Beginnings

I read this the other day and found several edits that needed doing. I fixed them and then wrote a new chapter for Aftermath. I find the little bits of information Una tosses out to be amusing to say the least. There is one point that I will argue with him on, is that Vera could not be a Whisper. But as Una has never been a Whisper, I doubt that he would understand the full happenings of it and it's his point of view. Just because he's the story teller doesn't mean he has to be absolutely right.

Coming up on a chapter (perhaps two) that I absolutely love. One for its honesty, the other for the delightful look that must have been on Una's face at the time.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




When the servant returned, some time later, Vera and she helped me from the bed. I had very little strength of my own and leaned heavily on them both. The fact that I was naked did not allude me, but I was too weak to care. In the room outside the sick room the servant had closed up all the doors and lit a few candles. Enough to light the way, but not enough to catch a glimpse of myself in the reflected surfaces I passed. Polished metal, nothing more, it would have been a distorted view at best, but it was still a view.

I was eased into a large stone basin. Never, at any point, did I ask where the baths drained to or how the servants filled them so quickly. It was not my place and to this day, should I mention the workings of the temple, the underground things and the odd little things, Vera will sniff and call in some servant who finds some excuse to spill something on me.

Vera, skirts and corset and tangled hair, stepped into the bath beside me and washed me. No one had touched me naked since my mother when I was just a babe. Being touched, even for something as innocent as a wash, sent spikes of fear through my limbs. I wanted to crawl away but hadn’t the energy to do even such a small thing. So I ‘allowed’ Vera to wash me. I allowed her and the servant to dry and then dress me.

At Vera’s insistence I was settled onto a short wooden bench by a battered table. A work table. The next morning I would realise this when I awoke, but at that time all I saw was the food. And I hadn’t eaten in six days. Vera moved away from me and washed quickly. She adorned herself in a white robe, having dried herself, and her servant braided her long black hair. She settled beside me as I stared at the food. I wanted to feed myself but my mother had taught me better than to stuff myself at the table of important people.

And this woman, with her servants and huge set of rooms, had to be very important, I told myself.

The entire time this went on, that was how I referred to Vera. This woman, the lady, that one. I prayed she was the Vera that Noran had spoken of but dared not to hope.

“My name is Vera,” she said as she settled beside me, as if reading my mind, “What is your name?”

Hungry. “Unaesios,” which is not my true name, for my true name and Vera’s true name we have told to no mortal for fear of our lives. A mortal wielding our names could lay spells upon us. But for this story, this purpose, Unaesios will do the job and means the same as my true name did.

“Owner of your own fate.”

Well… meant something along the same lines. At Vera’s words I bobbed my head. My stomach protested loudly and she sighed.

“Young men have such appetites,” and Vera paused, as I do often, as she still does, and smiled, placing three fingers over her lips to hide the smile, “Unfortunately, this is not all for you. Broth and bread is what you shall put into your body tonight and we will see how it stays down. Tomorrow, we will put some meat into the broth for you to chew on and such on down the days. We need to accustom your body to food.”

“I have eaten before.”

“Oh, no, dear boy, I am not questioning whether you have eaten before, I am questioning when the last time you ate was,” Vera paused and I shook my head, not recalling, “which is why we are going to do this. Always, after a long time without food, one must break fast with liquid and soft, soggy foods.”

I turned my full attention to the table as the servant set a bowl of dark, broth in front of me. Spices floated throughout the broth. Flavouring, healing or to cover the taste of rancid meat, I know not. The servant tore apart the mounded bread, not quite flat bread, not risen bread either. The torn off bits were piled on a plate and I picked one up and sniffed it.

“Wheat bread.”

My village still used ground corn as flour at the time. The corn had travelled so far north on the backs of merchants and then planted. What we grew was stunted compared to what others in the south grew. Each head of corn was the length of my index finger, perhaps, while in the south it was almost the length of my hand. Domestication is an ingenious thing, but so slow to take effect.

“What is wheat?”

“A grain. Like oats.”

“We feed oats to the mules.” I winced at the end of this sentence, throat hurting so much.

“People can eat oats. They almost have a sweet taste to them. And mixed with honey they are quite delightful. Cooked or dried, but,” Vera adjusted in her seat as the servant laid a platter of food before her, “we do try to only eat them cooked, better if everything is cooked, less possibility of something being wrong.”

I blinked at her, not understanding. Vera motioned to the bread and broth and waited patiently as I dipped the bread in the broth, soaking it thoroughly before taking a small bite. I was not certain I liked it. The broth seemed strongly flavoured, but the wheat bread was a lovely new sensation. Like anything that has been ground into a powder at that time, there was the odd piece of grit that had broken off the stones used for grinding. But to me the new bread tasted better than any other bread I had had before. Corn tasted bland after years of eating it.

At Vera’s urging I ate slowly though it was difficult for me at that age to slow down. My mother often commented on how I seemed to swallow my food whole. When the bread was gone, a portion that might have been half the size of my hand, I picked up the bowl and drank back the broth. Thirst drove me to do such a thing in a noisy manner. Even as I swallowed, I was certain that my throat was soaking in the moisture and easing the ache.

“Good. How large is your appetite? In general, I mean, not just right now.”

