Embers of the Lost

The so-called cages turned out to be thick glass containers which artefacts were removed from to make room. Oscar and Kiki were placed in smaller ones while Lily was dumped into the largest one, small slats being pushed open so they could continue to breath. It was a clever place to put her, there were very few of her elements that would help her in such a cage. But mostly, Lily was just disappointed she couldn’t get to any plants so she could make a splint for her foot. It was going to be hell to walk on if it started to heal in such an incorrect position.

Groaning from the pain, Lily shifted herself to a sitting position so she could lean against her left leg while getting a closer look at the damage. Moving around had caused the bone to start to break through the skin, the side making her cringe even further in pain.

“Liche!” she cursed under her breath at the tearing feeling under her skin.

“That’s only going to get worse. I’ll set it for you.”

Lily jumped at the voice, her eyes snapping up to meet the brown eyes in a round, kindly face the other side of the glass. There were a few wrinkles, marring the otherwise pale features speckled with dirt and mud, suggesting middle aged years even though the male stood at the same height as the children Lily had known.

“Excuse me?” She squeaked, her cheeks flushed from the pain and effort it was taking not to wallow in it.

The male chortled softly, unlocking the glass container while holding up a box to her line of sight. “I’m the physician, I just want to see your foot.”

Not that Lily really had a choice in the matter; either she trusted the stranger or she let her foot set incorrectly and walk in pain forever more. Hissing in pain as she used her hands to move her leg into a more accessible position, Lily found herself sitting with her back against the glass and her silver eyes watching the small hands that reached in to place the metal box down beside her.

“I’ve never seen a fairy before, but I imagine your bones are like ours, just bigger.” The male in front of her was saying as he tentatively began touching and examining the injury.

“And what ARE you?” Kiki called from across the room.

The small male glanced her way, but simply smiled at the rude tone she had chosen to address him in. “Litihana. My name is Kipar Sanrak, I’m the doctor to this section of our lands. We just keep artefacts here, so there’s not much for me to tend to.”

“Litihana? I’ve never heard of them?” Lily mumbled, casting her mind back to all the books she had read at Quintegia.

“Well, of course not. We keep ourselves to ourselves and far away from your wars.” Kipar commented. Lily couldn’t argue with that, that was a safer option.

“The war is a lie.” She heard herself saying in a tone that screamed the defeat in her heart.

“Pardon?”

Hands stilled as brown eyes looked up to meet her silver ones. Clearly this was not a statement Kipar had been expecting to hear.

“The war is based on a lie. Neither side actually wants to go to war, they just think they are defending themselves.” Lily stated louder, her hands gripping tight around the satchel they had allowed her to keep.

“Your races hate each other...”

“They do. We’ve painted each other as villains when the real people benefiting from the wars are hidden within both kingdoms.” It only took a curious hum for Lily’s unrecognised frustration at the situation to show itself. “It’s one messed up family that’s doing it. They are harvesting magic from corpses to make their bloodline eternal! They’ve got members in the witch world and the fairy world and they’ve got us blinded by history and controlled by fear.”

The angry tears that pricked at her eyes were foreign. Sadness she knew intimately, but anger… she couldn’t remember a time she had felt the boiling heat of the emotion simmering inside her. It was all a lie! Her family, her friends, a whole number of innocent strangers… they were all going to die because of the lies and greed of one family! She could see the lack of care in Finnigan’s eyes as he had left her in that room to be drained of her magic. He hadn’t even cared after the amount of time he had known her, after the length of time he had spent winning her heart and loyalty.

Lily had no doubt the living members of that family would watch a war kill strangers without so much as a flinch of regret.

“They have got themselves high level positions and they continue to feed the lies so that every century they can use our magic in this insane spell!” Pulling the journal out of the satchel, Lily flipped the pages through to the list of spell ingredients and held it out to the Litihana. Before glancing up, his small hands snapped her bone back into the correct position. A high scream of pain and surprise left the white-haired fairy, dragging tears from her eyes and the sudden adrenaline adding to the pool of anger she was already feeling.

“Liche!” She cursed angrily, leaning her head back and taking in deep breaths through the dizzying pain that throbbed up through her nerves.

“Sorry, figured I should do that while you were distracted.” Kipar smiled sheepishly, mopping up the fresh blood that could now seep from the free space in her wound. “Unfortunately, that story won’t convince many. Even our history books claim that this was all started because witches and fairies turned against each other. Fairies were losing their wings and witches were losing their homes. It was a world where races turned savage against each other.”

