Post by Liessel on Apr 2, 2024 11:25:35 GMT -5
The Dame's hand pulled on hers, and the strength would have her rising again. The waters were not so deep, where they'd gone: She's burst up through sloshing waves tossed by Dame Ashbroom's own emergence, and Adam Larrow's, too.
The light was the twilight aging toward night that she'd left behind at the Bells hill, only now it arced overhead with different clouds and a wider land. The summer air here had begun to cool a little.
Sopping wet, Amrilaine's silver-white hair was plastered grey against her head and back, her braid heavy, her clothing clinging to her. She had not let go of Liessel's hand for a second.
Adam's eyepatch cord had stretched with the weight of the water as he'd come up, but only enough for it to have a little sag. He'd held it in place when he'd gone under, and only let go of it now when he was sure that it would not reveal the pearl to the world and the world ot the Pearl. He was on Liessel's right, and close, reaching in to help her if she needed it.
The world smelled of this water, and the glow was gone. Here, they were suddenly not even in enough water to comfortably submerge in, but were waist-deep in some sort of canal lined in every direction by reeds and grass. What trees there were grew in dense clumps along stone walls. But to their left was a great hill and a path that climbed it.
Evening mosquitos and birds zipped around them. And two people in white on the shore awaited them.
She was pulled up -- or was it down -- to break the surface of the water. Amrilaine's hand was the thing that helped her find the surface, and the moment she felt air against her skin, Liessel let go of her breath and coughed. The ground beneath them was wet, but stable enough. It took a few moments for her to open her eyes to find Adam there, reaching to help her.
"Remind me," She said, sounding a little breathless, as she took his offered help, "To take some swimming lessons."
They were all soaked, but water was water and would do that. Her head was clearing, too, and that gave her the ability to look around at where they had come to. Her bag still hung heavy on her shoulder, its contents right and secure. It was heavier, but water was swiftly running out from the bottom, draining itself back into the shallow pool they'd come into.
Gone was the clarity of the water.
Gone was the rippling energy that did not stop at the skin or the bones.
Some of it, anyway.
There remained a subtle sense of it. A memory with muscle.
Wading out of the waters, they would rise onto the bank and be met with towels, but also with fine homespun wool robes of the same sort as those worn by their greets.
"Welcome, Amrilaine," said a tall woman.
Liessel had seen her before, of course. They had met. This was Catherine.
She gave the towel she bore first to the Dame, while her companion, a young man perhaps Adam's age, did the same for Liessel.
"Thank you, Catherine."
There were suppressed smiles at Liessel's comment about swimming lessons. Apparently, in this cricket-song-filled evening, they'd heard.
"Welcome to you both," said the young man offering Liessel a way to dry herself off. He wore a hood, but it had half-fallen back in a shouldering wind. He was handsome under a sprinkling of acne.
Sloshing through the water toward the shoreline, Liessel kept a hand on Adam's arm to help with her balance. That feeling, that vibration, had faded but it wasn't gone completely. Trudging through the water only served to remind her just how precarious balance could actually be.
Her hair, as with the rest of her, and as with Adam and Amrilaine, had suffered in the water. Her elaborate braid was no longer so elaborate, and it barely resembled a braid at all. It hung, it drooped, and water ran in tiny little streams from it down into her face, and down her neck to seep past the collar of her shirt and waistcoat.
As they approached, Liessel tipped her head forward to Catherine, and the young man with her reluctant to let go of Adam just yet. What made her to it was the offer of that towel. And when she did, it was as carefully as she could manage before she reached for the towel while saying, "Thank you," to the young man.
"That's pretty much how I remember it," Adam said, coughing a little and wringing out the tail of his shirt which had come untucked. "Only the greeting is kinder this time."
Catherine looked to him with a frown. "It was a dark day," she said, glancing to the Dame with a furrowed brow.
Quickly, Adam said, "I meant no slight. No one had towels for us that day."
Liessel had begun pressing the towel she had been given against her hair. That first, if only to stop the water from dribbling down her skin. If she tried to dry anything else off first, it would have been futile.
As she did this, she found herself looking from Adam to Catherine, who she did remember from their conversation in The Garden, "It was, indeed, a dark day," She found herself saying, "But thank you for offering us today what could not be done then."
They'd obviously been expecting the Dame, and her guests, and the young man said, "It's our honor to help you." He half-glanced--some hesitation--toward Catherine before cracking a smile and hurriedly saying, "And a wonder you didn't ask why you couldn't come dry."
