Saebrya

“Just leave us alone, okay?” Saebrya said. She ducked to grab Ryan by the wrists and started hauling him to his feet. It would have been a monumental task had a tiny aspen sprig not grown into a bower beneath him, lifting him up to the horse and depositing him gently across its back. Saebrya actually pulled away, then, because she could no more break the veoh coursing through that tree than she could chop the sapling down with her hand, and it unnerved her beyond words, reminding her of the sippers.

She was about to take Ryan and go when she realized that the bed had crawled out the front door of the hut, carrying the second boy. Reluctantly, not wanting to make her escape any more complicated than it already was, and yet knowing she would be unable to forgive herself if she left him behind, she went to get another horse.

Realizing that she intended to leave with his prizes, the Auld tried to step forward, but was blocked by a sudden growth of limbs and shoots, like the bars of a cell. “You can’t!” he cried. There was a desperation to his voice that she had never heard from a grown man before. “Please. Those boys. They’re all I have left.”

Saebrya could not believe the arrogance of those words. “I don’t know who you think you are, but Ryan doesn’t belong to you. Neither does this kid, or I’m a perfumed cow patty.” The old fart looked to be eighty, at least—definitely not capable of fathering a young teenager.

“Stay and we can talk,” the old man pleaded, sounding desperate. “Your friend—he’s too important to go back to your village. He needs my protection. He’s special.”

Saebrya snorted. “So special he needs to be tied to a post in your hut?”

“He’s all that’s left!” the Auld cried.

“Uh-huh,” Saebrya said. “And what about this other kid? He’s all you’ve got left, too? You in the habit of collecting young boys?”

The Auld looked like she had hit him. “You don’t understand. They’re my family, and our enemies killed the rest! They’re the only two I managed to save. I have to keep them safe.”

Saebrya felt her heart stutter at the word ‘family’ and she had to glance at Ryan to make sure he hadn’t heard. If he had any idea he was royalty, he would leave his meager existence with her at the inn and never come back.

“Ryan’s not your family.” She bent back to her task of stabilizing the unconscious teenager on the horse.

“He needs to be trained!” the Auld cried. “Please, I need to train him. He’s powerful enough…he could kill himself with a thought.”

Remembering Ryan’s ethereal silver body clenching a fist and making the forest dance, Saebrya said, “I don’t think he wants your training.”

“It’s not your decision!” the Auld screamed. “He’s my blood.”

Saebrya glanced at the aspens, which seemed to have encircled the man like a fence. “I think it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want your help.”

The Auld blinked at her, then at the aspens. “Please,” he whimpered. The old man had tears on his cheeks. “Please don’t take the boys. I will do anything. My nephew and my grandson. They’re all the family I have. Everyone else is dead. Our whole family is dead, and they will come for them, too.”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you kidnapped them from their homes and treated them like cutpurses,” Saebrya said, refusing to feel bad. She took the horses’ reins and started to lead them into the woods. She was half-afraid that the aspens would try to stop her like they had the Auld, but the trees actually parted to make a path for them.

“You see veoh, don’t you?” the Auld called to her, frantic.

Saebrya paused, her back to the old man.

At her hesitation, the Auld quickly went on, “You were born the same day as your friend.”

That made Saebrya freeze. Though she hadn’t been able to confirm, it had seemed like she and Ryan had been born around the same week of the same year, if not the same day.

“You travel between the realms,” the man continued. “You can cut through spells like they were made of smoke.”

“Water,” Saebrya blurted, turning to face him. “Like strands of water.” She felt herself opening up to the hope—the desperation—that this man understood what was wrong with her.

The Auld’s eyes widened slightly. “I can help you, girl.” His words were hasty, eager. “I am the oldest Auld alive. The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve researched—I can explain it to you. Just stay, and help me save the boys—your boy, in particular—from dangers they can’t even begin to imagine.”

Saebrya felt something in her chest begin to ache. More than anything, she wanted to know what made her so different from others. Yet she couldn’t help but wonder where the trick was, what the Auld wanted in return…

“Why did the sippers get pulled north two weeks ago?” she asked, rubbing the cuts on her arms that were only now starting to heal into scars. “What was that storm all about?”

