Burning Whispers

Whispers

Ella sat alone, curled among the roots of a tree. Sand mingled with the grass around her, sticking to her feet, the hem of her dress brushing her ankles. The beach stretched before her and then the ocean took over. Dusk had just appeared and the world seemed to pause for a moment, hold its breath, caught in that strange time between sunlight and moonlight. A black and white photograph.

There was still movement in the moment. The waves rose and dipped, smooth and constant. Closer to shore they broke, rising and cresting, crashing into white foam that leaped forward, running, dashing, sprinting up the beach and then falling back, exhausted, to gather its strength again. The branches above Ella swayed, the leaves brushing together and the whole tree seeming to bend into the movement. The grass around its roots wiggled. In the slight breeze that tickled Ella’s ear and wound about her hair, the grass found reason to dance.

There was still colour in the moment. The strange murky blue-green of the ocean. The dark outline of the waves in the dusk, rising, heaving and falling, dipping behind others. When they rose to break the lights pieces of sunlight shone through the water, revealing pieces of marine plants, sand and tiny fish. The leaves above Ella were a dark green in this light and the tree she curled against was nearly black, a shadow. The grass changed constantly, catching the last of the sunlight, turning silver in the growing moonlight. The sand that dusted it seemed to shine.

There was still sound in the moment. That strange, loud trickle as the waves far out hit each other, joining, gaining force. The sigh it gave when it sank lower, as if exhaling a deep breath. The water began to whisper as it rose on the break, curling over and the whispers gained force. Just as the wave turned over itself, bursting into white foam, the whispers sounded like a crowd’s secrets in a giant hall. The water reached up the sand, losing the sound, turning quiet and sleepy. It returned to the swell of the ocean to build up again. The soft wind egged the waves on, whispering its own words. These words tugged at the spray, wound up the beach and moved the leaves and branches above Ella, the grass all around her. In turn the leaves brushed each other, passing on secrets, whispering on their own breath. The blades of grass danced with each other, presenting the softest whispers of all. The tree seemed to moan, bending in the movement of everything.

There was feeling in the moment. Feeling that connected everything, bound it together, turned it into a single thing. The ocean swelled, feeling its strength gather, gathering the feeling in its belly. The wind caught it, carrying everything about it, the movement, the colour, the sound, taking those whispers and brushing it against everything else. It tugged against Ella’s ear and she listened, a soft smile on her lips. She leaned back against the tree and burrowed into its feeling. The strong, unyielding trunk, the extended roots curving against her and burrowing deep into the earth. The tree stretched up as well, its branches reaching for sunlight, its leaves sweeping together in the wind. A blade of grass tickled Ella’s foot. A single blade of grass that was part of all the other of its kinds and all of those were part of everything else. A constant moment that didn’t even pause in this strange moment between sunlight and moonlight.

Most people didn’t believe in fairy tale things when they grew up. They stopped believing in Prince Charming and hair long enough to climb up a tower and spindles that caused sleep so deep only true love’s kiss could break it. They were just stories told in taverns or to children to occupy their time. Most people didn’t believe in things like singing with the ocean, like feeling the strength of a tree and taking comfort in it, or listening to the tug of the wind or even the thing that was most basic. The heat of everything. The presence in it, the feeling it had that it would hold forever.

Ella watched an old man walk steadily after his dog in the early morning. Maybe the dog could feel what the man couldn’t. He splashed in and out of the water, up the beach, back to the man and turned to do it all over again. Could the dog feel it? Could he hear the whispers? Ella had asked a few animals that, but hadn’t been able to interpret their response. Maybe such a thing was so basic to them that they’d never had to think about it.

Ella leaned back against the tree and breathed with it. Its branches gave a deep sigh and the tree settled more firmly into the ground. The wind tugged at Ella’s ear. It brushed her skin, wound through her hair, pressed against her eyelids. Ella slowly stood, sliding up the trunk of the tree. Her hand straggled behind her, pressing against the bark, feeling its solidity and the heat that came from the core of it. Ella walked steadily toward the ocean. She was perfectly at home walking across the loose sand, feeling it shift beneath her weight. Where the water had packed the sand together her feet left small imprints that were washed away a moment later.

