Hello! I can't really remember the last time I did a proper literary update, and I feel like doing one now, soo... yeah. I also can't remember where I left off last time, so I may or may not have backtracked a little ways. SO here it is. (yes, it IS Nikita).
Chapter 3
Two months? Sparraben had told me that that was my time frame for training. He had decided, however, that I was either terrible at doing combat or great at it, and had insisted that I extend the training period to seven months if I wanted his help on anything.
Although this gave me a lot more time to develop every skill I had to learn, it also freaked me out slightly. Two months after I’d left home would mean that there would be a chance that Sonru would only have a body and little more. Seven months, however, would probably guarantee him not only a body but a sizable killing force as well before the only person who knew he was on the rise – also known as me – would have a chance to alert anyone who appeared to care.
Although Sparraben had lectured me on the first day about not jumping into things too quickly, I hadn’t learned that lesson well enough when he said my training should probably be extended for another five months. Two months after Grampa’s death was when the trees just began to change color and the weather grew cool. Four months after his death was when you couldn’t go anywhere without freezing, but the boots and the Ranger cloak I had been given would reduce the cold enormously (although the only times I was ever truly warm was when I had to practice with a sword non-stop for two hours). Five months after was not only in the middle of the winter holiday (usually celebrated with gifts, but the only one I got that year was an order to do more target practice, which wasn’t really a gift at all), it was right in the middle of the worst part of the snowy season. It was also just my luck that that year was the worst winter that any part of Illindara had seen for more than a century. Snow didn’t fall once: it fell three times, each dumping out almost a foot of white powder.
Either way, before I knew it, the trees were budding again, which was sort of alarming. Although I was not more physically fit than I had ever been and I had acquired more skills in almost seven months than I had in thirteen years, I was scared that the trees would wake up from their hibernation and tell me that Sonru was on the brink of annihilating the Three Cities – the general center of Illindara in most senses of the term.
One morning, soon after the trees had began to bud again, Sparraben announced that soon I would be getting my horse, and then we would review all the things I had learned.
“After that,” he added, “You only have about a week of training left, and then you’re free to go save the world or whatever it is you wanted to do.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” I asked.
“Nope,” he replied. “Faug sent you because you needed my skills, but you know enough now to fare well enough on your own.”
“But there’s so much I don’t know,” I protested.
“This is true,” Sparraben replied. “But I can’t teach you much more of the basics without making you an official apprentice, and I don’t think either of us has time for that.”
“As I recall, I had to agree to train with you in order for you to help me with Grampa’s mission,” I reminded him.
“But so much depends on you and what you’re doing,” he said, and for once, I thought I heard something that sounded like some degree of approval in his voice. “I’ve done enough here. I’m getting too old for adventures anyway.”
“I think you’ve just gotten too comfortable here,” I retorted.
“This may be,” he answered, “But at some point you’re going to have to stand on your own two feet. Do I think you’re ready? No, I don’t. But you’ve proven me wrong so often so far that I’m probably trying to protect you or something.” He said this almost sarcastically, but I wondered whether maybe he was trying to protect me or something… but I couldn’t think why he would have any reason to do that.
“But aside from my improvement, I’m still not as good as you,” I said, still trying to persuade him. I didn’t think I was ready to go alone, either, but I knew I wouldn’t if I didn’t get some help first. “You know more about everything than I do. You’re a better fighter than I am. What if there are three big tall guys who have cornered me and I can’t reach my bow and they have reinforcements coming?”
“Nikita, we’ve been over this.”
“But what if I don’t kick any of them hard enough? What if there are twenty by the time I get out? What if they have a mage, hmm? What do I do then?”
“You know what to do,” Sparraben sighed.
“Reveal that I’m an elemental and get myself killed?” I knew I could employ the power of the trees against an adversary, but I had only ever managed it once and it was by accident.
Sparraben was quiet for a while after I’d issued that statement. After a long, somber pause, he said quietly, “I never told you how your father and Grandmother died?”
I didn’t get why he’d changed the subject, but I didn’t mind. It hadn’t been bugging me, but I’d been thinking about it every so often. “No,” I answered. “How do you know how it happened?”
“I saw it,” he said quietly. “Both of them.”
“WHAT?”
Sparraben’s face was grave. “It happened on the same day, but about thirty years apart. It was two days before you showed up on my doorstep.”
I’d shown up on his doorstep two days after Grampa had died. There was no way it was a coincidence.
“Rhyda, your grandmother, needed to go outside the walls of Norasona to get some air and talk to the trees,” he continued. “I guess it’s an elemental thing, the need to be out in nature. Anyway, she went into the forest, to the stream not too far from here. She was talking to the water and making it do tricks – I don’t know why. I watched from a tree – I was practicing out-of-sight archery when she showed up. All of a sudden, an arrow flew out of nowhere and hit her in the chest, right in the heart, and went so deep the end nearly poked out her back. I always liked her. Not romantically, of course, but she was a lot like you’ll probably turn out – strong, spirited, and powerful. I’d given her a few months’ training when she was about your age, so I cared about her, and I was really, really mad when she was killed.”
“What happened after she was shot?”
