A Name and Purpose

Samara knows she must hurry as fast as she can to the Summer Palace. As she journeys, she remembers the name of her charge - Charles - and must conserve her magic.

By the second night, Samara could not take another step forward. Every muscle was beyond ache and reached bone-deep numbness. She feared that if she fell, she would not stand again, so she watched the earth with a deep slump.

Samara came across a large red inn built with river stones the size of sheep and with a porch that spiraled up to into the sky. The scent of vegetable soup and spitted beef on the fire wafted over her, giving her legs the strength they needed to cut across the meadow to the flagstone path. The flagstone gave way to polished wooden planks.

A glee man played a golden flute inside a large chamber as serving girls and patrons watched, swaying to song and clapping the beat. The floors gleamed and cut flowers adorned each table. The only man still moving about was a middle-aged man with a white apron tied around his large waist and a ring of hair around his spotted head. He approached Samara and immediately frowned.

“ ‘Evenin’! Is there trouble on the road, lass?” he said. He spoke with a drawl that Samara had thought was regional.

“No, sir,” she huffed. Her own voice surprised her. It was not a sound she heard often, yet it still sounded odd in her head. Perhaps it was the exhaustion and the ache at the back of her head.

The man’s tight frown pulled up in the corner. He leaned and examined the path to the door where Samara had tracked in dust. She blushed. “Where are your things? I’ll send Pat to stable your horse.”

“I have no horse,” she said simply.

He grumbled and looked at his giddy patrons. An older woman was holding her nose and glaring at Samara until she could move closer to the glee man. A stout young man pinched his nose and jabbed a friend. I don’t smell that bad, Samara thought. They were the ones who smelled of horses and pigs. She glared right back and bit her thumb at him.

“You will need a bath. I’ll not let anyone mussy up my rooms with-” He froze at the sight of her back. She scratched self-consciously, unaware of any wounds there. “Is that blood?”

She ignored his question and began focusing her mind on the end point of the transaction instead. Her head was groggy until a ping of sickness rolled to her stomach. He wanted silver, something she did not have. Was she traveling broke, or had she been robbed during whatever battle landed her on the river shore?

She clenched her hand into a fist and stretched each finger, searching for the energy to perform some small feat. She opened the veins of conjuration magic in her forearm, but her mind needed the shape of the silver to give it form. Samara had dealt with currency all of her life and never wanted for it - another detail of her identity that she would explore later - but she had never studied the coins in detail. They had ridges, words, pictures of ugly kings with big noses, and various little leaves or birds. These protected coins from cutters who might take bits off or clever smiths who might counterfeit them.

When she couldn’t remember any details of a coin, she closed her other fist to begin gathering more magic. Her own ring, her only jewelry, poked into her palm. A spark of hope lit in her chest. She produced a silver ring with ivy running along its sides and a fat emerald with green fire in its perfect cuts. She presented the ring to the man and muttered, “Please, sir.”

The man frowned and crossed his arms. “We only take the king’s coin here, lass.”

Samara slid the copy ring over her finger and clenched her hand into a hard fist at her back. The man’s frown grew deeper. The complaints from the crowd were louder as a cool breeze weaved through the door and wafted into the chamber. She looked over the twisted faces and scowled. She only needed one coin to use as a model, one coin with all the birds and letters and a monarch’s face.

She closed her eyes and focused hard, pushing her head until it felt it would crack, and pressed a coin into the man’s sweaty hand. He smiled and slid it into his apron pocket without ever meeting her eyes. “Pat will have a drawn bath ready for you in the yard. Come have a drink - an’ step out o’ the wind.”

She held her sigh of relief until she reached the table the old woman had abandoned. The innkeeper shouted out the kitchen window and turned food over the fire. She sighed and fell into the back of the chair as Three Girls Dancing echoed off the white walls.

She looked over the original emerald ring. It had no crest or inscriptions, but the emerald had a red impurity at its base. She slid the ring off her finger and read tiny scrolled letters from its inner band - Power in Spirit and Strength. It had been painfully snug on her finger after she woke by the river, but it still was too small. Perhaps her fingers were fattened with exhaustion.

“Crook!” She sat straight and slammed the ring over her finger. All eyes followed the keeper’s finger to Samara. All blood sunk to her belly. “You gave me a hollow coin!”

“She’s a witch!” A woman wearing animal blood yelled from the kitchen while pointing her butcher’s knife at Samara. “Come in the inn with nothing but black magic!”

The keeper crawled over the counter to reach a long ax leaning on the counter. One of the farmers drew a knife. The gleeman replaced his flute with a curved dagger. Samara stepped toward the door, fumbling for a shield of some sort. She found a half-filled mug of honeyed ale on a bench near a door and drank it. It angered the keeper, who yelled and halved the distance between them. Samara dodged his broad attack, snatched a long skewer from the oven, and rolled to dodge another attack by the cook. She dashed out the door with her head down and dashed across the meadow.

Samara found the nearest, densest stand of trees and leapt over a tall root. She pressed against the tree and ate the hot hunks of beef and onion that would give her location away. She was hungry and far too tired to outrun the inn folk. She listened between bites and could hear her pursuers give up before they reached the road, yelling about a flying, shape-shifting woman who had escaped with their suppers and a chicken.

