"Of Two Worlds"
Chapter 3
By: Willow Mae

The soft glow of candlelight was all that Bergan had to read by. As a sorcerer he didn’t really need the light to see, but the yellow aura comforted him as he read through ‘History of Thyrn and the Other Worlds’ again and again. There was still so much to be learned, and the book wasn’t as helpful as he would have liked. He would question Calandra more when she awoke. His thoughts drifted to his guest and he smiled as he heard her gentle snoring through the curtain that acted as a door between the rooms.

"You should go to bed." A voice whispered at his open window.

"I just want to finish this. I’ll be done shortly." He replied, turning back to his book. The voice snorted.

"It’s always ‘I just’ and then you’ll be up all night. You don’t get enough rest as it is, I worry about you." Bergan closed his book and sighed.

"And I worry about you." He looked to his window, where a dark silhouette was barely visible in the night.

"I know you do. I appreciate that, but I can take care of myself."

"But you haven’t been." Bergan retorted. "You’ve been so obsessed with becoming the best sister for an absent-minded sorcerer that you haven’t been as careful with yourself. I felt the residue from last weeks outing."

"That was a mistake. I was just a little clumsy, that’s all."

"Exactly. You were clumsy, and forgot to clean up after yourself. Jemmy, you must be more careful! If anyone was to find out, I don’t know what would happen to us. I may have to restrict your outings, if the need arises."

"You wouldn’t dare." Jemmy hissed, both shocked and angry.

"Probably not." He agreed reluctantly. "I just want you to be more careful, that’s all. I worry about what you’re doing out there, but I promised I wouldn’t interfere. Just promise me in return that you won’t do anything to harm yourself, okay?" There was a pause.

"Alright, I’ll be careful. And I’ll clean up after myself this time, I promise. I won’t do anything to harm myself." Jemmy conceded. Carefully, she tucked a gleaming object into the folds of her cloak. She ran a loving finger down the sharp blade of the object she carried. She felt a pang of guilt when her brother heaved a sigh of relief.

"That’s good. Don’t be out too late."

"I won’t be. Go to sleep."

"I will. I’m twenty-two, I can take care of myself."

"And I’m eighteen and I can take care of myself too." Jemmy laughed. "Goodnight Bergan. I love you."

"I love you too sis. See you in the morning." Bergan leaned forward and blew out the candle. He listened to his sisters retreating footsteps in the grass as she walked towards the woods on top of the hills, then opened his book again and continued to read in the darkness of his room.

***

Jemmy walked stealthily through the hills, away from the nearby city of Kir Aslen towards the Karayanir Mountains. Her mind was focused as she glided over the moist grasses of the hills and approached the forest line at the base of the mountain range. Quickly checking to see that no one had followed her, she entered into the dense forest and made her way easily through the scattered trees. It would be simple to get lost in woods like these, but Jemmy knew her way from traveling it many times before. She entered into a small clearing, no larger than a campsite. Taking off her large cloak and using it as a cushion, she sat down and waited and let her mind wander. A picture came to her mind’s eye.

The courtyard was filled with the laugher of the two children that sat by the fountain’s edge and played with the colorful flowers that grew amid the stepping-stones. A boy and a girl sat side by side, laughing as the girl draped her flower garland around the boy’s head. She was young, perhaps eight years old. Her light brown hair shone golden in the sunshine and hung thick and straight down her back, the ends trailing in the pool behind her. Her brown eyes held the same wonder of the world that Jemmy’s still did. On her head she wore a cap of pearls, and she wore a red velvet dress that was edged with golden threads. She was barefoot, but her shoes beside her were black and delicate, with small heels and silver bangles along the top.

The boy beside her was older, bordering his teens at the age of twelve. His blue-black hair was tied back into a thin braid, and his green eyes were closed tightly in laughter. Jemmy smiled at the memory. Even after ten years, he hadn’t changed much. His clothes were an elegant light blue silk, tailored to fit the growing boy. The boy removed the garland from his head and turned toward the girl.

"Hey sis, wanna see a trick?" he asked. The girl nodded happily and lay out along the fountain, her head resting eagerly on her hands.

"Yeah! Didja learn somethin’ new yesterday then?"

"Yeah. Watch." The young boy squeezed his eyes shut in concentration. The girl’s brown eyes widened with fascination as the garland began to change in her brother’s hands. It twisted together until finally the boy opened his eyes. Then, in a flash of light the garland had transformed into a glorious white bird. The boy caught the bird in his hands before she could fly away and held her out to his sister.

"Wanna pet her?" he offered. Gingerly, the girl stroked her delicate fingers over the bird’s head.

"Is she real?" she breathed.

