A Song Only You Can Understand - for Bat
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junetideTitle: A Song Only You Can Understand
Gift for: Bat
By: [to be revealed]
Gift type: Fiction (~3700 words)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rating: PG
Warnings: Non-graphic violence, some disturbing themes
Summary: Leda’s home was a tower of glass and steel. Disconnected from the world outside, she desperately wants to be a part of it.
Giftcreator's notes: This ended up referencing to a wide source of fairy-tales – the main character is intentionally named after a figure in Greek mythology and there are influences of Rapunzel in the story, but it mainly draws on a Norwegian folk tale as a backstory.
A Song Only You Can Understand
Once upon a time there was a little girl with skin as pale as moonlight and hair as fair as flax. She was very beautiful and very sad, but most of all she was very lonely. Her home was a tower of glass and steel – the epitome of the modern times – and when she pressed her face against the glass, she could see the entire world stretching out beneath her. It was a gorgeous view. It was also a terrible view. She could see the rich in their beautiful robes of silk and unicorns or winged horses were harnessed to their carriages. Gryphons and wyverns would glide through the air – so effortlessly graceful and free that it made jealousy seethe in her chest. They would dive and then snap up one of the poor, who twisted helplessly and fruitlessly in their talons. She would swallow the horrified lump in her throat as the beasts carried off their prey. The splendid city of glass and metal was filled with dark seedy allies where the poor struggled just to live and where nobody seemed to care if a wyvern carried off with a human being.
This girl wasn’t a part of their world. Not really. She’d never left this tower – the ornamental heart of the city – and walked those streets that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere. She’d never touched the fine silk or seen the unicorns up close. She’d never been a part of a world where the rich had all the access to the magic that they could possibly want. Where the middle classes drove cars fuelled by magic, instead of the extraordinary carriages drawn by magical creatures. Where the poor lived and died under the glamorous surface without anybody noticing them, except from a tiny girl sitting in the window of her prison.
She’d begged to be allowed out, but her father would always say, ‘No, Leda, it’s too dangerous. It’s too a brutal place out there for you’, and keep her imprisoned. She never wanted for anything. Her rooms where decorated in cream and ivory with ethereal gold decorations (swirling patterns that had no other meaning than to be pretty). She was given paintings, books and the most beautiful handcrafted instruments any human had ever seen. But she was never given what she wanted the most – human companionship. Her father was always so busy with his work for the city, and her mother was a pale shadow haunting the corridors.
Caught in this tower of glass and steel, cut off from everybody else, Leda grew up into a lovely woman. She still watched the outside world with longing, but had resigned herself to living in the tower forever. The city pulsing with life and death below her wasn’t meant for her. Her life was meant to be in here, preserved between glass like a beautiful butterfly that was too fragile for the outside world.
There were three things that happened to change Leda’s destiny, even if it would take her years to understand it. It began with a woman who came to see her father. She was different from the servants coming and going, different from Leda herself and her parents. Her face was round in shape and almost flat with a pencil-straight nose. Eyes with a feline tilt took in everything as she was ushered past Leda’s room. The young girl’s heart pounded. The woman hadn’t seen her, but Leda had seen her and her beautiful foreign clothes. Without thinking over her actions, Leda followed her father’s advisor and the strange woman. Her name was Ning Ruan, Leda learnt after eavesdropping while Ning was shown into her father’s chamber.
Leda waited outside for just another glimpse of the woman. She was hidden in an alcove and the servants passed her by without noticing her. At one point her mother shuffled past, but Leda dismissed the notion that she’d seen her. Even if her mother’s eyes had been directed towards her hiding place, the stare had been vacant. Sometimes Leda thought that her mother didn’t recognise her.
She almost fell asleep in the alcove, when the door opened with a bang. The beautiful woman strode out of the door. Her anger was visible in the short, cut off motions of her stride and stiff bearings of her shoulders. Had she been a cat, her hair would have been on an end, but as she was not, it remained sleek and carefully pinned in a bun. Leda’s father – almost as rough in appearance as Leda was finely sculpted – hurried after her. His voice was cold when he told Ning to reconsider. He never asked – he only told.
