Tallys' Story - Ghost Stories

[ANGST WARNING: If you know anything about Tallys' past, this story could be a major bummer. Read at your own caution!]

When the clan settled in a forest on the edges of the Norm township, Tallys felt an uneasy stirring in her gut. 

“It’s the ratra,” said Luthe, Tallys’ cousin and one of the clan’s ahfuri scouts. “Siktir lan, you can sense it too!”

“It is not the ratra,” Tallys answered, snapping shut one of her books in annoyance. Then, immediately, she regretted it: the books were ancient, precious, salvaged from the archives of Sylfaen itself and preserved on wafer-thin lotus paper. If Hippia, the clan’s former Keeper and Tallys’ master, found out that her apprentice had been slamming the old tomes around, her ensuing wrath would be legendary. 

Luthe was already turning away to address Indica, who was sorting out one of the supply charaxes: the kind of mobile home and vehicle that the Elves used to transport their goods. Tallys had heard outsiders comparing their charaxes to a cross between a covered wagon and a sleigh. “I wonder if you heard that, Indi—that Tallys can sense the ratra nearby. I told you the omens were true.”

“All I heard was you being a fool,” Indica answered tranquilly. She caught Tallys’ eye and might have winked. “There is no ratra here, Luthe.” 

But by the second day of their settling, the rumor could no longer be contained. It was whispered in the ethes, the cradling platforms they installed high in the boughs of trees to sleep in; it was shared like meals among the guards on patrol, murmured in the forest clearing before the dawn prayers. Luthe—and other superstitious chatters like him—spread it through the clan like a sickness. A ratra was following them, and it was only a matter of time before it claimed someone’s soul. 

At first Tallys smiled at such talk, and tried to follow Indica’s example and laugh it away. It was like campfire smoke, she reasoned, stinking up the air, hovering low over the clan like a shadow. All it needed was a bit of sunlight and wind to drive it away.

But the disapproving frowns of the other Ironwood Elves began to silence her. And day by day, the frowns only grew. 

The signs were innumerable, some said. The Tamer, the master of the ahfuri, found two of the panthera mounts lamed overnight. The Smith presented a sword mysteriously bent into a spiral, like a blade of grass. And the Tablemaster found worms as thick as a man’s fingers, writhing in the belly of a well-roasted boar. 

The presence of a ratra was said to cause strange and disastrous luck, even catastrophe, the whisperers claimed. The camp was under attack, and the assailant could only be this creature, this wraith born of shadows and terrible obsession. The ratra was said to fixate on some unlucky soul, to steal the faces and voices of those around it in a never-ending bid to slip among the unknowing and claim its target from right under their noses. It couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be identified: it could be your neighbor, your closest friend. It could even be posing as your lover, creeping closer and closer to its intended victim, pilfering the identities of those who would be less noticed first. 

What it did when it caught hold of its target, no one knew. But the clan was becoming unknitted, undone, as friend suspiciously eyed friend; as loving Elves flinched away from each other’s touch. And this was a bad time for disunity to be sown amongst the clan, Tallys thought. They needed each other, now more than ever. 

“You’re talking about the tree sickness?” Indica asked one morning over breakfast. Even she was beginning to believe the rumors, now. “Maybe that was the work of the ratra, too.”

Tallys frowned. This summer, the forest they usually hunted their elk in had grown sick and decayed. The leaves and trees were full of blight, and so the elk had moved to stranger pastures—specifically the plains that these Norm settlers resided on. Tallys’ clan was keeping its distance, remaining concealed in the nearby trees as it waited for the herds to move on. The Norms were only farmers, harmless and inferior compared to the trained archers and warriors of the Ironwood tribe—but the war called the Castigation was still fresh on everyone’s minds. Their proximity to the Norms made Tallys feel queasy, but she told herself there was no reason to be afraid. If it came to a battle, her people would decimate that town.

“We are in foreign and uncharted lands,” she said out loud to Indica. “The last time our folk passed through these hills, the Gods-forgotten had not even learned to scratch a living from the dirt. We need to rely on each other to make it through the season in a strange place, to serve as the familiar and the true—not turn against each other because of a silly rumor.” 

“It is not a silly rumor,” a voice declared behind her. They both turned then, and saw Luthe standing there, back from patrol and cradling something in his hands. 

Indica was on her feet in an instant, crying out. She hurried over and scooped the thing up from Luthe’s grasp, and now Tallys saw what it was—a sick and dying blackbird. 

