Gwenna's mind clouded. She felt the need to destroy this thing of beauty-this threat to the shadow-that marred the bayou's perfection. She caught herself in mid-reach. Only her physical contact with Temken, and therefore an association with the magic he commanded, intervened and left her hanging in the balance. She knew that to resist was futile and would mean punishment. One did not defy the shadow, especially her. But Gwenna was also a child of Gaea, and to intentionally mar such beauty as the orchid was not easily accomplished. She pulled back, daring to believe Temken for even the briefest moment.
The punishment came swiftly.
Darkness broke over and around them both in a wash of despair. Gwenna fell away to the muddy trail, physically sick. She watched as Temken glanced up in confusion, his concentration obviously broken, tears rolling down his cheeks as the orchid first lost its coloring then rotted on its stem. He tried to speak, but no words issued from his mouth. Gwenna shook her head.
"No building again," she said, voice laden with the tears her eyes no longer cried. "We can none of us leave. It will never let us." Then the shadow passed again.
Temken's eyes rolled back, and he pitched forward, collapsing into the muck.
Calling the collection of ramshackle huts and utility buildings a village was optimistic to Temken's way of thinking. The clearing looked up to a gray, moisture-laden sky, but the poorly thatched roofs could not possibly keep out anything stronger than a morning dew. Walls were full of holes. No one thought of or bothered to make a mud and straw mortar to fill the irregularities between branches. Certainly mud would not be hard to come by here. Doors were commonly a piece of hide stretched over a light frame and leaned into place over one of the larger openings. The huts sketched out a crude circle, which might have been considered a rough tribute to nature's cycle except for the large opening that framed a path leading deeper into the bayou. At least the ground here appeared drier, though Temken wondered if that might simply be relative to his own muddied and sodden state.
It was not quite the way he had intended to make his entrance, he and Gwenna leaning against each other for mutual support as they hobbled into the encampment. His head throbbed, and he could only imagine his appearance-disheveled and feeling the worse for whatever had come over him. Even so, he had expected something more than the indifferent looks the other elves gave him.
Nothing.
No words of welcome, no questions after kinfolk who might have been part of Temken's enclave. He read their harsh lifestyle in the gaunt and drawn faces as much as in the poverty of their living. Resignation and defeat shadowed their features, even the young ones who were obviously born in the After. Not for the first time since entering this forsaken land, he wondered why they remained here. The plains to the north were dying as the climate turned worse every year, but certainly there were more hospitable stretches of forestland nearby or the coastal regions to the nearby south. If the ocean reminded them too much of what they had lost, at least it would provide nourishment until a suitable refuge could be located. Why did they stay here? Another question answered him, swimming up from the depths of his mind, teased up by the shadow dancing at the edge of his consciousness. Why not? That was not an answer, though. He refused to accept it, and the shadow retreated.
What had happened to him back along the trail?
Gwenna slowed to a halt, tested her own balance, and then stepped away from Temken to let him stand on his own.
"This is Temken," Gwenna introduced him for the benefit of those who did not remember him as a youth. "He will be staying."
There were nods all around.
"Only as long as necessary," he amended Gwenna's remark.
More nods, though to Temken they still seemed to be agreeing with Gwenna. A day, maybe two. Just to rest, he told himself, though earlier he had not planned on remaining one night in the bayou.
"There are other Survivors. They are heading west- to warmer forests, we hope. But we'll be together," he finished weakly.
"We're already together," Gwenna said, though she did not sound certain of herself. Quick nods bolstered her confidence.
She stepped over to a large pot simmering over an open fire, a community cooking area, the charred ground showing the remnants of other fires. Someone handed her an implement, and she dipped out a ladle of broth, shocking Temken by not offering it to him first as a guest. Instead she drank deeply. He covered his surprise by wiping mud from the long braids hanging before his left ear, then tucked them back over his shoulder. Gwenna drank again, then handed Temken the ladle. As their hands touched she blinked in sudden confusion, as if suddenly at odds with her own violation of custom, but she shrugged it off.
Temken reminded himself of how long these Survivors had been cut off from others, of the conditions under which they currently lived. He nodded thanks to Gwenna, to the person tending the fire, and then pulled a deep ladle from the pot. He noticed the grisly meat swimming in the brown broth and decided that if he questioned its source he might not get a comforting answer. He slopped a bit over the ladle's rim, splashing it to the ground in an offering to Gaea, and sipped the rest cautiously. Over the ladle's rim he saw reactions to his libation-the briefest touch of surprise and even anger for his waste of good broth. To a forest people, he thought his ritual offering to the nature goddess should still be known if not commonplace.
"He'll need a home," the fire tender said, glancing about the village. "There might be room to squeeze him in over there." He nodded toward two huts with just enough spacing, away from the opening toward the bayou's heart.
Temken lowered the ladle from his lips. "I won't need a home," he said, confused.
He sipped again at the weak, fatty broth. Darkness wrapped about the area, but Gaea's song, dim but recognizable, pierced the gloom and brought back to mind memories of cleaner lands: the whisper of a breeze among willows, the creak of tree limbs rubbing over a clear, gurgling brook. Handing back the ladle to the tender, Temken glanced at Gwenna and drew in a steadying breath of the dank air.
"I'll be looking for more Survivors soon, on my way westward. I hope you'll come with me."
They met his invitation with frightened looks of concern and sidelong glances.
What had happened to him, back along the trail? It seemed an important question. Unfortunately, Temken had no good answer. Marsh gas, or simple fatigue? He remembered feeling ill. He remembered the shadow collapsing after the failure of his spell. He'd lain in the foul-smelling muck, looking to Gwenna. Her words, soft and despairing… We can none of us leave. Hadn't there been something more? He couldn't recall.
Gwenna remained rooted to her spot near the fire, watching Temken with a mixture of sorrow and despondency. She nodded to him as he looked her way, as if confirming his thoughts. Gaea's calls had led Temken to her specifically, not the village. She was the key, but how to turn it? The two stared at one another, the first searching, and the other becoming more pale and insipid. Rather than infect her with a yearning to quit the bayou, to return with him and bring her enclave, even now Temken could feel the pull to remain. They had no home, not really. Gwenna was correct about that. But did it have to be that way? Everything had its place in nature, hadn't it? He remembered the death of his spell, the orchid, and the sorrow it brought him.
We can none of us leave.
Why not? What was he missing?
Gwenna felt Temken press up to her, standing behind and reaching around to grasp her wrists in order to better control their movement. Eyes closed, she tried to follow his whispered directions, forgetting or placing aside all sensations but her reach for the land's mana. Forgoing sensation was not the difficulty, not for her- bayou living had made such a task easy. Only the warmth of his touch against her bare wrists offered any amount of distraction. But she couldn't visualize the bayou's life-giving side when her memories of the dank and dismal place fought against it. Even now its rotten scent clung to them, reminding Gwenna of the cold place of shadow where they had-chosen? — to live after Argoth's destruction.