Amrilaine, with the towel pulled about her shoulders, arched a brow at him. "I remember, once, a sage came through the water dry. I do not think he was showing off, but I do know that he was crestfallen when he could not be admitted into audience with Gwydda. He disdained the simplest of our rituals, and had to return either by foot or as we have."
Liessel looked toward Amrilaine as she answered, then considered for a moment herself why she hadn't asked. The towel she shifted from her hair to the back of her neck and then around to the front, to dry beneath her chin, "Rituals and rules, I have learned, are there for a reason. I have lived by many, myself, and know their worth. I was told we were to travel by water, and so water it was."
That earned Liessel a look from Adam, but he stayed quiet.
The Dame eyed him across the young priestess as she said to Liessel, "I thank you for your trust." She offered her towel across to Adam behind Liessel's back, and he set about getting the water quickly out of his hair. "I have a task to perform before I see White. Will you wish to descend alone?"
Aurelia's warning hadn't faded from her mind, it only sharpened the more her head cleared as she stood there drying what she could. It was a moment she found herself envious of Adam. His hair was much shorter, and it would dry a lot quicker. All the same, Liessel gave a gentle nod to Amrilaine, before looking Adam's way, "Are -- you going down, too, or does your own task take you elsewhere, as well?"
"Missus White was who I came to see," he told her at once. He looked like he might have added something, but thought better of it. "I'll accompany you, and introduce you."
To a being he'd met one time, who took his eye.
"If you like," he added, absolutely dead certain that that was what he'd heard in her question.
"Thank you, Mister Larrow," Liessel felt something of a rush of relief. She'd have gone down anyway, but that she would have company, and known company at that, made the prospect of this a lot easier. Though, if she remembered the story right, she had to imagine that this was not going to be so easy for Adam, "I both welcome, and appreciate it."
The young man with the acne, whom neither Catherine nor Amrilaine had bothered to introduce, offered Liessel a robe.
Unlike his, which would have been pulled over the head to be donned, hers was split down the front with warm, dry sleeves. Adam would get the same. They lacked belts, and might have served some ritual purpose, or might just as easily have been for warmth for folk coming up from the shore.
Amrilaine took hers from Catherine as Adam nodded to Liessel and said, "My pleasure, Miss Erphale."
The Dame turned to the hill.
When Liessel did, she might see something curious.
Up the green, terraced hill, the slope was utterly treeless. Atop it was a modest church, pale in color and currently washed in a subdued pink from the sky.
Atop it also--almost--appeared to be something else at the same place, and in the same spot.
There was the church up there.
And there seemed to be the shadow of a much larger tower, encompassing the church and soaring high above its roof.
"Thank you," She'd be heard to say to the young man again as she took the robe from him. As she slipped into it, Liessel gave Adam a small smile, and a tiny bow of her head. Her hands were occupied, drawing her robe up and over her shoulders, otherwise she would have placed her hand over her heart for Adam.
It was just as she was getting the thick garment settled that the Dame's turn caught her attention and pulled her gaze toward the hill. The space around them was wide and open, with a few clusters of trees. And a church? A church -- and a tower? Her brow pulled in as if she wasn't sure of what she was seeing, "What is that over there?" She asked, looking back toward Adam first, and then Amrilaine, Catherine and the young man.
It was Catherine who smiled. The Dame had glanced to her, as if giving her permission to be the one to answer. There was a clear hierarchy here, in such a gesture. "What do you see up there?"
Adam's attention had been snagged by Liessel's sudden question, and he stared up that way. "That wasn't here before--" He cut himself off.
She looked that way again, out toward the hill where the church sat. Her brow was still pulled inward, but now she squinted as if it might help her see better. In the moments that followed, Liessel glanced Adam's way, "Its a church," a church that hadn't been there before -- "And a -- a tower?" She went from looking at Adam to looking back toward Catherine and Amrilaine, as if searching for confirmation.
It was the church that Adam had seen--and gone inside--and descended below. The tower, however....
Catherine and the Dame's smiles were matching slynesses.
"You behold St. Michael's tower," she said, watching Adam. Her gaze moved slightly; she was noting his eyepatch, but apparently could not make the comment she wanted to make.
"We found it necessary, long ago," the Dame told them breezily, "to allow for certain overlaps, as newcomers came to plant their sad little flags upon our sacred places. Having no wish to continue battle, we let them believe what they wished, and be ignorant."
Her attention shifted back to the church and its encompassing tower.