“Big. My mother once said she’d have to cook the donkey to feed just me if my appetite grew any more.” I murmured as the servant delivered a clay mug of water. This I drank without thought, though at the last gulp I knew there was something more than just water in the mug but I could not bring myself to care. When the mug was empty, I placed it back on the table without thumping it.

“Now, get you into bed. You look hollowed out and we, you and I, need to talk still.”

“Talk?” I croaked, allowing the servant to help me to my feet.

“Yes,” Vera came around the table and helped the servant move me to the large bed. Hidden by darkness, the bed was huge, a mattress made of feathers of all things. Blankets and atop it all a quilt of many colours. Vera was of the mind that nothing should ever be wasted and thus when curtains or table covers were no longer serviceable due to fraying or staining, she converted them into other things. Eventually nearly every fabric creation ended up as a patchwork quilt on one of Vera’s many beds.

Vera pulled back the blankets, down to the sheets, and motioned for me to climb in. I cringed away, recalling bites and nibbles in the middle of the night while travelling with Delune.

“No bedbugs, fresh linens, come dear boy, under the covers.” Vera murmured, motioning again.

I sat on the bed for a moment, uncertain still, before I pulled my feet up and tucked the sleeping robe I had on, down further, so that it covered all but my feet. The clean linen was marvellous against my bare feet. Clean just has this feeling. Like a cool breeze on a hot day. Vera tucked the blankets up and around me. Then I watched her walk around the bed and to the other side. She lifted the top blanket, the patchwork quilt, and climbed under it. Leaving several layers of fabric between myself and her.

“Now,” the way Vera always started her important conversations with me. Her way of saying that I had to pay attention and take this very seriously, “Tell me about your family.”

I told her about my parents, about how they had found me and my siblings and my village. She smiled the whole while until I came to a stop. I did not want to share with her how I had come to be separated from my family, from my village.

To have to relive the violation yet again was too much for me to bear.

“As it is for us,” Vera murmured, propping herself up with several pillows, “where I was born still is glorious to this day. No, no questions, just listen. You and I are very special. Until you there was only me and I have been for a good deal of time. Such a deal of time that I am quite looking forward to having another of me.

“Harella-shay calls us Mother born. Which means that we, you and I and Harella-shay, are the chosen children of Mother. Born of her, to her. The land that we settle on will bloom and become glorious under our care. That tree of yours. It will draw the people of Harella-shay, those she holds closest to her heart, and it will grow and grow and soon it will be a forest. Have you visited it since you were found?”

“Every few years my father takes me out. This year its leaves were starting to turn brown and dying on the branches.”

Vera sighed, “none have made it through the changing fever and survived. Oh, how cruel would it be to bring you through, only to lose you again. Unaesios, you and I are going to have some fun.”

My heart skipped a beat when she said that. I feared the worse, even as she smiled kindly at me.

“To find out your limits. I am beautiful and my mind is in one piece. But I have no power. You seem to be of sound mind and body. I wonder if Mother made improvements on her first child.”

“Why improve what is perfect?” I murmured in response.

To which Vera laughed, “we shall see what you can do.”

“What is power?”

“You have never heard the term before?” Vera murmured, then sighed, “I suppose not, from some backwater village that probably doesn’t even know what a horse is. Tell me, how do daemon draw people in? How do they do what they do?”

“Are we daemon?”

“No, but they use something called power. Like the force of Mother, like the crackling in the air during an electrical storm. We, you and I, are supposed to have power.”

I opened my mouth to ask the question: How do you know? But Vera held up a hand to silence me.

“I am immortal, which leads me to believe you will be immortal as well. Tomorrow morning, when the light is good and the polishing of the vases and plates are done, I will show you why I suspect that you and I will be the same. Immortal. We will not die. We can be hurt, cut and pained and harmed but we will not die. Heal we will and it is highly unlikely that you will ever scar again. You will get sick, though rarely and… well…

“You have likely noticed that the lights are too bright and the air smells worse than before. The broth tasted of the kitchen and the ground it grew in and the servant who did not wash before attending to you, like I had asked her to. The linen against your feet, can you feel every thread of it? Feel the clean and the fingers that created it, whispering over the threads still?”

As soon as Vera mentioned the fingers, I noticed it, the feeling of fingers caressing my feet. Such a feeling had come over me many times before, but always for things that I had watched my mother lovingly make for me. When I wore or touched the items she had created, I would feel the movement of her fingers across the threads, smell the unique aroma of thyme and rosemary that always seemed to cling to my mother’s hair.

“Is that feeling not new to you?”

“No.”

“You have felt it before?”

“Ka.”

“I did not feel it until after my fever. Well. We will have time to inspect you tomorrow morning. Why not close your eyes and sleep now? We can discuss more in the morning.”

“Mm?”

“Sleep.”

Vera does not have power of her own. That is what we say, she and I. And to others, it would seem that she does not. But the capability to feel where an object was made, to feel the emotions that hang on an object, is a power. The ability to look at a person and know what words to say, what touch was needed to settle a frightened mind, is a power. To tell a tired mind to sleep and be able to gently push that mind into slumber is a power.

Whisper, she would have been called, had she been born later in history. But Vera was born before that and stubbornly clings to the idea that she has no power (unless she is under the canopy of her tree) and so the people believe it. She seemed, at that time in my life, a very strange woman who was a bit mad but entirely harmless.

How foolish I was when I was that young.

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