Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

46 Rebirth

The taste of the blood in her mouth, the wind in her hair, the snow's voice a roar about her. The feel of her toes digging into wet, cold, redness. And a first breath, a whiff of the sky and the blood and the snow and the stench of death. Emeline was a stormchild. Her breaths rushed in faster, but now she watched with horrified awe as her little form stepped naked from the coruscating whirlwind that soon after dissipated. Young, pale, bony, moist, storms in her eyes. She watched her younger self lift a hand, gazing purposefully at the woods as the snowstorm settled around her.

Then she clenched her little fist, and a blast of snow and blood destroyed the dead and the living alike, like a fist pounding from the sky, not one of the crowd was left living or whole. Limbs and organs and shards of skin splattered in every direction as the storm rent them. Her child form gazed ahead unconcerned, took one step, then turned her head to the podium where the Dark Woman stood glaring. The stormchild threw her hand out, and the sky pressed in to the Dark Woman from every side as she screamed in pain.

From where Emeline watched, she saw the Forest Mage pulling the Rishtai away, stumbling through the paste of flesh and snow to another man Emeline recognised. The Warden of Ysbrug Bridge, as doddering as when she'd met him, a day far in the future from the one she watched. The stormchild did not see them as the Mage swung his rod in a movement of The Way, casting a fleeting green glow on everything before disappearing in a flash, but the child noticed the other Magii stupid enough not to have fled.

The flame Magii, with a boom of tinged snow snuffed forever. The mist Mage, with a whorl of ice-ridden wind lost forever. The Ice Mage, her final battle of glory against the multitude, her last stand a blue beacon in Emeline's heart. She, too, was lost forever. The end of the age of the Magii, that is what her existence meant, and one Mage remained. Would she be his demise?

Tears streamed freely down Emeline's face now, wet her shoulders, trickled past her bare breasts. The Father of Time did not flinch, but his silence was heavy and dark as the Dreur Woods. Now she understood why he had given her this as his gift, this glimpse into her birth. All her life she had felt drawn to adventure, magic, wondrous tales of supernatural beings too marvellous to be real. All her life she had feared blood and the snowstorms. Mother had called her different, and now at last she knew why—what she was. It all fit so perfectly, but it was the strangest thing to know; to recall her first moments and shudder at them with a horror that seemed bound to her bones, her very fibres. So much pain, so many dead with a fling of her hand. She was a monster.

Did she feel free to know herself at last, or trapped, bound by sorrow knowing things her young mind had buried deep beyond consciousness? Was this gift a curse or a cure? Though she told herself it was good to know, good to be herself, to see herself as she was, she could not deny the terror inside her and the overwhelming sense of guilt drowning her, stealing her breaths. What would Avétk think of her now? And her parents, would they still love her?

The urge to be back on Erdil with Avétk was too much to bear, and as she swiped tears from her face, the world around her spun and she found herself back in the ethereal white of the Fathers' throne room. For a few moments nobody spoke. So this was who she really was. She was not human but a monster, a demon.

'Now you know who you are, child,' Elian smiled at her, holding her shoulder and meeting her eyes. 'Accept it and you will flourish. You have spent your life shrinking from it, trying to fit the mold, but now cast those ideas aside and be who we made you to be.'

She thought she might choke on the depth of emotion burning through her. She was evil.

But the Fathers spoke as though her thoughts were written in the sky. 'You are not wicked, daughter. Your heart is strong. Yes, your powers are immense, but we made you and we know at your core there is goodness.'

More tears streamed down her face. 'But the bodies, the blood...all those people...' Her voice was whisper, her lips shaking.

'Yes, many died that day,' Mercur said, stepping forward, arms folded. 'But they were already dead when we made you, for the most part, and the few souls still breathing were not cast aside like wilted branches. Each met with us here, each given the choice to return to Erdil. You may have been the weapon created to smite a foolish immortal and her undead, but don't think for a moment you were responsible for this massacre.' He tipped her chin up, and meeting his grey eyes, Emeline's heart calmed.

'From the moment we created you, you have been loved, child.' The acceptance radiated from the Father, a saturating, tangible wave of love too deep to ignore, calming her, and when Emeline looked down at her body it was no longer shapely and sensual but pale, white, bony, small.

'As I am,' she whispered to herself.

'And now, my gift,' Elian said. 'The gift the Father of Creation can give. Those who have read the Book most often desire power in the element of their study, but you, child, are not a mage or even human. This means my gift to you cannot be like those the others have. So to you I gift what belongs to you already, that which you have forgotten. The voice in the storm of your birth, that you may call it again. Hear the snow, the winds, the clouds, the blood, the trees whispering inside, and you will be able to guide the storm to your will.

Emeline closed her eyes and felt snow wet, crunching beneath her bare feet, sensed molecules of blood crashing into minute icicles. The smell of death filled the air, but a crisp wind that tasted like winter whipped her hair, rushed over her skin, thrummed in her veins. She breathed it deeply, and a whisper hushed past. Then a tender voice in the storm—an echo of her heart or a spirit of the clouds—she did not know which, but it spoke to her. Called her name, danced with her.

Around her fingers, tickling, swishing. The storm rumbled above her head like the voice of a god, booming and grating, and she felt it inside her chest. A part of her, in her very fibres, in her bones. The storm spoke a language she could not write, a voice without words tugging at the very core of her being. Now her tears rushed but elation filled her. This. This is what had been missing. All those nights yearning for the stars, aching for the magic she sensed in the air. All along she had ached for what was lost without knowing it.

She opened her eyes, swept the tears away with a hand. 'Thank you, Father. I...' What words could she say to thank him? None she thought up sufficed.

But Elian, the Father of Creation, nodded and smiled, wrapping her in one final hug. 'I knew you would like it,' he whispered into her shoulder.

Elian and Mercur stepped back, and Emeline's breath caught for a second. It seemed even the animate whiteness shifting constantly around them stuttered for a moment. Then the Great Father stepped towards her. 'What I must give you, dear, will be hard for you to bear, but bear you must. Come, watch the planes with me and know.' She stepped up beside him, a tremble shivering on her skin, in her bones. What she saw then knotted her guts, twisted them with revulsion, and settled deep in her a numbness she couldn't shake. This changed everything.

P.S

thoughts, readers? anything unclear or confusing. This one was a bit airy fairy, but I couldn't resist.