St. Michael's.
The furrow to her brow deepened as she took in the sight once more, "It -- seems like such a heavy thing settled out here as it is." Her voice was quiet in her consideration, her tone deeply thoughtful.
"What do you mean, my dear?" Dame Ashbroom asked quietly, a ghost of that sly smile still there, though her expression had softened.
Liessel kept her eyes on the church the climbing heights of the tower for a moment more before looking back toward the Dame with a blink and a shake of her head. Her right hand rose laying, against robe and wet clothes beneath, where her heart would be. "Forgive me. I meant that it seems ill-fitting. Uhm -- out of place."
"Oh, we agree!" the Dame laughed. Adam was still staring up at the ghost of the tower, his hand straying very near the eyepatch, and she saw it but spoke to Liessel still: "Once, it was attached to an even larger monstrosity. But apparently on one note Henry the Eighth and we were in absolute agreement."
The young priestess frowned, and looked to consider the church and its tower again. She didn't get that far because in the corner of her vision she caught sigh of Adam with his hand raised toward the eyepatch she had made for him. It was a half-turn, stuck there, a part of her wondering if he'd find it within himself to take a look without his eye covered.
She did speak, though, "I've read some about Henry the Eighth. He had quite a way of going about things, if I remember right. The bigger part of the building -- what the tower was attached to, it was destroyed while he was on the throne?"
"Oh, aye. When the Christians were finding yet more reasons to destroy each other. Which has happened quite often, of course." Amrilaine turned to gaze up at the top of the hill. There was the shadow of the very square-cornered tower, and the seemingly more substantial, and far more humble, little white church. "It would be easy to say that all conquerors enjoy wrecking the beloved works of the conquered, but it would not be so. Here, for us, the claiming of this place was of particular insult. But we have always had ways and means that confound such bloody thinkers."
"It seems," Liessel's soft voice carried out of her on the back of her breath as she took to contemplating the sky above the church, and around the shadow of the tower. It was alive with the setting sun, catching the vividly soft hues of a dying day, "If I remember right, that those who did not agree with those of Christian faith were given the worst of their bloody treatments. I have not read much on the subject, I have not gotten very far in making headway in the history of this world, but I do remember coming across several stories that spoke of it: conversion, and persecution." She felt the edges of her thoughts bleeding away toward the difficulties of her own people, the horror they had been subjected to. It was not the same, but the result was similar. "It makes me glad to know that they were not able to -- smother -- what they did not agree with."
Catherine looked to the Dame, her expression unreadable.
The Dame, in turn, offered her hand to Liessel. "Come. Let us head up there. You won't see the tourists with their picnic baskets who come to see the ruined tower, and they will not see you."
The shadow of Amrilaine's hand, as it moved toward her, took Liessel's attention. She looked down at it, and then up at the Dame while she laid her hand against Lady Ashbroom's, "We are -- shrouded -- then, that they will not see us?"
"They're busy," the ancient woman explained.
Adam moved when they did, but more slowly. "Why wasn't the tower visible when the soldiers came here?"
Catherine fell in with him, and the young man who had waited with her took up the rear, lost in thought perhaps due to the topic. Catherine said, "They did something to assail us before they came, and Missus White shifted her attentions to protecting our core."
"But which one is real?" Adam persisted. He had not given in to the urge to unleash the Pearl. He might not have been the one to see anything thanks to it anyway. "Church, or tower?"
"Neither of those are the most real," Dame Ashbroom said without slowing, and without turning back.
"Aurelia and I went inside the church. With everyone. Temmis was tended there."
The Once-Warden shrugged as if his protests were irrelevant.
How curious, she thought, having fallen into step and having heard what Adam had to say about the place. What was also curious was the growing desire for her to take her boots off. It wasn't that they were water-logged. This came from someplace else, and she only noticed it as the grass they walked through brushed against her every stride.
"I'm not sure I understand," Liessel looked toward Adam, and then toward Amrilaine. The shadow of Catherine was there just outside of her vision, but she turned her head just a little bit more and caught sight of the other woman. Behind them, the young man trailed. "These are places that exist, but don't. And the people will not see us because they are too busy -- we are in a space between, then? Land that is not fully in one place, or another?"
"Oh, they're all real," Amrilaine told her easily. "One is more real than the others. Ours is more real. We allow the others to exist."
She drew in a breath, ready to say she understood, but what came out of her instead was, "The church, then, that Mister Larrow and Aurelia went into with Temmis -- that one is yours? The most real."
