It was Arianell that woke me next. I felt someone’s soft lips on my forehead and opened my startled eyes on her silvery amethyst orbs that were so like gemstones. She smiled and kissed me again on the lips and I parted mine in both astonishment and awe.
I’d stolen kisses from the few girls I met when I’d been to the town near my home. I’d even paid for an encounter in the city. Not that I’d ever told my mom or dad but I suspected he’d known because he gave me that lecture on responsibility and cleanliness. The girl I’d paid wasn’t one of the city paid prostitutes in the government run brothels but a new widow who’d been robbed of her goods and was doing it discreetly on the side to supplement her meager pension. One of the few friends I had told me about her and she’d been kind and understanding to a first timer. She taught me much more than I ever dreamed of and said I was one of the rare few that placed her pleasure over mine. And I was a swift learner. I had to be, our encounters were only three or four times a year. Getting away to the city was a three-day trek out and a three-day back.
Her name was Phillida but it wasn’t her face or body I was thinking of at the moment. I gently nipped at Arianell’s lips and kissed her back with delicate enthusiasm.
“Your lips are sweeter than Fælin wine,” she murmured and cupping the back of my head, she drew me up. I almost swooned, the intoxicating scent and taste of her made my senses reel. My eyes closed and I panted for breath. I felt feather light touches of her tongue on my eyelids and then, something sweet and rich entered my mouth. I chewed, swallowed and it was washed down by liquid as sweet as mead and as light as ambrosia.
“Hungry, Prionsa? Eat.” Her voice promised more delights as she fed me morsel by morsel, sip by sip until I was sated with both the food and her presence. When I was full, she kissed me again and licked the corner of my mouth. I could feel her teeth scrape lightly at my neck and I shuddered as blind passion stirred me. She felt it and reached lower, gathered me in her hands and stroked the throbbing center of my flesh. “Yes?” She asked almost growling and my whispered pleas she took into her. Slid herself onto me, her knees drawn up by my side as she rocked me, her muscles squeezing me into exquisite agony. I forgot my sore ribs as the waves roared through me and into her. I felt her shudder only a second beyond my release and the golden flush that slowly ebbed from my body drew out a cry from me that was almost the same music that she had sung and we harmonized our cries and it echoed in the small room as if we’d rung a chorus of bells.
I wanted to see her yet when I opened my eyes, she was gone; the only sign that she had even been there was an empty tray of dishes on the table next to my bed. I drifted slowly into a deep slumber where I dreamed I was riding Diomed across the ocean waves on a path of rainbow light.
I was sitting up in the chair near the balcony and watching people traveling from one tree house to another on the wide branches that served to connect one to the next. I was bored. It’d been a quiet morning. Breakfast was delivered by Belgrave’s daughter, named Sinise. She was his twin although more feminine. She tried to speak to me but I was helpless when it came to the bird calls so we resorted to pointing. She showed me the bathroom, clothes closet and doorways to other rooms within the Great Tree. No one showed me where the stairs out were, or how to exit the rooms that I was in. I still hadn’t received any clothes other than a nightgown and robe. I needed a bath and fresh clothing, I tried asking for them and had been met with blank looks.
Belgrave came twice to check on my condition and see that I was eating. Asked personal questions on whether everything was coming out and how much. I asked how my horses were doing and where was Arianell. He told me they were recovering and Arianell was patrolling the Border Wall to ensure none had managed to find a way through.
“Was she here, last night? Yesterday morning?” I asked diffidently and he smiled a smile that was as knowing as it was mysterious.
“I did not see her,” he said smoothly, his eyes twinkling. “Did you have pleasant dreams, Toby?”
I glared at him sure there he was mocking me. Asked instead, “can I see my horses? Get out of this room? I’m going stir crazy.”
“It’s a long way down, do you think you’re up to it?”
“If I don’t get out of here, I’ll throw myself out the window!” I threatened. “I want something decent to wear, too.” I added, “Please.” After all, they had saved my life, my horses and were taking care of us.
