The Erruindel Chronicles: II

Part I
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In Which Lill'th Is Not Given A Choice

"I am not going to marry you," blurted Lill'th immediately, drawing the natural conclusion. "I know you were that bear from earlier," she added quickly, as she could hear her mother approaching the common room, "and I'm not about to associate with magic like that, so you can take your offer elsewhere."

Eivex, apparently on a different page altogether, was speechless.

"I'm sorry if you were secretly in love with me," Lill'th went on, rather wildly, "though I honestly don't see how that would be possible, since you've never been here before."

"Oh, I—No?" said Eivex, his pasty face turning an incredibly deep shade of red. His long white hands were twitching nervously at his sides.

"Not to mention that you're probably old enough to be my father," continued Lill'th, who didn't know why she was still talking.

Fortunately for him, Eivex was saved from having to answer, as Za'allamaca, Lill'th's mother, glided into the room just then, holding a heaping load of clean washing, which she promptly dropped into her daughter's arms with an airy "Welcome home, darling" and a light kiss on the cheek. Eivex let out an audible sigh of relief and went to stand by the table in the corner.

"What have you done with my trousers?" said Lill'th, frowning down at the oddly-shaped clothing in her arms.

"I cut them open and sewed them into skirts," said Za'allamaca, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder, "so you can dress like a proper woman. Now that you are sixteen, after all."

Lill'th frowned harder. "Mother, you can't do that. Have you ever tried climbing the cliffs in a skirt? It's impossible! Also, these are so ugly."

Za'allamaca's beautiful dark eyes flashed, at once dangerously furious and wistfully nostalgic. Oh no, thought Lill'th.

"I once climbed to the top of the Black Tooth itself," Za'allamaca said in a low voice, "in the most lovely silk dress. I never faltered, not once in my long ascent. The dress is still lovely. By Loej's hands, I married your father Jacob in that dress. Pah! Do not ask me if I have climbed mere cliffs in a skirt."

Eivex, whose presence Lill'th had momentarily forgotten about, had a sudden fit of obviously fake coughing. Za'allamaca turned to him, instantly charming and elegant again, the perfect hostess. (Lill'th looked between them, feeling conflicted and emotionally whiplashed.)

"Now, sir," began Za'allamaca, "about that goat and its rainbow kids—"

"I have changed my mind," interrupted Eivex, somehow turning an even more impressive shade of red than before. He tugged at the laces on the front of his shirt and cleared his throat. "I am no longer interested in the goat. I...I would like to marry Lilith instead."

"Lill'th," said Lill'th automatically, then, "WHAT?"

Eivex smiled anxiously, showing more teeth than was strictly normal.

The spray of wildflowers sitting in a vase on the table seemed to wilt in the long, awkward silence that followed. The wooden floor creaked faintly. A small purple mouse fled the room through the open doorway.

"All right," said Za'allamaca, finally. "Let me fetch Jacob."

Lill'th dropped her pile of hideous trouser-skirts in shock as her mother glided back into the kitchen. She couldn't be serious. She was serious. She was calling Lill'th's father right now to come perform the betrothal, probably right here in the common room, with its old worn furniture and dirt-streaked walls.

How was this happening? Wasn't she supposed to at least make this choice for herself? Lill'th had been planning on probably choosing Aaron, who was nice to her and didn't smell that terrible if she really thought about it. Today was supposed to be her special day, the day that marked the beginning of her dreams coming true, and yet here she was, about to be forced into arranged marriage like some sad girl in Ayla's Fairy Tales From The Ringlands. When she'd dreamed of being married, it wasn't at all like this.

Lill'th was about to start crying when Eivex urgently grabbed her arm and whispered, "Quick, before your mother returns," which was a horrible thing to say just now, so she got angry instead, flung his hand away, and turned her back on him.

"Okay, first things first," said Eivex from behind her, "I am not old enough to be your father."

"That doesn't matter much now, does it?" said Lill'th, fuming at the streaky wall.

"Secondly," Eivex said, "I don't actually want to marry you, I just needed some way to convince your parents to let you come with me without it looking inappropriate, and it seemed—"

"Hold on," said Lill'th, turning back around. Nothing today was making any sense. "You don't want to marry me?"

Eivex's fingers started to twitch again. "Do you find odd things happen to you often?" he asked. "Nights get messed up, trees fall behind you, sparrows and cows love you, lots of thunderstorms, anything?"

"Well, let's see," said Lill'th, glaring at him. "A bear showed up as a man who's pretending to want to marry me in order to kidnap me instead, for undisclosed reasons. No, nothing weird."

"Do you like fire?" he persisted.

"Hate it."

"What about water?"

"I can't swim, if that's what you're asking."

Eivex scratched his head. "This doesn't make sense."

"NONE OF WHAT YOU ARE SAYING MAKES SENSE," yelled Lill'th.