One of Dame Ashbroom's eyebrows hooked inward in surprised puzzlement. "That? No. No, no, no."
"Then," With her eyes ahead of her as they walked, Liessel could feel her brow crease as she tried to piece it together and make some sort of sense out of what she had just heard, "It is the land?" The tension in her brow eased a moment later and she huffed out a small sigh, "I am sorry, I think I still do not understand."
They were walking up a hill that was wind-blown and lovely in the purples of the deepening evening. A chorus of frogs, emboldened by the dark, had begun down near the waters they had just left.
"I'm not surprised, my dear," the Once-Warden said gently. "Look at the sort of folk from whom your exposure to magic here comes. They are good folk, but their magic is not like ours. How full of lines and definitions."
The frog-song filled in edges she hadn't known were there until they had started, filling in the background of the place along with the crickets. The deepening shadows of the evening were drawing out longer, the perfect vivid pastels of the sky were deepening and would soon be gone.
This was a place, she thought, that she could have laid herself down, peacefully, to watch the sky and all the changes that overtook it as day became night.
"They are good people," She heard herself say, a glance going to Amrilaine, "Your magic is different, though. It is more, uhm --" She stopped herself so she could consider what word she wanted to use just then, "natural. More of the land."
"Their whole world is different," the Dame agreed. "They make it so."
The church there had gone through the deepest pink into violet. The sky transformed all colors below. The white robes appeared in blues.
"While ours dries up, like ponds in a drought?" He didn't really ask it. It wasn't really a question, despite the slight upturn of Adam's tone at the end.
"Adam," Dame Ashbroom sighed, "don't bring that here. I'm tired of it."
"They would help," Liessel said steadily, her eyes catching against the ways the edges of the church were wrapped up in the shifting of the night, "If they knew. I would help, if I knew how -- or what I could do."
"I know that you would," the Dame told Liessel. They were nearly there. "For now, you have your mission, and I hope for you that this venture bears fruit. Did you bring the gift, as I advised?"
Liessel was quiet for a brief second, letting that topic settle. It weighed in a way that felt as if it had made her wet clothes even heavier than they had been when they'd first come through the spring. After that moment, Liessel was nodding while her free hand slipped to rest against the still closed tightly flap of her bag, "The seeded fruit, and the leaf from a plant I've tended to myself. Yes, I've brought both. Two apples, and a pear, and a leaf from my garden."
"She'll receive those graciously, I'm sure."
Their climb up the path began to ease, the curve of the Tor gentling as they came to the top. Adam had fallen silent, and kept up.
The tower faded, ever just a shadow, with only a hint of what the evening light was doing to its aged stone.
The church did not.
Where once Aurelia and refugees from the Twin Bells had come inside with Catherine and ensorcelled British soldiers, here was a more peaceful entry. It was gentle it the certainty of its mundanity. The church, clean and refreshed with new paint, showed no signs of recent strife at all, and looked exactly like what might be expected from a simple country church.
There were pews, clean floors, and though the windows dimmed, during the day they surely let light beam in across bowed heads and a humble altar.
It was not as grand as Saint Hubert's by any means, and while it did still seem to be out of place where it sat with the shadow of the large tower hovering just at the edges of sight, Liessel found herself breathing the words, "This, too, has beauty to it."
Inside, Liessel turned to look toward Amrilaine, her hand still clasped with the Dame's, "Is it alright -- can I -- look around?"
Surprised, Amrilaine glanced at her and laughed a little. "Of course. There's not much to be seen, I think, but wander as you will. Just know that when I go myself to White, our business may overtake others. Don't tarry too long."
Liessel looked away, toward the little room with the neat rows of tidy pews, and the lectern that stood at the front of them. "Perhaps afterward, then, I do not want to delay what I've come here for and miss that opportunity. It is more important than this."
The ancient woman nodded, looking her over--stepping back from her, in fact, to do so. "I think she'll like you. You have the proper reverence, and there is something about you... yes."
Liessel stood there, her wet clothes sticking to a form that was hidden beneath the folds of a warm robe. "About -- me?" She couldn't help but ask, a glance going toward Adam. It was brief and she found herself looking at Amrilaine again.
She was a mess. Her hair had fallen from the braid she'd pinned it up in with strands of loose gold-wheat colored hair finding ways of freeing itself as it dried. Liessel had come through the spring looking as far from polished as a piece of pewter when compared to polished silver.