A chill ran up her spine. Now that was a bad omen. Blackbirds were the messengers and spies of the god of death, Corvus. Normally they were watching over the clan, as Corvus was said to have fallen in love with an Ironwood Elf. To find one mortally ill…

It meant they no longer had Corvus’ protection. 

And it meant that death was coming. 

“We need to tell Rhamni,” she said immediately. Rhamni was the clan’s Speaker and primary leader; while Tallys and her master Hippia consulted the records of the clan’s past, using their long history, traditions, and culture to help guide the tribe’s future, Rhamni communed with the sleeping gods and spoke on their behalf. He would know why Corvus had so abruptly abandoned them. And he would know what to do next. 

Indica was crooning to the blackbird, who lay in her palms and panted through an open beak. Indica was a healer and a mender, and Tallys felt the slight press of her small magics as she took something out of the pouch at her waist and dribbled it into the blackbird’s throat. 

The blackbird stirred and murmured something, but Tallys didn’t catch it. 

“Indica,” she said again. “We have to tell Rhamni.” 

Finally her friend looked up. “Let’s go.”

Rhamni the Speaker listened in silence as the three of them recounted what Luthe had found during his patrol. Hippia was there, too, sitting gravely with a stark frown in the shadows of Rhamni’s personal charaxis. When Luthe was done telling his portion of the story, Indica said anxiously: “Our blackbird friend says there’s trouble in the town to the east. All of the cattle have gone missing; their fences, destroyed by something. The bad luck is spilling out of the forest and even affecting others in the area.”

“Perhaps the ratra is after someone in that town,” Luthe suggested hopefully.

“Or perhaps it’s after one of us, and it’s so powerful that its miasma is tainting others,” Indica shot back. “Even the birds.”

Rhamni sat silent and still as a statue. He was a tall man, with a cropping of silver hair that he’d had since birth: some called him “Starcrowned,” and considered it a mark of his connection to the divine. Finally he turned to Hippia and said, “What do the records say about a ratra?” 

Indica, beside Tallys, tensed. Asking direct questions was considered rude amongst the Elves, who felt that doing so imposed and forced the recipient into giving an answer. But exceptions were made during times of emergency. For Rhamni to break that etiquette now meant that things were dire. 

Tallys also tried not to press her lips together: not at the question, but at the fact that it was directed to Hippia. Tallys was Keeper of the clan’s history now—Hippia had passed the mantle to her not ten years ago—but the Elves were very slow to adapt to change. To Rhamni, it would have felt like a week, a few days; he had not gotten used to consulting Tallys herself yet. 

Hippia, aware of this, said smoothly, “Tallys will read through the records and tell you. Within the day.”

“Yes,” Tallys said, from where she was kneeling on the charaxis’ fine-woven rug. It had been made by Rhamni himself: all the Elves were skilled at a multitude of crafts and pursuits. They had all the time in the world to hone their arts, after all. 

Rhamni sighed and turned to her, as if finally seeming to remember her position. “And I will try to receive the gods’ intentions,” he said. “Though I cannot claim I understand their signs, of late.” He turned then to Luthe. “Tell the others I will try and hear the gods tonight.”

Luthe nodded gravely. Speakers were uniquely equipped to open their ears to the whispers of the world, the universe, and the gods who had created them; but they had to do so in complete silence, undisturbed by others for at least a day. Rhamni would lock himself away in his special charaxis, meditating and partaking in mysterious rituals and trances as his mind wandered the secret rhythms of the world, and he would be unavailable until he emerged again. To disrupt him would be to risk breaking his connection with the gods altogether. 

“Go well,” Luthe said, making the gesture of a well-wisher watching someone depart on a long journey. Tallys and Indica imitated the gesture, and Rhamni said with a gentle smile, “Take heart. I will see you again soon.” 

When they were outside of the shelter, Luthe darted off to convey the news to the others. Indica retreated to tend to her blackbird, who was rallying a bit under her ministrations; and Hippia caught Tallys’ arm. 

“I am sorry to volunteer your services in such a way,” she said. Her auburn hair was long in the traditional fashion and braided through with many sprays of tiny white hemlock flowers. There was just the slightest, most delicate wrinkle around her soft blue eyes: the only sign of her advanced age. “I will help you read through the tomes, of course.”

Tallys shook her head. “It is no service,” she answered, meaning it. “Not when it helps the clan. And I should have been researching mentions of the ratra, anyway. I should have been doing so since the moment we first heard of it. But I simply thought it was Luthe telling stories.”