‘My lord,’ Ning said carefully, softly, but with just a hint of steel, ‘the clans have been quite clear regarding their stance on your endeavour. I’m afraid that there’s nothing to reconsider.’
‘You will regret this, Miss Ruan. All of you.’
Ning bowed, disrespect etched into her body language even as she remained formal, and when she straightened her eyes flickered over to Leda. The pale girl gasped and took a step back. The woman looked nonplussed for a while, before turning to leave. Leda remained in the protective darkness of the alcove. Her heart pounded as if she’d been running up and down all of the stairs in the tower like she had when she was a child. It was only her temporary paralysis that allowed her to see the look on her father’s face – a look of deep-seethed hatred.
She tried to put Ning Ruan out of her mind like she’d done every other visitor she’d seen. But her face remained with her. In the night she saw her face and heard her voice. The clans – what clans? What endeavour? Why did her father hate this woman? The questions whirred through her mind like insistent flies. She remained wide awake in her ivory prison.
The second thing that would change her life happened at midnight that very same night. She started, still awake, when the door to her room crept open. She clutched her blankets to her chest to hide the fact that she was fumbling for her dagger. It had been a gift from her bodyguard, before she’d insisted that she didn’t need one. A quick glance towards the door revealed the ghostly apparition of her mother, carrying something reverently in her arms as she approached. Leda managed to find her speech again and stuttered in surprise, ‘Mother? What are you− is something the matter?’
Her mother gently placed the thing she’d carried in her arm onto the bed. Leda saw that it was a mass of feathers in white and different shades of blue. She realised that the feathers were attached to the head of a bird with gaping holes for eyes. Despite its almost ghoulish appearance, she couldn’t help but to be drawn to it. It seemed to her a living thing – a living, singing thing – and its song reached out to touch a part of her that she hadn’t been aware existed. She felt the familiar ache of loneliness, of being trapped and captive, well up. The feather shroud would alleviate it; she could feel it in her bones.
Her mother watched her with a sad glance and said softly, ‘I thought as much. It recognises you when it won’t acknowledge me. He’s cut my wings and crippled me, but he hasn’t been able to touch you.’
‘Mother, you’re talking in riddles,’ Leda said.
Her hands reached for the feathers and they moved under her hand. She gasped. The feathers were warm under hand and the shroud undulated. It seemed to be reaching for her. Cautiously she caressed the head, which preened under her hand. She heard a distant trill – weak, but it was there – and the sound filled her heart with joy.
Her mother smiled faintly. ‘In riddles? Rather I’m talking about fairy tales. I know it’s hard to believe, but the man that I married is not the man that is your father. He watched my sisters and I dance on the beach, before the city existed, and stole my shroud.’ She gently caressed the feathers, but the feathers didn’t move like they had when Leda touched them. Her mother’s face crumpled in sadness. ‘I begged him to give it back to me and he would if I agreed to marry him. I did, but my mother – the queen of the castle east of the sun and west of the moon – would not honour my promise.’ Her voice lowered to a whisper. ‘I was sent to break the engagement, but by then I was already in love with him. I told him to come and find me in my home. Such a feat was unheard of by ordinary men and my mother would surely be impressed if he managed to accomplish it.’
For Leda this tale was very strange. It was the most she’d ever heard her mother speak and the man in the tale, so far, didn’t sound like her father. She couldn’t stop touching the feather shroud. It was warm like a living creature underneath her hands. Touching it made something restless – something almost akin to a living creature of which she’d been unaware of, yet it had always been straining against what caged it – settle and purr in contentment.
‘I’m still not clear on how he managed it, but he displayed great courage. He won the seven league boots of a pair of quarrelling trolls. He met more quarrelling trolls and won an invisibility cloak of one pair and a sword that could raise the dead of the other. He spoke to three women who could speak to all the creatures on the ground, in the waters and in the air. The last one – the one who could speak to the creatures of the air – managed to summon my oldest sister and on her back your father rode to the castle. I’ve never felt such happiness as I felt when they landed in the courtyard, a beautiful sight against the silver and gold of the castle walls. My mother the queen was still reluctant, but your father gave her the invisibility cloak and the sword that could raise the dead. He tried to give her the seven league boots, as well, but mother just laughed and wondered what a phoenix queen would need boots for. He took me home and we were wed. My mother helped him lay the foundations of the city.’