“But witches don’t use fairy wings for anything…”

“You can have a look at our history records, accounts from those years written by our ancestors if you want. But both races were vicious in their war and it led to the extinction of non-magic humans. It escalated and anyone who got in the way was slaughtered in the midst of it.” Kipar sighed softly and shook his head. “Our ancestors ran, it was the only way to survive without possessing any magic to protect us against the rage around us.”

“But…”

“Even if you are right and two people did start it; the fact remains that there has been a slaughter every hundred years that people aren’t going to forgive anytime soon.” Kipar continued. “But you already know that. You wouldn’t be in the Densewood if people back home believed you.”

The way his eyes met hers steadily made Lily feel like she was being through like one sees through the very glass of the box she sat in.

“They banished me for conspiring with witches…” She admitted gloomily.

“And witches will already see you as the enemy.” Kipar stated, turning his focus back to the injury he was treating. “You would be naive to think that one child could change the minds of two races who hate each other.”

Was he right? Were fear and history deep enough within the souls of both fairies and witches that they would be too blinded in their hate to even give truth a moment of their time?

Maybe the war was driven by distrust and fear; and the family were just profiting off it. Lily wasn’t certain that they would have been the actual cause of the original war; it was a gut feeling and one with very little evidence. All she knew was that they were fuelling the wars to continue. Lily thought back to how Finnigan and Layla had both twisted Lily’s situation to fuel the distrust further. Finnigan would have let it out in the witches’ world that she had been a spy with ill intent, while Layla had spun her discovery of incantation magic as corruption by witches.

Kipar was probably right; she would be more likely to be arrested or killed than listened to if she went back to either world to try and make someone listen. Rubbing the scabbed wounds around her wrists, Lily let her head fall back against the glass behind her.

“What do I do then?” She asked, not really expecting a reply. The rollercoaster of emotions between anger, fear, sadness, hopelessness, and hope was wearing her down quickly with how suddenly one emotion would transition into another. The overbearing emotion that came with all of them, though, was the daunting feeling of being overshadowed. Kipar was right; she was one person, not even an adult yet, and she was now rejected from both communities involved in the war. Who was ever going to listen to her?

“Well, you won’t be able to walk for a few weeks. After that, I’d suggest you leave for the mainland and escape the war altogether.”

“Mainland?” Kiki chimed up, mirroring the confusion on Lily’s face.

“You really are sheltered, aren’t you?” Kipar laughed. “This is just an island - it’s a fair distance from the mainland, but this isn’t all there is in Ryvalia.”

“Ryvalia?”

“It’s what those on the mainland call this world.”

“So, they aren’t at war too?” Oscar called from his glass box, receiving a shake of Kipar’s head.

“No,” He started. “They aren’t exactly integrated together as races but there isn’t a war anymore. Hence my suggestion to escape if you aren’t welcome anywhere on this island.” Tightening up the bandage around Lily’s foot, Kipar finally moved away from the glass cage and packed up his tools. “I’ll bring you some food.”

With that, he left the three with the revelation that this world was so much bigger than they had ever guessed. Their kind knew so little of the world, living in a protected but blind and naive bubble in the treetops, thinking they were in the only safe place from everything else that was monstrous.

“Maybe we should go?” Kiki offered her thoughts first.

“What about everyone else?” Oscar countered. “Mum, dad, Lily’s friends?”

“We could go back for them first?”

“And get arrested within moments? That would be suicide.”

“Staying here where there is a stupid war, where no one will listen is suicide too!” Kiki snapped. “At least on the mainland, there might be safety.”

The bickering reflected well the own argument going on inside Lily’s head. The desire to run to the mainland and be away from the pain, the betrayal of Finnigan, the banishment from home, was incredibly tempting. But could she really go knowing that those she did love would be suffering in her wake?

No.

No, she could not. Even if every fibre of her being wanted to run to another place and start over… her pain was not as vital to stop as her parents’ potential pain.

“We can’t leave,” she stated loudly, shuffling to the door of her glass cage which Kipar had left open. Hanging her legs over the edge and sitting more comfortably Lily cast a defeated look over at the cats. “You know we can’t. How can we walk away without trying?”

