CHAPTER 45 – The Bones of Her World

Within the grassy grounds of the shrine to Our Lord of the Endless Hunt, Saphienne sat before the sacred icon in sudden dread. She dared not show her concern to the priest, however, and slipped back into the same posture of deceit as she had adopted throughout the rest of the morning.

Her voice was calm and light when she asked, “Why is it necessary to invoke a spirit before you teach me? Is it symbolism, or is there a practical reason?”

Her question made Nelathiel break from her religious pageantry with laughter. “Such a wizardly thing to wonder! Couldn’t it be both? Who says that symbolism isn’t practical?”

“In my experience, it’s better when my teachers are direct.” Saphienne wasn’t really so literal-minded that she couldn’t see the point of symbolism; her problem was that calling a spirit to bestow a blessing risked the spirit refusing, which would prompt difficult questions about why it was forbidden for anyone but Hyacinth to bless her. She needed to stall for time while she found a solution.

Fortunately, the priest had no problem believing her. “Have you heard,” began Nelathiel, rising as she spoke, “about performative speech?”

She had read about it, but chose to pretend ignorance. “Things said to change how people see us, rather than out of conviction?”

Nelathiel rolled her eyes. “So I’ve heard it phrased… but no. That’s a misunderstanding of what performance actually is, and so what it means to speak performatively.” She gestured to the fur-draped icon of her god. “Suppose I offer an invocation to Our Lord — casting no spell, but simply calling upon Him to witness our discussion. What is the consequence of that speech?”

Despite her predicament, Saphienne was drawn in. “I can’t speak to what Our Lord of the Endless Hunt might do, but in more immediate terms, you would be solemnising our meeting.”

“Exactly!” Nelathiel half-crouched with the exclamation, hands raised, as though she were pouncing upon her quarry. “The speech in itself performs an action. Performative speech has an effect on the world, changing the way people relate to each other by changing the context in which they exist. This isn’t the same thing as making people feel a certain way, or making them think a certain way…” She pressed her palms together. “…The speech doesn’t exert influence, or make a request of people, but instead does something that is socially recognised, and understood to be true.”

“I follow.” Inwardly, she wondered if Hyacinth could answer the call… but she had no way of ensuring that Hyacinth would do so, or even telling whether she was near. “I suppose there’s more nuance? Relating it to symbolism?”

“In a sense.” She approached the statue made in the likeness of her god. “We are constantly performing ourselves to the world. This doesn’t mean we pretend. To perform ourselves as being a certain way for long enough is to become that performance to a lesser or greater degree. What makes an elf an elf, Saphienne?”

Just as quickly as dread had arrived, Saphienne felt goosebumps, and all thoughts about the invocation stilled. Her eyes were bright and focused. “…I’ve wondered about that. I’m not satisfied by any of the answers I read.”

The priest was pleased by her reply. “You can’t be. To be an elf is to perform your life as an elf, and for that performance to be recognised as authentic — upheld as true by the world in which you find yourself. There is no one thing, or even a set of things, that convey being an elf upon you.”

“So then,” Saphienne tested, “a human could be an elf, if she were to perform her life as an elf, and be welcomed among elves?”

“No.” Nelathiel tilted her head to the side, her horns dipping toward the woods. “There are many things bound up in the performance of being an elf, and some of those things are materially impossible for a human to perform. We do not wither with age, and we do not die from that withering. Those are key parts of our performance, one that most humans cannot match…” She pointed in the direction her horns indicated. “If you were to ask someone from the village what made an elf an elf, they would talk about these material things as though they were the whole of being an elf. Our ears, our agelessness…”

Saphienne hung on her words, and had to wet her lips before speaking. “So these are important for the authenticity of the performance, but it’s the authenticity of the performance as acknowledged by elves that make one an elf?”

“Yes… at least,” she qualified, “in the general sense. When someone refers to you as an elf sincerely, that itself is performative speech, for it performs the social acknowledgement that is bound up in making you an elf.”

“What about the reverse?” Saphienne’s mind was swept up in events from her past. “Could someone be born able to be an elf, with agelessness and tall ears and all the rest, but then be denied that life because they weren’t acknowledged?”

Frowning, Nelathiel took a moment to respond. “…The answer is yes, but…” She crossed her arms and looked to the statue, her lips moving in silent prayer before she said more. “…This lies close to the heart of the ancient ways. How acknowledgement is conveyed – by what right, and through which rites – is central to how our people join together to make our society. We share our faith, and we share beliefs that complement our faith, and among them lies an understanding of the proper ways to acknowledge or refuse what is performed by individuals and groups in society.”

“The consensus of the woodlands,” Saphienne murmured.

“You understand.” The priest shifted, uncomfortable. “But many things in our lives lie below the notice of the consensus. Most things, actually, until they cause great enough concern that they must be brought to everyone’s attention, and consensus sought. And even where consensus is found…” She sighed through her smile, hinting exasperation. “…Not everyone personally agrees, even if they go along with the consensus socially. Their going along, their publicly abiding while privately disagreeing, is performative in nature, in that it makes them part of the consensus.”

“I think I understand.”

“Then you’ll be thinking about how the consensus changes over time,” Nelathiel said, “and how even settled matters continue to be disputed, and advocated, and revisited, and how all these arguments are themselves an important contribution to how the consensus lives.”

“Does that imply,” Saphienne wondered, “that who is treated as an elf can change?”

“Were it not laid down in the ancient ways, yes.”

Saphienne’s breath silently caught.

“And yet,” Nelathiel went on, having not noticed the effect of her words on Saphienne, “you asked if elves could be denied their being, and I said yes. There is a rite to declare someone no longer an elf, and no longer subject to the ancient ways. The person becomes anathema – detested, loathed, condemned to exclusion – and their name is unspoken in society, even struck from historical record.” The priest mistook Saphienne’s silence for concern, and her gaze shone with reassurance. “This is not done lightly! It happens very rarely, and only to true and unrepentant apostates.”

