Three: Coming of Age

Dynyd celebrates his Coming of Age

“Hurry up son, else you shall be late!” Rodran Onecson’s bellow carried easily through the treehouse.

“I’m coming, father. I just need to find my belt.”

Rodran shook his head at his son’s lack of organisation, remembering fondly how he himself had almost been late to his own coming of age ceremony. He removed the thick leather belt from a hook by the door. “It’s out here, where you left it last night.”

“Oh, thankyou.” Dynyd Rodranson rushed into the entrance hall, skidding to a halt before his father. He took the proffered belt, buckled it and stood before his father’s appraising eyes.

“You’ll do, I suppose,” Rodran said gruffly, nodding to his son. He ducked his head beneath the top of the doorframe, and stepped outside the treehouse, into the dappled light of the Ælhollow forest.

Dynyd followed, his heart pounding. He couldn’t believe it was this time already! The thirteenth day of the twelfth month – the day that he turned sixteen, and became a man. It was not something that happened very often, even less so here in Ælhollow.

The other treehouses showed many signs of life, even this early in the morning. Rodran Onecson was highly respected in Ælhollow, and known to many elves throughout the rest of Kal’mara, and everybody in the village was going to his son’s coming of age ceremony.

When he arrived at the clearing where he had made all his preparations, he did not recognise it. Hung from the trees were coloured banners, bearing the words “Good Luck, Dynyd” in both human and Elven runes. Tables in the centre of the clearing were already laden with food, including some human delicacies that Dynyd had not tasted for almost ten years. There was plenty of space remaining for the dishes that the guests would bring with them.

The stages that Ardorm had prepared bore the signs of thickly layered magic – none of it touching his spells, so it would not interfere with the production he had prepared. A willow archway had been constructed between the two stages, and, now he looked more closely, Dynyd could see that the tables were wrapped around with willow as well, sung from the trees.

Rodran looked up at the sky. “About nine,” he murmured to himself. “The first guests should be arriving in a few minutes.”

“See, we’re not late!” Dynyd laughed.

“We could very well have been,” replied Rodran, frowning at his son, but his eyes were laughing. “The time you were taking, I would have been amazed if we turned up before every else left and went home!”

“So, who’re my mystery guests? Are you going to tell me now?”

Rodran smiled, looking over his son’s shoulder. “I don’t need to. They’re already here.”

Dynyd spun around. “Nydan!” he shouted, throwing himself at the eldest of the four, a man of his father’s age.

“Hey there, kid,” Nydan replied, carefully pulling out of Dynyd’s grip. “You’ve grown!” he complained, but there was laughter in his eyes.

Nydan Kyleson stood an inch below Dynyd, his features similar to Rodran’s, although he lacked a beard and his eyebrows were somewhat tamer. His hair was cut in the same style that most older men favoured, almost reaching his shoulders. Nydan and Rodran had been childhood friends, almost inseparable until they were grown men, and were still very close until Rodran had left for Kal’mara. They had celebrated their birthdays – and, of course, their coming-of-age – together. Dynyd suspected that Nydan was the reason Rodran had stayed in Lorwynne for so long after his wife’s death.

 “I’m sure father’s grown, too,” Dynyd replied cheerily.

Nydan smiled, turning to embrace Rodran, who towered over him. “You’re catching up with him, though, Dynyd. You may be a man now, but that doesn’t mean you’ll stop growing! Why, your father carried on for another three years after our ceremony!”

As Nydan and Rodran began to talk to one another, discussing five years’ worth of news, Dynyd turned his attention to the three youths before him. Two of them he had seen five years ago, when Nydan had visited last, but they had changed much since that last meeting, although not enough that he didn’t recognise them.

“Kal! Gaz!” he embraced each of them.

“It’s good to see you again,” said Kaldan Nydanson, grinning.

“Yeah, a pity you missed our coming of age!” added Gares Noaryson, the boy Nydan had adopted as his own son after the boy’s mother – Kaldan’s wet nurse – had died in a fire.

The boys were both a year older than Dynyd, with only a day between the two of them. Kaldan could almost pass for an elf[i], but for the curved ears – his build was slight and his features narrow, accentuated by blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, inherited, if Dynyd remembered correctly, from his mother. Gares looked more like you would expect a man from Fay to, and more like his father, with the same dark hair and eyes. Both boys, however, were shorter than their father. Gares, the taller of the two, was at least four inches shorter than Dynyd.