The moon had fully risen when Samara was rested and able to walk again. She followed the road, resting when the clouds hid the moonlight. Then, as the moon began to fall, she came upon two willows near a fork in the river. She stood between the willows and cupped her hand. Moist magic pooled in her palm in quick rivers as she touched the cool earthy magic that beckoned the willows to grow. She closed her eyes and watched the yellow curtain of bubbles through her eyelids. Thick drapes of willow formed and spooled together in wide cords. She pushed wind against the curtains and urged the willows on, wrapping the new growth in light and water until a soft cocoon formed between the trees.

Samara hoisted herself into the cocoon and wrapped it shut. It rocked for a time like a cradle. She was asleep before the shaking stopped. Suspended in the soft new growth, she dreamed vivid dreams that broke and faded one after another. She dreamed of a chubby boy with a limp and a smile that took up his whole face. His name was Charles, she knew, because his mother chased him and called his name in the rose gardens.

After chasing the boy through the garden, Samara found herself in a new dream. She was remembering a room she’d stood in many times. Her feet had worn a spot in the carpet pile where she stood silently. A voice was speaking behind an oak desk, but she didn’t face the man directly. He wore a black officer’s coat with a red cord tied around his upper arm and spoke to her in harsh words. The sounds were murky like he was talking through water, but she could remember his orders beyond the dream. Protect Charles at any cost. 

She woke feeling as though she’d slept for a week, but she knew she had no such time to spare. Outside, the sun had just begun tacking holes in the forest canopy. Dragonflies darted over the water as tiny flying pests woke. Samara washed her face and hands in the water and let her dreams flow over her.

Charles. He was hidden in the summer palace in the woods. The main forces would wait for his assassin in the capital. She remembered the boy limping down the hall. She remembered his chubby belly showing behind curtains and giving himself away as he dropped food onto the marble floor. She was going to the summer palace to protect Charles. Was this her ward? Was this her purpose?

As she remembered more and more, she stood and doubled her haste. She must conserve her mana for whatever Charles would require. When the land sloped down in hills or dips, Samara ran, and when the land sloped up, she hiked in long strides. Her sleep was needed to recover her strength lest she never make it to the palace, but she couldn’t waste time trapping dinner. She wished she’d stolen more food from the inn.

A day passed, and then another with little more than a nap in another gnarled cocoon. The plant magic was abundant within her and took as much energy as scratching her brow, so she felt no regrets on using her mana on the small camps. When she could move, she ran and jogged down the forest road. 

With each slumber, she remembered more of her past life. She had no more dreams of the officer, but oftentimes she was working in fields of corn and strawberries. Sometimes she was tall and alone, but when she dreamed of her mother, she was small and happy. Her mother had hair that was the color of hearth embers like hers. She was curvy with full lips and a laugh that was more like a bark than a feminine giggle. Her father had been much older than her mother and was often in bed with a book. He was grey and sallow, but he adored Samara with gentle pats and stories of boyhood adventures. There were others she saw in her dreams, but their faces were often clouded and their voices were blurred like she was underwater.

Samara came by a small farm on the seventh night. The farmer and goodwife offered Samara refuge in the barn and a full meal in exchange for the ring she’d conjured at the inn. She ate a heavy plate of lamb and carrots. When the plump goodwife offered another plate, Samara took it eagerly. The couple exchanged looks before offering a third, but Samara paid their looks no mind. She’d paid well for her fare.

It rained all night. The barn stank of chicken droppings. The cow woke Samara up well before the sun rose. Despite the buckets of icy drops falling from the roaring sky, Samara continued on. Her leather jerkin and cloak offered little protection from the stream of water pouring over her. The gusts of dagger-hard water blew through her clothes and bones.

She ached for a warm thought to warm herself and turned the ring over on her finger. Who’d given her the treasure? Was it a romantic gift from a lover she could not remember, or was it an heirloom from her parents? Who stitched the patches on her old cloak? What did her home smell like? Who in her dreams was still alive, and who was just a memory? The absence of memory sent chills over her skin.

The rain continued throughout the day. The road washed over with overflowing streams. Each step was icy and slick when Samara braved the low roads, but the highroads were treacherous. Twice she slipped and landed on thorns and stones. With the heavy rains, the rise and fall of the hidden sun seemed to matter less than before. She trudged on until she reached another farmhouse.

The goodwife looked Samara over and wrinkled her nose. She offered her the barn and a meal on the porch. The farmer brought her bread, cheese, and fresh water from his well before returning to dinner with his wife and six children. Samara was grateful for the bread until she smelled eggs and flat cakes at the table. Her stomach grumbled long after her last bite.

She stood in the window and waited to interrupt the family once more. “How far is the summer palace from here?” she asked.

“Why, a day’s walk, I believe. Maybe less if you don’t have children wandering off the road or bellies rumbling half a mile down,” the farmer said around his pipe.

Samara reached through the window and whisked her soaked cloak over her aching shoulders. She cursed herself for not asking the question earlier. The boy was in danger and she was filling herself with bread. The rain fell harder yet with thunder and hands of lightning across the black clouds.