“They’re all gone now, Ela...” he said. “They’re all gone.”
*****
After that day, Elan stopped asking her father about where he had been and who he had been with. The pain she had felt rolling off him that day had hurt her so badly that she even shied away from the subject in her mind, preferring to focus her energy elsewhere.
She had always been a hyper child, running around their small home and property, even after helping all day in the field or at the river. So it was inevitable that Elan would occasionally arrive in places where perhaps she shouldn’t be and see things that maybe she wasn’t supposed to.
Not so soon, not so young, at least.
It was about a month after the conversation with her father that Elan happened on her father during one of his solitary times.
Elanthielle clambered up the rock, moving as quietly as only someone of her size could. Her carved doll was clenched in her teeth as she climbed, held gently but firmly as she topped the huge boulder that sat in the center of their field. This was her place, it always had been, and she loved being alone in the immense sea of dirt that surrounded them.
At the top of the boulder she set about to play as she always had, but for some reason she stopped and looked down at the far side. She didn’t know what caused her to look over the side—she just had this funny tickling along the back of her neck—so she crawled softly over to the side and peered down.
Her father was there, right below where she played, right below her place. He was sitting here, back resting against the hard and unyielding surface of the huge rock, his head tilted back and his legs folded under him.
Elan frowned. She’d never seen her mother do this, and her curiosity was instantly piqued. She crawled slowly over to the edge of the rock and stared down, wondering if he were asleep. But no, she soon realized, his eyes were open, though they didn’t seem to be staring at anything.
Elan stood up as tall as she could, shielding her eyes to blot out the light of the noon-day sun, and stared off in the same direction as her father was.
No, there was nothing out there. It was extremely strange, and she tilted her head slightly, a puzzled scrunching of her face causing her nose to wrinkle slightly. Maybe Pappa had better eyes than she did?
She hopped up, hoping to get a little higher, as if that might give her a better vantage from which to see what it was that seemed to so enthrall the big man that was her father.
Still nothing.
She frowned, sitting down herself for a moment, and pondered the situation. After a time she glanced back down and he was still there and still staring off into the distance. She pouted, then looked from side to side and made a decision. Quickly she scrambled down the side of the boulder and landed squarely on the packed dirt. She made her way around until she found him and approached slowly, hesitantly.
“Pappa?”
He didn’t respond.
“Pappa?” She began to feel a tension in her as she walked closer. “Pappa? Are you alright?”
She got closer, her hand hesitantly reaching out until it was almost touching his unmoving face, only inches from his frozen eyes.
His hand snapped out in a lightning move that tore a startled scream from her throat as she jumped and tried to run. His hand snapped around her wrist, holding her firmly as his eyes locked onto her. For a moment his face was hard, wary, but upon seeing her, he instantly softened. “I’m sorry, Ela... Did I scare you?”
Upon hearing his soft voice, she stopped trying to run and looked back, half frightened and half ashamed. “I’m sorry, Pappa...I just wanted to know what you were doing...”
He nodded. “It’s alright, Ela... It’s alright...”
Damasc pulled his daughter close and held her for a moment before speaking. “I was on a Dream Quest, Ela...”
“A what?”
He sighed. Trying to explain the Quest or the Dreaming to one so young was difficult. More so because his own teachers had been barely able to do so to him. He looked up at the hot sun above him and climbed to his feet while holding his daughter. With her in his arms, he walked toward the cold spring that was the land’s sole redeeming virtue.
As he and Elan drank some of the icy cold water that sprang from the depths of the ground, he tried to explain.
“You see...” he started haltingly. “You know when you go to sleep...the pictures you see in your head?”
She nodded. “Mamma calls them dreams.”
He smiled. “Your mother is absolutely right. Dreams are gateways to other worlds, Ela...other places in this world sometimes... They have a power that we seldom understand. A power that we almost never hold in our hands.”
Elan didn’t really understand, but she did feel that it was a solemn sort of thing, so she reacted appropriately, nodding very seriously.
Damasc smiled at her serious face, even as he noted the confusion in her eyes. “When we learn to understand and control our dreams...we learn to understand and control our lives.”
“Is that what you were doing?” she asked, her face full of innocent curiosity. “Controlling your dreams?”
He sighed again. “I was trying, Ela...”
“By sitting out in the sun with no water?” Ela asked. Even she knew that wasn’t a good thing to do.
He nodded.
“Why?”
“When the body is tired...at the edge of endurance...” Damasc tried to explain, “its connection to the physical world is weakened.”
She looked confused, but nodded for him to continue.
“The physical world...the world around us that we can touch and taste and smell...” he explained, “is only part of the world we live in.”
“What part?”
Damasc laughed. “The solid part.”
“Oh,” Elan said, as if that explained everything.
“Some things you will only know later, Ela...” Damasc said. “Maybe you should play with your doll for now... Childhood is a time for those things.”
“No!” she said quickly, actually startling her father. “No...please. I want to know.”
“Alright...” He sighed, not really understanding why it was so interesting to her, but willing to humor the little girl. “When you are weak...tired, but not sleepy...when you are hungry and thirsty...that is when your connection to the solid world is weakest...” he said slowly. “That is when you can reach into the world of spirit and dreams.”
“Why?” her voice was innocently questioning.
“I don’t know.” He smiled, saying three words that hurt any parent to admit to their child. “I just know that it is so.”
“Oh...” She frowned. “So you hurt yourself?”
“No...I...push myself, to make myself stronger,” he tried to explain.
“Oh,” she said, brightening immediately. “Like when I carry buckets for Momma... It was really hard at first, but it got easier after a while.”
“Exactly.” He sighed in relief, glad to just have any common comparison.
“Can you show me?”
That took him by surprise, eliciting a blink and a grunt of shock as his jaw dropped. “Ela?”
“I want to learn this...Dreaming,” she said. “I want to be stronger too.”
“Ela...you’re...you’re too young.” He tried putting her off, knowing that it was a lie. The younger the person, the faster they could learn. That was what youth was for.
“I am not!” she pouted instantly. “I’m old enough to help Mamma in the field...”
“Yes...but...”
“I’m old enough to help you fish...” she continued.
“Yes...but...”
“I’m even old enough to make the nightly meal,” she finished with a tone of finality.
He sighed and gave in, thinking that it was a childish whim and she would soon forget. “Alright, Ela...I’ll show you what I know...but do not expect much. I have only entered a true Dream Quest once, and that was a long time ago.”