“It still could be so,” Hippia said, shaking her head. “I hope it is so. But we must be diligent and give Rhamni all that we can, so he can make the best decision possible.”

They walked together to the edge of camp, where they kept the charaxis full of their records. It was Tallys’ duty to memorize and preserve these histories herself, within her own mind, should anything ever happen to the physical copies: that was part of her role as Keeper. Ink did not last forever, but an Elf was close to immortal and could outlive even her own books, living to repeat the stories even when the paper they’d been written on had turned to dust. In a way a Keeper was the living receptacle for others’ stories and memories, “Keeping” them safe throughout the long ages. 

But there were hundreds upon hundreds—even thousands—of years frozen within these pages, not to mention the new records being added every day by clan members turning in their journals, or Tallys herself transcribing fresh and uncaptured oral histories. Even if she lived as long as Hippia, she would never memorize them all—not if she wanted to save room for her own life, all the years she would experience firsthand—so she would have to go through them again, from the beginning, if she wanted to find any mention of a ratra. It would most likely take more than a day… but at least having Hippia, the more experienced Keeper, would greatly expedite the process.

They worked for a long time in practiced silence, moving around each other fluidly as they reached for a reference here, a record there. Tallys saw the blue shadows of the forest shrinking and then elongating as the day blurred by; eventually, her eyes began to smart from darting over the many flowing scripts, the perfect, identical calligraphy. 

“Here,” Hippia said finally, her voice a little dry and cracked from disuse. She cleared her throat and said again, “I’ve found something.”

Tallys eagerly took the supple leather volume she was holding out. It was a diary kept by one of her ancestors, an Elf of seven hundred years ago. The account detailed how the clan had moved through an Elvish settlement, long since abandoned now. The city was riddled with strange phenomena: animals found with their throats slashed, citizens being driven mad by the sounds of unearthly screams. The locals believed it to be the work of ghosts, from a bloody battle long past, and the writer of the diary theorized it could be a ratra. The day after that entry, the clan apparently moved on, unsettled by the troubles they witnessed. 

“Vaetir,” Tallys said aloud. “I’ve heard the name before.”

“It is an empty city,” Hippia said, with a note of triumph in her voice. “Perhaps even emptied by the very activity our forebear writes about. What’s more, its ruins lie in this very forest.”

Tallys’ heart leapt within her chest. “You think the ratra could have come from Vaetir?” If a ratra had caused Vaetir’s ruin, or at least its abandonment, perhaps it had lain dormant there throughout the ages. Perhaps it had been awakened by something, only recently, and drawn here to the clan… 

“Perhaps,” Hippia said, following her line of thought. “And if any of that is true, then perhaps Vaetir holds the key to its vanquishing.” 

They left the charaxis for the evenmeal, then abruptly altered their path to go deeper into the woods: Hippia wanted to look at the old road that would lead to Vaetir’s ruins. They walked for a time into the black and silent trees—the sun had vanished long ago, and there was no moon tonight—and Tallys tried not to shiver and rub her arms. Normally she was at peace in the forest: she could feel the thrumming life of the plants around her, the flurry and cheerful movement of the many animals that resided here. But this place felt cold and alien to her; the trees here felt strange, as if she had reached for the hand of a friend, only to mistakenly touch the palm of a stranger.

Finally they reached what Hippia said was the old road, now overgrown and obscured by the long centuries. In the dark Tallys could just pick out the faint imprint of charaxis ruts here and there: it would be utterly unrecognizable to anyone but an Elf who knew what she was looking for. 

“Vaetir is that way,” Hippia said, pointing in a straight line west, towards what Tallys knew was the heart of the forest. “In the morning we will pack our things and go there. Look for any signs of how to banish the ratra.”

Tallys nodded, eager to turn back around and head for the warmth and safety of camp. But then her ears picked up something—a snapping of a twig, the heavy shuffle of something not Elvish—and abruptly she twisted, pushed Hippia behind her, and silently drew her bow.

They stood for several long moments, keen eyes searching in the dark. Then: there! A dark figure slowly ambled into sight, out from between the trees. It looked like a wraith with two heads.

Tallys’ fingers twitched against her bowstring, aching to let loose her arrow. Was that the ratra? What would it do if she attacked it?

Then the “ratra” let loose a distinctly-human curse, fumbled for something at its waist, and lit a lantern. 

