“Shut up,” Athan hissed past clenched teeth, the arrow shaft snapping within his fist.
“You think you know me, boy?” The thin line of Melakatezra’s lips broke into an amused grin. “Why don’t we ask your brother what truth he thought he knew?” Melakatezra looked past Athan to the dark forest behind. “I know you’re there, child. We are connected now, you and I. Why not show yourself, Treven?”
“Treven?” Dnara whispered the name into the night as wide-eyed she looked to Athan for explanation.
Athan looked down to her, past the broken arrow in his fist, but offered only an apology for more things he had intended to tell her but had chosen not to. “I’m so sorry.”
And from the woods, a large silent shadow emerged, with tawny brown skin, ears that twitched at the ravens overhead and big black eyes that had always held more intelligence than a mule should have. Treven’s nostrils flared in a snort and his withers tremored. Those clever eyes were locked on Melakatezra, and if mules could glare, Treven’s expression would be full of rage.
“There’s a good boy,” Melakatezra said then sighed softly. “Oh, now don’t give me that look. It’s not my fault your brother is as much a fool as you and has backed out of our deal.”
Dnara gently set the blackrope’s head down upon the loamy earth. Standing up behind Athan, Dnara decided she’d been kept in the dark far too long about far too many things. Moving past Athan’s attempts to intervene, Dnara stood before Melakatezra and Treven, no longer willing to have her fate decided for her; to be led by the hand through this world, understanding less than the truth.
“Please,” she said to Melakatezra and raised a hand to Treven’s snout. The mule, the boy within in the mule, nuzzled into her palm and closed his eyes. “Explain the truth of this to me.”
“Dnara-” Athan began but stopped as Treven stamped one hoof to the earth.
“The truth of it?” Melakatezra mused the words for a moment, the last remnants of sunlight behind her finally giving way to winter’s final dusk. “Where shall I begin?”
“The beginning,” Dnara said, never more certain. “You should always start at the beginning.”
Her words made Melakatezra smile. “Yes, I believe that is always the best place to start.”
27
The Two Brothers and the Raven
Once, there were two brothers who lived on a small farm where their father raised cabbages and their mother mended clothing. They were happy, these two brothers, running after each other in the hot summer sun, down to the edge of the property where they would dive for hours into the small fishing pond. In the mornings, they would tend the field with their father. In the evenings, they would help their mother deliver mended clothing to other farmers around the nearby village. Each sunrise brought a new day full of promise and adventure, and each sunset would see them safely tucked in their beds, kissed goodnight by their loving parents.
Together, these two brothers felt invincible, and they made grand plans for their future. The eldest, Athan, wanted to take over the farm and grow even bigger cabbages than their father. The youngest, Treven, wanted to be like the merchants who came bearing extraordinary items from faraway lands, traveling around Ellium, though not too far from home. No, the brothers vowed to remain together, to look after one another and their parents, no matter what the next day may bring.
How could they, young and innocent in their ways, have known that the next day would bring blight and shadow?
Blight came first to the fields of their neighbors, decaying vegetables in the earth and filling their orchards with rot. Next, blight came to the animals, driving some away and driving others mad, killing their offspring before they themselves died standing in the fields. Lastly, blight came to the people. It took from them first their children, filling them with cough and fever, then it came for the mothers with babes still within their bellies. Like ashes they fell to the earth in silence, without crying nor wailing save from those they left behind. Many of those left behind, standing alone in ruined fields of bitter harvest, fell into madness and despair as all around them the world burned.
The two brothers lost their cabbages, then they lost their chickens. Their father left to find new fortune upon the Sapphire Sea, never to be seen again. Their mother fell next, along with an unborn child taken soundlessly in the night. The two brothers were left alone in a barren field next to a rotten apple tree under which they’d buried their mother, watching on the horizon as the King’s Guard came and burned the farmlands to ash and cinder.
“Why do you not cry?” asked a voice from the branches above. The brothers looked up and saw a raven, its curious gaze turning this way and that, as if trying to understand the ways of man.
“I have no tears left to shed,” said Athan, the eldest. “I have cried for my mother, I have cried for my father, I have cried for the hens dead in their roost and the cabbages blackened in the field. Let the king’s men have the rest, but they’ll have no more tears from me.”
“What good would it do to cry?” said Treven, the youngest, his small hands fisted tight in anger. “If I were stronger, I could stop them, but I can’t. I can’t do anything but stand under this tree next to a mother who is dead.”
The raven turned its
