"Fall of a Sparrow (For Emily)" by A. Setliffe

Sparrow knew her children crouched around her. Her niece and nephew would be there also, near the couch on which she lay. She could smell them all, and hear the rustle of their clothing, feel their raw grief as it electrified the air like a coming storm. Only one hand was resting on her arm; only one dared to touch her. That would be Storm’s-Passing, her eldest, with the sword-callouses already forming on his joints.

Sparrow reached out her shaking hands to the left and right, hungry to feel all of their hands in this moment of clarity. It would be all too fleeting.

“S-son?”

“Here, mother.” Storm’s-Passing’s voice drifted to her as he moved to take her hand. Her fingers closed around his as she felt the hands of the others fall on her arms.

“Candle?”

“Here, aunt.” One of the hands gently squeezed her arm. Candle was the heir, her mate’s sister’s son and head, now, of their dwindling clan.

“Take my other hand.” She was quickly obeyed and tightened her grip on her nephew’s hand as well as her son’s. “Strong elves… worthy of your names and your breeding. I will miss your voices. I will miss all of your voices.”

A muffled sob sounded nearby, heralding the coming cloud. Sparrow struggled to keep her clarity of mind, but had lost what she wanted to say. In confusion, she then lost where she was, and was left only with a distant inkling of who was with her. Storm’s-Passing bent near to kiss her cheek.

“Rest, mother. We won’t leave you.”

The words seemed to echo slightly and Sparrow shuddered, then shouted. “You said you would wait!”

Storm’s-Passing and Candle both leaned forward to restrain her as she began struggling with her blankets.

“Wait!” She sobbed.

“Mother…” She did not even hear the pain in her eldest son’s voice as he spoke. All she felt was the cold.

Sparrow woke to cold raindrops falling on her face and soaking into her dress. Wet grass lay beneath her and she felt it around her as well, covering her as if she were a rabbit hiding in the brush. Confused, she sat up and tried to feel about her for something, anything familiar. Once above the sheltering grass the cold wind that accompanied the rain pushed against her and she shivered. There was nothing familiar about this place; not its smell, nor the feel of the space. Even the grass was of a kind she had not felt before. Slowly she stood, but without a cane to test out the ground ahead she had to feel before her with a foot.

As she moved slowly she began to hear something above the soft hiss of the wind and rain. There were the sounds of folk in the distance to her left. Clinking of metal, the ruffle of fabric in the wind and the sounds of movement, as well as voices. Some were speaking, some laughing, and some were lamenting, weeping and moaning. A shudder passed through her. Freeze to death here on the outskirts, or trust myself to strangers? Trying not to think, she moved towards the sounds, but when she came up against a low boulder she stopped. The stolidity of the cold rock gave her comfort. She climbed and sat upon it, turning her face up to feel the rain. At her back, her wet hair hung, shield-like, against the biting wind.

For a long time she listened to the speech of the wind. It was strangely near the language she knew, but of a dialect she could not quite understand.

“Mother?”

Sparrow stiffened. The voice was that of her son, but it came to her on the wind, from a great, great distance, and she could not smell or feel him near.

I… am dead. The moment the thought struck her she knew without doubt that it was true. Then this was the realm of the Mountain, the Realm of Passage. Her heart skipped. This is where he said he would wait.

Tentatively she spoke, her own voice sounding weak against the wind and his name sounding strange on her tongue from long disuse.

“Lionchild?”

No answer came. She spoke louder. “Lionchild!”

Again only the wind replied in its almost-familiar language. Emotions that defied naming rose in her chest and she shouted the name so that the air from her lungs left her throat briefly raw.

The wind hissed, seeming to shush her. For a time she waited, breathless. Eventually the sounds of the wind and the rain seemed to hem her in. She whispered the name one last time, but with little hope of hearing his own voice in reply.

Where is he? He said that no matter how long, he would wait.

The wind spoke, but she no longer listened. Turning her head so that her ear could better catch the still-distant sounds of folk, she wondered if he was among them, waiting. What if he isn’t? Must I climb the mountain, then, by myself? She felt, somehow, that the feat was not beyond her. She had faced so much after she had lost him. But the thought filled her with a sadness she had not felt since she had received news of his death. Memory of the messenger’s words, the hesitation in his voice, echoed in her thought.

Majesty… Word has come. The High General herself has sent you tidings. The Emperor has been slain.

She choked against the recollection. She had known it would come, yet knowing had not eased the pain. Only his children had been of comfort to her then; the offspring of her blood and his, and then his sister’s children when she followed him and her own husband to their graves; five young elves bereft of clan and home for Sparrow to protect. But now she had nothing but herself.

Suddenly the grief gave way to rage and she screamed into the wind and the rain.
Her first scream held no words, nor needed any. Words would not, could not suffice. Then she screamed his name once again, throat and lungs burning.

“Lionchild! Did I fail you in some way that you would abandon me again?” The wind seemed to ask her a question, but one she still could not understand. Suddenly the air felt electric and she froze, half in fear that her perch on a boulder in a bare field might bring the lightning to her. No strike came, however, and the spark calmed about her until she was unsure if she had felt it.

If I wait here, I will lose what courage I have to move on. …Lionchild… if you have taken the path before me, I will find you. I will make you look at me.

Carefully she lowered herself from the boulder. The grasses clamored about her as the wind teased them and the rain pelted them from above. Step by step she made her way towards the distant murmur of people. If she was to take the mountain path alone she would need food, and a staff, lest she starve and stumble. The grief rose in her again, choking her, but she swallowed it back with desperate force. She had always been strong, and had become stronger still since he had abandoned her for the seductive embrace of Honorable Death, leaving her sole guardian of what remained of the Kingsbane.

