CHAPTER 22 – Innocence

“I suppose the solstice festival feels long ago to you, given your age. You don’t remember, then?”

Brought back to the present as Gaeleath spoke, Saphienne stepped forward, as though she were carefully examining the trio of unfinished sculptures, reaching out to touch the sandstone with one hand while she wiped her eyes with the other — keeping her back to the sculptor. She tilted her head, pretended she had been brushing a loose strand of hair back behind her ear.

Saphienne needed a moment to steady her voice. “No, I don’t,” she lied. “I have a vague memory of a puppet show, but nothing significant.”

Gaeleath hadn’t noticed her lie, and their voice remained light. “That would be right. The festival lasts for three days, and on the day of the solstice there’s always a special event to entertain children under the age of fourteen. You would have slept there, overnight?” They were trying to help her remember, unaware that she wanted to forget. “This year will be quite different for you.”

“So,” Saphienne moved their conversation on, “you want to exhibit one of these?”

“That would be my plan.” They came up beside her, half folding their arms and resting their cheek against their palm. “But, well. I find choosing difficult. And I really ought to produce something worth showing, to justify my presence here. All was fair while I was teaching you, but now that you’re learning wizardry…”

Glad for the change of topic, she kept her expression neutral as she turned to them. “That’s actually what I was coming to see you about. I’m going to be very busy–”

“For the next while.” Gaeleath hadn’t taken their eyes off the stone. “I remember how it goes. A week or so marvelling at the disciplines, then three weeks where your education begins in earnest. The early curriculum is largely settled. You’ll doubtlessly be busy in the afternoons, after your morning lessons.”

“We’re going to study together. Me, and the other apprentices.”

“Lovely.” They nodded, then glanced her way and flashed a smile. “I’m sure you’ll get on better with them than I did with mine. Camaraderie is important, for those who can manage it.”

Saphienne wasn’t in a state to pry into their history. “After, I was thinking I could come here in the mornings? Two days each week, I’ll be busy, but the rest… I’d still like to learn the art of sculpture.”

“And I’ll still be happy to teach you.” They indicated Saphienne’s half of the work area, where several engraved slabs were neatly stacked, and the rough head of an elf was slowly emerging from sandstone. “You’ve got a sharp eye and a deft hand for etching, and I expect that, when you make the transition to harder, darker materials, you’ll be surprised by how good you are. If you were more confident with the songs, you’d be further along with your statue work, but oh — these things take time.”

“I’m grateful.” She bowed. “Will you bring on another student?”

Gaeleath grimaced. “Not if I can avoid it. I’m quite particular. I don’t want to spend my time teaching a child who won’t do something with the lessons.”

Despite how she felt, she managed a small smile. “Aren’t the lessons wasted on me? I’ll be a wizard, not a sculptor.”

“Hardly.” They unfolded their arms, facing her. “It’s the art, Saphienne. The art is what I’m teaching you. The sculptures, the medium — these are expressions of the art, not the art itself. When you’re good, the work of art you make can convey an impression of the art, but they aren’t the same thing.”

She studied their gaze. “I don’t understand.”

“Nor will you, not now.” They shrugged. “Don’t think I’m patronising — I don’t mean to condescend. I didn’t understand for a very long time, and I still haven’t quite come into my own. Art is what we do to ourself, within ourself, that we then try to explain to ourself and to others through making artistic works. Magic and sculpture, calligraphy and painting, song — they’re all different mediums for expressing the same thing.”

Thinking back to their first meeting, she thought about what she had said to Gaeleath, and how they had replied. “When I told you I wanted to understand myself, and you said–”

“Yes! ‘To understand art is to understand oneself; to understand art is to make art.’ People who aren’t artists, they think that old quote refers to the production of the works of art! But, it doesn’t. Art is entirely within us. And,” they gestured to the half-formed stone, “if we can make something that stirs the same in others, then the art spreads, and can be shared, and the discussion unfolds and adds to the art.”

For the second time in a few short minutes, Saphienne felt she was standing on a precipice — had always been standing on a precipice, of which she had been blissfully unaware. Now she knew it was there, but couldn’t see the bottom, and feeling it wait for her–

She retreated. “I’ll think about it.”

Gaeleath glanced her up and down, and their expression softened. “Don’t rush into it. You’ll make sense of it when it’s time.” Then they turned back to their works in progress. “Unlike me, no one expects you to justify yourself through your art. Which leads me back to my question: which should I finish, Saphienne?”

Looking back to the three pieces of faintly glittering stone, she tried to think it through. “Do you have a particular audience?”

“Good thought, but no, it’s for general consumption. I already selected these because they will have broad appeal.” They shifted, and sighed. “Being specific is necessary for great art, but being too specific runs the risk of people just not… well, if they can’t connect, they won’t see the value.”