The water folded around her feet and didn’t let go. It stayed higher up the beach longer and slowly fell back, keeping pace with Ella. When she waded in the breaking waves did not batter her. They moved with her, as much a part of her as with the other waves. Ella waded out to where the water rose and fell calmly and let the salty water buoy her so she was carried on her back.

It was the most difficult thing I’d ever done trying to put into words the very thing Ella thrived on when most people couldn’t even feel it. Harder still, it is hard to explain how my older sister loved and trusted these feelings so much that one day her presence, her feeling, the heat that burned inside her heart just...vanished.

Our parents still slept in our three room cottage and hadn’t noticed that Ella had never gone to her bed. I had. I’d stayed up as long as I could possibly keep my eyes open, looking at her empty bed, but eventually they weighed too heavy and closed without my consent. In the morning I knew where to find her and watched from a distance as she stirred in her sleep, pressing closer against the tree, curling tighter in its roots.

Ella had never been able to explain to me the very essence of the connection between everything, but she’d managed bits of it in stories. In my mind I can see her holding me, three years younger than her, as we listened to our parents snore. The first few years of my life she’d let me wind my fingers through her honey coloured hair as she murmured to me the feeling of everything. I listened for the wind and pressed myself against trees, feeling its strength and heat and I’d let the ocean run up around me and the sun move across my skin, warming me, but these things had never spoken to me like they did to Ella.

When I waded through the break I had to turn sideways against the waves and time it to run, splashing through the water so they wouldn’t knock me over. When she waded through they bent around her, curled around her skin and held tight. When I walked across the hot road it burned my feet. When she did the heat seemed to soak into her, warm and pleasant. The trees let me feel their strength and their core heat, but when I settled in their exposed roots they did not bend, move their entire self just to get closer to me. This was all Ella’s gift and she never understood how I ached for it.

That day, when she waded out into the ocean as she’d done a hundred times before and let the ocean carry her I’d watched, awed. Even the sunlight seemed to prefer her, leaving it too dark and cold for me. I don’t know whether all of this took her, or if she gave herself too it, joined it completely, but soon her body washed ashore, empty.

That same day, when my sister lay dead in the church hall and the town was gossiping the news of how sweet Ella had drowned a Lord rode through. He was with a company of twenty soldiers and his carriage was in the middle, pulled by two black horses. I had settled in a tree above the blacksmiths shop, using the heavy ring of hammer on metal to drown out my thoughts and the heat from the furnace to drive the chill away. I watched as the company stopped and someone opened the door to the carriage. The entire town had paused to watch.

The Lord that stepped out was well dressed in fine trousers and a white shirt, a light black coat on even in the summer heat. His hair was well trimmed, his face smoothly shaven and his entire presence demanding attention and expecting nothing less. He placed a neat hat atop his head and stepped over a puddle, careful not to get his shining boots dirty. He looked above the heads of everyone, his nose in the air and it was this expression of avoiding looking at such lowly people as us that he met my eye.

I stared at him from the tree and he stared back. I wondered if he expected me to lower my gaze or perhaps slip from the tree entirely, eager to straighten my dress and neaten my hair and smile prettily, ready to serve. After a moment he frowned and I thought the expression suited such a thing mouth. His dark eyes hovered a moment longer before moving away. He ran a hand across his pointed jaw. He nodded to the man beside him.

The man was at least twice as broad as the Lord and had a sword at his belt which his hand rested on from habit. Three medals rested on his chest. He surveyed the crowd and was content with the attention directed toward him. He cleared his throat, cleared it again and spoke with a loud, low voice.

“Lord Belvan, on behalf of his royal majesty the King, has arrived in search of a certain woman by the name of Ella Declair.”

My hold on the branch slipped and I tottered for a moment. Grabbing hold of another, I sank deeper into the tree and pressed myself against the trunk. Palms pressed flat to the rough bark, I tried to breathe, drawing on the strength of the tree. Murmurs went through the crowd, but nobody was saying anything to the company. My parents were in the church, keeping watch over my sister’s body. Why was the king looking for my sister? The broad man repeated himself and this time Pete, the old man who walked his dog every morning, stepped forward to break the news.

