"The Sisters" by Diogo Dionisio Teles

The sisters

He sat with his legs crossed looking at the strange pavement stone on the ground. He felt the coldness of the rocky floor of the ruins bellow his torn shorts; the breeze of an autumn morning chilled his naked torso and relieved the pain that throbbed lightly on his scorched knees. At his side stood two low walls, once belonging to a small house from which only a moss covered ruin remained. The trees around it towered over his head with their tops filled with red leafs that fell slowly, one by one plucked by the invisible hands of a gentle wind, on the soft layer of dead leafs that was the forest’s autumn ground. Right above the centre of the ruin, the forest opened allowing the glimpse of a grey sky that hinted the coming of a rainy afternoon.

He wondered how he had never noticed this stone of a slightly darker grey than all the others paving the floor of his playing ground. Maybe the leafs that covered this yet unexamined part of the ruin had been swept away by the strong winds that hollowed during the last night, revealing the strange stone. Without further thought and not really knowing why, the boy felt compelled to place his tiny fingers on the edges of the rock; they were somewhat rounder and more worn than the ones framing it. Easily and without effort he removed the stone revealing a small hole covered with ancient dusty clay. Inside, he found the remains of an ancient leather bag. The boy paused amazed with his finding and his mind immediately started to boil with unaccountable fantastical explanations to the origin of the bag. They quickly ceased, defeated by curiosity. His hands tried to untie the strings fastening the mouth of the bag but they broke as he touched them. Looking inside the open leather pouch he found a piece of shiny glass, a shard of a broken mirror slightly smaller than his tiny hand and impressively clean. He took it out and held it in both hands between his crossed legs, looking at it with a childish expression, mouth half opened and eyes wide with curiosity. The reflection showed his head looking down upon the mirrored surface of the shard; in the background of his face’s tiny reflection was the grey sky above, framed in a circle of red and brown tree tops.

The child let out a breathless gasp as the image on the reflection suddenly moved. Small waves rippled its surface as if a pebble had been thrown into the surface of a tiny silver pond. His mouth fell open with amazement as it let out a sound of exclamation, eyes wide with expectation lit with the fearless ingenuity of a small child looking at something new. Then came the voices, first it seemed like the wind had grown stronger, whispering as it swept through the ground it made small leafs fly in spiralling patterns around the place where he sat. Then the whispers of the wind melded into an echoing voice, soft and barely audible but melodious and, at the same time, with a tone of melancholy that made him feel sad.

“Father did not mean what he said; there is no reason for you to be sad. I am sure he’s glad you are back just as I am.” The voice echoed in the ruins at first, then it became clearer and more focused and as it did, the reflection on the mirror vanished leaving only an empty greyness which made it seem like a piece of lead. The child looked around as he saw the ruins change before his eyes, he gasped again for they were ruins no more. He stood now on the stone floor of a very simple room, its stone walls were bare and the furnishing was scarce, the roof was made of straw and clay and very well kept. He got up in a jump dropping the grey glass which hit the floor with surprising silence. Very quickly he realised he was not alone, he could still hear the voice but its words flew by as his attention was still clouded by the surroundings.

The room was dark; the only light came from a round window in the wall in front of him which was nothing more than a round hole opened in the stone. He glanced quickly to his left and saw a bed close to a wall that had been covered in moss just moments ago, but now it looked sturdy and clean. On the same wall was a door which he had never seen before, for nothing had remained of it or its frame in the ruins where he played. His attention was recaptured by the voice, now clearly coming from behind him. He turned around in one step and saw two strange women talking by the remaining pieces of furnishing in the room: a low stool standing in front of a man sized mirror framed in simple wood and leaning against a two feet wooden support. They were beautiful but much different, the women on the right was slightly shorter and had long and shiny hair of a very light shade of brown. Her eyes were hazel and showed a strong will. She wore a simple long linen dress, its top falling just a little bellow her shoulders from a thin strip of dark blue lace embroiled with a wavy pattern of gold. The sleeves were cut almost to the top and looked like two veils pending from the shoulders, showing the pinkish skin of her arms and ending in a tiny loop of white lace that fastened then to her middle finger. Her neck was adorned with a golden necklace, depicting the engraving of two small beech leafs joined by the feet. Her pose was that of an educated girl and her hands waved in gracious gestures as she talked, a fain hint of a smile always present in her lips. This woman, just like the other, had strange pointed ears, her long hair was held by them reflecting with a faint reddish tone the light coming through the window.