“But, if you’ve already thought it through, how am I meant to help?”

Gaeleath laughed. “I asked you what your heart says about them. Which piece, crude though it may be, most resonates with some sentiment? Which makes a connection? Knowing that will help me choose.”

Accepting they wouldn’t let her leave without an answer, Saphienne did her best to calm herself, and to let herself feel whatever they provoked. What she thought was a sitting figure stirred nothing in her; what appeared as a half-shaped tree inexplicably angered her. But the last piece, which looked to her like two figures…

“This one.” She lay her hand against the stone. “The dancers.”

Gaeleath raised their eyebrows. “…Dancers? Well. I… yes, I suppose.”

Saphienne backed away, fighting down the memories that lay behind the choice. “People like dancing. It’s a festival. It’ll suit the mood.”

“You’re right, though perhaps in ways that… yes.” Gaeleath flashed another, slightly forced smile. “I’ll finish it across the next few weeks, while you’re away. Might I ask you not to call unannounced, while I’m working on it?”

The sculptor had never before asked that of her. “You want it to be a surprise?”

“…Let’s say yes. I have my reasons. My artistic whim, fickle as I am.”

She inclined her head. “Of course. Thank you.” She leant toward the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to…”

But Gaeleath had already shifted their attention to the work, and from their sudden focus on the figures, Saphienne knew that their choice was made, and that they were reading lines in the stone – or within themself? – that would soon be visible. They waved to her despite their distraction. “By all means. Enjoy your break… and when you return, we’ll finally see how you fare against wood.”

Everything in Saphienne wanted to run from the pavilion in relief, but she waved back, and left as though at ease.

* * *

Part of Saphienne wanted to go straight to the library, but she was too upset, and the thought of having to pretend all was well to Filaurel and Faylar made her feel even more wretched than she already did. Instead, she went for a walk, picking her way through the woodland while staying within the outskirts of the village, her eyes on the ground and her senses turned inward.

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Why had she remembered the festival? For over three years, she had kept the memory of that day carefully buried. And not just that memory — there were others that she avoided dwelling on, whenever they were prompted.

Unconsciously, she took out the pouch containing her copper coin, and clutched it against her chest as she went on.

Perhaps losing her temper in front of Iolas had loosened her control. That memory embarrassed her; even accounting for how easily her mother provoked her, acting so childishly to him on their first meaningful day together felt shameful to Saphienne. She had only herself to blame. Still, being off-balance from humiliation… that went some way toward explaining why Gaeleath’s question had cut right through her defences.

Or was there more? Was being in the tented pavilion – much like the one raised on that day – partly responsible? She thought not: the village used many such structures for temporary accommodation, and she had been working there, beside Gaeleath, for months. Then again, the unfinished sculpture resembled dancers, and the combination of things together could explain…

Saphienne sighed, and her eyes fell shut. She knew why.

She had friends again. Had just made friends, that very day. She felt welcomed, and perhaps even understood. She hadn’t felt that with Faylar, not entirely… or was it that she hadn’t let herself…

Tears slowly ran down her cheeks as she admitted to herself how deeply, and bitterly, she missed Kylantha.

She wiped them away; she wiped the thought away. There was too much there. And too much else in the memories, things that she hadn’t understood at the time, things that she now realised she had overlooked — and now saw with new, terrible unease.

Older now, Saphienne knew the concept of what had so preoccupied her parents, and was aware of what they must have been doing together — were always doing together, when they forgot about her. So too, she could dimly contemplate what might have featured in the evening’s events that wasn’t suitable for children. The books she had read in the library, that Filaurel had carefully directed her toward without suggesting they were yet appropriate… from them, she intellectually grasped how parents made children. But – and this gnawed at her – she didn’t actually understand anything.

What she had read, she hadn’t been prepared to think about. Yet now she felt like she must think about these things, that she must understand them, for the future was beckoning to her, and she wasn’t prepared. How could she hope to meet the challenges ahead, if she was unprepared?

And what Gaeleath had said about art made it worse — that making art required she explore within herself, discover things about herself. There was a whole part of adult life she couldn’t comprehend, a whole part of what was presumably herself that she didn’t know… and she was inevitably, terrifyingly growing into an adult.

Elves said they reached adulthood upon attaining their first century. If this was how she felt at fourteen, how much worse would it be across the decades ahead?

And everything – all of these thoughts and feelings, whirling within her – were eclipsed by the realisations she reached as she considered the way Kylantha had been treated: by the caretaker, by the woman on the stall, and most of all by Phelorna. How sweetly Kylantha’s mother had treated her! And how cruelly — how viciously, to let her daughter love her so, knowing that she was to be abandoned.

“How could she?”

Saphienne hadn’t meant to speak aloud, and she looked around furtively. There was no one nearby, only the trees and wild spring flowers.