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Several cat shapes emerged from the forest nearby, which I recognized as the pixie sister trio, along with other cats who were not cats. Spirit beasts, my [Fairy Sight] said. Were the pixies recruiting members?
Human and human-like figures came behind them, including Ceria and Chiara, led by the fairy royal knight, Lady Serera, wearing her panoply.
The non-feline members of the assemblage were all clothed, so the fairy sisters began growing raiments as well. It’s basic fairy etiquette to match the state of dress when others arrive. Using the greater skill level I possess when I’m in Sky Ocean, I managed a reasonably competent juvenile elder tunic.
Rather than being in cat form, Kiki was in normal pixie form, riding on Serera’s shoulder as the knight left the others behind and came to the circle. In a display of formal etiquette, Serera knelt at Velar’s side with her head bowed, offering her an unremarkable-looking magic stone on her open, extended palm.
“Rônnedo,” she stated gravely, but Velerè rolled her eyes as she retrieved the stone from the fairy knight’s hand.
“I haven’t spoken that language in millennia, and no one else in my domain knows it at all. Speak the common tongue of the hills or Dorian, My Lady. I shall hardly understand you otherwise.”
Her words surprised me. Mother had drilled Tiana in High Fairy and even made her maids learn it so they could practice it with her. The idea of my older sister, a being thousands of years old, ‘barely understanding’ it, after I heard Serera say “Your Esteemed Highness” as clearly as if she’d said it in Ostish or Dorian, was difficult to comprehend.
It did explain why none of the other sisters were using it. If Eldest Sister didn’t like it, naturally the others followed suit. Although they had been throwing “salne” and “innanmi” around anyway.
It also explained why Mother didn’t speak High Fairy in her final message. Although she’d guessed that it would be one of the younger daughters who found her, Velerè’s domain had not been that far away and it might have been her who did.
Velerè held the stone up with her fingertips to gaze upon it, then stated, “The contents are an automatically-playing message that has already played once, and an inscribed fairy spell.”
She wagged a finger of her other hand at it, and, after a moment, Mother again appeared, this time in the air above the center of our circle. Nobody spoke as we watched the message Serera, Amana and I viewed already.
Again, Mother commanded, “… See to it your sisters all view it.”
Again, the message cut off there and the image drifted apart.
After no one spoke for a long space, the fairborn daughter and near-fairy Áda asked, “She died right then, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Velerè nodded, while frowning at the stone. “Which means either she didn’t get to record the message for all of us, or…”
“The inscribed spell is the message?” Mitozin suggested.
“Why did she waste her magic on this instead of just saving herself?” Alore, one of the sylph twins, wondered. She turned to her aunt, Serera. “She could have, couldn’t she?”
“She could do no such thing,” Serera told her. “She was gravely wounded. Frankly, she should have already been dead. She was using Healing magic just to hang on long enough to do this.”
“But…” Diddere, the other twin began, but Serera overrode her.
“And she had to remain within the barrier she built, to protect Owen’s body,” she declared. “It was vital that Cullen not get hold of it.”
“What a trivial thing to lose your life over!” Diddere protested.
“It wasn’t trivial at all,” I insisted. “That Cullen isn’t the real Cullen. He’s a demon lord named Durash, and using Owen’s reanimated body, he could have wreaked havoc in the kingdom and taken it over for the demons. Mother cared deeply about Pendor and about the kingdom it’s part of, Salnedo.”
Diddere clicked her tongue and looked away. She didn’t give a whit about mortal affairs, but she couldn’t deny that Mother did care about her mortal subjects that much.
“And she really would not have survived,” Serera insisted. “She chose to spend what she had left for this, so respect her choice, child.”
Alore wondered, “Was she really that injured? She didn’t look it in the recording.”
“That was a projection of her mental image, not her physical self, child,” Serera told her other niece. “Her body was already torn to pieces.”
“That explains why her bust wasn’t as ridiculous as usual,” Amana mused. “She must not have realized just how big she was.”
“You’re one to talk!” Áda rebutted.
“What do you mean? I’m not as out-sized as Mother!”
“You’re precisely as out-sized!” retorted Áda, of whom the same could be said.
“What sort of spell is it?” I wondered, peering at the stone, wanting to get the conversation back on topic. I could only tell ample magic filled it to capacity. This wasn’t a spirit stone with a resident spirit whom we could investigate, or ask for information. It was just a dense knot of mana, and of too many kinds to guess the nature of the spell.
“Nobody here could tell you. Inscribed fairy magic is essentially a lost art, since only those who have survived since the Ancient Fairy era even know how to do it,” Velerè replied. “I’m frankly surprised Mother possessed the skill, given she wasn’t that old. Grandmother must have taught her.”
“Why?” Amana demanded. “Why don’t they teach us? That’s such a waste!”
Amana, with a deep interest in studying magic, would naturally feel that way.
“Much safer to limit the world to Mortal art for such devices,” Velerè declared. “Separating Fairy magic from the fairy is far too dangerous. It can fall into evil hands.”
I shuddered. “Are you talking about the Holy Swords?”
She raised her eyebrow as she turned to me. “Indeed. They are an excellent example of this problem. You know about them?”
I scratched my cheek. “I sort of have one for a partner. He’s here in Sky Ocean now.”
Both eyebrows went up, but then she grew a wry smile and murmured, “Mother did tell me you were rather extraordinary.”
She returned her eyes to the stone.
