Red's Wolves

Chapter Fifteen

The days passed and both Alera and Jere continued their training in their respective concentrations. Every morning they would part ways— Jere would visit the apothecary and the horses while Alera would practice with the hunters in the field and eventually through the woods. At the end of the day they would return to the communal fire, discovering all the forest has to offer them, and then spend the night talking about all they had learned until it was morning and they had to start all over again.

Sharing the hut with Palo quickly became exhausting, especially when Alera and Jere had had no time to themselves ever since their confessions of love to one another. They snuck away for a small kiss here and held hands there but the tension between them was growing thicker than it ever was when they lived in the castle.

It was almost distracting, especially when she had to focus her attention on targeting dummies, so one day when Hevea asked her to join him on a walk to the lake, taking her away from her archery lessons early, she was more than relieved to go.

"Where exactly are we going?" She asked as they walked deeper into the forest, a part she had yet dared venture by herself.

"There is something of your mother's I want to show you— a treasure that once belonged to her."

"In the forest?"

"No... here."

Here was a pond whose waters looked as clear as crystal and just as still. Alera watched Hevea as he reached down to pick up an acorn that had fallen to the forest floor, and dropped it into the crystalline waters.

"Look," he urged as the ripples increased and grew.

"What am I looking for?" She asked as she got to her knees for a closer look... and gasped.

As the ripples receded, they revealed an almost perfect image of her mother in the water, like a mirror's reflection. So real, it felt like she could reach out and touch her.

"How?" She whispered, afraid anything louder would scare off the watery image.

"I have told you time works differently here— it is not the same as the world beyond our forest. But the water has memory and through it we can see things that once were, and things that have yet to come."

"But what does that have to do with me? Or my mother?"

"Dearest Alera."

She froze. And slowly turned back to the reflection of her mother in the pond. It sounded too much like her but there was no way—

The reflection met her gaze and continued.

"I know you are here, and of a heavy heart, but to become what you must, no simple path can be laid. For I have seen what the future shall birth, points not moved, of death, destruction, but it is you, my bright jewel, who shall be the explosion of change."

In time with her mother's foreboding words, an explosion of water erupted from the same spot her mother's reflection had once been. Now, in its place, was an ethereal hand and forearm, reaching out of the water, and in its grasp was a sheathed dagger, emanating a light all its own.

Her eyes were wide as she looked back at Hevea, but he only nodded. As if that was enough to convince her to take the offered dagger.

Her hands were shaking as she reached out, and unlike the translucent hand that held it, the dagger itself was very real.

"Much is asked of you," her mother's voice said as the arm retreated into the pond. "Train, and heal the rift, for darkness is on the horizon."

"What?" She looked between the dagger in her hands back towards the lake, to the rippled where the hand had disappeared. "Mother, no— come back!"

But the surface of the pond stilled, and all Alera could see stared back at her was her own startled features.

"No," she whispered, unable to stop the tears that fell as she sank onto her knees on the shore.

"You possess many gifts, Alera. More than just the dagger you now hold in your hands."

She looked down at the dagger, clutching it. It was not wet or damp, despite from whence it came, and it was a comforting warmth to the touch.

"Just as the water nourishes us," Hevea continued, "It carried that from then, through to the now, and to that which must be, and back again."

She shook her head. "These are all riddles. I don't understand what they mean or what I'm supposed to do—it doesn't make any sense."

When Hevea didn't answer she looked to him, then to where his attention was focused.

Jere was standing on the edge of the clearing. She didn't know how long he had been there, but by the look on his face as their eyes met, she knew it was long enough.

"Just as love finds you, Alera, and you trust your heart, you must also learn to trust the magic within you."

Hevea bowed with his parting words, for to Alera and then to Jere as he approached him, before disappearing into the forest beyond, leaving the two of them alone on the banks of the pond.