CHAPTER 70 – Into the Light

Before Saphienne and Hyacinth hid the tracks left by the goblins, they took their time meticulously studying the scene. Any mistake that made the Wardens of the Wilds suspicious could have dire consequences, and Saphienne refused to be caught through another careless oversight — never again.

Fortunately, though goblins were denser than elves, they weighed so little that they only left footprints when rushing. While there were countless impressions on the grass around the offering trees, the sole trail led away from the shrine.

“That, I can cover.” Hyacinth was confident. “Elsewhere, what needs done?”

Careful not to leave any tracks of her own, Saphienne followed the goblins, noticing strands of yellow cloth caught on the underside of a briar. She retrieved it and continued further on — then laughed, immediately finding an entire square of the same fabric discarded on the dry grass.

She carried both scraps back to the icon, there to stare up into the golden eyes that watched her expectantly.

“Hyacinth,” she silently asked, “are you still able to shape the flowers that are on my head? Could you grow a body from them?”

“A body small?” The bloomkith giggled. “You would make me a running goblin, short and fierce and sharp of tooth?”

Saphienne snorted. “Not quite. I just need something that can leave an impression like their footprints.”

Ponderous uncertainty rippled out from Hyacinth and through Saphienne. “…Perhaps I could bend wood…”

“I thought you could only shape hyacinth flowers?”

“‘Tis hard, in truth. The less alike my blooms, the harder done…” The spirit tilted Saphienne’s head to survey the area around the icon, parting her lips in a smile. “But lie we do within a shrine, ‘neath sun! Repair the bounds, and here I may then find the magic, pure, that nourishes my kind.”

Nudging Hyacinth, Saphienne reasserted control of her body. “You’re supposed to ask my permission — this hardly counts as protecting me.”

In the field of their minds the flowers blushed pink. “Has danger not drawn near?”

“You’re forgiven.” Saphienne wondered if other elves who often shared their bodies with woodland spirits slid into such easy familiarity…

Hyacinth was sharing her thoughts. “Holly says so; much trust is needed. Priests sometimes let go of formal rite, when friendly spirits ask.”

“She and Nelathiel did seem close…” She cast her eye over the sacred grounds, seeking the means by which a circle had been made before the icon. “Hyacinth? I don’t see the boundary.”

Mischievously, the spirit pressed forward in reply — pointedly asking permission to move her head. Saphienne rolled her glowing eyes before she let the bloomkith refocus them, whereupon she was made to look up at the boughs of the offering trees surrounding the shrine, seeing there the intertwined limbs that formed the circle she sought.

“…I thought it had it to be made on the ground.” Her gaze travelled from branch to branch, each tied to the next with loops of amber ribbon. “That was a foolish assumption, now that I think about it. I’m guessing the goblins broke it when they–”

Near where a corner of the canopy had been cut down, one of the thinnest branches had snapped — and was now dangling from the ribbon tied to its neighbour.

“…Fuck me.” She glanced down at the impractical gown she was wearing. “It’ll be a miracle if I don’t tear this while climbing.”

She felt the spirit’s amusement. “Take care you must… or naked do the task?”

Already unclasping her cloak, Saphienne paused to consider–

“I jest!” Hyacinth guffawed and hugged her. “You are too young to wildling walk.”

She tossed her cloak onto the grass and muttered as she rolled back her long sleeves and knotted up her hem. “It’s not like you don’t know how I look without clothes on…”

But the Hyacinth who mirrored Saphienne only stuck her tongue out, changing her petals to blend into the melting snow.

 

* * *

 

Balancing precariously, Saphienne held the broken branch in place to complete the circle while Hyacinth retreated into her floral crown. She felt the blooms stir, another blossom budding off and tumbling twenty feet down to the forest floor — where Hyacinth quickly took root, planting nourishing bulbs in the soil.

The spirit extended her tendrils to the base of the tree on which Saphienne perched, unnatural hyacinth vines twining up and around the bark as she sought purchase. A moment later Saphienne wobbled as the bough beneath her feet creaked, and she nearly fell as it rapidly grew green wood around the break — grafting the limb back together.

Then an overhead branch twisted with a groan, and Saphienne grinned at the incongruous, footed walking stick that the spirit had shaped for her.

 

* * *

 

As Hyacinth departed upon the wind and went sweeping through the woods, Saphienne slid down the trunk and sat heavily — spitting out the stick she had held between her teeth.

On closer examination? The foot was a poor likeness. Although the right size, the webbed toes were improperly spaced apart and too symmetrical; there was no way a Warden of the Wilds would be deceived by its prints.

Not unless…

She closed her eyes. “Fuck me.”

 

* * *

 

By the time Saphienne was done with her craft singing, not a single bird remained within two hundred yards.