“My fair sisters, I cannot penetrate the spell at all. I cannot verify it is safe. You must each choose what you will do, now. Will you risk staying close when I trigger the spell?”
Eyes glanced toward other eyes, all around the circle. But as each sister weighed the question, Kiki left Serera’s shoulder and fluttered over to hover between Velerè and the stone, inspecting it with intense curiosity.
“Sniff, sniff!” she said as she leaned forward to act like she was smelling it.
“Kiki,” Velerè warned, “Not too close.”
“Baby too much worry worry!” she scolded the ancient huldra. “Stone safe safe!”
I’m ‘Big Sis’ but Velerè is ‘Baby’?
The pixie’s family relationships are quite confused. As are mine, I suppose. All these women are my great-granddaughters, after all.
Kiki’s palm shot out and planted on the stone before Velerè could react.
“Wait!” she yelped, as we all felt the spell go into action. The stone shot out of her hand and floated up into the air, settling roughly in the same spot as Mother’s image had appeared.
Mitozin turned her head sharply to order Serera and the rest of those observing, “Get back out of the effect field! My Lady, make sure everyone is at a safe distance!”
Words in Ancient Fairy, the distorted Juvenile Elder tongue, began intoning in a slow rhythm. It was Mother’s voice and not Mother’s voice, as if a chorus of Mothers were reciting the syllables.
Soft, soft, the seasons turn. /
Gentle, gentle, the years wear away. /
Dust and sand swirled as a whirl of Water mana stirred them, which grew and washed over everyone as it became a turning column of magic enclosing us
They do not hear. They do not know. /
The last daybreak comes unwarned. /
The poem continued but it wasn’t merely poetry. Fairy magic is not invoked through speech, but these were magic spoken in a Fairy tongue anyhow. No memory of mine, belonging to Senhion or Tiana or anyone else, knew this style of incantation but it was undeniably a magic spell.
Come, come, good children gather! /
Swim, swim, the tide runs swift! /
A vision overwhelmed our senses, not merely an illusion of light but [Fairy Sense] and [Fairy Sight] included, as something that could almost pass for an [Inner World], if not an Illusory Reality, enveloped us. We did not sense each other, nor even our own forms, as foreign memories streamed into us.
Listen well, the tales tell tales! /
Watch well, the play is playing! /
Mother’s joy, as a naked child playing in her grandfather’s river. Mother’s crushing loss, as her first child died within her and nearly killed her. Mother’s devotion and love of the first who survived, a fairborn whose life went her natural course, leaving many mortal children and grandchildren as she went. Was it overcompensation for the loss of the first, or just joy in bringing new life to the world?
I gasped as I realized that, either way, this was the source of her devotion to the Dorian land and Pendor in particular. Although her mortal offspring through her first living child were from long before the Dorian culture arrived, they were a bronze age people who built their cities in that place and tilled that land, and their descendants married the newcomers and were no doubt still present. The loss of her first baby had made her devoted to her second, to the degree that she remained Mother to those living there today, and became devoted wife to the men who protected them. Not only Egon, who built Pendor on the ruins of the Dorian Empire, but also, before him, the First Emperor of Doria and, after him, the King of Orestania, Owen.
It had defined her entire life from that first living child onward.
Soft, soft, the seasons turn /
Gentle, gentle, the lives wear away! /
Mother’s continued joys, as each of her children arrived. We didn’t see simply the ones here, but also the rest, the ones who had long-since passed. Many of the fairborn also blended into the Dorian population, increasing her attachment to the place. And we saw the other triumphs, such as when she roamed afar to seek ancient treasures with her friends Matthias and Arken, both of whom she recognized not only as friends but distant descendants, because it was more fun to aid their child-like search for those treasures than to just teach the two about them, since in most cases she was far older than the treasures in question.
Children watch closely, the dancers dance /
The swimmers swim and fairy wings fly! /
And her happy, long strange marriage with Father. She was habitually unfaithful, as was he on occasion, and she never gave him a child (until me, after his death), but the daughters she bore other men, who often married his vassals or his brightest and best, bore him many fairy-blooded subjects, who themselves contributed greatly to the strength of his realm.
Children listen closely, the singers sing /
The wind blows and fairy wings play! /
And the bittersweet end of that marriage, in which she saved him from demonic possession by killing him, hearing his gratitude as his last words. And the advent of a certain fairy vampire named Tiana…
To my consternation and relief, that story unfolded completely, including her sad childhood and her death and my real identity as Mother’s grandmother and other incarnations. Some of my sisters knew about it, now they all did, leaving no one I still needed to explain it to.
To my surprise, it included receiving a message from her grandmother Eurybia as she lay dying beside the body of her last husband, Owen, promising her that she and the original Tiana would be reborn in my womb. That explained her words in her final message that ‘I am told we will meet again.’
Was this her final message? Was it a message, or a wish, or perhaps a parting gift? Throughout all of it, we felt her enduring sense of happiness and contentment with her life, and her hope for her children. She didn’t bear the least feeling of resentment, bitterness or loss with her death, or any of the many children she lost, except that very first child. She just wanted all of us to remember her and feel the same happiness and hope.
Soft, soft, the seasons turn /
Ever and forever, my love goes with you.
A long time later, the sound of a rushing breeze stirring the nearby trees brought us back to our senses. The magic was done. The spell was over. Nobody spoke for a time, unable to find the words.