"Sure, as real and me’n you." The boy grinned.

"When I grow up, I’m gonna learn magick jus’ like you!" the girl exclaimed happily. "Then I can make lotsa animals to keep me company while you’re in school."

"You can’t learn magick, silly." The boy scoffed.

"Why not?" her brown eyes lost a bit of their excitement.

"’Cause you’re a girl. And you weren’t born with magick, so you can’t." he said as though his sister was foolish to even make mention of the possibility.

"Well, Khris wasn’t born with magick and he learned anyhow, so I’ll just be like him." She said firmly. The boy shook his head.

"That don’t change the fact that you’re a girl, Nessy."

"Nessa! Kodey! Come inside, it’s getting late." A low feminine voice called from the shade of the hall connecting to the courtyard. "You’re mother will have a fit if you’re not ready for dinner in time. One of your father’s friends is coming over tonight, hurry up children!"

"Coming Nanna!" The children chorused. The boy closed his eyes quickly and the bird changed back into the garland. He handed it to his sister and smiled.

"Don’t worry Nessy. I’ll make you lots of animals to keep you company while I’m at school, so you don’t need to worry about learning magick anyway." With that he trotted back into the hall to follow their nursemaid back to their house.

"But you don’t understand Kode." She murmured, looking longingly at the pile of flowers in her hands. "It’s not the animals I want, it’s the magick. And I know it’s possible, I just have to find the way, s’all." Nodding happily, she tucked the garland into her skirt and gathered up her shoes, running after her brother and the nursemaid at high speed.

As the memory faded, Jemmy sighed.

"Why do you keep coming back?" a voice like the wind stirring through dry leaves came from behind a nearby tree. The speaker stepped from the shadows and entered the clearing to kneel in front of Jemmy. It was a Laarin, one of the different races that lived on Thyrn. He was obviously still a boy at 5 feet, and had a ways to grow. Like all Laarin, his skin was deep brown and rough like the bark of the trees his people lived in. His thinness would be a disturbing sight to anyone unfamiliar with his race, though Jemmy still found herself shocked at how small he looked. His deep green hair was tousled and his black eyes gazed a Jemmy from deep within their sunken sockets.

"Teach me." She said forcefully, her jaw set firmly as she met his gaze.

"Jemmy, I can’t! There’s nothing to learn!" he cried, throwing his twiggy arms in the air.

"You told me that there was a ritual. Teach it to me Xathir, please." She drew out the sharp knife from the folds of her dress. The boy looked at the gleaming metal and let out an exasperated sigh.

"I already explained to you it wouldn’t work. The ritual is only for Laarin that intend to use vast amounts of magick for a cause! You’re not Laarin, and your only cause is the desire to learn how to cast a spell. It won’t work." Xathir explained patiently to her.

"I still have to try. If there’s a chance…" she began, but her friend cut her off.

"Even if it did work, after the ritual is over, the vessel usually dies within the week. I can’t let you do that to yourself." He told her gently.

"I don’t care…" she whispered, grasping the knife and slowly drawing the blade along the side of her arm. Her blood looked like black ink, oozing in the darkness of the forest. "Just do the ritual Xathir. I’ve started it, now finish it." Xathir sighed and hung his head, and murmured a few words in the Laarin tongue. With a long bony finger, he traced patterns down Jemmy’s arm with the blood spilling from her wound. When he had finished, the blood that remained on her arm and hadn’t fallen into the grass below her swelled up and returned to the wound. Xathir spoke one more foreign word, and the wound sealed itself with an angry hiss.

"I’m done." He finally said. Jemmy took a deep breath and reached back into the folds of her dress. She drew out a small garland of faded white flowers. She grasped the flowers tightly in her hands and concentrated, closing her eyes tightly. She felt the light flutter of wings and the pulse of a tiny heartbeat beneath her fingers. Her heart jumped in delight, until the beating of wings and heart faded back into the silky softness of withered petals. Slowly, Jemmy opened her eyes and looked down at her hands. Twined between her fingers was the garland, unchanged.

She stared at them for a while, then slowly closed her fingers around them as sorrow tugged at her heart. She brought her clenched hands up to her forehead and leaned heavily on her knees as she sobbed. Tears poured down her face in small streams as she rocked back and forth. She snuffled and tried to regain her composure, but it didn’t work and a fresh stream of salty tears dribbled down her cheeks and nose, some dripping off her skin like rain and others tormenting her mouth with their salty taste. Her vocal sobbing turned into pitiful hiccups and she dropped the garland from her hands to wipe unsuccessfully at her red, wet face.

