Travelogue of an Apostate

A caravan emerged down the dirt beaten path. The wheels of horse drawn wagons traced ancestral paths running parallel to the west, past dense grove and sickly meadow until weary travelers found their eyes resting upon an ironclad city, where ships lay moored to the docks overlooking The Great Sea.

The horses paced forth with what sluggish endurance remained in their bones. Thin, dull protrusions plagued their ribs. Their eyes had grown sunken and hollow, their coats had lost all luster, and yet, these animals appeared no worse than their masters, who huddled beneath muddied tarp coverings and shivered in the winter cold.

Two individuals, wreathed in cloaks of separate cloth and make, approached the caravan from the road leading away from Centa Muis, The Old City.

Lavenza wore her burgundy wool cloak as one should, fastened around her neck with an onyx brooch and draped over her bare shoulders such that the fabrics brushed against the bare skin behind her knees. Many would have been alarmed by her attire, which consisted of little more than a loose vanilla white robe held together by patterned sashes. Thick braids assembled at the base of her neck in a bushy bun. Her mahogany eyes were masked by a whimsical pointed hat that did little to hide the sharp lavender stripes painted on her cheeks and nape. Only a pair of heavy boots gave anyone any indication that Lavenza knew what season it was.

The girl that skipped behind Lavenza in sheepskin moccasins wore her fur cloak with its cape knot dressed over her mouth and chin as if she was one of the guards that patrolled the road. She hummed a folk song, a nursery rhyme you sang to disarm travelers of their passing distrust. And yet, in spite of all good intentions, the travelers shook themselves awake at the sight of Deme, for among the caravan, there was no trace of a single child.

“Hey, Menua bitch, the harbor’s that way,” someone sneered at Lavenza.

“Snake!”

“Child killer!” another hissed. “Come with us, daughter. The Opposing Shore calls to you.”

Lavenza and Deme paid them no mind. They had heard the same remarks several hundred times before. Indeed, several hundred. They had lost count, but by Deme’s estimate, the pair had crossed paths with over half a thousand caravans in recent months, each and every one of them crossing all Aparthia to reach the harbors by the western shore.

They had traveled north from the peninsula at the foot of the continent, following the Grixys Ley Line along the coast. Beyond the outskirts of Centa Muis, where fields of unattended grain stalks withered, Grixys ended where the imperial demarcation line began. Lavenza stamped her boots upon a knoll several fields removed from the main road. Her hands scrubbed a patch of soil and rubbed the stubborn roots of several plump weeds.

“Here too,” she muttered.

Lavenza stood and clasped her palms together.

“Eco Severin,” she chanted.

Deme trudged her way to the top of the hill and dropped her knapsack. Loose pots jingled. The pack hit the ground with a mellow thud.

“Nothing here either?” The child panted.

“What’s left is soaked up by the weeds,” Lavenza smiled. “Do you want to feel them? They’re brimming with mana.”

“Ew,” Deme grimaced. “No thank you.”

“Rafta’s technically a weed, you know,” Lavenza frowned.

“I don’t believe you,” the girl shuddered. “If it was a weed, it would be much easier to find.”

“Coaxan watercresses are exceedingly rare in the wild. They’re weeds.”

“We camping here tonight?” Deme changed the subject. She had no intention of being lured into another plant based lecture. “We’re a safe distance from the road now.”

“Yes,” Lavenza nodded. “I’ll extract what’s left in the soil. I’ll be done by morning.”

“I’ll get a fire going then.”

Deme fetched from within her bag a machete twice as long as the height of the knapsack and descended down the hill, where barren trees amidst a snowy grove offered kindling to her. When she returned, machete slipped inside her belt and her arms stuffed with twigs and tangled branches, Deme saw Lavenza knelt over a carpet spread above the soil, her eyes closed and her hands again folded in prayer.

A staff, hewn from bright yew and ornamented with silver rings and embedded gemstones, hovered above the carpet and glowed an evening pink. The soil below bathed in this light. The weeds released droplets like dew but washed with emerald. The beads circled above the staff, arranged themselves above an opal stone, then dissolved into its translucent body.

“Asta sen. Nevos. Fela ten Grixys asta vos. Eco Severin.”

“I offer you this light, Nevos the Midevening Star,” Deme recited. “I offer you this light that once belonged to Grixys of the earth…”

“Not bad,” Lavenza peeped at the girl with one eye open, “But I didn’t address Nevos by her title.”

“Menuans don’t address anyone by their titles. It’s implied in the enunciation of the name. The emphasis on vos carries the regal declaration. You have to translate the subtext when working in Imperial Common.”

“Says who?”

“Says Tamarin.”

“The shaman?” Lavenza raised an eyebrow. “When did she learn Menuan?”

“Before traveling east.”

Lavenza shrugged. Deme set the kindling around a circle of stones and sparked the tinder with the matches she always carried in her pockets. She fetched a metal grate from the knapsack, unlatched a metal pot from one of the side straps, and set it over the fire.

“Food?” the girl asked. “I’m thinking stew tonight.”

“We have rabbit, some carrots,” Lavena said. “I think we’re running low on salt.”

“Rabbit stew it is, then.”

Deme held out her hands. Lavenza rose from her carpet and snatched her staff out of the air.

“Asta kavan,” Lavenza hummed.

The world above Deme settled and curled back, revealing a separate pocket of jet black night. A pair of furry ears sprouted from this negative space, followed by pointy carrots, a bundle of celery, and a thin glass canister. A separate vacuum appeared above the campfire. Fresh water waterfalled into the pot.

Once again, Deme pulled from within her knapsack a cutting board and knife of greater contour and proportion than the knapsack itself. With the cutting board balanced on her kneecaps, Deme butchered the hare and separated flesh from bone, then diced vegetables into cubes and half moons. She popped open the lid of the glass canister and watched with disappointment when no more than a trio of white flakes settled into the bubbling pot.

“Well,” Deme sighed. “There goes the rest of it.”

Lavenza paused her work and sat cross legged at the campfire. Dinner was bland. Deme possessed neither the herbs or seasonings to do anything but poach rabbit legs and loin with old vegetables and less than a pinch of salt. But during this winter, taste abdicated its royal status, and the two travelers settled for the stew’s most distinguished feature, that rich, temperate, head to toe sensation when hot soup passed from bowl to belly.

Normally, the two feasted in silence. Tonight, Deme broke with tradition.

“Tamarin doesn’t know what it means either,” she said all of a sudden.

Lavenza’s spoon stopped outside her lips.

“Doesn’t know what what means?”

“Eco Severin,” Deme repeated, intonations and all.

“You asked her?” she replied. “When?”