Neither Lord Belvan or the broad man beside him seemed to care a whit about what had happened to my sister. People in the town had started to cry again. It was tragic, they said, that a woman so young, so full of life had been snatched away by the sea. After death they seemed to care more about Ella. Before she’d given herself to everything, before that feeling that heat in everything had taken her, they’d called her nothing but strange. Her head had been in the clouds, her eyes unfocused, smiling at things other people couldn’t see. I felt some responsibility to go down there, among everyone, and make myself known since my parents were still in the church.

I slid from the tree, pressing hard against it once and for a moment I thought its strength pressed back. Staring at it, I backed slowly away and felt a tug at my ear and a heat inside my chest. Ella entered my mind, how everything had seemed to bend toward her. She was gone now, though. I held my breath, wondering if maybe the presence of everything, the fire that burned life into the wind and the ocean and the trees, needed someone else to bend toward. The thought terrified me. Ella was gone now, snatched away by this gift.

I turned and walked through the crowd. They parted for me, moving out of the way. A heat was on my skin and I wondered if it was the flush of adrenaline or the sunlight finding my skin. I smoothed my light brown hair and straightened my dress. When I reached the front of the ring that had been made around Lord Belvan I hesitated. He looked at me again, not over me as he did to everyone else, at me. He seemed curious. Maybe he didn’t see girls in trees that often.

“Er, your Lordship,” I began, unsure of how to address him. “Ella was my sister. I wanted to ask why you sought her.”

Both the Lord and the broad man turned directly, startled. Taking a small step back, I wondered if I’d done something wrong. Both men stared at me and I straightened my dress again. Then the men looked at each other and murmured to each other, whispers. The wind snatched at their words, moving around them to me, pressing at me, clinging to my skin, tugging at my ear. I listened as I had all my life, but this time the wind didn’t just talk, it spoke to me.

“Nobody said anything about there being a second daughter,” Lord Belvan was saying.

“Nobody said much of anything,” the broad man countered. “I think it’s possible they’re alike.”

Alike? Alike how? There were rare similarities between me and my sister. Where she was honey haired and pale skinned I was brown haired with skin that looked like dirt had been rubbed into it. She was always so good at everything, at singing and painting and being part of that burning everything. There wasn’t much anyone needed me for. I was the one that fetched water, that milked the cow and swept the floors. People rarely looked at me admiringly, called me strange for being able to do things others couldn’t.

My parents were suddenly there, brought out of the church by one of the townspeople. My mother hovered back in the crowd, but my father came forward.

“Jessie, go back to your mother,” he said to me and I turned, nearly running from the company. The look on my father’s face scared me. He didn’t see the crowd around him, just the two men standing in the middle of town and he seemed furious.

“I told you I wouldn’t do it,” he growled at Lord Belvan and tones of shock went through the crowd.

“Declair, you owe something to the throne that you wouldn’t ever have been able to repay without Ella,” Lord Belvan sneered at my father and I felt my heart burning, the new fire in it growing hotter. “Now that she’s gone I don’t see how you’ll avoid the price.”

“I never agreed to let you have her,” my father growled.

Have her? I stared at the men. Had they been going to take her away? For a debt my father had? What debt? My mother clutched my shoulders and I looked up at her pale face. My mouth was dry as I looked back at the men. Nobody seemed to notice the crowd, the murmurs, the gossip. Nobody seemed to care.

“Unless, that girl there is also your daughter and she is also in accordance with the old tales,” the broad man left his sentence hanging there as a question.

My father glanced back at me and my hands slid around my mothers. She grasped me tighter. The baker’s wife wrapped an arm around my mother, lending support. The men looked at me too and I felt like they were sizing me up, putting a price on me. A wind curled around my neck, pressed against my lips and I parted my lips for it to push its way in, reminding me to breathe. I took comfort in its touch and listened to its whispers of the sunlight and the ocean not far off and the trees that hung above the houses. For a moment I forgot where I was and what was going on, before sliding back into reality. Lord Belvan smiled at me. This time the heat that crawled through me was definitely from a flushing anger.

“You can’t have her,” my father looked hard at both men. “She doesn’t even know the tales.”