“I’m sorry,” Dynyd replied. “I wanted to come, but father wouldn’t let me. I don’t think he wants me to do the Quest either, but I’m not going to let him stop me!”

Gares laughed. “You haven’t changed, Dyn! Well, you’ve grown,” he said, running his eyes up and down Dynyd’s huge form. “We gave your father our gifts last night – they’re already on the table!”

Dynyd looked back at the cluster of tables, and spotted, beside the food, a table already laden with presents. He grinned. “You saw father last night?”

“Yeah, we’ve been here for a couple of days, but Rodran didn’t want us to see you before the ceremony – wanted it to be a proper surprise. Father only got here yesterday evening, anyway.” Gares had never called Nydan ‘father’, despite being too young to remember his own father, a drunkard, when he had been adopted. “Magpie threw a hoof on the Great Road East, so he had to find a blacksmith yesterday morning whilst we carried on. Lucky we chose to stop early that night, really – none of the villages further east are big enough to have a Blacksmith! Mind you, we weren’t sure we were going to make it in time.”

“I had to stay with father,” announced Nydan’s other child, a girl with the same blonde hair and blue eyes as Kaldan. She was two years younger than Kaldan and five inches shorter, just barely over five feet. Her other features, Dynyd couldn’t help noticing, were highly appealing – he could easily ignore the stubborn chin and focus on the soft, full lips, heavy lashes and strong cheekbones. He tried hard not to examine any features lower than the loose neckline of her silk gown.

“Tanin?” asked Dynyd, his eyes wide. The last time he had seen Tanin, she had only been speaking a year or two.

She smiled, her eyes hidden behind lowered lashes. “It’s me. You’re…quite different to how I remember.”

Dynyd grinned. “So are you!” He felt blood rising in his cheeks, and hoped that Kaldan and Gares would not notice, or, worse, resent, the attention he was giving their sister. He was saved the necessity of having to say anything else as more guests began to arrive, a long, solid stream of them pouring into the clearing. They expressed delight at the surroundings and both old and young seemed incredibly excited to be witnessing a human coming-of-age ceremony, something no elf had done for almost two thousand years.

Finally, all the seats were filled. Ardorm, Rodran and a female elf, Zena, whose age was unknown, although she wa definitely over a century old, stepped onto the stage to the audience’s right. Recognising the cue, Dynyd approached the left stage, and stood there, as silence fell, feeling rather foolish and vulnerable, though he would never admit it to anyone.

“We are here today,” Ardorm called in the human language, his voice carrying easily to every ear, “to witness the coming of age of the human, Dynyd Rodranson. For nearly ten years Dynyd has lived amongst us, fitting into our way of life so easily that many of us often forget that he is a human. By our measures he is still a child, but today he is sixteen, and as such, he is fit to call himself a man.”

Ardorm paused, and the crowd, led by Nydan and his children, applauded and cheered. Those elves who knew little of the human tongue waited for their friends to translate before joining the applause. Dynyd beamed.

“Before we ask Dynyd to speak, I would like to welcome his father, Rodran Onecson, to say a few words.” Ardorm bowed in the elvish style, his arms crossed over his chest, and retreated to the back of the stage.

Rodran waited for the applause to die down before he spoke. “Words cannot describe how proud I am to stand here today,” he said, and though his voice was quiet, and held a slight tremor of emotion, everyone could hear him perfectly. “My only son, Dynyd, named for the elf who helped my wife through the later stages of her pregnancy and through childbirth, is now a man. I have no doubt that he will be a fine man, a great man. I hope that his deeds will, perhaps, be greater than mine. I hope that, one day in the future, he will stand on a stage like this one, making a speech for his own son, as his wife watches and beams.

“The years have gone so quickly. It seems like only yesterday that I took him from Anna’s arms into my own, and we named him. Why, only a few hours ago, he was but two years old, and standing on his own for the first time. Mere seconds have passed since he uttered his first word, and then his first sentence, since he first drew a bow, and thrust a sword. I will miss him, when he departs for his Quest of self-discovery, and I hope that he will return to me swiftly, a stronger and better person than he is now, for I know, as a father always does, that there is room for improvement.”

Rodran turned and beamed at his son, his eyes sparkling with tears that refused to be held back, as the crowd applauded again, this time sensing the moment before Nydan could prompt them.