"There's a prophecy about you," said Eivex earnestly, "only I didn't realize it was you until just now. You're supposed to have amazing powers, and you're the one who's going to set this land free."

Lill'th threw her hands up in utter confusion and despair.

"Free from what?" she cried.

The Erruindel Chronicles: I

In Which Our Story Begins

It was, without a doubt, the dumbest bear she'd ever seen.

The stupid thing lumbered oddly from side to side, ignoring the sheep, and seemed only moments from outright falling off the side of the mountain. Several sheep on the outskirts of the flock were braying in mild terror, but the rest remained blissfully oblivious to the large black creature bumbling its way drunkenly along the precarious edge of the gorge. As Lill'th watched, the bear stumbled into a bush of thorn-vines and began to flail weakly, like a dying octopus—not that Lill'th had ever seen an octopus, but they were a common monster in her favorite picture book, The Enthralling Exploits Of Naffyt The Pirate, and the comparison seemed fitting.

The bear stopped moving suddenly. Lill'th squinted in suspicion. Had it died?
Or, no—that was definitely a snore—it had fallen asleep, in the middle of the thornbush. The dumbest bear, she swore to herself.
But what animal slept like that? There was something unsettlingly wrong about the way it had moved, the way it had overlooked the sheep, and the way it now twitched between snores.

Lill'th was no fool of a shepherd girl, and she quickly gathered her flock to bring them home to Om for the night, leaving the stupid black bear snoring gently with vines creeping into its mouth. The sun set gloriously on her way back to the village, reaching through the twin-peaked Blue-Horn Mountains to light the Blue-Foot Valleys all on fire—though not literally, Lill'th thought, as the thick, tough grass covering the valleys was entirely too wet to be burned.

She had tried burning it once, as a very young child attempting to cook a huge pile of “beetle-flowers” for her mother, and had nearly died from the smoke that quickly filled the outhouse. Her mother had been hysterical upon pulling young Lill’th from the billows of smoke, though to this day Lill’th could never be sure whether it was with worry or with laughter.
“Loej’s eyes, child,” her mother had cried, “I told myself you’d finally learned to poop in the proper place, and here you are, burning yourself alive! What in Thykaismoss were you doing?”
“Uhhh,” Lill’th had rasped.
(Thirteen years later, Lill’th was fully potty-trained, but still grew faint at the sight of fire.)

Tonight, Lill'th found herself oddly distracted and jumpy as she herded the sheep into the fold and went to wash up at the town pump before returning to her house, like something gravely important was about to happen. There was nothing she could think of to explain the way she was feeling, not even the fact that it was her sixteenth birthday and that she’d more than likely find herself betrothed before the night was over.
She went through her mental list of eligible boys one more time as she scrubbed at her hands and splashed water on her face: Aaron the weaver’s son, who unfortunately smelled like lard and mothroot dye; Levi the blacksmith-apprentice, who was handsome but took all of Lill’th’s jokes literally; and Jethro, another shepherd, who had already lost half his teeth from all the fights he got into. It was absolutely nothing to worry about.

It was, yes, a smaller and less dashing group than her sister B’naala had chosen from last year, but Lill’th felt sure it would be all right. Any of the boys would make a fine husband, and she was impatient to be married. While watching the sheep, Lill'th often dreamed of building her own house, expanding her flock, raising her children, and feeding her parents when they grew old and grumpy. She also occasionally dreamed of visiting the sea or the great White-Eye plains in the east, but those were far less practical fantasies and never lasted very long.

Softly singing an old shepherd's tune to herself, Lill'th crossed the shadowy cobblestones of the twilit town square to her home.

Sing the baby lambs to sleep
Baby lambs are baby sheep
Kill the wolves before they come
HUM HUM HUM

Lill'th pulled off her worn felted boots and left them by the doorstep as she went inside.

In my hand a staff I keep
A staff for guarding baby sheep
Kill the wolves before they come
HUM HUM—

Lill'th stopped singing abruptly. There was stranger sitting on a small stool in the common room, his long legs shaking slightly and looking incredibly cramped. Where had he come from? There hadn't been foreigners in Om since her own mother moved here to marry her father, twenty-three years ago.
As she entered the room, the man's pale features lit up with a wide, toothy smile.
"You must be Lillith," he said, and there was suddenly something familiar about him, like she knew him previously, but that was impossible, since he had just gotten her name wrong.
"It's 'Lill'th,'" she corrected him. "Who are you?"

The revelation smacked her in the face like a nasty mountaincat when the man stood up, unfolding his long limbs awkwardly and very much—uncannily—impossibly—like a dying octopus. In that moment, Lill'th knew—though she didn't know how she knew, but she definitely knew—that, somehow, this odd stranger was the bear from earlier that day. She reeled, taking a step backward.

"My name is Eivex," said the stranger, still smiling. "I've come to make an offer."

Lill'th panicked.