“The one who did it came looking for his target, him and his buddy, talking about how good a shot the first guy was. They were big and stupid, so they were talking about their plans right in the open where anyone could have heard them, and I listened. They were apparently killing elementals for bounty from some warlord. The elementals had apparently stolen his glory, and now he wanted them all dead, even the single- and double-elementals like you and your father – a long-term grudge or something. Rhyda was probably one of the last full elementals left on this earth, and the warlord wanted his revenge on her kind.”
I was quiet for a moment, pulling it all in. “Did they get the arrow?” I asked.
“No, just the body,” he replied. “They left the arrow. I guess they thought if someone saw the arrow, they would assume it was one of mine. They must have known I lived nearby.”
“So do you have the arrow?”
“Yes, and the one that killed your father,” he said. “They’re the exact same kind, killed by the exact same people. I’m saving them for when I meet the ones who killed them. I cared about Rhyda, and I cared about her family.”
“How did you get my father’s arrow?”
“He died in almost the exact same way, just a lot closer to my cabin. He didn’t die quite as quickly as your grandmother – probably because the shot was just shy of any vital organs. The hunters came to look for him, but they saw he wasn’t dead and decided not to kill him there. I pulled the arrow once they left, and he had life left in him to walk most of the way back to your house, mumbling about his children. He was gone by the time he reached the edge of the forest.”
I nodded mutely. I knew where the story went from there; I could see it clearly in my head.
Dad had staggered all the way across Farmer Bag’s fields, which had greatly irritated Farmer Bag until he saw what condition the Destroyer of his Beans was in. Farmer Bag then half-carried Dad across the bean field and into our beet patch when Mum saw them from the cabin and raced out to help. Farmer Bag and Mum dragged Dad into the cabin, where we all saw – me and Jack included – how bad the wound really was when Mum pulled off his shirt to bind the wound. The most disturbing part was that Dad had been skinny enough that you could see his heart beating through the skin below his ribcage, and the blood came gushing out of the wound every time the skin above it fluttered with the beat of his heart.
Mum had wrapped all the spare cloth she could find around his middle, but the blood came out too fat.
I remember Dad’s last words to Mum, and I suddenly realized why Mum had been so cautious last summer when Grampa had told me to find Sparraben.
He had said, “Leanna… Sparraben… protect… Nikita… Jack… watch out… Rangers… heroes!”
Then, like Grampa, he’d expired.
Six years later, I’d taken the exact same course in the opposite direction, to seek out Sparraben in search of answers instead of departing his company with a mystery. It was almost poetic.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked.
“You were too weak,” was the reply.
“Too weak to know how my father died when I saw him go with my own eyes when I was seven.”
“To weak, too tired to absorb the information,” he amended. “Now that you’re capable of handling a lot on your own, and you’re determined to go forth and conquer, you need to be warned: what happened to them could happen to you, too. You need to be on your guard.”
Be on your guard. That was the first rule of being a Ranger Trainee. Well, it was the second rule. The first rule was to Always Be Patient. The second rule was to Always Be on Your Guard. The third rule was to Never Disobey Rule Number One and Two. Seven months of hard training had pounded that into my head, but that still didn’t mean I was ready to go on a quest on my own.
That evening, I went out onto the slight porch of Sparraben’s cabin to talk to the trees. They had only started budding a few days before, which meant they would finally be awake enough to deliver some news. Winter for all trees except the evergreens is like an extended period of almost-hibernation – they were asleep, sure, but I was still able to hear them (sometimes I didn’t want to). As winter wore on, they got quieter, but I was still able to talk to Pine until the Big Snows came and I couldn’t get close enough to hear what he was saying.
“Hello?” I asked the trees, unsure if they would be able to hear me. It was a weird doubt – I’d been keeping the ability going on purpose, in the irrational fear that the elemental part of me would somehow die if I didn’t have regular contact with nature.
However, all I heard now was silence.
I tried again. “Hello? Oak? Ash? Poplar? Are you there? What about you, Elm? Cedar? Willow? Pine? Hello?”
There was no answer from any of the trees. Pine usually was good about answering when I called, even if it was to tell me, in his polite way, to shut up. I found his lack of response disturbing. The trees had specifically told me that their hibernation would end soon after they began budding, and in the fading light, I could definitely tell that buds and leaves and whippy young branches were present on almost every tree in Sparraben’s grove, but not one of them had answered when I had called their name. I could still feel the slight rumble of energy coming from the forest, but now it seemed sort of distant, like the energy in Sparraben’s Grove was detached from the energy of the rest of the Silvercourt Forest.
Then words came jogging out from a distant memory: the Forgotten Glen. The trees there had gone so long without the presence of something else they’d been driven silent.
That day, I had also found out that groups of trees were going silent prematurely; groves of trees were suddenly cut off from the energy of the forest when other creatures passed through them regularly and chattered to the trees.
The energy here wasn’t stirring at all, even though before the snow I was talking easily to Pine, and before that, to the entire grove. I’d heard them talking in their sleep until the Big Snow.
Now the energy here seemed to be cut off.
Nothing was stirring. The buds didn’t giggle; the leaves didn’t rustle; no trees groaned in a waking-up sort of fashion.
I had waited too long.