“I’ll see what I can do, Toby. Just rest another day, please?”
Sullenly, I agreed but he made my solitude less onerous when he brought in several books. Bound in supple leather and hand-painted in gold and lapis, they were artworks in their printed beauty. Even more surprising, I could read them. They were printed in Ehresh, my father’s language. I looked at the title and read, The History of the World before the Split. By Gunther Papillion, the Last Pope.
“What’s a pope?” I asked and he frowned.
“Read the book and you will know,” he answered.
“And this is the truth according to whom? You? Or the Oldlanders of Ehrenberg?”
“History, dear boy, is written by those who win. Not the losers, so read it from both points of view. However, Pope Gunther was more true to the facts than most.”
I hefted the book, it weighed as much as a half bushel of corn. I turned the page and my eye automatically translated the old archaic date, the year 2569 A.D. but I had no idea how that conformed to our present date of 1229 Ea or Emperors era.
“Does this mean it was written four thousand years ago?” I scoffed. “No paper or book would last four thousand years!”
“It is a copy of a copy, and copied a hundred times. The original is no more than a scrap of leather and a map, a photograph of a boy.”
“Hogs spittle,” I snorted. “What’s a photograph?”
“Like a daguerreotype but more lifelike. It was supposed to be an instant image of whatever you wanted to picture. Captured by a small device and printed out. There are some recreated inside the book.” He opened it and showed me. Grainy images in faded colors of strange vehicles that moved on flat paved roads with no horses pulling them. Others, sleek and birdlike that hovered in the sky.
Young boys dressed all alike in white knickers and striped shirts with numbers on their chests and nine of them to the team. Girls with strips of cloth covering their chests and crotches but leaving the rest open to the eye.
Women painted with eyes and nails to match, with blood red lips, purple hair, blonde, orange, green as well as black, blue, brown and red. People with artificial legs and arms competing in racing trials, jumping, biking and every sport we played today.
Horse racing where tiny men perched like fleas on the horse’s neck wearing colorful suits that matched their mount’s colors. Horses very much like Diomed and Beau.
I saw metal towers built into the heavens defying gravity, and standing on sand and desert. Floating upon the sea and perched above mountaintops. Truly, these people from the past had been designers of genius and magic, for nothing we had today could rival even one small thing from the book. If I believed it to be true.
I slammed the book shut. “What good does it do to show me this?” I demanded. “Even if it were true, we could never have that world again!”
“But your grandfather and the Emperor don’t think so, Tobias,” he said softly. He opened the book again and on the very last page was a picture that had been carefully reworked so that it was still clean and crisp. The image or photo as he called it, was of a teenage boy. With eyes of deep pansy violet and black pupils, dark winged brows in a pale faintly peach tinted complexion with short hair the deepest black of a raven’s wing. A sixteen-year-old face, still partly held in childhood and yet not quite taken that step forward towards manhood. A solemn face but handsome, without the wary look I saw in my mirror and without the burden of sadness I now carried.
“That looks like me,” I said, shocked, scratching at the page to see if someone had placed my image inside the pages but it was printed and part of the book.
“No. It is the only portrait of Tiʄnéræn that is known anywhere in the world.”
“Who or what is Tiʄnéræn?”
“He is the founder of our line, a child born out of the chaos and destruction of the old world and he led our people beyond the Border Wall to the new land he called Elassa. He kept us safe as the old world died and the few survivors killed each other fighting over the few that remained. For three thousand years our peoples thrived and prospered as those on the other side of the wall slowly pulled themselves back from anarchy and destruction. Yet, they did not learn from their mistakes. Once more, they seek war and have waged it on us.
“Tiʄnéræn himself said that he would return to wage the final battle against the others on that side of the wall and end their threat forever.”
“I’m not him!” I shouted. “And I’m certainly not waging war on my people! Or my family!” I threw the book across the room, got up and limped my way over to the bathroom where I locked myself in and refused their quiet entreaties to come out.