Silvanus and Empire, an Original Novel (Chapter Sixteen)
Welcome back to Silvanus and Empire! In the last chapter, Hammerfist and Spirit spoke at length about how best to drive the Imperials out of their ancestral lands. Now, let's check in with Lyrinn to see how she's adjusting to her new home...
Silvanus and Empire
Chapter Sixteen
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Lyrinn adjusted the soft, supple deerskins she’d been given to wear as she stood in the center of the pavilion-style hideskin tent. Slightly tight across the chest and a bit on the short side, the simple dress was still a pleasant change from dirty woolens that had been ripped to shreds by a flint knife.
“There,” Mousestep said from behind her. She tugged on the leather thong she’d just tied Lyrinn’s hair back with. “The dress is a bit small on you, but you’re a touch better-fed than I am.” She dusted her hands off and walked around to face Lyrinn. “Now at least you look civilized.”
“Th-thank you,” Lyrinn murmured. She had more or less passed out from exhaustion a few hours earlier when Mouse had brought her to this tent. She’d awakened when the Silvani girl had come back with a bundle of her own clothes as a donation.
“I don’t wear dresses any more,” Mouse had said in way of greeting. “Can’t sneak up on a Stoneheart with your skirts rustling.” Lyrinn’s skin had crawled as she thought back to last night, as she’d come out of her little bedroom in the Baker’s house to see her master sprawled out in his chair while Mouse bloodied her knife hand in the man’s chest cavity. Then the cloaked and hooded demon that had come for her last night smiled at Lyrinn, and her apprehenison eased somewhat; in front of her was a slim girl scarcely older than she was. She had helped Lyrinn dress and tame her wild mass of fire-red curls in shy silence.
Mouse gathered up the tattered remains of Lyrinn’s old clothes and tied them into a bundle. “There’s nothing in here that you wanted to keep, is there?”
Lyrinn shook her head. “I didn’t really have much, back south across the river. Just one or two more dresses like that one.”
“Well, good; no loss then. We’ll get a better-fitting set of clothes made for you as soon as we can, Lost One. Something to better accommodate that heaving bosom of yours.” She grinned impudently at Lyrinn before ducking out the door flap of the tent.
“Heaving bosom?” Lyrinn looked down at her own chest. It’s not that big, is it? She pulled at the neck of her dress and looked down inside.
“I hope I’ll not have to have that particular talk with you,” a female voice said. Lyrinn jumped and looked over to the door flap where Spirit was standing. She had a bit of a smile on her face. “You do know what those are for, do you not, my child?”
Lyrinn blushed. “It was Mouse. She said something about my chest being large.”
Spirit laughed and stepped inside, letting the door flap fall. “I think she was simply teasing you a bit, my child.” She held out a package wrapped in soft leather. “Here, eat; you must be hungry. As for Mousestep, she has always been a bit too ebullient for her own good.”
Lyrinn took the package from her mother and sat down on the tent’s sleeping pallet before unwrapping it. “Dried meat?”
“Venison,” Spirit said. She sank down gracefully to sit beside her. “Deer meat. And dried, yes. It is better fresh but we’ve not done any hunting lately. We hunt on this side of the river, as we have done for generations, while those on the south bank work the land for their food. Not that you’ll have to haul that basket of bread around any more, my child.”
Lyrinn blinked. “You knew about that? But how?”
“Sight-of-Eagles has been watching that Stoneheart town for weeks. You are hard to miss, what with this.” She reached out and took a lock of Lyrinn’s blood-red hair between her fingers.
“But the river’s… I mean I don’t know how many paces across it is… and he could see the far shore that well?”
Spirit smiled patiently. “His name is Sight-of-Eagles, after all.”
“Oh.” Lyrinn looked down. “I thought it was… well, just a name.”
“We Silvani are given our adult names once the forest spirit has shown us what our particular gift is to be. Until that day children are referred to by the name their parents’ give them.”
“Is that why… why everyone calls me Lost One?”
Spirit nodded. “Yes, my child. We named you Lyrinn when you were born – but after you were taken from me, I have called you Lost One ever since. I suppose the name is a bit inappropriate now, since you have finally returned to me… but you must understand; I never thought I would see you again.” Spirit swallowed and bit her bottom lip, sighing raggedly. “Never in a hundred years did I ever give up hope that you would return, my child.” She looked over at Lyrinn with tear-filled eyes before dropping her gaze to her lap.
Lyrinn reached out and grasped one of Spirit’s hands. “I’m here, Mother,” she whispered, her own voice tight with emotion. “I’m here, and I’m not going away again.” She squeezed Spirit’s hand and hugged her. Spirit let out a tiny sob and wrapped her own arms around Lyrinn in return. They simply sat there, embracing, for a long time.
Finally, Spirit pulled back, wiping tears from her eyes. “Well,” she said, laughing weakly, “now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, perhaps we can go about becoming a family again.”
Lyrinn smiled, her body flooding with a warmth that seemed to radiate out from Spirit and wash over her like waves on a beach. It left her feeling curiously lightheaded, like the time she had sampled too much of Master Baker's ale. She shook her head, and her head cleared. “I've never had a family before.”
“My daughter, all that is about to change.” She laid a hand on Lyrinn’s shoulder and led her to a side flap of the tent, throwing it open to the mid-afternoon sunlight. “Now that you’ve come back to us, you’ll never want for family ever again. Thanks to the blood that runs in your veins, Silvanus itself is your family.”
“Silvanus?” Lyrinn looked at her mother quizzically, then out at the forest beyond their tent. “What, you mean the forest?”