A strange metallic sound came from outside reaching the room through the window, it was unclear but persistent and from time to time voices were heard uttering unintelligible words that seemed like distant shouts.

“You must have learned much since you left with her. I longed for your returning and so did father in spite of what he has told you this morning. You will be needed today and you will prove yourself in merit at his eyes, and later, he will understand why you left and he will be proud of you.” Her voice had a fair and mild tone, trembling slightly. “I know you will be successful, you will fallow the path of wisdom, you earned it, and you had the courage I never had.” She sighed. “The comforts of home were always appealing to me, but you managed to go beyond them, now you bringing back the experience none of us ever had. And I know…I know that you won’t go down with something like this, you won’t allow it to end now.”

Silence fell between them for a short moment, only the strange metallic noise and the voices could be heard coming from outside, both of them seemed to be getting louder. The other women had kept silent until now, listening with a sad expression on a hardened face. Her stance showed a clearly less controlled manner, this woman was bulkier showing the hardening of physical stress. She wore a shirt of light leather suited for travelling, padded with a darker tone over her shoulders. It was practically fastened with a simple black string tightening her breasts, under the elongated low cut of the shirt. Her skin was tanned to a slightly golden hue and her face was framed with an almost white blond hair, tightened in close braids above her head and then loosened in a thin mantle over her back. Grey eyes bellow very light blond eyelashes added depth to a face that showed a distant sadness. A silver bracelet resembling a small piece of ivy curled around her upper left arm. She had the same pointed ears, smaller and pointed back looking almost cat-like. Opening her mouth she spoke in a tone of studied coldness that failed to hide the emotion behind her words:

“Sister, I came not to stay but to prepare you. We will make a travel together soon; I have foreseen it and I know that is the way it should be done. This gathering of huts that we call village stands amidst the trees of the Living Woods, we have kept them for countless years safe for those whose life depends on it. Its trees provide them with wood, its animals allow them to survive and its shadow gives them shelter and cover in times of need. But by now you must have noticed, the forest is dying, its spirit is lost. How this has happened I cannot tell you, but this unbalance made the men for whom we have provided for so long advance into the core of the woods. They are looking for the food that they cannot find and for the wood that still lives. They are here and they have seen us” She looked at the window and then so did the other woman. The metallic noises became clearer and louder as did the voices. The clash of steel and the alarmed screams seemed to echo around the place of the ruins, faint traces from a skirmish fought long before this time. “You know what must be done” said the silver haired woman, “I came because we are needed.” The other smiled and nodded. The sound of battle became louder and voices were heard behind the door. Angry voices followed by the dry noise of steel ripping flesh and the short moan of the fallen.

“I know.” The reply came with conviction as she hazel-eyed woman grabbed gently her sister’s arm. “Then we shall travel beyond. The forest will live again as our spirits shall refresh its springs, bring colour to its trees and breathe of life into its creatures. Balance will be restored at our cost. I feel the urge, not a premonition as the one that blessed you, but the urge to fulfil my destiny…our destiny, together. Let us look at ourselves in union one last time, so that we may remember our reunion no matter how fast it was. So that our spirit might depart in strength and peace by knowing that we were together in the end.”

They looked at each other and smiled. Then slowly they turned to face the mirror, the brown haired woman looked at the reflection. Her smile showed acceptance or maybe even resignation, but her whole face hinted a faint feeling of victory and resolution. At her side stood her sister, looking past the mirror to the life behind her. She looked back to the years of training in the ancient art and thought if the end could have been different if only she had stayed home. Was wisdom really worth the price? Then without warning splinters of wood flew through the air as the door behind them was forced open. The gleam of metal reflecting the window’s light was followed by the sound of broken glass as the two women fell over the mirror with the force of the blows on their backs. There they remained, fallen over shards of broken glass as their blood flowed between the pavement stones seeking the forest bellow, the sister’s blessing to a dying forest.

Suddenly all faded away and the boy was in the familiar ruins once more. He looked down quickly and saw it. The shard was lying there on the floor but its surface was grey no more. He picked it up and saw its surface, the image of the sisters stood there, the memory of their last embrace. Then, with a sudden flash of light as if reflecting the light from ancient days, they were there no more. The boy saw his own face reflected, it was different. How could it not be? He had seen those whose blood gave life to the forest, the same forest that allowed his ancestors to live and that, to this day, still provided for the humans living in it. He had seen the price of the harmony in which he lived, harmony which, until now, he never realised he had.