The tales? I remembered my sister pulling me into her lap, wrapping a blanket around me and putting her mouth close to me ear.

“Would you like to hear the tales?” she’d whisper to me and I tried to listen to her breath, tried to feel the life in that. I’d nod and press closer, searching for the heat in her. Trees were the easiest thing to feel the heat in. Animals less so, but my sister had always been burning. She’d been so bright and hot that I wondered she didn’t just burn up.

“What a shame,” the broad man sighed deeply and indicated to one of his men. He came forward, shackles in his hands. “The price is too high for you to pay any other way.”

My mother whimpered. I looked back at her and saw how she swayed, how the baker’s wife was the only thing keeping her up. Her grip on me slackened and I realized they meant to kill my father for his unknown debt.

“Wait!” I cried and broke away from my mother, burst through the crowd and attached myself to my father. My hands clung to his arm even when he tried to shake me off.

“Jessie, go back to your mother. Make sure she’s alright. You hear me Jessie?”

“You can’t take him,” I cried and clung tighter. My eyes held Lord Belvan’s refusing to release him.

“Unless you have a way to repay his debt I have to,” he told me, but there was no pity in that voice.

“You thought I was the same as my sister, take me!”

The crowd around us was shifting, swelling and moving just like the ocean, its many whispers brushing against me.

“Jessie, you can’t,” my father told me sternly and I felt the burning grow hotter in me. I planted my dirty boots more solidly in the ground, feeling as solid as a tree. My father turned to the men. “She’s not like Ella. She can’t do what you want.”

“What tales?” I demanded. “Tell me, father, before you let them take you. What tales? The ones Ella told me at night? About heat and whispers and the feeling of everything?”

Something seemed to snap. I felt it in the air. My father’s shoulders sagged and he turned his face away, pressing his eyes closed as if he couldn’t bear it. The look that lit up in the eyes of Lord Belvan and the broad man was eagerness and greed. In a moment my father had been shoved away and the broad man’s hands clamped around my arms.

“What are you doing?” I screamed and tried to tug away, struggling against the hold, kicking back at his legs.

Other men in the company closed around us, blocking off my father, separating his shouts and my mother’s cries, thick with tears.

“You come with us and we let your father live, understand?” the broad man hissed at me, yanking me against him and tightening his grip so I could barely move.

I paused in my struggled and looked at my father. He was trying to get past the soldiers. They’d drawn their swords and were edging toward using them. So I mouthed that I loved him, looked at my mother’s tear stained face and allowed myself to be pushed inside the carriage in place of my sister.

The carriage immediately began to move and the company fell in around us. I heard clattering hooves, shouted orders, yells for people to get out of the way. The curtains were drawn. My skin itched. The only heat in here, the only thing I could connect to was Lord Belvan who sat across from me and the air that stirred because of our breath. I didn’t say anything for a few hours and Lord Belvan didn’t either. He studied me for a while, then seemed to lose interest and twitched the curtain aside for a moment. Then he settled back in his seat and looked to be thinking.

“Where are we going?” I asked at last.

“The palace. Two days,” Lord Belvan said curtly and fixed his eyes on the wall behind me again. The carriage squeaked and jolted as we went over ditch in the road.

“Why?”

“The king requires you as payment for your fathers debt.”

“I know that much,” I snapped and was gratified by the shocked, almost offended look Lord Belvan gave me. “What is my father’s debt?”

“He deserted the palace guard and burned everything we had on the old tales. He was captured three days later and released on the agreement that his daughter Ella, two years old at the time, would be handed over on her nineteenth birthday. She’d already shown signs of the old tales in her.”

“That was last season,” I said numbly. “Ella turned nineteen in the winter.”

“And we waited for spring weather to travel.” Lord Belvan smiled discourteously.

I frowned at him, but he didn’t look at me.

“The old tales,” I said abruptly and refused to look at Lord Belvan, returning his manner and acting as if he were far too horrible to let my eyes rest on. “What are they exactly?”

“In short,” Lord Belvan said crisply and I could tell he was getting annoyed with me. “It is the ability to sense and control the fundamental life in everything.”