Xathir watched his friend lose her composure, unsure of what to do. She sobbed and hugged herself mournfully while she rocked. Minutes passed, and he finally took the garland from the ground and placed it in his pocket, then shifted his position so that he sat beside Jemmy instead of in front of her. Awkwardly he put his arm around her in a hug.

"I’m sorry, I’m so sorry." He repeated over and over. Jemmy turned her face into his shoulder and kept weeping miserably.

"I…I all-most-had…it…" she gasped out between hiccups and choking sobs.

"Hush, I know. I know…but there must be a better way to learn magick. I know there must." He felt her head move in a nod on his shoulder and he smiled thinly. "We’ll find a way, I promise. Hush now, settle down. It’ll be all right." He stroked the top of her head as he tried to calm her.

She cried for most of the night, long after her tears dried and her throat croaked from being dry. Exhausted, she fell asleep against her friend’s comforting shoulder. Xathir smiled and looked around the clearing.

"You left another magickal mess Jemmy." He whispered to the sleeping girl. "Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up for you. Let’s get you home." He murmured, lifting her in his arms, then strode from the clearing back towards her house in the hills near Kir Aslen.

***

Calandra opened her eyes and looked about her at strange and unfamiliar surroundings. The room she was in had light grey walls and a ceiling that reached high above her head. The windows were too high to see out of, and if it were day the openings would cast thin beams of light onto the dusty gravel floor. Below the windows was a line of lit torches. The room had little furnishing, with a table and chair along one wall and a cot in the center of the room. Across from Calandra was a large opening with a heavy red velvet curtain pulled aside. Through the opening she could see stacks of elegant chairs and couches, plus a scattering of potted plants. It appeared as though they were in storage.

She sniffed the air tentatively, trying to discover any familiar scents that might tell her of her whereabouts. She was surprised by the variety in the air. The most familiar scents reminded her strongly of her home on Isina. However, she also caught a scent similar to Bergan’s home on Thyrn. The final two overpowering smells confused her, for they had a similar base but were still distinctly different.

~ Where am I? ~ She thought dizzily, before a voice drew her attention.

"He’s waking up. Give him room." A childish but commanding voice said. Calandra cast her gaze toward the center of the room, where three people gathered around a makeshift cot. The one who had spoken was female, as was the person standing next to her. The one across the bed was male, and so was the figure on the bed. None were of the same race.

"Sugan, are you all right?" The other female asked nervously. Her skin was a transparent gold and tattoos covered her arms. Her eyes were completely blue; there was no pupil and no white. Her pink hair was long and thick, pleated into over a thousand tiny braids and coiled high upon her head. She sunk her thin frame onto the cot beside the man called Sugan.

"I’m fine." Sugan replied roughly, sitting up abruptly to prove his point. Calandra caught a glimpse of his face as gasped. Quickly, she clasped her hands over her mouth; not wanting to draw attention to her, but the four figures took no notice. Carefully she crept behind a small boulder on the floor. From that position, she had a clear view of the four figures as well as a decent hiding spot if she was discovered. Once there, she looked at Sugan again.

~A Bakna? I thought that they had all disappeared! ~ She thought as she examined Sugan. Calandra knew her history well, and the Bakna were a race from the past. They had all vanished over twelve thousand spans ago, just after the Shade Striders took control Isina. The Striders had wiped them out because they were powerful, just as the half-breeds were being wiped out because of their power.

Calandra examined him carefully to see if she had been mistaken, but he had all the physical features of the Bakna of the past. He was quite large and muscular, with a dusty mane of hair framing his face. His skin was ebony black and two stubby gray horns protruded from just above his eyes. His deep green eyes were alert despite his obvious weariness.

"Another moment over there and you’d be dead." The short woman who had spoken first snorted, placing chubby hands on chubbier hips. Her light blue hair was so fair it was almost white. It was cut short around her shoulders, framing her round face delicately. Her large amber eyes were catlike and contrasted deeply with her pale skin. Her four feet of height did nothing to diminish her aura of power.

"Damn it Brelassa, I was winning!" Sugan growled.

"No, you were dying. We can’t afford that." The yellow woman sitting beside him on the cot said gently.

"Alissadi…" he hung his head. "You were right to bring me back."

"Of course we were."’’ Brelassa confirmed. She turned to the fourth man. "Aji, would you mind checking the grounds again? I worry that one of the Striders might have followed Sugan through the rift when we dragged him back here kicking and screaming."

The man bowed. He looked very much like a human bird. His thick golden hair shimmered, and his narrow face was covered with pockmarks. A great beaky nose shadowed his mouth and his jutting brow hid the color of his eyes. A large pair of fiery red wings folded neatly across his shoulders.