“We have tried. We got banished!” Kiki snarled. “Besides, why would we try so hard for people who have made your life awful?!”

“Because there are also people who made it good.” Lily stated with solid conviction. “Even if they now think I’m the enemy, Dia and Tanith are still good people. The teachers, like Wild Witch Agora… they don’t deserve to die because of a lie. Even those like River don’t deserve to die just because they weren’t kind to me.”

“Hmph.” Kiki flopped to a lying position with a sulk.

“You’re a good person, Lil.” Oscar commented proudly, raising his rear paw to scratch at his left ear.

“Not really… We just have nothing else to lose,” Lily sighed. Banished, battered, betrayed, bruised… It wasn’t like there was a guarantee that the mainland would be better. “Everyone else has still got everything to lose to a war.”

“It’s not your job to save everyone,” Kiki reminded gently.

“It is if I make it my job…” Lily mumbled, at least it would mean that she had a purpose to keep moving forward one step at a time.

“Well, we can’t do anything until you are healed.” Oscar spoke up before Kiki could argue further. “You should try and get some sleep, Lil.”

Sleeping on glass was a dream compared to the cave floor she had slept on last, but after a week of sleeping in it, Lily had shifted herself onto the softer ground which had a light dusting of soil at least. Kipar returned every morning and evening to check her wounds and bring her food. The rest of the Litihana sent her suspicious or dirty looks whenever she saw them through the doorway, but not one of them came to talk to her.

When she asked about this Kipar explained that Litihana had sworn to keep their lives in the underground tunnels of the world and leave any of the big folk to whatever destruction they brought upon themselves. They had trouble feeling secure and safe around those who were both bigger and considerably more powerful than themselves.

“Even on the mainland,” he had said, “we keep ourselves underground and secret. Those on the surface have a life reliant on magic and could easily destroy us if they chose to. So, we keep ourselves to ourselves and live in peace in the tunnels of the Great Snake.”

It turned out that Litihana revered the legend of the Treanguis as a deity. Their legends claimed that the tunnels they now inhabited and expanded were originally burrows of the giant three headed creature. Lily wondered why none of the Litihana had ever seen it if they were living in its burrows, but she politely kept that to herself as Kipar supported her out of the room she had been in and into another where ancient copies of books were kept. They had obviously deemed that she was not a threat, and Lily followed their wishes to use no magic in their home.

Lily found herself oddly fascinated when she read the accounts of the Great War from the view of the Litihana. It was obvious that the writing had been done by one of youthful mind. It was a story of fear and loss, written in the form of a child’s diary. The writer described the world as fire and blood, and had been told by their mother to take their younger brother and run for the woods for shelter. From the way the diary read, it wasn’t just Fairies and Witches who were in the war; dragons were said to have been vicious in the protection of the mountain area, non-magic humans had attempted to stand their ground but ended up adding to the number of bodies strewn in the path of children who fled for cover. Not one of the parents ever came for them when the war had died down and the children dared to venture out of the tunnels they had lucked upon.

Five of the eldest in the group had ventured back towards their homes to find their parents, only to find ruins of homes and confirmation of their orphanage.

Grieving, alone and scared of the world above ground, the children took to living underground, inventing ways to get around and gather enough food to survive. It was no mystery now why the Litihana were so small, they had been stunted in growth by the tunnels they took shelter in and over time they must have evolved to be smaller to accommodate their environment.

“I wonder how the Draconians saw the war… no story has been the same; apart from the level of death.” Oscar mused one evening as he curled up beside Lily’s leg to support it while she slept.

“Quintina and Cyrus have so many lives to answer for.” Kiki spat.

“Assuming they did actually start it…” Lily countered sleepily.

“Even if they didn’t, they’ve still continued it and killed millions.” Kiki growled, still unwilling to budge in her anger at that family. The bruises on Lily’s skin from Finnigan had grown darker each day and it had only made the kitten-sized feline sourer.

“Xalina will help.” Oscar soothed with a finality that told them both it was time to stop debating who deserved what and get some more rest. Getting Lily healed enough to move again was the larger cat’s priority.

