Teller of Fate
Third Movement: Dævara and Bradwold
Chapter Twenty-One
* * *
For over a century after her dramatic arrival on Ælfen, Dævara stayed with Tathar the Raven’s Son, deepening her knowledge of the Syrat and of her new people. To all but a small circle of intimates, she was and always had been an elf.
The intensity of her sexual appetite was tempered by familiarity and discretion as the decades passed, though she remained a wanton thing and became the mother of many children.
Like the inevitability of the change of seasons, the time did come for her to move on. When her youngest found a mate of her own, she knew it was time to re-join the Multiverse.
She found Tathar in his study of deeply stained wood and blue-coloured windows.
Snugged tight amid deep bookshelves, his small desk overhung with a lantern shining a blue-silver light, the old elf was hunched over a manuscript, magnifying lens hovering in front of one eye, studying the large folio at his elbow. Quill in hand, he made an occasional note in a workbook.
Dævara closed the door quietly and, lifting her skirts, descended the steps to the study, letting her hand slide along the rail on her left.
She was sure her slippers made no sound, but Tathar turned as she alighted on the last step. The mental bond they shared had greatly strengthened with time.
His hair was mostly white now and his face more wrinkled, but his eyes danced with the same joyous intensity as ever as he smiled. “Dæv, my love. What brings you here?”
“I’ve decided to leave, Tath.”
Tathar’s silver beard couldn’t mask his sorrow. “I suspected you’d go when Gillaeril went off on her own. You’ve been restless the last few years.” No protestations did the old elf make. Elfkin knew their own minds.
He stood and held his arms out. She came willingly into them. His waistcoat smelled of ink and old paper; his clasp was warm. They broke after a while.
“Have you thought where you’d go?”
“As close to home as I can, I think.”
“There’s almost nothing left of that whole constellation.”
“There’s one world on the edge o’ the system. Misry, it’s called. They don’t have a Portal, but they have transport to a moon that does.”
“Space travel? You will live dangerously, won’t you? I’ve never been able to trust machinery.”
“You know me, Tathar.” She grinned at him. “Never one to pass up a chance for a bit o’ fun, I’m not.”
He shook his head fondly. “When were you thinking of going?”
“Now. I’ve said good-bye to me brood. Could you tell the others I’ve gone? I couldn’t bear to do it myself.”
Tathar nodded. It would delay her days if she did. “Come back and visit an old man one of these days, will you?”
“You know I will.” Reaching up, she put her hand on his shoulders, hoisted herself up, and kissed him well. “Goodbye, Dear Heart.” She hopped down.
“Fair thee well, child of my heart.” He placed his left hand over her heart; she mirrored the gesture.
* * *
Dævara’s leaving-taking lingered. She’d be back for sure, but it might be a long time.
Dressing for travel, she wore a coat that flared at the waist and hung to her knees. That and the snug breeches she wore were well-made and of undyed leather.
The collar of a shirt of heavy, deep blue silk peeked out from between the lapels. Her soft-soled black leather boots were laced to the knee.
Fine leather gloves, palest blue, covered her hands and ran up to her elbows.
Her hair, past her waist now, was tied its whole length in a leather sheath. A net of faceted steel links snugged the rest to her head. Slung to her back was a slim leather pack, holding much more than it appeared to have room for.
Finally, she carried a staff exactly her own height, of a reddish metal, burnished to a shine. Strange characters flickered along its length when the light hit them. A friend of Tathar much skilled in defensive magick had made it for her.
Dævara began her farewell walking the same path along which she had first viewed this world. She stopped to smell the air and look at the branches and their weight of life.
She decided to walk across one of the spun silver bridges to a neighboring branch.
The scent of the air and the feel of the wind; the tinkling sound of the sparkling leaves and the sighing song that the air sang to her; the sense of the lives lived: all these Dævara did savour on her last day.
She paused at the top of the bridge and spent a long time just looking. Above and below, the huge branches formed patterns almost understood before they faded into the pearlescent white of the sky.
Trunks, like the pillars of some massive temple, retreated all around her, to be lost in the same haze.
She felt a tingling all over and her face felt chilled.
Not home, this place. Not home. But a fine place to be, just the same.
She crossed three more bridges before deciding to fly the rest of the way to the library.
She knew, of course, that it wasn’t the library. Many more were scattered around. It was the first she had ever seen though and remained special to her.
Once there, the diminutive elf woman spent some time just drifting on a platform as it rotated through the enormous hall, pretending to read a book, but really staring at the world through the coloured windows and at the browsers and students immersed their studies.
‘Enough tarrying,’ she thought. ‘It’s not as though you can’t get back here any time you like.’
One last stop, then. To the floating fountain she went.
Tobair Tuar Ceatha, the Rainbow Fountain, occupied a treeless area dozens of square miles in extent. It was the largest open space this Aion’s inhabitants knew.
At its center they had made a hollow cone of open silverwork four hundred yards across its base, rising to a thousand at its pointed peak.
Tuar Ceatha floated, held suspended in the air by jets of water shooting downward from its circular base.
The upper surface consisted of intricate treelike curves of metal. Countless jets of water shot out from along these designs, dancing in ever-changing patterns.
The spray eventually became a mist, floating outward to form a spherical cloud that enveloped the whole of the open space around it, turning the air into crystalline rainbows.
Flying straight through the dome, Dævara laughed as the chill, refreshing water lightly misted her.
She settled on a wooden platform that circled the outer ring, sharing the delight of several young children taking an afternoon off from their studies.
After an all-too-brief time, Dævara knew she must go or never have the courage again.
She stood and dived off the walkway, dropping straight through the spray again, and kept falling until it was quite far above.
Angling to the horizontal and weaving in and out of the trees for almost an hour, she found what she was looking for, a tree housing the only platform that could form a Portal out of this Aion of Elvenhome. It was the very one she’d arrived through; the one that began her life as a Fæ.
Dæv passed through a large opening in the side of the tree and settled in gloom on a polished floor. Two elves stepped out of concealment and asked her business.
She responded with her intended destination. They asked for her authorization. She stared at them until they got uncomfortable and withdrew. The security was new to her, and troubling.
Dævara walked between circles of plain wooden pillars carved from the tree and into the center. The tree had no rings because it, like all the others, had been made whole and didn’t have cycles of growth.
The middle was marked with a plain black dot.
She stood upright, staff held in both hands before her, and thought of three green suns in the shape of a triangle. She turned one-and-a-half times around the staff and spoke, “Spindle.”
When it manifested, the portal had no colour. It was merely a distortion in the air.
Dævara Tatharsdottir took two steps and left Ælfen behind.
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, August 2026
© Gideon Jagged
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