 

* * *

 

Eventually a very large badger lumbered into the glade, thoroughly confused to be awake during the daytime. The beast stared mutely at Saphienne with yellow eyes before rearing up and waving its claws, then sank down and snuffled northward, beginning the tedious work of digging up the tracks the goblins had left behind.

She took this to mean Hyacinth had matters in hand — or at least in paw.

With thread, cloth, and retrieved shards of honeycomb in hers, Saphienne hefted the resculpted walking stick and went westward. She gauged the stride of a sprinting goblin and made partial impressions in the dirt, careful to leave only single toes and scuffed markings so as not to reveal that all were made by the same foot.

When she was a little way outside the shrine, she scattered the honeycomb.

When she encountered a thicket, she snapped twigs and caught the thread on them.

When she was all the way down the slope, she dropped the cloth into the stream.

Then she waded through the water for a quarter of a mile, picturing how the phantom goblins had swam and scrambled so as to leave intermittent marks along the banks wherever they went, until she was confident the false trail was made.

She signed her work with a single, perfect footprint in the mud.

 

* * *

 

A doe was foraging next to the shrine when Saphienne sloshed her way back to the crest of the hill, and the deer watched her until she was sure the elf was hornless, at which point she went back to grazing.

Hyacinth had added hoofprints to the scene.

Taking her shoes off and laying them out to dry, Saphienne borrowed the sickle from the icon to hack apart the incriminating end of the walking stick; she concealed the pieces in her cloak’s pocket and hurled the remainder as far into the southern bushes as she could. This accomplished, she smoothed out her dress and sat cross-legged before the shrine to think very hard about exactly what she would say.

Before long, a fox came to lope back and forth around her.

 

* * *

 

Once they were reunited in her body before the icon, Saphienne wasted no time laying out her lies to Hyacinth. “We need to coordinate our story about what happened when we got here, and what we did afterward. I’ve gone over events in detail.”

“Then I shall listen close,” replied the bloomkith, “and you shall talk.”

“We should change as little as possible. Everything happened exactly as it happened — right up until I startled the goblins. That was when you took control, and you grabbed the sickle that was lying on the grass to our left; but the goblins were already fleeing back the way we came from.”

“And what about your ring? What happened there?”

She sighed aloud as she replied within. “A lie would be too risky: we have to admit they took it. One of the goblins was carrying off the scales; I dropped the sickle to give chase, and ended up holding one end while the goblin clung on to the other. The ring slipped free when I fell into the stream — and the goblin ran off with it.”

Where they sat side-by-side on the library steps the bloomkith hugged her. “Your dignity is offering most fair.”

“It explains how I got soaked. Anyway,” she pressed on, “I cleaned the implements and returned them to the icon, and then we fixed the broken boundary. You found shaping the tree far more difficult than you expected, and mending the branch took until now.”

Hyacinth deflated against her. “Teased I will be, for artless shall I look.”

“Didn’t you just say that dignity is a sacrifice worth making?”

“Did I complain?” The bloomkith tutted, mild ire expressed in her near-rhyme. “Away with your rebuke.”

Saphienne knew she was only anxious. “Have I missed anything?”

“Their scent,” Hyacinth noted, less testily, “which musk of beast has covered well.”

“Then now…”

They gazed as one beyond the goddess, to where the protectorate awaited.

“…There’s nothing else for us to do but find the wardens, and tell our lie.” She felt daunted by the challenge — and thrilled. “We better hope we’re convincing enough that they don’t call upon a diviner to examine what happened.”

“My faith in us is strong,” Hyacinth reassured them both. “We left no tell.”

Saphienne wryly smiled up at Our Lady of the Balanced Scales. “I pray you’re right.”

Yet the snowfall upon the bloomkith’s field increased as she shifted away, eyeing Saphienne as the flakes settled all across her flowers. She said nothing; she withheld herself.

Being unable to fully discern what her friend was thinking or feeling made Saphienne apprehensive. “Are you worried we’ll be found out?”

There was vulnerability in what Hyacinth shared. “Never again might I depart these lands. ‘Tis rare for blooms like I to be allowed. I would that we should touch the earth with hand,” she admitted, “and go into the light with heads unbowed.”

A delicate, sentimental smile had crept onto Saphienne’s lips. “You want to walk with me again… in case we never get another chance…”

Hyacinth looked down.

What else was there to say? Saphienne physically thrust her feet into her still-wet shoes, and as she stood in body she grasped in mind the spirit she had come to care for, and fell into springtime as she strolled toward the fields.

 

* * *

 

There is a poem my father wrote, a poem that I believe captures in full what Saphienne-Hyacinth felt as she emerged from the woodlands. I will quote this fragment from memory:

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun…

Do not ask me to explain it to you. He has long gone along the ruddy shore, and elves leave no footprints to follow.