It took a couple more weeks until Lily was able to move at least awkwardly. Her ankle couldn’t take her weight, but it no longer screamed in agony at any small movement the rest of her leg made. The Litihana still avoided her whenever she moved through the tunnels, though Kipar had become something akin to a friend in the darkness of the underground. He would sit with her and show her how they had designed tools to deal with daily life. He taught her how to start a fire without magic and how some plants from above ground could be harvested for oily sap which would let torches burn for long periods of time. He provided boots which Lily was allowed to use magic to grow to fit her size. He also built a contraption that would be strapped to her calf in order to keep her foot in place and off the ground, while taking all the tension of walking from it. It was made of stone and wood to keep the whole thing rigid, though the part that extended past her foot was slightly springy to withstand impacts and work with the movements of walking rather than against them.

“This is ingenious…” Lily breathed as she examined the contraption around her injury. It held her foot perfectly still which provided a sweet relief of no longer having to fear every small movement.

“Living without magic, we had to get creative.” Kipar chortled as he packed away his tools. Creative was certainly a word that Lily would use to describe the Litihana race. She had been told about the community hollows under the centre of the mainland which they traversed with equipment to carry them up and down the levels and to speed up movements through long tunnels with the use of carts. They relied solely on their own to thrive; they didn’t train animals, nor did they use magic.

It was an eye opener; to think about how to solve things without an easy answer. Perhaps if she thought outside the box as much as they did, she would be able to find more ways to live easily without wings.

“But you have nothing that could help reduce the losses in war?” Oscar asked the night before Lily was planning on leaving the underground community.

“We have armour that can reduce the impact of magic, but if we gave that to others it would probably just make the wars more violent.” Kipar shrugged, though Lily wasn’t sure that was the real reason. She suspected that the Litihana wanted to keep that armour a secret so that it couldn’t be overcome. They seemed single-minded about keeping their kind safe from the magical races.

“What’s it made of?” Kiki ventured, gaining a suspicious look from the male she addressed.

“We call it Hiseki.”

Even if he had given the proper name, Lily wouldn’t have known how to find and use it. But she placed a hand on Kiki’s head when the feline moved to ask more. Despite their need to stay away from the above land, Kipar had helped Lily plenty and she was not about to put a dampener on that just before leaving.

“It could have been useful,” Kiki hissed at her later.

“We don’t know how to make armour even if we knew what it was.” Lily countered with a sigh. “Besides, I don’t fancy annoying the people who have given me a way for my ankle to heal without killing me with every movement I make.”

“You’re too polite for your own good.”

“I don’t need armour to survive, the idea is to stop the war so it wouldn’t be needed anyway.”

“It would have helped with the Viparterka…” Kiki countered sourly, shuddering at the beast they had escaped in the darkness. According to Kipar, they were the largest and most vicious predator within the Archaic Densewood.

“Kipar confirmed they can’t climb.”

“I suppose, though I’m still concerned that this contraption isn’t going to make climbing easy for you either.” Oscar added as he nuzzled himself closer to the injured ankle to provide extra warmth while it healed.

“I’m sure it will.”

“Polite and trusting.” Kiki murmured with a roll of her eyes before curling up on Lily’s lap to sleep. The words echoed heavily in Lily’s ears; perhaps she was too trusting. She had been fooled and played by Finnigan because of it; she had trusted that all the elders wanted the best for the fairy kingdom, she was trusting that Xalina could help her, and she was trusting the Litihana not to have given her the ankle support that would give up in a couple of days.

Was she foolish to trust others? Was it wrong to see the good before seeing the bad? Her life had been filled with people who were not worthy of trust, but there were those who she still believed in with everything she was. Her parents, Dia and Tanith, Xalina… she couldn’t deny that she trusted them all still even if she couldn’t have most of them in her life anymore. But then, had someone asked her if she trusted Finnigan a couple of months ago, she would have answered that she trusted him with her life… and it had almost cost her that.

The bruises had faded over the weeks, but Lily could still feel the binds she had been in, could feel the restriction around her neck and wrists when she closed her eyes. They haunted her dreams alongside the sparkling of Finnigan’s eyes.

She didn’t want to experience it ever again; but more so, she didn’t want anyone else to experience it. No one should die or suffer just for one family to extend their corrupt lives. So, she awoke from each dream with a mixture of fear and determination curling in her chest. They motivated the next steps she took out of the exit which Kipar waved her through, back into the Archaic Densewood.

“Good luck!” He called before ducking back into the tunnel and caving the entrance in so Lily could not come back.

Adjusting the crutch she was given to support her while her ankle was bound, Lily glanced around the darkness before gripping onto a vine to help her up into the tree line once more.