It happened too quickly for Tallys to react—and besides, there was not much she could do. They were right there, out in the open. The lantern-holder saw them in an instant and startled. 

“Oh!” a light male voice said. “I didn’t see you there!”

Tallys fired. The voice had the unmistakable western twang of a Norm, a little older than a child, by the sounds of it. She aimed to his left, striking a nearby tree trunk, hoping to scare the whelp into fleeing before he could get a good look at them.

Unfortunately, he did the opposite, freezing with his eyes wide—so Tallys nocked an arrow again. But before she could make the killing shot, she felt Hippia’s hand on her elbow.

“Tallys,” the former Keeper hissed. “He’s a child.”

“A child from that town,” Tallys shot back in Elvish. “He will tell them about us, if we let him live.”

“We will bring down the ire of their entire village if we draw his blood! A dead body or a missing boy will earn more attention than anything!”

“They will not know who did it.”

“He is a child. It is not our way.”

While they were conversing, the boy—an older teenager, actually, almost a man—put his hands into the air and called, “I’m real sorry. I didn’t know this was your land. I’ll go, I swear.”

Tallys nearly bared her teeth at him. He had a dowdy mass of red curls on his head, and his face was covered in freckles and a thin wisp of hair—his attempt at a beard, she supposed. Hippia said, before Tallys could stop her: “What are you doing here?”

She said it in Common, and the boy’s eyes widened in surprise; he had seen their pointed ears, then. But he did not know the Elves had the gift of tongues. “Ah,” he stammered. “Er—sorry.” He shook his head and blinked twice, obviously thrown off-guard by the revelation that they could speak the same language. “I, ah, our cows… our cattle, they ran away, or were let loose, or something. My pa went looking in the hills to the west, but we found a calf loose in these woods once, so I came looking, just in case.”

“Did the tracks lead here?” Tallys asked sharply, startling him again.

The pile of curls shook wildly. “No, ma’am,” he said. “L-like I said, I just had a hunch, so I thought maybe I could find them on a lark.” He tilted his head at them. “You… you haven’t seen them, have you?”

“No,” Tallys said harshly. “Now leave.”

“Yes’m.” He turned to go, and Tallys saw now that he had some sort of long gun slung over his shoulder: the thing that she’d thought was a second head. Then the boy looked back, and they saw the glint of his eyes in the wavering dark. “How long you folk been in these woods, anyway? Never knew your kind were here. You’re welcome, of course…”

“Leave,” Tallys said again, motioning with her bow. His head ducked down below his shoulders, and he scampered off like a frightened hare. 

Similarly, Tallys could feel her own pulse rabbiting against her wrists. This was not good. The Norms knew the clan was here, now, and while they weren’t likely to try anything, it would be best if her people picked up and left—elk or no. But Rhamni would have already entered his sati, the meditative trance needed to converse with the gods, and they could not risk breaking him out of it early. Or leaving him. 

Hippia touched her arm again. “He said we were welcome,” she said, her voice gentle.

Tallys shook her head. “He’s a Norm,” she ground out. “Their kind lies.”

Her master’s face clouded. “I sensed no lie from him. He seemed like a child. Innocent.”

That’s what our kind said before, Tallys thought. We were duped by the youth, their guilelessness. Then their kind butchered us like animals.

She turned away and shouldered her bow. “Come,” she said. “We must tell the others what’s happened.”

#

“The ratra,” Luthe said. Tallys felt like reaching across the table and strangling him. She was very sick of hearing that word. “I wonder how you know that boy wasn’t the ratra?”

“He didn’t do anything but turn tail and flee when Tallys threatened him,” Hippia said.

“Still—perhaps encountering him was the result of the ratra’s bad luck.”

“You should have killed him,” Galanthe, the Battlemaster, said, folding his arms.

My dear grandmother wouldn’t let me, Tallys wanted to say, but she kept silent. Not only would it sound petty, immature, but referring to her blood relatives in such a way was frowned upon. Amongst her clan, every older adult was considered a parent, a grandparent. All children were treated equally: her own birthparents had the exact same relationship to her as any other “aunt” or “uncle,” all of them serving as mother and father to all of the other clan youth, too. It gave the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” a whole new meaning. 

“It is not our way,” Hippia answered then, folding her arms and mirroring Galanthe’s stern posture. “Never in our clan’s history have we murdered a stranger’s child for something they might do.” 

Galanthe frowned, but didn’t dispute this. “It will probably come to nothing,” he said finally. “But we will prepare, be on guard—and we will be poised to move once Rhamni is finished with his sati.” He glanced quickly at Tallys and Hippia. “If leaving is what is decided.”

