Page 81 of Earthbound

Lettle

Lettle woke with a start. She hadn’t expected to sleep at all, but the quiet serenity of the sanctuary had lulled her into the depths of slumber. Afa slept next to her, surrounded by obeah. One was watching her with its unnerving placid gaze.

Perhaps Afa has put a spell on them? Lettle thought. She reached for Mortah’s walking stick and clutched it tight.

Afa murmured in his sleep and the sound was so like Alder, it frightened her. A sob began to claw its way up her throat and she left the moss field before she woke Afa.

She followed a trail of fireflies to a small pond, and only then did she let her tears fall.

Alder’s terrified face kept haunting her, his cheeks red from the waterfall, his eyes wide and pleading. ‘Help me,’ he’d cried.

‘I will, I promise,’ she vowed. The pond rippled with the reflection of something large. She tensed and turned round, not sure what she expected to find. After yesterday she knew anything could be possible.

‘Oh, Ajax.’ She let out a breath of relief. He saw her distress and pawed at her lap.

‘I’m all right.’ She squeezed her eyes shut, causing more tears to spill.

Ajax nudged her face, his cold nose startling her into looking at him. It elicited a small smile from her. ‘Thank you for being with me, Ajax.’ She tucked herself into his side, inhaling his familiar aroma.

I can’t believe Rayan was watching me this whole time. It should have made her angry but it didn’t; she liked that he had been with her in his own way. It proved that part of him still cared.

‘Is Rayan listening?’ she asked the obeah.

Ajax dipped his head in assent.

Though hundreds of leagues, thousands, separated them, she spoke the words she had been rehearsing in her mind since the day they had argued.

‘Rayan, I know that not being forthright about the extent of the prophecy was wrong. I didn’t think of it as a lie, but deception by omission is still deceit.’ Afa had shown her that more clearly. ‘I was too caught up in the pain and fear of knowing I would one day be the death of you. The prophecy has haunted me from the moment I gave it breath.’

She wiped at the tears that fell down her cheeks. Ajax sat unmoving, his green eyes giving nothing away of the thoughts and feelings of Rayan within.

‘I hope you can forgive me. For this and also for what I will one day do. I don’t know when or how you’ll come to be my victim, but know that I will never do it purposefully. I am tired of being plagued by a future I can’t control. I love you, and want you, and need you.’

Ajax, of course, said nothing. Lettle’s tears turned once again into a heavy sob. She dropped her head in her hands and let the grief of missing Rayan wash over her.

Ajax whined softly. Lettle wrapped her hands around him until her tears abated.

‘I thought when I said this to you, Rayan, you’d have an opportunity to respond,’ she laughed a little and straightened her shoulders. ‘But perhaps it is best this way. I do not think I could continue on here knowing that you had rejected me–if that is still your wish. Instead, there is hope in this uncertainty. I can say I love you and imagine the response back. This fantasy will satisfy me for now.’

A frog sprang out of the pond and dashed across the rocks in front of them. Ajax pranced after it, bouncing up and down like a kitten giving chase to a ball of string. The fraedia was beginning to warm above them, setting the morning dew sparkling on the flowers and plants around her. It would have been a beautiful sight if not for the situation.

She looked back to the field of moss behind her. Afa still lay asleep among the obeah.

He holds onto so many secrets, she thought.

Her hands went to her prophecy tokens in her pouch. If he wouldn’t tell her everything, then she would ask the gods themselves.

‘Hail, Bosome, grant me your knowledge this night: tell me of Afa, the last human.’ She cast the talismans onto the ground, Afa the single thought in her mind.

See without sight those that are missed. The obeah should never be again.

‘See without sight…’ Lettle whispered as she penned the prophecy into her journal.

The Fates were leading her to use magesight. Lettle stood and let her mind focus and relax at the same time. She always found it easy viewing the world in magesight since it was how she’d always read the Fates. But as she looked around nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Well, as ordinary as an underground meadow and a magical boundary can seem, she thought.

‘The obeah should never be again…’ she murmured. She looked at Ajax, the spark that glowed in his chest bouncing up and down as he chased after the frog. And just like the obeah, the frog was also lit with a small twinkle of life–like all living things. After discovering in Mosima that obeah glimmered bronze, fae gold and elves silver, Lettle had begun to notice the variation in the hues of different animals. The light emanated a faint green for reptiles and amphibians, whereas mammals were red and fish blue. Birds glowed a light purple.