline. “This isn’t– I didn’t call you to–”

“Relent from thyself. Come up my hill, novice, and I will teach you.”

 

* * *

 

Mother Marigold sat beside Saphienne with heated skin pressed to skin, and as she talked her flowers wound up and around the magician most tenderly. She held Saphienne’s hand, and then lay her red head against blonde, tracing a touch that was sensual – but not sexual – along the curving back that leaned into her caress.

This is what she taught:

Bodies were simply flesh and bone. Spirits envied elves their corporeality, and when invited to share in physical being they exulted in living in the world. Ruddles revelled in the beating heart within the chest she had come to occupy, savoured each breath that Saphienne drew as they sat within the sandy circle. All that Saphienne took for granted was cherished by the bloomkith.

So too, the animal drives that animated elves were not all inherent to the spirits, not when newly arisen, and those the bloomkith and woodkin began with were like starlight compared to glorious elven sunshine. Mother Marigold felt emotions, yes, but not as viscerally when she was not possessing a form that could feel them. Plants did not know happiness and sadness, or anger and fear, in the way that skin and blood knew them.

Complex sentiments like lust were strange for the spirits. Even in the rich satisfaction of their pollen spread by wind or bee, no bloomkith or woodkin wanted for another like elves ached… not until they experienced what it was to go through the world embodied. Thereafter, their elder sisters gave them cuttings of collective memory, and in time the full plethora of elven emotions wound through their roots.

Yet the elves were not simply bodies, and to such could not be reduced. That was what had been revealed to spirits before the founding of the ancient ways, when the gods had brought elf and spirit to see one another as themselves. That was when wind and bone first walked together — no longer joined as two, but merged as one.

Still, short of that union, how were those who shared a body to relate?

They could touch in mind as Mother Marigold and Saphienne were touching, and what was exchanged there was as meaningful as what passed between elves. Yet the things they felt together from Saphienne’s physicality were like a vista, moving both of them, yet not endowed with interpersonal significance…

At that, Mother Marigold took possession of Saphienne’s hand, and she stroked her cheek fondly.

…Not unless meaning was intentionally imparted.

During willing possession, an elven body could be delighted in by both elf and spirit for the sensations they received together, but what that meant to them depended upon their relationship. Were Saphienne and Ruddles to eat a hearty meal, it would not mean they were feeding each other. The same perspective applied to intimacies like arousal, and consequently there were elves and spirits with no desire for each other who regularly indulged together libidinally.

However, from the outside? Whoever interacted with Saphienne while she was possessed by Ruddles was engaged with both, even were one in control and the other merely a passenger.

 

* * *

 

“… To grasp the cleaving edge,” Ruddles concluded, “ask yourself: how would you feel, were you to embrace Laelansa while she was possessed by Hyacinth? With whom would you be making love?”

Saphienne had been repressing her feelings while listening, yet she could not hold back the nervous thrill stirred by imagining that. “…I’d be with both of them. But you’re explaining that they wouldn’t necessarily be sleeping with each other in the same way?”

“You have it.” Ruddles planted a kiss upon her brow, then withdrew to stretch and gaze upon the distant library. “Your confusion stems from the passion shared between you and Hyacinth. When you walk together, do you feel in love with yourself, as though you are your own lover?”

Saphienne’s embarrassment was supreme.

“Laelansa and I do not feel so when we walk.” Ruddles grinned. “Afore, I told you that the priest who raised her did so out of faithful obligation. I do not teach her from duty alone. I care for her — and she for me. We are contented when we are joined.”

Distant though she tried to keep herself, Saphienne beheld the affection for Laelansa that Ruddles didn’t hide. “…Laelansa is family to you.”

“My sisters and I do not have daughters as elves do…” There was sadness behind her words. “…But were I an elf, I would have adopted her when she was fifteen. She is one of a handful of my wards in whom I have beheld the true meaning of my maternal title.”

“She’s special.” Saphienne faintly smiled. “I’m glad she has you.”

“Ay — I echo your words.”

In the ensuing lull, Saphienne recognised she had prevaricated for too long. “…Ruddles, the reason I thought I called on you is because I need to talk to Hyacinth, but when I invoke her, she doesn’t answer.”

Brows raised, Ruddles crossed her arms. “You as well?”

Worry made Saphienne’s heart skip.

“Others have been seeking her,” the old bloomkith admitted. “She seemed much afeared of the high regard she has won from our sisters; Spire told me that she has retreated into hiding. Alas, none among us knows where.”

 

* * *

 

Assured that Hyacinth was in seclusion by choice, Saphienne pretended that she was consoled to hear all was reasonably well. Yet she didn’t relinquish her anxiety as she parted from Ruddles, convinced that it wasn’t discomfort with newfound praise that had driven the younger bloomkith to seek sanctuary.