Hippia nodded. “I think that would be best.” Then she turned to Tallys. “You will have to go to Vaetir alone.”

Tallys’ spine jolted, as if it had been turned into a lightning rod. “Alone,” she repeated, through stiff and numb-feeling lips. She would have to venture through these alien woods… alone? And then into the ruins of a dead city, probably haunted by spirits or worse?

Hippia was nodding. “I must stay in case anything happens here,” she said. “With Rhamni in his trance, the clan needs leadership in the event of… well, in any event. And the others are needed to prepare the camp, as well. So you must go on alone, and try to uncover a solution to our other problem: the question of the ratra.”

Tallys looked around at all of the expectant faces: Luthe, Galanthe, and Indica. She cringed from the idea internally: she did not want to leave the clan, certainly didn’t want to go hunting in Vaetir by herself. What if she encountered the ratra there, and it came back wearing her face?

But she was Keeper: she did not have the luxury to refuse. So Tallys nodded and said airlessly: “I will go, then.”

Hippia smiled, ever so slightly, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, dear heart,” she said. It was the first time she had ever called Tallys that. Tallys blinked and felt her heart quail in a way that she did not like. 

It felt like an omen.

Preparations were made quickly after that; the sky was just beginning to pale as dawn approached. At least Tallys would be making the journey in broad daylight, though that was little comfort. She tugged on a pack stuffed with supplies, and the diary of the woman who had described Vaetir in the first place, and went to say goodbye to Luthe and Indica.

She found them in a little clearing away from camp, shaded and obscured by the drooping curtains of weeping willows. Tallys’ step was naturally light, so at first the two did not hear her; and as she came closer into view, she saw them breaking away from each other with uncharacteristic clumsiness.

Tallys’ eyes moved from Indica, who was blushing, to Luthe, who was grinning shamelessly. “Ah, cousin,” he said cheerfully. “You’ve caught us.”

Indica jabbed him sharply in the ribs with her elbow. “You fool,” she hissed. Then she turned to Tallys and covered her face. “Oh, Tallys—I’m sorry. We would have told you sooner, but—”

“You were under no obligation to,” Tallys heard herself say calmly. Inwardly she felt her shock moving somewhere deep inside her, like a slow-moving glacier—but then again, she was not that surprised. Luthe had long since been writing Indica poems, composing songs, courting her; Tallys had simply not known that it had worked. She wondered briefly if they would pledge themselves to each other now—but that was for people madly in love, who were sure they would be together forever, and they were all still young. This could simply be a carnal relationship, something she was not unfamiliar with. She felt like it would be a very long time before she was ready to pledge, if that moment ever came at all.

Indica was still furiously blushing, but she forced herself to forge on. “You came to make farewells?” she squeaked.

Luthe said at the same time: “You should find someone for yourself, cousin. Maybe once you’ve defeated the ratra, returned a hero. They’ll all be writing you poems then.”

“No,” Tallys drawled flatly. Like many others, she tended to seek relationships outside of the clan, though these opportunities came few and far between—even farther now that the Norms’ new government discouraged the meeting of Elven clans. Without the ability to freely mingle with other tribes, her romantic prospects had dried up—but she could not force herself to look to her own kinsmen, either. For one thing, she knew too much about them: she read their memoirs, their family histories every day. For another, she’d grown up with them. She was related by blood to some of them, like Luthe. It all felt too… incestuous.

It hadn’t stopped her cousin and Indica, though, all three of them childhood friends; and in her heart Tallys was glad for them. They deserved happiness, especially in a season full of misfortune like this one. She touched her forehead, and then her chest, in the traditional sign of blessing. “May you find happiness together,” she intoned. 

Automatically they returned the gesture. Then Luthe said, anxious-looking now: “You will be careful, won’t you? You’re bringing your weapons, and you will not fall for any tricks the wraith might tempt you with?”

Tallys tried to give him a brave smile, but it came out watery and thin. “Trust me,” she said, trying to believe it. “I will be back before you even have time to miss me.”

#

The road to Vaetir was so overgrown that even Tallys’ ahfuri had a difficult time picking through. 

She stayed low on the back of her big tawny cat as the hours dragged on, the sun overhead sliding across the sky like an egg across a hot pan. Always Tallys’ sharp eyes roved the underbrush, scanning for any signs of Norms—though it was unlikely she would encounter them, this deep into the forest—or… anything else. She still wasn’t sure she even believed the ratra was real, but she was not going to be taken surprise by any inhuman-looking shadows again.

