Chapter Fifteen
Dalrosse in the Cottage of the White Rose.
Xhanu, the high wasp, struggled up from the
crushed bodies of Han and the Bede. The
insect was a pre-cognitive creature, despite the anguish she felt and the hurt
of her injuries, the High Wasp’s heart rejoiced that the maiden, Marayela had
not rode with them when the ravens attacked.
Trying to test her injuries, she tried to lift a wing; yes it was badly damaged,
yet in silent pain she flew to Marayela’s abode.
A diminutive creature, unlike any she had seen
before was talking to the woman. As
Xhanu approached, he noticed the Crow. The
Crow told Dalrosse to Shush,
‘Listen,
the crow said. Let me tell you the Story
of Shaneal. How she loved to speak the
language of the Birds, but her Father was cruel, and her guards inhuman. And so
to keep her without friends and to languish with no hope, she was locked into
the high tower of Demerol. Her father
had promised Shaneal a bridegroom, an aged prince with who he would
return with once the latest war was over.
Night
after night her loneliness increased and she spent long times weeping, yet one
night to her absolute surprise a crow tap-tapped upon her icy window. Eventually she forced the window open and let
in the crow, who had been her greatest friend when she had wandered in the
summer gardens of Demerol.
“How
please I am to see you. Where have you
been,” she chittered and chattered like a baby robin about how she had missed
him and all her other friends.
“Oh,
shut up Shaneal. We have to get out of
here.”
“And
how on earth are we going to do that?”
The Crow
flew to her shoulder and said with a laugh. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Beneath
him, in what seemed an instant Shaneal transformed with beak and wing into a
youthful blackbird. Together the crow
with the blackbird beside him escaped Demerol, a rainbow encircled them and
together they dived into the tidalverse.”
As the crow silenced Xhanu landed beside
them. Marayela did not at first notice
the High Wasp, her mind distracted by the thought that so long ago her mother
had told her the story of Shaneal, before she went away to the happy land
beyond the unwritten sea. Slowly she returned from her reverie and saw how
hideously Xhanu had been hurt. Xhanu, as if instructed by the truly sublime 605
and the power of the Author’s incantation was filled her with new
strength. She ordered Marayela onto her
back and the boy thing. Her last journey
for the creature required the fruit of the Red Rose and though the mountains of
the Demense were high, he would have to help them escape.
The crow was silent.
Marayela got to her feet and walked away from
her home. There before her was the crushed corpse of the Bede, yet on Han’s
face a smile, a look of glee in his open eyes as if the death he had found was
the death that he had sought and if he still lived laughter would assuredly issue from his
mouth. The maiden knelt beside Han’s corpse and it seemed a lifetime of unshed
tears fell from like the deluge of rain each day in the Demense. Secreted in
her pocket what was left of the Rose distillate she removed, unplugged the stopper
and drank deeply until the phial was empty.
Slowly her tears diminished and she thought of Shaneal and the blackbird
and it seemed to her that she had lived only days in the Demense, she imagined
the flight of the blackbird and despite her broken heart, a laughter of wings
came upon her and she decided that she would leave the Demense for good.
“We must go.” Dalrosse said.
Tentatively Dalrosse and Marayela were lifted
upon the High Wasp’s back and they flew to the Red Rose. Dalrosse took his knife, cut a sapling, and
took two or three bulbs as the wasp painfully rose to the uppermost point of
the rose.
Anger filled The Maiden. I will not stay here. I know Dalrosse’s design and oh my Xhanu,
take us one last journey to The Cottage of the White Rose. An so with the Shouel and the maid to no man ruled rose over the
dismal mountains of Pallion, the crow always abreast of them heading to Cottage
over the city of Peth and swiftly beyond the Garden of Strainval.
Thirty three tiaga away in the White Rose
cottage the Janitor stared tranquilly out of the window. He seemed to be waiting, and while he waited,
the knife his father had given him stabbed between his splayed fingers time
after time after time. After a long time of watching from his well spruced
windows he saw the beautiful Marayela approach clutching tighter to the
shoulders of the Omelyn on the back of a High Wasp. Unable to fly any longer, Xhanu fell, in a slow
motion descent as she thought of her little ones soon to be born and fly where
no Bede of harsh men would rule them.
With them on her back she fell into Death and Slumber. Dalrosse and the girl
tumbled from her back onto the shortly mowed lawn of the garden bedside the
cottage.
Inside the Janitor put away his knife, hefted a
smile on his grim face and went to meet them he came to the door he hid put the
bloody contusions on his fingers deep into his pocket and thought:
‘Visitors and such a good day I was having.’