"I would say so," Amrilaine said simply, nodding her approval. "Good fortune in your questioning; I hope she has your answers. Adam--" She frowned over at him, but that frown eased, and she gave him a nod, too. "See her down and back safely, my boy."
"Thank you, Lady Ashbroom," She brought her right hand up, brushing the fingers there against the mark on her forehead before looking Adam's way to see if he was ready.
Adam, who'd been quiet since being chastised, remained so now. Liessel would find him there, his head turned a little more than another's might have been, because of his blind side. Liessel's gaze would meet his eye, though, and find a nod.
"Remember what I warned you," the Dame said. She was looking right at him.
He nodded to her, too.
She nodded back, and then she detached from them to stride toward the altar. Catherine paused enough to smile reservedly to both of them, as if she, too, were unsure of this ribbon of tension, and she said, "Ewan will show you the way."
"I know the way," Adam said softly.
Catherine hesitated; the young man with the acne did not move; but it was Catherine who after a moment relented. "You do. Take care of your footing, and may your minds be clear as the waters below us."
Ewan. That was the young man's name. Liessel filed it away as she tried to settle into what felt like a fissure in the peace around them. The question of it lived in her eyes as she turned to look toward Adam again after giving Catherine a bow of her head and a quiet, "Thank you, Lady Catherine, yours as well."
What took over her expression then was a question that she wanted to ask but would wait until they had left the church. It was a question that was all for Adam who, if he allowed, would find her hand back in his.
He closed his around hers and waited until Catherine turned to follow Amrilaine. Ewan trailed last, and did not go to the altar, but halfway, as if he were in attendance.
Only when they had a little space did Adam nod toward the back of the church, where there was a pew already slid aside. Also lifted free and set aside by other hands was a large wedge of thick flooring, with dark and heavy loops of rope visible here and there poking out from underneath.
Liessel would find herself looking down at a few steep steps that turned and disappeared into the dark.
"It's quite a descent," Adam told her softly, staring at where the light was left behind. He knew that other light would take over soon enough below.
Staring down that darkness, Liessel gave Adam a distracted nod. Those steep steps. She took a moment to shift the weight of her bag toward her back so that it wouldn't be tugging her off balance as they made their way down. Down where it was deep. Down where it was dark.
"Talk to me as we go down, if you would please, Adam," She answered Adam, glancing his way, forcing herself to look at the young man with a pearl-eye, and the eyepatch she had made for him. Her voice was just as quiet as his, bouncing off no stone or wood, "Are you alright?"
His nod came curtly. A spasm of nervousness. When he looked to her, he had to take in a steadying breath. "I will be. Unless there's a second pearl somewhere, my good eye's probably safe enough. Do you want me to go first?"
What would the odds of that be? A second pearl? Liessel didn't spend too much time on that thought before giving Adam a small smile and a nod of her head. Then she was considering the stairs again, and her smile faded.
"No," She answered, "If -- I am behind you, my steps are likely to falter."
He nodded. "It's a tight fit. It was for Aurelia, and she's smaller than both of us. I'm with you. Take your time." He blinked to cut off staring at the hole in the floor, and set himself to breathing more evenly. His own words then, meant to be comforting to Liessel, rang in his ears as too rapid. It was hard not to imagine panic in them.
Liessel gave him a small nod and looked back toward the hole herself before looking at him again and saying, "And I am with you. We are going down together."
Her feet didn't want to move, they wanted to stay right where they were. She recalled, though, a different hole in the ground for the second time that night.
You fall until you fly.
She had conquered that darkness with the presence of a friend. And here, she would do the same. Liessel did take a moment, though, to place her hand over the mark on her forehead, and then her heart before she was pushing herself toward that hole and those steep steps with a hand going to the wall at her side for support and balance as she made her way down.
It's a tight fit.
What that meant would be clear before Liessel's head was even below the level of the church floor.
She would have to duck to go in, and the walls would be easy to touch to either side, because they crowded in nearly to her shoulders. Adam would have to hunch and go sideways in a tiring crabwalk down the turns--a trip he remembered with a thick haze of all kinds of feeling.
Adam had not been kidding when he said it was tight. There was not much room for her to loose her balance on those stairs, but it was dark and the walls were close. At least these walls she could feel, they were solid, unlike the unknown closeness that came with the Three Gates. That darkness was warm. It was thick and oppressive in its closeness.
Still, Liessel found herself listening for the sound of Adam's footsteps as she took one stair and then the next, feeling with the edge of her boots for the drop as the light was left behind them.