As her ahfuri prowled on, the darkness and heaviness of the forest seemed to grow more and more oppressive, until it felt as if a literally weight was pressing down against Tallys’ head. She tried to keep her back straight, tried to lighten her spirits with a cheery Elven tune (in the confines of her mind, of course). But slowly the dread settled against her heart more and more, until it felt as if it had sunk down into her stomach.

Here and there she saw evidence of Vaetir’s past population. There were broken little statues at the side of the “road” to mark the way; scattered tiny shrine houses, now reduced to nothing more than piles of rubble. Old idols to the gods, she surmised—and occasionally warding stones. In the old days it was common for Elves in a city to work their small magics to hide their home from outsiders, confusing trespassers and sending them in lost circles through the woods.

Deeper and deeper into the old forest she went. Her ahfuri stayed silent, a well-trained and silent huntress, but Tallys felt the hackles rising on Mikiri’s shoulders rising stiffly as they crept closer to the gates of Vaetir. Black, gnarled branches fought for sunlight up above. Tallys shuddered. She’d always thought of trees in a forest as part of one larger being, friends and companions who thrived with each other’s growth, or limbs part of the same body. But it felt as if the trees here were struggling to survive—and willing to kill each other for the chance.

This is an evil place, her mind whispered, but Tallys tried to shrug it off, tried to assume the neutral Keeper’s perspective. What had caused this oppressive atmosphere in this forest? Was it true that there’d been a terrible battle here, and the echoes of that violence had warped the natural harmony of the place? Or was it something else?

Finally she saw the first ruin of the city: Vaetir’s gate, now a lone, moss-ridden pillar jutting up out of the ground like a jagged tooth. 

Mikiri, her ahfuri, balked as they approached, coming to a halt just beyond the gate and growling deep in her throat. Tallys reached out with her mind and murmured to her.

“What is it?”

No going, Mikiri yowled. Bad. Smells of rot and death. 

Tallys tipped her head up and sniffed the air. She could smell nothing but the same earthen dampness that had surrounded her since she first entered the forest: but of course, she trusted her ahfuri. 

But she had to go. She just wouldn’t force Mikiri to go, too.

“You stay here,” Tallys said, sliding off of her saddle and turning to stroke Mikiri between the eyes. She shouldered her pack and added, “Wait for me. If you hear me cry out, come at once.”

Mikiri bared a fang. Go and come quickly, was all she said. She sat and stared at the lonely gate with her large green eyes, her tail twitching agitatedly. 

Tallys took a breath and, encouraged by her ahfuri’s steady gaze, took several steps towards the ruined pillar. Beyond, she could see the crumbling remains of buildings, little more than flat squares of weeds and stone now, and the skeletal outline of a tower or two. Massive trees dominated the skyline here, rotting timbers and pieces of clay still clinging to their tangled branches. The bones and carcasses of former homes.

The silence was almost nauseating, the further Tallys made her way into the city. She was acutely aware that hers was the first human breath to disturb this air for a very long time; her footprints, pressing down into the springy moss covering the streets, would become a part of this place’s history, too. 

Here and there she looked in on what she could recognize: an ahfuri cattery, what might have been a library. But there was not much to see. Everything had been swallowed up by the forest and its roots. White lichens and slick mold—and clusters of blue mushrooms, every now and then—dominated every remaining surface thickly. There were not even any symbols to discern.

Once in a while Tallys thought she caught a shadow moving alongside her, flickering between the trees, but when she looked, it turned out to be her own shadow, or a trick of the light. Still, she couldn’t help but feel as if eyes were watching her; the point between her shoulder blades prickled eerily, and she began to feel a presence hovering just out of her periphery, heavy and hot. Her palms began to dampen, and her heart stammered. She told herself not to give in to the fear, not to whip her head around when she felt the urge to: partly not to feed the delusion, and partly because she was afraid to find something staring garishly back at her if she dared to look.

Finally, she reached what she estimated was the center of the city—and here she found nothing more than a simple stone well, long gone dry. She peeked in and saw the bottom in the dying light: nothing more than more moss, coating the bottom of the well like carpet. Tallys leaned against the sun-warm surface of the well’s edge and sighed. What had she expected to find? And what could she do to uncover any mentions of the ratra, or whatever had driven the Elves who’d lived here away?