 

* * *

 

Through a field of winter barley that stood on the threshold of summer gold she roved wordless and wistful and wise to the currents of herself. The long green grain swept back and forth across her shins in sensual caress, while the wind that willed it move carried clouds in procession with her footfalls. Though the earth was dry the air was moist and rich upon her tongue, and she breathed free of the pollen that had poured out the boughs across all the springs she had lived.

The heavens in her eyes were more than clear.

And though the day was alive with the rustle of the crop and the moan of the wind there was a silence upon her unlike any she had ever heard, shapeless where it spread out around her, vast and unfamiliar. Saphienne-Hyacinth knew then what was meant by open sky, for she had at last beheld the world unshaped by the echoes of the woodlands.

So onward she went, and went on forever, until arose the sight of a hill and a tree.

 

* * *

 

Saphienne wished she could have ignored the figures she saw — yearned to keep on walking with Hyacinth. And even without the unity of thought and feeling they had just shared, she still would have known that the bloomkith felt the same way.

“…Humans…”

They both said the word at the same time; and both with the same groan; and both shared the same laughter at each other, along with themselves.

Neither held anything against the girls sitting up ahead. They were only sad that encountering other people had brought their communion to an end, forcing them to face the world apart. For all the elf and the spirit were still shallowly touching, they were now individuals once more.

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Hyacinth stretched toward her flowers. “Take off the choker golden, if you please.”

“Must I?” Her fingers brushed the metal. “And must you go? Wouldn’t it be fun to amaze them a little?”

“Do not make them afraid,” the bloomkith urged her. “Set them at ease.”

“I won’t…” She nevertheless pried the jewellery from her neck and slipped it into her pocket beside the chunks of wood. “I don’t intend to scare them. I want to talk.”

“Then to your brow I shall depart, mellow…” Hyacinth withdrew into the flower crown with a parting verse. “…To trade out clashing blue — for kind yellow.”

While she was unable to see them change, Saphienne was pleased to feel the petals shiver as they altered their hue. She had been dismayed by how the blue might look with the forest greens and silver she was dressed in, having wanted to ask for a warmer colour against her brown hair. Again she wished that she had a mirror, and resolved that she would ask Hyacinth to bestow another crown on her when the festival arrived… assuming they hadn’t been declared apostates by the time of the summer solstice.

She tried not to think about that as she went up the hill.

The humans she’d seen were sat under a rowan tree, the younger girls gathered in a semicircle around the eldest, who was reading to them in another language that Saphienne hadn’t encountered. As she approached them she listened and let herself be lulled, enjoying the heady consonance that sounded so different from Elfish.

“…Je ne suis pas fier, mais je suis heureux, et le bonheur aveugle, je crois, encore plus que la fierté…”

Though she only had Felipe to reference, Saphienne estimated that the girl reading was older than her — perhaps Celaena’s age. The double-layered dresses that the dozen girls were wearing struck Saphienne as modest, too heavy for the heat outside the shade, and the speaker had covered her hair with a mantle that draped down across her shoulders in woad blue, matched to the long sleeves and hem beneath her outer, dull red fabric.

The youngest of the girls was perhaps seven or eight years old, and the way she hung on every word told Saphienne she was listening to a story. The others ranged in age between her and the storyteller, and the older girls took more enjoyment from lazing in the sunshine than from the tale.

One of them rolled her head toward Saphienne — and sat up in a hurry. “Une elfe!”

In an instant the spell cast by the narrative was broken, and the human girls all leapt to their feet and spun toward Saphienne, instinctually crowding together as though to seek safety in numbers. Yet their expressions were not fearful, only astonished, tinged with worry as they glanced back and forth between her and each other.

Arriving before them, Saphienne brought her hands together–

And was surprised when the girls all bowed.

The eldest stepped forward, coughing nervously. “We are sorry for intruding,” she said in slightly mispronounced Elfish. “We did not know we were too close to the forest.”

Saphienne studied her wide, blue eyes, which were far less clear and colourful than the gazes of elves. The others were blue or grey, or brown like Felipe; she saw no green to pair with her own. “Good afternoon; your Elfish is very good.” She smiled what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Thank you.” Being complimented had the opposite effect than intended, and the girl clutched the book against her chest. “I brought the others here. Please do not be angry with them — the mistake was mine.”

Saphienne decided then and there that she would make the girls relax and smile, whatever she had to do. “You are not too close to the forest,” she promised as she walked toward the tree. “I’m not here because you have done something wrong. I’m here because something strange has happened, and I need your help.”

The group had backed away from her as she drew near, and turned as one to watch her sit on the roots where the eldest among them had been sitting. Not all were confident with Elfish, and a shorter girl whispered an urgent question, to which two others replied with what Saphienne assumed was a translation.

Having digested the news, the eldest girl took a wary step toward Saphienne. “I would be happy to help you…”

“Good.” Saphienne unclasped her cloak and let it fall back. “You can answer some simple questions. You have a home not far from here?”