“More than the forest, my child. I mean the spirit of Silvanus itself. Do you think the pattern you bear on your shoulder is nothing more than a simple mark? No, my child; you, like your father before you, are more in tune with the spirit of Silvanus than any of us. You alone can command its power.” She pointed to a nearby tree branch. “Do you see the squirrel there?”
Lyrinn squinted for a moment, following the line Spirit’s pointing finger. “Yes, I do. What about it?”
Spirit lowered her hand. “Call to it.”
“What?”
“Call to it, my child! You have the power to compel it to obey. You are the caretaker of a great power; within the confines of this forest you could move mountains. A little squirrel is no match for that power. Now reach out with your mind and command it to come to you.”
Lyrinn stared up at the little bushy-tailed rodent make his way across the tree branch. She formed the command in her mind – come to me! – and pushed it out of her head and towards the squirrel. It hitched in its path across the branch and looked down at her in apparent puzzlement before continuing on its way. Lyrinn sighed.
“Well,” Spirit said,” you weren’t expecting it to jump down and start dancing for you, now were you, my daughter?” She smiled at Lyrinn and motioned for her to try again. “This time, try envisioning the command as a ray of sunlight shining from you and striking the squirrel. Your father always said that helped him focus sometimes.”
“All right… if you say so, Mother.” She turned to face the squirrel’s new location on the branch and closed her eyes. Imagining herself bathed in a golden light, she thought to herself, please, little brother, come to me, and pushed it out of her. She imagined a coruscating pulse of light emanate from the middle of her forehead in a tight beam, striking the squirrel and bathing it in a warm golden glow. “Please,” she murmured, “please little brother, come to me. Please.”
Opening her eyes, she saw the squirrel as it turned to regard her again. It twitched its tail nervously and took a few cautious steps back across the branch towards her.
“Please,” she repeated, holding out her hand. The squirrel skittered down the branch some more until there was less than a pace between the end of the branch and Lyrinn’s outstretched palm. It looked down at her palm, then up at her face, and chittered at her.
Lyrinn laughed, breaking her concentration, and the squirrel shook itself like it had just woken from a dream. Then it slipped away and disappeared around the other side of the tree. “Remarkable,” Lyrinn whispered.
“Remarkable indeed, my daughter!” Spirit beamed at Lyrinn, clapping a hand on her shoulder and squeezing it. The young girl felt another feeling of giddy, almost overwhelming warmth surge through her. “You are well on the path to mastering your powers. Come, let us sit – you must be tired after trying so hard.”
Lyrinn was about to protest before feeling a deep weariness take her, as if Spirit's words had conjured it in her. “You’re… you’re right, Mother.” She leaned on Spirit heavily. “That was… I feel like I just ran five leagues.”
“Yes, you will, until you get used to it,” she replied. “It’s much like exercise, your father once told me; the more you do it, the better you will be at it, and the stronger you will become.” She sat Lyrinn down on her sleeping pallet. “You are off to a wonderful start. I would suggest one thing, however.”
“What’s that, Mother?” Lyrinn sighed as the older woman set her down. She truly did feel like she’d just run from Annex to the Lemon Squeeze. Finding herself hungry, she reached out and took a piece of dried venison.
“You strained yourself without need, my child. When you spoke to the squirrel, you asked him to come to you, did you not?”
“Yes, yes I did. Why, was that wrong?” Lyrinn sniffed experimentally at a piece of the dried meat before biting into it. It was salty, but good.
“Not wrong, but needlessly difficult. You do not need to ask permission for anything you do in Silvanus’ name. You have every right to demand what you will. Bend the forest’s will to yours. Demand of it and it will serve you unflinchingly. You must be strong, like the thickest oak in the forest; like the granite of the sea cliffs to the north. You need not ask of Silvanus – you take from it.”
Lyrinn swallowed. “But Mother, that seems terribly wrong. Almost evil. If the spirit of Silvanus gave me this power, shouldn’t I use it responsibly?”
“My child, I love you dearly, but now I see the damage growing up amongst the Stonehearted has caused.” She reached out and squeezed the girl’s hand. “Do the trees ask the earth to let them grow? Does a bear beg pardon from the salmon after catching it in the river? The spirit of Silvanus is neither evil nor good; it simply exists, as it always has, for untold centuries before your birth… and hopefully for just as many after your death. The forces of nature may seem cruel and capricious, my child, but you must stop thinking like those to the south of the river would.” She stroked Lyrinn’s hair. “You must feel no compassion. You must feel no pity of any kind. The lightning feels nothing when it strikes someone dead. The river, nothing, when someone slips beneath it, never to return. It simply exists, much as we have. Now rest, my child. We shall talk more of this later.”
Lyrinn nodded wearily and yawned. “Thank you, Mother,” she said. “Mother?” she asked, her eyes still closed.
“Yes, my dear?”
“My birthmark.... the shape... how could Caddoc have it on his medallion?”
Spirit brushed a lock of hair from her daughter’s brow. “I do not know. There was only one man ever given one not of our people, and that was before your young friend was born. Now sleep, my little doe.”
“Yes, Mother. You have given me much to think about.” Lyrinn leaned back on her pallet and closed her eyes. Lyrinn yawned and settled down beneath her blanket. In moments she was fast asleep.
“Yes, I have,” Spirit whispered, slowly rising from her place on Lyrinn’s pallet. “You keep thinking, my little pawn, exactly what I tell you to.” She turned and slipped from the tent.
I like how most everyone (excepting Mousestep really) doesn't want to just go out and murder people, and Spirit is out there trying to entwine that thought right into everyone's brains while playing the caring mother. I love to hate her lol.
She is an enigma wrapped in a mystery rolled up in a deerskin tortilla of hate. Great, huh?