The two days passed slowly. The two nights when we stopped and I was allowed out of the carriage I practically hurled myself against a tree. I pressed myself against its bark, sank down and slept against its base even though a tent had been set up so I could be away from the view of everyone. Lord Belvan slept in his own tent, but everyone else was outside, as close to the campfire as they could get. Both mornings, when I woke, Lord Belvan was already up and he smiled slightly at the sight of me rising from the ground.

“Weren’t you cold?” he’d asked me when we were back in the carriage.

“No,” I told him and looked away.

I hadn’t been even the slightest bit uncomfortable. I’d often wondered how Ella had done it, sleeping among the roots of that tree bordering the beach. Hadn’t she been cold? Hadn’t it been uncomfortable? No. All night the tree had kept me company, the wind had pressed against me, the grass had tickled my skin and the fire that burned in everything kept me warm. Before the afternoon came on the third day we arrived in the city.

Everything smelled. Refuse, sweat, mud, but there were also nice smells, bakeries, perfumes, fresh fruit. We wound deeper into the city and eventually arrived in the palace. I was let out again and stopped dead on the lawn of the most stunning thing I’d ever seen in my life. Green lawns kept in order, rose bushes and lemon trees and fountains and statues and a drive that led to the biggest building I’d seen in my life. It was made entirely of gray stone. There were towers, spires, walls, halls, glass windows. Surrounding everything was a giant wall and a huge gate that swung closed, sealing me in.

Lord Belvan didn’t say goodbye. He walked toward the palace, followed by the broad man while the rest of the company led the horses and carriage around the side of the palace. A woman hurried down the palace steps, grabbed my arm and set off at a mean pace. I tried to question her at first, but then she opened her mouth and I saw she had no tongue. It had been cut off. I felt my stomach churn.

The afternoon was spent in a lush room with thick carpets and mirrors and brushes and dresses and women who wouldn’t stop prodding me. I was stripped, washed down, dressed again, my hair brushed out and done up and gems hung around my throat and on my ears. It was the most uncomfortable experience of my life. I’d hardly ever seen my reflection except for in the occasional tin jug, but I knew for a fact that the person in the mirror was not me. My brown hair was in nice curls atop my head and the blue gems set off my eyes and the dress was far too low cut, the necklace making a sad attempt to cover the suddenly bare skin.

I was given food and I ate it quickly. When I was done it was replaced with more and I ate that and had to refuse before anymore was brought out. Now I was pampered and stuffed, ready to be hung on a wall like a hunting trophy. The same woman who’d brought me to the room hurried me down corridors and to a room guarded by two sentries. She shoved me through and the door swung shut behind me.

It was the throne room. A deep red carpet led to the dais at the other end of the hall. A single throne stood tall and an even taller man sat straight backed in it. He was lean with dark hair and light blue eyes and a stern kind of smile on his face. It was not how I imagined the king, but the gold crown on his head and fine clothes did suit him.

“I hope you’ve been treated well while I found the time to meet you,” he told me.

There were five guards on either side of the throne, and six servants kneeling against the left wall. Apart from them the room was empty. The king smiled at me, showing too much teeth. A dreaded, clawing feeling worked through my stomach.

“Very well,” I forced the words to pass my lips in a polite tone. “Thank you.”

The king nodded, a decisive movement.

“You’ve been shown your rooms?” the king confirmed.

My rooms? Had that been where those women had prodded at me? Those extravagant rooms were mine? I agreed and thanked the king again.

“I have to confess to some confusion, your highness.” It was difficult to pick words that wouldn’t guarantee my immediate death. After being dragged so quickly from my town, from my family, right after the death of my sister, because of a debt my father had owed. I hadn’t even known he’d been part of the palace guard. I thought my family had always lived in that town.

“Confusion?” the king asked. He rose and descended the dais to stand in front of me. He was a good half a foot taller than me, but I was relatively short.

“I’m not sure what’s going on. I’m not sure what I’m doing here besides repaying a debt.” My fingers twisted around each other for anything to comfort me, but all I could find was the king’s heat and his steady breath shifting the air. He was far too close.

“I’ll sum it up for you,” he told me and smiled as if I weren’t that bright. “You belong to me now. You will do anything and everything I ask of you.”