Chapter Sixteen
THE FALLS OF SHANEAL
The moment Shaneal reached the shore of the island
she collapsed under the weight of the King as if the strength in her body had
been banished from her. The breathless Phytomonger dripped drops of water upon
her. He laughed, as did the king. Kren kicked her prone body. King Loor said:
‘I don’t know why, but Plan C always works.’
‘Do you want me to kill her?’
‘Oh, you ridiculous man. Get me out of the
sand. Of course I don’t want you to kill
her. Carry her to Demorel. Yeric’s breaths kill her.’
Shaneal was slung over Kren’s shoulder, and he
kept pace with the king as if filled with Shaneal’s psybotic strength. On his
hoveboots the King’s pace was quick and soon they saw the tower, Demerol. It
rose from the jungle that covered the island. Its structure seemed chained in a
sea of green. They went on pushing passed countless strands of vines and creeping
branches feeling no hurt in them, as they stared up enamoured by the tower
reaching almost a tiaga high.
Into
Demerol’s bright white marble shimmer in the new sun they fought through to the
courtyard, crowded with vegetation that it seemed sunk in a quick sand of
creeping green.
Shaneal in the topmost of the tower had no
memory of Tasen, or the cruel slave driver, or even of Delgdreth and her
childhood. The door was mainly locked an
iron strong door barred her room like a safe, her cell, despite its fine furnishings
and warmth.
It seemed for a hundred days she slept. The King
kissed her into wakefulness.
‘O sweet so long I’ve been away I have almost
forget the sound of your voice. Sing to me again; sing me once more in my dreams’
She laughed. She got out of bed, blew out the
candle and quickly dressed.
Anxiously she asked.
‘Is your fellow officer coming to Demorel?’
‘Yes my sweet.
He is the lord of Opydamea across the wandering width of the Sunbourne Sea.
His dolphins have raced him here to meet
you. Put on your finery.’ Before he left her alone he added sternly.
‘Be ready when Drendunde arrives.’
Before she got ready for sleep, she heard a tap
on her window, then two more taps. The Crow was there. Excitedly she opened the
window and in he flew. ‘Has your new suitor arrived, I hear that Drendunde paid
Loor well for you to be his Lady.’
He flew on her shoulder. ‘Is there anything to eat?’
With the touch of the Crow on her shoulder Shaneal was aware of a momentary déjà-vu.
Mere seconds were faceted of quarter memories of her cavorting about the flames
with Aflarien, about a bonfire lain on one of nighttimes dark beaches about
Lake Leme. Dalrosse rose to join them as the bonfire grew higher and the stars
brighter. The three, Shouel, woman, man took each other’s hands. Dalrosse’s
grip and tiny hands held his step- kin’s and as if that night had never ended
together they danced on as the sun flowered over Ashenmoire. They danced until exhaustion finally took
them and they curled about each on the warm sands until midday. In unison they
were mesmerised by the blue beyond blue they looking out on the golden waters
of Lake Leme. Shaneal splashed water onto her night crusted eyes in the sweet
water and walked toward the receding tide.
She awoke walking once more in her high
apartment in the tall tower of Demorel, bitter, dank and drunk with despair.
She thought of her suitor, Drendunde and her chest quailed. She knew he was old; at least sixty and that
he had been lured here by the greed of Loor.
Her Father, the King who had long coveted the vast peninsula of
Opaydaemia. She also knew if Drendunde took her as wife she would live until
death in a half life of loveless contempt.
The Crow though cawed from his perch on her
shoulder.
Shaneal was delighted at the song of the
crow. She thought she would practice his
speech.
‘I’ve missed you so much and all the other
birds too, before I was banished from the garden. You know I do not want to
marry so stop teasing. Yet I have no choice,’ she sang with melancholy. ‘There
is no escape.’
The Crow laughed. ‘You haven’t seen anything
yet.’
He lifted off her shoulder, she felt herself
get thinner, her lips grew a bill, her arms transformed into a blackbird wings,
she flew in ecstasy all about the room sniffing at the flowers and perching on
a bowl of fruit.
‘Come on,’ the Crow said. ‘We’d better get going.’
‘Where’
He sighed as only crows do. ‘How many hundreds
of times do I have to explain?’
He went to the window and Shaneal flew beside
him.
In silence they flew into the night, and were
soon far from Demorel and on the edge of the Sunbourne Sea. They needed no sleep
and by morning they were in Menerth.
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