(I drew my MirMarnia map on handmade Khadi paper using ink, then manipulated a section of it in Canva using another drawing I had of four figures. I printed it out, cut it into a circle, crumpled it into a ball, and then took this picture with it over the original hand-drawn map. - Chaiga T. Cheska)
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“Plans? What do you mean, Olis?” asked Oren, studying the scribe and glancing at Liv, wondering what their role was here, so far into their families’ past.
Olis adjusted his robes, looked to Liv, then back at the sweep of the settlement before them, where elves still clustered, watching and waiting. Olis nodded respectfully to an older elf on a high walkway who made eye contact with him and recognised Estara, Liv’s grandmother, who was regarding him from the walkway. He already knew he’d have to meet with her before he left. So much for dropping these boys off and leaving them to witness what he knew they needed to see. So, he would just have to stay a little longer than he’d planned. What harm would that do? He turned back to the oldest boy.
“Well, Oren, we need to make plans for you and your family to learn to use your elvish magic with confidence, because I believe you might be able to help the Crystalsong elves before you return to your own time. So we must make plans.” Olis gazed back at Oren, wondering whether the boy would see through his plans. He watched Oren and considered that this boy had powers, possibly great powers, but whether he could already tap into them and would help his kind was the question, especially as this boy was also half a Tiorian Lightweaver, which worried Olis more than he would like.
Oren frowned, held the scribe’s gaze, and didn’t look away, sensing that Olis was holding something back. His gaze dropped to his left, to Nix, who now stood wedged between himself and Tavik. Oren rarely saw his cousin scared, except when Simi was near, but now Nix looked hunted. If it weren’t for Tavik’s arm around Nix’s shoulders, Oren was certain escape was the only thought in Nix’s mind. He turned back to the scribe and looked to Liv as well. “My cousin is terrified of these elves. Is he welcome too?”
Olis looked up at Liv beside him with an expectant look, and there seemed to be a silent exchange between them until at last Liv sighed audibly and looked out towards her kin, who continued to watch them from the walkways. She spoke one word that sounded to Bran like “Graina”, then swept her hand around herself. All of a sudden, the tension they’d all felt and the fear Nix had felt as a pressure against him vanished, and he stumbled back as if released from some invisible barrier.
Liv looked at Nix, remembering that this was just a boy, a child in the eyes of her kind, and said, “I’m sorry, Nix. My people fear the Caelvarae who live in the kingdoms of the sky temples above our forest. Though they cannot understand your other heritage, they sense your Caelvarae line and see you as a threat.”
Liv then turned to address her kin on the walkways and spoke loudly, “I welcome the boy with blue skin and Caelvarae blood! He is kin to these half-elves.” She gestured to Oren, Tavik and Bran, who blinked back at her, then at the elves on the walkways, watching and waiting. At last, the elves shuffled and broke from their watchful gazes. Suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, Galena was full of the murmur of voices, the clatter of tools against crystals, the humming of trees and the gentle susurration of the leafy canopy high above.
Liv gazed briefly at the Watchers, who had stopped just beyond the small group, and nodded subtly to them. Bran watched as the tall elvish guards stepped back and took up positions at the entrances of Galena, their hands clasped behind their backs and their eyes fixed on the way they had come, towards the glittering crystal forest. The sun was now high in the sky, shining through the canopy and catching the crystal veins in bright sparkles so intense that Bran found himself squinting and looking away. This place seemed so unlike what he’d imagined his half-elf family’s origins might look like. It didn’t feel like the home he’d hoped for.
Liv led them down a gentle slope of green thistledown and glittering violet crystal-vein clusters to a vast door set into the side of a huge, crystal-veined tree. She opened the door, led them inside, and immediately went to a panel of blue and red knotwork set into the wall on the far side of the room. When she pressed the panel, there was a soft click, and the whole room was suddenly filled with light and a gentle warmth that seemed to come from the central fire circle, which shimmered green gold within a carved crystal barrier that seemed to chime in response to the warmth slowly permeating the rooms. The space was vast to the boys, who stood in the centre and looked up and around at the tall ceilings that seemed to reach into the interior of the great tree, with ornately carved staircases along the sides that wound up and up until they were lost in the shadows above. There were a few windows here and there, shaped like leaves, with delicate patterns of coloured light that Bran thought reflected the seasons and all the colours he would have expected of each. Nix moved in beside Tavik and kept close, feeling less hunted, though still wary, and for the first time in a long time, feeling that his cousins might offer him protection in a place where part of his heritage was hated. Nix briefly wondered if he could try to suppress his Caelvarae tendencies, but didn’t even know where to begin, so he dropped the thought, especially after Tavik gave him a small shake of his head, clearly picking up on Nix’s feelings.
Liv moved through the space, occasionally ducking through doorways too small for her great height, then looked back at Oren and gestured towards a room with beds lining one wall. “We have guest rooms, as you see. This room will be enough for you, I think.”