With a shiver, Saphienne stirred. “…What makes someone an apostate? Lack of belief in the gods?”

Another laugh answered her. “Gods witness me, no! Whether or not you believe doesn’t change their existence. Many elves question the existence of the gods… and, privately?” She stepped closer, her voice lowering. “Many spirits do as well. But this knowledge is private to those of us who have come to know the spirits of the woodlands as individuals. Most elves know them as servants of the gods — which is true, in the sense that we, too, serve the gods with them.”

“Then, if not a matter of belief…”

“An apostate,” Nelathiel explained, “is one who renounces the ancient ways through their deeds. It is not enough to fail to uphold them, or to dispute their interpretation; an apostate has to actively oppose and reject them through their deliberate, significant actions. And you, especially, mustn’t worry,” she insisted, “because until you’re taught the ancient ways in full, you cannot be an apostate.”

She was silent.

Uneasy, not sure how to read her, the priest bowed and stepped back to the statue. “Anyone declared an apostate forfeits their place in elven life, and is no longer an elf… but, even then, there will be some who still see them as elves, who acknowledge them in that way privately. So long as the ancient ways are upheld, including by performative speech, such private opinions can be ignored.”

“But,” Saphienne asked, passion showing, “are they true? Which is true: the opinion of the majority, or of the individual?”

“Truth emerges from whence we place our faith.” Wryly amused, she nodded to the idol. “I don’t mean faith in the gods, necessarily. Whatever we invest our trust and faith into shapes what we believe to be true. We don’t choose the truth… but in choosing what we abide in, and in whom we trust, we are choosing the truth of the world.”

Then the priest faced her god, and she raised up her hands in supplication, and her low voice grew in majesty as she spoke. “Oh Lord of the Endless Hunt, I beseech You: bear witness to the truth I now share with this child.” Invocation complete, she knelt and pressed her horns to the ground, then addressed Saphienne, still kneeling. “What you behold before you is no mere statue: this icon of Our Lord embodies His presence. To look upon His icon is to look upon Him. The symbol is His presence.”

Saphienne slowly stood. “Because your faith tells you so.”

“But you can see,” she asked, sitting up, “how what is symbolic is also practical? All words are symbols for meaning, but beyond that, symbols embody meaning, and meaning we accept determines what is practical — what is necessary, or frivolous. Symbols are not just poetic ways to teach, but are paths to engaging directly with whatever they convey.”

Recognising that Nelathiel was trying to share, Saphienne tried in turn to be diplomatic. “I understand how a priest finds symbolism so important.”

Chuckling, Nelathiel tilted her head to Saphienne, though her eyes remained on her god. “Have you never been given a gift by a friend? Flowers, perhaps? Did the sight of them, the scent and touch of them — did they not impart the meaning of your friendship, even when your friend wasn’t present?”

Then, stirred by the revelation, Saphienne could feel the pouch in her pocket grow heavy, could taste the copper of the coin it cradled. Her heart ached, and her eyes watered, and she suddenly understood that symbols were not abstract, but entirely real, underpinning all of life.

The priest glanced her way, seeing her unshed tears, and behind the thick face paint Nelathiel’s expression softened. “Now you understand. Calling a spirit to attend is symbolic, but the performance of that symbol affirms the ancient ways by embodying their purpose, and in doing so gives a practical lesson in the nature of our faith.” She returned to her feet. “I will invoke one now.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Earlier, Saphienne would have interrupted. Were she not so tired – had the day, and the days before not been so much – then she might have had the will to resist. But she was overcome, and it was all she could do to wipe at her eyes and pull her outer robe tighter around her shoulders, resigning herself to whatever awaited in her bittersweet grief.

She felt for the coin, and understood why she held it so tightly.

* * *

The calling of the spirit was very different from how Almon had invoked Hyacinth. No circle was made upon the grass, though Saphienne – recovering her calm through intellectual distraction – noted that the area around and before the icon was circular, the boundary demarcated by carefully arranged offerings. So too, the spell that Nelathiel cast didn’t take the form of arcane whispers and mysterious gestures, but was embodied through a prayer she spoke around as she threw wide her arms and swayed.

“Oh gods of the woodlands,” called the priest, “hear your servant! Bone cries out in need: whose winds will answer? Come now you faithful, kin of wood and kith of bloom: in this shrine a priest awaits you! Tread the trod, stride the way — join your song to dance!”

Yellow light faintly glimmered around her, and she stepped back, leaving an outline of herself upon the air. Lowering her hands, she bowed to the icon and then to her magical silhouette, retreating beside Saphienne to wait.

Which, as the minutes passed, increasingly surprised Nelathiel. “…They are usually much quicker to attend.”

Nervous, Saphienne disguised her hope with a question. “Could they be busy?”

“It’s possible.” She tried to crack her fingers again, then gave up and clasped her hands, twirling her thumbs around each other in distraction. “Yesterday, the spirit I often walk with was urgently called away. She reassured me all was well… but I spoke to other priests, and we all had similar interruptions.” She shrugged. “The spirits can be… private. There are parts of their existence that they avoid trying to explain.”

“…Because it’s difficult?”

The priest nodded. “That’s what I believe. They will speak when asked, but I can tell when they’re struggling to find a way to translate their experiences into Elfish — experiences that aren’t based in the world of forms are tricky. Metaphor can only take us so far.”

Curious, Saphienne thought about the glimpses she’d stolen when she plunged into the depths of Hyacinth’s being. “Do we have experiences that they struggle with?”