"Aji would be glad to oblige." Aji said, his voice light and airy. With that, he turned and glided from the room.

"Sugan, try to relax while Brie looks at your wounds!" Alissadi commanded. Sugan was struggling to follow Aji from the room, but Brelassa’s small firm hands held him down.

" ’Lissa, you weren’t there! The fighting has gotten worse. The Striders are more powerful than ever, and if any of those creatures got in here we wouldn’t stand a chance. We couldn’t defend ourselves if they came. I have to go fight." He said forcefully, ignoring the woman’s calming hand on his shoulder.

"Aji can take care of himself. So can the rest of us, if the need for fighting should arise." Brelassa said quietly, gently placing a poultice on a gash in Sugan’s side. She gave a small nod to Alissadi, who placed a thin finger on Sugan’s forehead and closed her eerie blue eyes.

" Oh, no! I won’t let you put me under again. I have to stay awake, to protect…" slowly, his eyes closed as a golden glow encased him. Alissadi opened her eyes and removed her finger from his forehead and the glow disappeared.

"He’s being more difficult that usual. What he saw must have really upset him." She murmured, brushing a light grey strand of hair away from his sleeping face.

"How long will he sleep?" Brelassa asked.

"For the night. We couldn’t risk any more time."

"I know." Brelassa turned her cat eyes away from the sleeping man. "He once accused me of not caring about our fates. I do care, though. I’m just so scared…" she sat down on the floor and pulled her knees to her chest, whimpering like a child. All the strength of character she had displayed moments before melted away.

"I know you care. We all care. That’s why we were chosen." Alissadi knelt by the tiny woman and put a thin arm around her shoulders. "That’s why we all have to fight, and that’s why we all care. You’re not alone in this. No one is." Brelassa nodded sullenly and wiped at her face.

"Aji has finished searching, but he found nothing out of the ordinary." Aji came back into the room. He looked at Sugan, sleeping on the cot and sighed. "Aji is worried. We don’t know how to fight them and we don’t have any plans."

"You’re right. We should take this time to think through some things. We can’t afford to rest any more than necessary." Brelassa stood and waved her hand. There was a shift in the air as it re-arranged itself under her power. Floating two feet above the ground appeared miniature replicas of four planets. Each of the planets was marked with a range of black x’s, red and green dots, and yellow stars.

"Let’s try to think about this logically…" Alissadai’s voice began to fade from Calandra’s ears and darkness laced itself through her vision as everything she saw melted into an inky blackness. Her breaths became more shallow and even as her muscles relaxed and her eyes closed. Gently, a powerful sleep took control of her, only to release her again moments later. Calandra opened her eyes to the darkness and blinked. It took a moment for her to analyze the familiar scent of Thyrnian air and her mind was drugged from the taunts of dreams. When she finally pieced together the fact that she was awake, Calandra leaned against the wall to think about what she had seen.

A dream?

Perhaps.
She wrapped her slinger fingers around the golden amulet on her neck. The comfortable coolness of the metal beneath her skin and the smooth tranquility of the ruby stones helped clear her head as she recalled the dream.

Alissadi, Aji, Brelassa and Sugan. She recalled the four people with a tender curiosity. Each showed a great deal of power, and though they were quite obviously of different races they seemed friendly and kind towards one another. That confused her, for during her lifetime she had been taught the only way to ensure complete safety would be to befriend only those of one’s kind. Others might betray one to the Shade Striders, but if races stuck together there would always be support. These four had obvious bonds of trust between races, and seemed to have banded together to fight the Striders. This too was something Calandra found strange. The Striders could not be fought for they were too powerful. They could only be avoided. She thought again of Sugan and his evident desire to fight and protect.

She knew by his ebony skin, dusty mane and horns that he was indeed a Bakna. However she also knew that Baknas were an extinct race. Yet another thing that disturbed her. She had never seen a Bakna before, and had heard very little of this past race during her childhood. Yet, Calandra found herself understanding Sugan more than the other three, as though some bond had formed between her and a character she had invented in a dream.

"No, that’s not right." She murmured, twisting the amulet in her hand as her tired mind struggled to place her thoughts in order.

They weren’t characters in a dream. There was more to them than anything she could have imagined. These four were quite real. Her frown deepened. Now that she thought of it, the entire dream seemed far too realistic to be a figment of her subconscious. It was far too substantial. Perhaps it wasn’t a dream, but a vision…her head throbbed from thinking so much. She was exhausted and was beginning to feel rather ill. Calandra pushed her latest thought from her mind and snuggled back beneath the warm fur comforters. She fell asleep once more. This time there were no dreams, and she was alone in the troubled depths of her mind.