The sounds of people grew louder as she approached, sounds almost of a city save for no clamor from paved roads. The multitude must have been very great. Why did they wait here at the mountain’s foot? Why did they not climb? Why did he not wait?

The smells reached her then. People crowded together in a camp with fires, food, and steel. It was the latter that made her stomach tighten. Leather and steel and polish. Her feet stopped against her will, refusing to take her closer. Her stomach felt full of stones and her heart paced like that of a hunted deer. Lionchild might be there, but then what if the other was there as well? The soldier. Could he not be dead? Fear seeped into her bones, more potent than the cold that was already settling there. Even if he was not there, might there not be others like him? Those who would see her as prey?

The memory of her first meeting with Lionchild rose unbidden to her mind, but it moved as if to shield her from the older, cruel memories. He too had smelled of steel and polish, the smell of a soldier. She had shied from him, terrified. But he had seen her fear and had stayed back, keeping her in sight as she walked home, but not venturing too near. She gritted her teeth against the longing for that safety, to feel him at her shoulder.

“My lord…” she sobbed. A few of the tears that had not come before found their escape down her cheeks, hot in the chilled rain. I cannot go into the camp. I cannot. Fear will take me.

The Mountain pulled at the edges of her perception. Come to me, it whispered. It is, as the legends say, a living thing, she thought, more alive than the mountains of the living world.

Turning, with the wind now at her back, pushing her onwards, she began her slow progression towards the mountain. As she moved, she prayed.

Tree of All, guide your daughter’s steps, strengthen her heart and mind. I am alone, and my heart breaks to know why. Has he gone on before me? Is he entranced by some other? Has some trial befallen him that keeps him from his promise? Or can he not find me?

This last thought tortured her, for she hoped most for it, but could not allow herself to bring hope to the point of trust. If she stopped she might wait, here, at the foot of the mountain forever, waiting for him as he promised he would wait for her.

A growing rattle off to her right caught her attention; wind in a stand of cane. She turned her face down in thanks as she moved even more cautiously towards it. The ground became marshy, but her step was light and she did not sink. As she reached the stand of growing cane she felt about until she found one of the right thickness. The find eased her heart. Now, at least, she might make her way.

She drew power from the air about her, singing a sharp wind-weaving until a trickle of heat across her fingertips told her the spell was fixed. The cane was sliced in two as if struck by a sharp and swift blade. With her hands she measured out its length and then sliced again. The power left her, and she rose to her feet.

He had been patient in his wooing. She had given him no other choice. For her he gave up steel and worked with her father in the fields. For her he had deserted, though at the time she had not known the whole of what he had left behind. After so much, why had he not waited for her? Had he used up all of his patience in their courtship that he had none left to keep his promise in this place?

No! I will not be angry. I will not be weak.

The passage of time was impossible for her to gauge. There was no sun to be felt on her face, no familiar sounds of early morning birds, or owls in the night. Sparrow walked on, feeling out the path before her with her cane and following the Mountain’s beckoning until she came to the head of a trail. It was a deep rut, worn down by countless travelers perhaps since the very beginning of time. Sparrow shuddered, though this time it was not from fear or grief. The foot of the mountain was the first right thing she had felt in this place. It was familiar, though utterly strange, like a song that she had heard before and yet could not place, a song that brought forward a feeling of joy and excitement. She wanted to take the path. Sorrow rose again, though this time it left bitterness, anger behind it. She wanted to take the path with him. How she wanted that. But it had been so long… too long, no doubt, for him to fight the lure of the mountain, even for her. At last she understood what it was that kept him from her, and she wholly forgave his betrayal.

She climbed the path at a steady pace. It was not steep, there at the foot, though rocky, muddy and in places treacherous. Her emotions swirled about, co-mingling joy, excitement, sorrow and fear. It was that, more than walking, that eventually wearied her. She climbed the bank of the path and curled up beneath a tree on the higher ground. As she lay, cold and alone, another surge of grief came to take hold of her. She pressed her face into the moss beneath her and wept.

When next she woke, she was warm. Beneath her shoulder and at her back was the warmth of another, and a cloak was thrown over her. Panic shot through her like a crossbow bolt, but with it she took in a sharp breath and panic turned instantly to shock. How much she had missed his scent! Turning, desperate to confirm, she reached up a hand to seek out the features of his face: nose, eyebrow, ear with the ring of their oath still in it, cheek, lips. With a sob she brought her own to meet these last, her hand trailing down his neck and hair. He held her to him and she could feel him restraining his desire to hold her too tightly. His arms shook.

“Now you are here I almost cannot move,” he spoke into her ear before resting her head against his shoulder and his chin on her head. The years that had passed had failed to take from her the familiarity of this embrace. She choked, not even attempting to hold back her tears, knowing that it would be a hopeless struggle.

“You kept your promise.”

His hand still shook as he stroked her hair.

“You took me knowing you would lose me. How could I betray you? Why would I.”

“It… was so long.”

“I would have waited forever and considered it short if you came at last.”

“Where were you?”

“Hunting. You would come at a time when I was hunting. Why are you such a contrary creature?”

She laughed through her tears. “You knew I was from the beginning.”

She felt him nod.

“Tell me… our children?”

“Not now.”

He laughed, and it was as if she had never lost him. “Quite right. There is time. It has been too long since I looked forward to the path ahead.”

She beamed and rested a hand over his heart.

“I will protect you,” she said.

She could hear him speak through a grin. “I’ve no doubt of that.”