Oren smiled gratefully and peered into the room, taking in strange beds of all sizes and shapes that looked as if the tree had grown them. There were at least ten beds lining one wall, and they were also part of the wall, the wood polished and carved with the shapes of forests, creatures, and mythical beings, all swirling together as if in a strange dance around the beds. Some were high up, others low to the floor. Oren knew immediately that the highest bed would be claimed by his cousin, and he smiled, thinking it would be good to sleep in a bed again and perhaps have a night of rest before moving on. He looked over to Tavik, who was jostling with Bran to see through one of the elvish windows, and sighed, then looked over at Nix instead, who was indeed eyeing the highest bed.
Oren looked back to the entrance and to Olis, who stood there watching them. Something about the scribe felt odd, Oren thought, as if he were planning to leave them and was making sure they were settled first. This sparked a surge of fear in Oren, startling him, so he raised his voice and addressed the scribe, drawing the attention of his brothers and cousin in the process. “You plan to leave us here, don’t you?”
Bran and Tavik turned at their brother’s voice, the strange, unusual anxiety in his words and the way Olis just looked back at them, unsurprised, which made Bran’s eyes widen. Tavik surged forward before Olis could respond, “I knew we couldn’t trust you! I knew it! You’re no different from everyone else, hiding something because it suits you to know it and not tell us!”
Oren glowered at his brother and held out a hand to silence Tavik. “Not helping, Tav!”
Bran ran up to stand in front of Olis, looking up at him. “But how will we get back? We’re in the past! Four hundred years in the past!” His eyes were wide and frightened, and his voice had taken on a high pitch. Olis sighed and reached out to grip the boy’s shoulder, trying to school his face into a reassuring expression.
“I will not be gone long, Bran. Please don’t worry. I have business to attend to, and as you may recall, I said that once we passed through the forest, I would leave you on your way. You are not stranded. You are simply going to spend some time getting to know the elves of your heritage. That is all.” He looked up at Tavik and tried to smile, but Tavik was glaring at him and was not as easily persuaded as his younger brother. Oren was also watching him intently, reading more than the scribe would like.
Olis looked over at Liv, who was watching the scene with interest, then turned to Oren and Tavik. “You are right to question me, and yes, I do know more than I can share, but understand that this is my nature, not because I wish to keep things from you! I am older than MirMarnia itself. I know the past, the present and the future… There are few events in the world of MirMarnia that are shielded from me. I know you four have a significant role to play in the history of our world, so I have brought you here at this time to bear witness and to learn who you are and who you might become. Surely, that is not a terrible thing?”
Olis’s eyes were piercing, and eventually Tavik had to look away, but Oren held the scribe’s gaze and said, “When will you return, and will your return mean you will take us back to our time?”
Olis smiled at the older boy and nodded. “When I return, I will immediately return you all to your correct time in history. Do not fear.” He then remembered something and patted his robes, dipping his hands into unseen pockets for a moment before he appeared to find something. “Ah, here it is… here, Oren, have this. I was meant to give it to you on our parting.” He handed Oren a small, round circle of cloth with lines running through it, as if it were a very small cloth compass. Oren turned it over in his hands and then looked back at Olis, confused.
“What is this?”
Olis sighed again, wondering about the boy’s power yet his inability to see relationships, and gestured at Oren’s cloak pockets. “Your cloth map, boy, the one you created from our campfire last night. Pull it out… yes, that’s right. Now, what I’ve given you is called a Witanweft. It’s stitched with ley threads that echo my place within the realms and across all centuries, so you can see where I am. When you move the threads to point to where you are on the map, I will come.”
Oren looked down at the strange little woven circlet of cloth, its pale silver crisscrossing lines like a bird’s-eye view of rivers and pathways. With the scribe watching and guiding him, Oren placed it on the cloth map he had pulled from his inner cloak pocket and marvelled as the woven ley threads shimmered golden like starlight for a brief moment, then golden gossamer threads leapt and dove across the map in new silver stitches, forming four stitched figures outlined very close to the Witanweft. Bran, leaning on Oren’s arm and peering at the map, looked up at Olis in wonder, his fear forgotten. “Those four figures are us? My brothers and Nix! How is that possible?!” He turned to peer closer at the map, nearly touching the cloth with his nose, before Tavik nudged Bran aside to look for himself, earning a dirty look from Bran, who stumbled back.
“Were we always stitched onto this map?” asked Tavik, holding Bran back with one arm and touching the raised stitches that represented himself, his brothers, and his cousin.
Oren gave his scuffling brothers an exasperated look, pulled the map out of their view so only he and the scribe could see it, and looked at Olis. “How are you able to know where we are by this bit of cloth…this Witanweft?”
Olis answered by rolling up the sleeves of his robes to reveal strange ink markings along his arms that looked like Nix’s runes, yet were not, for Olis’s markings were not beneath his skin but either tattooed on or part of it. Oren wasn’t sure which, but what made Oren stare in wonder was that the same ley threads were part of the scribe’s skin and were now throbbing in a heartbeat-like rhythm in vibrant pale blue. Olis met Oren’s wide eyes and regarded his own arms before responding, “I am a son of the sentient being, Time, and these ley threads are what I am made of. You will always find me as long as you have the Witanweft, though your map was unexpected. I have not seen one such as that for many centuries.”