Idly, she saw a pebble, lying near her hand on the well’s rim, and she brushed a knuckle against it and nudged it towards the drop in the well. She waited, expecting to hear the round thud of it striking the bottom—but instead she heard the sudden crack of glass.

Tallys looked again, into the well, and her stomach lurched when she saw that her pebble had disturbed just a little of the moss—and beneath its cover was the tiniest sliver of something shining and cracked. Was something down there? 

Tallys stood at the top for a long moment, deliberating. The well was just wide enough that she could technically shimmy down… but the walls were slick and smooth. It would be difficult navigating her way back up again. 

Still, the Elves weren’t gifted with grace and agility for nothing—and she could not leave this place without trying to uncover any piece of knowledge she could find. So she shrugged off her pack, placed her shoulders and feet up against the sides of the well, and slowly began the descent down.

It was shuffling and awkward, but eventually she made it to the bottom of the well safely. Her hands were sweating, sore, and covered in dirt and moist green residue, so she wiped them on her pants before crouching and pulling away the carpet of dried algae and moss. Finally she managed to pry something up from the caked soil: something chipped and made of glass.

Then her heart sank as she held it with difficulty up to the sun, the light of which was weak and waning down in the well shaft. What she held in her hand was a mirror. 

A stupid, useless, ancient mirror.

Tallys cursed, turning it over in her hands. The mirror was flecked with black, the surface barely visible and the border lined with scrolled silver and mysterious designs. It was a pretty enough thing, but a mirror would do her no good, not with her current problems or her clan’s. 

She stared hard at the one section of her eye that she could see in the mirror’s reflective surface. The eye was green, and angry, and disappointed. It looked like it belonged to a girl who knew she didn’t know what she was doing. A girl who was lost.

Then she blinked, and the reflected eye didn’t.

Her heart hurtled up into her throat. 

The eye had turned silver.

Tallys’ hand shook, and she nearly dropped the mirror. She actually did when the reflection in the mirror moved, and her mouth faintly said, “Tallys!”

Thunk. The mirror dropped to the floor.

The ratra, Tallys thought, staring down at the glass with trembling hands as it lay on its back. The fall had cracked it even further, but in the fragmented surface she could see that the image in the reflection had changed: now it was of a Mage girl with silver eyes and black hair. But did ratra ever hide inside mirrors? Could they, even? 

The girl in the mirror looked around, as if peering out a window she couldn’t quite see through. “Tallys?”

Don’t speak to it, Tallys thought, her heart beginning to flail against her chest. Leave it and climb out of here. 

But, as if against her will, her limbs slowly bent… and picked up the mirror. She looked into it again and nearly screamed. It was extremely unnerving to look into glass and see the visage of someone else staring back up at you.

The girl was less alarmed. “Oh, good,” she said. Her voice was very wispy, almost inaudible; it seemed to be coming from the mirror itself. Magic. “You’re right on time. Any longer, and I would have never have met you.”

A tremor went through Tallys’ hand. She couldn’t speak.

The girl’s eyes took her in. “I’m a Seer,” she said, as if she was used to giving out this explanation. “I can see into the future, but so far ahead that my visions rarely help those in my time. But some years ago, I came across this mirror. It’s a long story, but when I drop it in places people in the future will find, it helps me speak to them in my time. Then I have to go and get it again, after the time of the vision has passed. Following so far?”

“No,” Tallys said.

The Seer sighed. “Say I see something happening five years from now,” she said. “Like… a forest fire is going to break out. Well, I can’t travel five years into the future to tell the relevant people what they need to know. I can’t jump half a decade and tell the woodcutter that the forest will be on fire tomorrow. And I can’t glean enough from my visions to find them now, five years before the vision ever happens. The woodcutter might be a fisherman at this moment, for all I know. And they wouldn’t be able to do much about it, anyway, so there wouldn’t be much point to telling them so far ahead of time.”

She took a breath. “But if I plan to drop this mirror somewhere where I know the right person will find it—five years from now—I can talk to them through it from my time. Make sense? The mirror connects our two times. We can speak to each other through it.”

“But you’re holding the mirror now,” Tallys said. “If you drop it, how do you… how does it…” She shook her head. “So how are you speaking to me?”

“I’m about to drop it,” the Seer said. “I’m standing over the well in Vaetir right now. Then you’ll find it—well, you have found it—and… yes, you understand.”

Tallys’ head throbbed. “How long… how… what year is it for you?”