I stared at him. Slavery. That was what this was. Despite the gown I was wearing and the rooms that were apparently mine I was now a slave. My skin itched. All I wanted was a tree to curl against, or an ocean to throw myself into, or a strong wind to snatch at my hair, even just sunlight, but all were so far away in this cold palace. I scratched at my skin. I felt sick. Not just from this man, from the situation I found myself in, but from everything. I needed to be outside now. I could feel everything reaching for me, bending itself to try and touch me, but I was too far away. I scratched harder.

“Your highness,” I started and he smiled slightly, as if he would find whatever I said next thoroughly amusing. “I think I’m going to faint.”

I woke up outside. Lord Belvan was leaning against a tree, examining his fingernails. When he saw I was awake he straightened and watched me struggle to my feet.

“Fainting in front of the king,” he made a disapproving noise with his tongue.

I moved past him and clutched at the tree. It was young and thin, its branches reaching just higher than my head. Still, it was nice to press against and it had a core that steadied me.

“How long have they bent to you like this?” Lord Belvan asked.

I opened my eyes to see him looking above me. Tilting my head, I saw the tree had swayed in a wind that was only just working itself up. The branches reached toward me and the wind pressed against me, not touching Lord Belvan. It was night, but the moonlight shone brilliantly and my skin seemed to glow in it. I was warm, almost hot, and a contentment reached deep within me. I kicked off the slippers that had been put on my feet and grasped the grass with my toes, anchoring me even more firmly to the ground. Everything whispered, the leaves against each other, the wind against my ear, the ocean--

There was no ocean. The sickness was back in my stomach. I’d grown up beside the ocean. There hadn’t been a second in my life when its whispers and crashing waves hadn’t been able to reach me. I realized Lord Belvan was still waiting for my answer.

“Same day you came,” I told him, trying to make my voice hard, but it sounded warm even to my ears. The feeling of everything reaching for me was making me feel slightly drunk. “After my sister died.”

Lord Belvan nodded as if it made sense, but I couldn’t see it.

“And before that?”

I pressed closer to the tree and exhaled deeply with it. Ella had tried as best she could to describe how she felt when she breathed with everything else, but the words just didn’t exist. Something tight loosened in the chest and simply gave itself over.

“If I strained every part of me, stretched my insides to reach it I could hear it, but it never spoke to me.”

Lord Belvan smiled at the bitterness in my voice.

“How do you feel now that it reaches for you?”

I considered him for a while. His mouth smiled expectantly, but the expression did not reach his cold eyes. I decided to tell him the truth, just to see what he’d do with it.

“Relieved,” I told him, renewing my grip on the tree. “but also terrified.”

I slid down the tree and settled at its base. By leaning back and closing my eyes, I could feel everything. The tree, steady and strong, the wind winding through its branches, the stickiness in the summer night air. The core of everything, including Lord Belvan who now crouched in front of me, reaching out a hand. Eyes still closed, I reached out my own hand and touched his fingers.

“You’re already more than we’d hoped for,” Lord Belvan murmured with a smile in his voice.

His breath whispered against his teeth. The leaves brushed each other, telling their own secrets. The wind curled around my neck.

“What had you hoped for?” I asked and opened my eyes. A deep disturbance reached for me at the sight of Lord Belvan’s greedy expression. “Why am I here?”

“For now you’re just a prize for the king to wear, but soon we’ll find a use for you.”

His words made my stomach crawl. Lord Belvan left me in the garden and I tried to move closer to the tree, to be away from here, but my own skin was in the way. That night I slept outside again, the grass needling me and the wind pressing against me, more comforting than a warm blanket.

It happened in a moment. There wasn’t even a decision. Just longing. One moment Jessie was pressing her life, her burning heart against the tree and the next the heat had slid away. It left Jessie and moved completely into the tree. A guard found her in the morning, her body cold and a smile on her lips.

Those the world bends toward and reaches for are sought for more than friendship and the company of more life heat. Those who reach back, who want nothing more than to lose themselves completely in that connection know nothing but longing in its absence. Maybe it sounds cruel, but by the time the body is left cold the burning spirit has well moved on.