Dynyd walked slowly through the willow arch, his head reeling. This was it! He was a man, an adult! And, he held his breath, from what his father had said, he might be setting out on a Quest very soon. He did not watch the audience’s reaction as he made the journey from child to adult, but stared straight forwards, at his father. When he reached the man who had raised him, he embraced him. Rodran squeezed his son’s shoulder tightly, then pulled away and dropped to one knee.

He drew his polished sword from its scabbard and held the blade out before his son, offering the pommel. Dynyd grasped it firmly, admiring the tempering of the steel – Gädyl-til was an Elvish blade, far stronger than anything a human could make, but lighter than most such blades, the perfect weight in his hand. He felt tears pricking at his own eyes.

“Use it well, though I hope you shall not need it at all,” murmured Rodran, rising again. He retreated to stand beside Ardorm.

“Thankyou, everyone, for coming today,” said Dynyd to his audience, his voice unsteady at first, but growing in confidence as he went on. He gradually released the magic he had imbibed in the trees around the clearing, so that the crowd could watch the journey he had come on. He heard some of them gasp – one of his human guests, from the sound. It was too loud to be an elf.

“Thankyou for your gifts and your kind words, though your presence alone is more than enough. Thankyou, Ardorm, Veses, Taial, for your help and advice on Elven culture – you have stopped me putting both my feet and my nose where they were neither wanted nor needed. Thankyou, Nydan and family, for the long journey you have made to be here on this most important day of my life so far. You do not know how much it means to me to see each of you here.

“And finally, thankyou to my father, for raising me, and shaping me into the man I am now. Without you, I would not be half the person I am, and I would be ashamed to lift my head in the present company. You have given me your wisdom and kindness, and now your blade, that I may be a better person, and strive for a better world.”

It was a short speech, he knew, unprepared, and nowhere near as polished as the speech an elf would make at their coming of age ceremony, but the elves still broke into an applause louder than any yet at its end. As his eyes ran across the crowd, he saw Veses and Taial, smiling at one another. Here and there, older elves, friends of Rodran rather than Dynyd, were nodding their heads with approval. At the back of the crowd, Nydan wiped a tear from his cheek, and Tanin stared, entranced, at the stage.

Now the spells that Dynyd had detected before came to life, sending coloured fire into the air. A warm scent spread gently, accompanied by a low humming, a slow-changing melody that Dynyd recognised as a song from an Elven coming of age ceremony. He smiled at the mingling of two different cultures, then gasped in awe as the trees on the edge of the clearing twisted and shifted slowly until they bore his likeness, carved into their features as though by an expert craftsman. The four humans in the crowd forgot that it was not polite to leave their mouths open.

The music and fire faded slowly, but the scent and decorations remained. Dynyd nodded to the crowd, and turned to speak to his father. The elves stood and approached the tables, which were now piled high with more food than Dynyd thought the entire assembly would need in a month.

“Father, I thought that you did not want me to do a Quest,” Dynyd said quietly.

“The Quest is an important rite of passage,” Rodran replied, a slight smile playing on his mouth. “I would not want you to miss out. Besides, there is much of the world, both in this Realm and the human one, which you have yet to see. You have my sword – I shall also give you my ring, and the names of some of my friends throughout both realms. With these, you should not come to any harm, and you are more capable of defending yourself than even I was at your age, and by then I had already slain five of my enemies. Just remember to stay clear of the King and his men.”

“I do not how to thank you,” Dynyd replied softly, taking his father’s ring, engraved with the three circles, two complete, one broken, that showed the wearer to be an Elf-friend, or Äk-teirn. It was only once Ardorm had nodded in approval that he slid the ring onto his finger.

“You do not need to thank me, son,” Rodran said gruffly, tears once again threatening to spill from his eyes. “Just see that you return to me safely, as soon as your six months are up.”

“I will, father,” Dynyd replied. “I will.”

“Good. Now, there is rather a large pile of presents awaiting you just over there, and my stomach is beginning to complain of emptiness. Shall we join the hordes?”

Dynyd laughed. “Yes, let’s.”

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[i] The appearance of elves is widely varied, to the magical powers that race possess.  An elf who has not altered his or her appearance is most similar to a human, though often taller and fairer. And elf’s ears taper to a point; his eyes are narrower and more far-seeing; his hair and skin are paler; his features are more angular and more noble. Many elves alter their features to resemble those of animals – adding to their anatomy tails and wings, or lengthening the hair over their entire body so that they have a fur coat. Some go even further until they appear more animal than elf – these are the wild-elves, who obey only themselves, the laws of nature, and the direct orders of their Monarch.