“You’re about seven hundred years ahead of me. This is my last time using the mirror, in fact. I’ve only used it twice before this, but I’ve seen that this is my last time.” 

“You’re a Mage?” Tallys shook her head. “But… what are you doing here? There? And how did you know my name?”

“I saw it,” the Seer said patiently. “I had a vision about you; about you coming here, finding this mirror. And I came to Vaetir because I had a vision about it, two or three years ago, and now’s the time to warn them about it. Not through the mirror, that’s just for you. I came personally for them. They’re about to be attacked by Endarkened, you see, so I’ve come to tell them to evacuate.”

So that was why the city was emptied, Tallys thought. “And now you’re… dropping the mirror into the well before you leave? So you can speak to me?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What is your name?”

“That doesn’t matter. Listen, I don’t know much about you. I can’t see your past or even your immediate future. I just know that—a long time from now—you’re going to encounter someone who’s very special. Someone who has the power to bring an end to all Endarkened kind.”

Tallys’ head spun. “Who?” 

The Seer shrugged helplessly. “No idea. I can’t see them clearly, I just… know about them. A bit. And they’re going to need your help to do this, Tallys. You need to… to…” She seemed to think hard. “To… well, look after them, I suppose. The details are fuzzy. But it’s very important. Life or death. The end of the world. Lots of different futures; this person is at the center of many different splits in the road. Branching paths, you might say. And…” She cocked her head, as if listening. “You need to let something go.”

Tallys frowned. This was all very vague.

“Oh,” the Seer said, looking over her shoulder. “The Endarkened are coming now. I’ve got to go. Remember what I said!” She moved, as if to drop the mirror.

“Wait!” Tallys cried. “Do you know anything about the ratra?”

The Seer’s forehead came back into view; it wrinkled. “Ratra? There is no ratra.”

“None at all? In my future or my past?”

“None that I can see.”

Her heart loosened. Could it have all been a coincidence, after all? Natural phenomena, superstition? “Thank you,” she said. 

The Seer smiled briefly, then dropped the mirror. Tallys watched as it fell, landing face-up, eerily reflecting the very view above her now. The white circle of the well above. Then it went blank, and she saw her own reflection once more.

It smiled at her.

Tallys tucked the mirror away into her bag once she made the climb back up the well. If her understanding of the magic was right, the Seer would never be back to speak with her again—the mirror had been left at the bottom of this well all these centuries, after all, for her to find—but it would make for a valuable piece of history in the Keeper archives. And perhaps she could use it to investigate who this “important person” in her future was. If there was any truth to what the Seer had said—and Tallys had the gut feeling there was—this was a momentous occasion. She’d have to tell Hippia about it immediately. 

The ability to end all demonkind?

The forest felt significantly brighter as she made her way back to Mikiri, despite the darkening sky; the air was cleaner and freer than it had felt in a long time. Tallys felt no ghosts as she walked through the streets of Vaetir—there were no dead here, only the empty nests of people who had been saved from a terrible fate. It was a good thing. There were no eyes on her as she swung up into saddle—except, perhaps, the phantom gaze of a Seer many centuries dead by now.

And there was no ratra. 

Of course there wasn’t, she thought. They’d encountered tree blight before, and dying birds, and all manner of things besides. They’d connected it all into some stupid pattern where there was none.

There was no ratra.

Only Tallys. And her clan. And their silly superstitions. 

Some things didn’t need to be preserved, after all, she thought. Some things could do with being dispelled. Maybe ideas of the ratra was the thing they had to let go.

Though Hippia would kill her if she ever found out a Keeper had thought that. 

Tallys wore her smile all the way home on Mikiri’s back. Somehow it felt as if her journey down into the well had cleansed her, washed her free of her doubts and fears, even though there’d been no water at its bottom. Somehow the concerns that had driven her to Vaetir seemed very small and far away now.

They would leave this place together, after Rhamni emerged from his meditation. They would go down into the golden hills together, following their elk, and eventually they would go back to forests that knew them and embraced them. They would be happy; and she would learn more of Keeping from Hippia; and perhaps Luthe and Indica would marry and bless them with more children. And together perhaps they would all try to uncover the mystery of what this strange prophecy meant. 

But they would be together. That much was certain. And nothing—not even a ratra—could ever change that. 

She saw the orange glow of fires in the distance, peeking out from between the black trees in the direction towards camp, and she felt her heart lift. She spurred Mikiri on and went towards the light; towards what was familiar and true, and home.