The Auld blinked at her. “Sippers?”

“The ones who eat people like you,” Saebrya said. When the old man’s fuzzy eyebrows pulled together in a frown, she amended, “Not you, but they eat the stuff that comes out of you. Why did they all get pulled north with the wind? It swept all the liquid from the land and sent it up the Idorion. Was it headed here? Did you do it somehow?”

The old man gave her a look of total incomprehension, and Saebrya felt that brief hope that he could help her die, replaced with the grim certainty that, despite his promises, the Auld really didn’t understand. “Never mind,” she whispered.

“You’re asking me about a storm?” he pressed, sounding confused. “There’s been no storm.”

“There was,” Saebrya snapped. “You just didn’t feel it. Nobody did but me.” Not that that was unusual in the slightest. She turned to go.

“No, wait,” the Auld insisted. “You saw veoh get pulled north? North as in towards Ariod? How much of it?”

Saebrya blinked at the obviousness of the question. “All of it.”

The Auld’s face went slack, then he glanced north. “But that’s not possible. The Auldhunds are watching the—”

“Of course it’s not possible,” Saebrya snapped. “I’m hallucinating. That’s why I can break your spells.” Disgustedly, she grabbed the two horses’ reins and started walking again.

“That boy—no, all three of you—” the Auld cried, “—need protection. If what you just said is true, someone found a way into the…” He seemed to shake himself. “There’s a war starting, and I am the only one who can protect you. If you think you can go back to your quiet lives in your quaint river village, you’re deluding yourself, girl. You will have no refuge, no safe place. The Auldhunds killed all the Auldzwin in the fall of Ariod, and Auldheist and Auldbluut were hunted like animals. They exterminated them, and they’re sworn to prevent them from ever inhabiting this realm again. They find you, the Dyrian Brotherhood will die to a man to kill you.”

Seeing the earnestness in his face, Saebrya got a chill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The Aulds will come after you, too,” he insisted. “Even if they don’t know the truth of what you are, just the feel of the boy’s veoh will be enough. The Spyre will do anything to get rid of you, you understand? Believe me when I say that I am your only ally in this world, girl, and you’re going to need all the allies you can get.”

The passion with which the old man said it made Saebrya’s heart hammer, wondering if it was the truth. For long minutes, logic warred with fear in her mind and heart. She had no doubt that somewhere out there, people wanted Ryan dead.

And yet, aside from one desperate old Auld who’d bound her friend like a thief and spirited him and some other boy into the great forest against their will, she’d seen no one but merchants traveling the Idorion. The most interesting parts of her life had been Ryan’s bi-weekly visits and the rare days when she caught a new type of fish.

And Saebrya liked it that way.

She wanted, she realized, nothing more than to have that quiet life that she and Ryan had discussed, him running the inn, her keeping the tavern stocked with fish, the world quietly passing them by as they grew old and died in the same town they were born. She dreaded the conflict she knew the Auld represented.

Deep down, she dreaded war.

“Sorry,” Saebrya said, turning to go. “Please don’t follow us.”

Behind her, the Auld made a horrible sound that would haunt Saebrya’s dreams afterwards, and when she turned back to look, he was on his knees, clinging to the aspens imprisoning him. “Please don’t take my family,” he whispered, just loud enough to hear.

Seeing that, Saebrya hesitated. She considered going back, asking him why Ryan was in danger, and from whom, specifically, but she knew it might give the Auld the opening he needed to take Ryan back. Besides, she had no idea how long the aspens would remain helpful to her—she had heard that Auld enchantments only lasted a few minutes—and she wasn’t willing to risk giving them the time to fail.

With the Auld’s desperate pleas at her back, Saebrya began navigating the aspen grove that opened before her, allowing her passage like a living, moving maze. Steeling herself, taking a tight hold on the two horses’ leads, she led them through the trees that seemed to shine with their own inner light.

On the back of his horse, Ryan mumbled something about pork roasts and meat pies.

Please don’t let him remember, Saebrya thought, looking at her unconscious friend’s face. Please let everything go back to the way it was.