‘Phoenix queen,’ Leda said thoughtfully. ‘Is phoenixes what we are?’
‘Of a sort,’ her mother replied promptly, but would not elaborate.
Frustrated with her refusal of answering that particular question, Leda asked another pressing question, ‘What happened?’
The mother’s pale eyes, which had lit up brightly during the earlier part of the conversation, dimmed. The change back to the shadowy creature she’d been before happened frightfully fast. She’d been so radiant, but now she looked broken. Plucking at the fine sleeves of her dress, she said softly, ‘The city, it grew. With it came new responsibilities, new plans, new greed. I didn’t notice the change in him until too late – when he’d already stolen my shroud, hid it, in effect cut my wings. By then you were only a few months old and I couldn’t leave. Later I think I forgot how to. I never stopped searching for my shroud, but when I found it and put it on, it was like a dead thing to me. It wasn’t a part of me. I had forgotten what it meant to be free and fly.’
Leda was startled to see bright, furious tears in her mother’s eyes. Her mother didn’t look at her anymore, rather passed her, towards the window. She watched the night sky with barely veiled frustration and said, ‘Birds aren’t meant to live in cages. I can’t let him cut your wings like he cut mine and by the moon, he’s tried. He’s tried, but you haven’t let him.’
‘You want me to run away?’ Leda surmised.
‘Not yet, but in the future,’ was the quiet reply. ‘You need to learn how to fly, before you can escape. Escape only at the time when he wants you to marry, because he won’t be seeing to your happiness. He will marry you off to whoever will benefit the city the most.’
Leda never doubted that her father loved her. She just thought that he might love the city more and it was therefore she let her mother help her put on the shroud. Her heart pounded with excitement, blood roaring in her ears, palms sweaty with excitement. The hood was settled over her head and she felt her body heat up and start to tingle. The gentle warmth swept over her and she shrank. There was no pain, no discomfort, just her body morphing to another natural state. She saw herself reflected in the mirror and she chirped happily. Her body was mostly white with the exception of the tail, which showed white interwoven with icier shades of blue, and the longer decorative feathers attached to her head, which were dark blue. So were the tips of her wings. Her beak and legs were the same shade. Only her eyes remained the same almost black colour.
Her mother opened the window. Using the bed, Leda awkwardly took off in a glide and sailed through the window. She should have been terrified to be at such a height, but she wasn’t. She was exhilarated. She felt invincible. The rhythm of flight seemed to be instilled into her bones. She swerved and ducked wyverns and gryphons diving after her, trilling out a spirited song. She was soaring through the night sky. It belonged to her. How could she have gone so long without this – without the gift of flight?
From that night forward, she would dress in the shroud and open her window. She’d explore the beautiful city and watch the people still out during the night. Mostly, she found herself drawn to the poor quarters. The horror of it – of families not having enough to eat while the rich threw food away, of families living in buildings so cold the limited water froze to ice, of wild magical beasts attacking them – made Leda return. She found a man dying from the wounds from a wyvern’s claws and cried. She discovered that her tears had the power to heal in this form.
Three things would change her life and the third thing was when she was reunited with the beautiful Ning Ruan. She didn’t recognise the woman first. She was out of her fine garments and walking among the poor as if she belonged there. She would give a helping hand everywhere she went. She repaired draughty windows and mixed medicines for the ill. She gave away food to those not too proud to refuse and told them stories that her clan had passed down to her. Leda found herself following her and soon helping her. Ning didn’t question the sudden appearance of a phoenix by her side. Instead she whispered something in her language that sounded like a ‘thank you’ or a prayer when Leda would help her heal the ill and wounded.
When they weren’t busy, Leda would perch on Ning’s arm and listen to the stories she told. Ning would absent-mindedly stroke her head. The people kept a respectful distance from Leda and didn’t touch her with permission. It took her a while to realise that they thought that she belonged to Ning. She realised that she wouldn’t mind if that was the case. Warmth would fill her whenever Ning petted her and she would sing her prettiest songs for the woman, just to watch her smile. Ning took to talking to her like she was an equal, like she could understand the words, and Leda learnt about the night sky and the constellations. She learnt about magic and Ning’s clan, Ruan, who were mostly known for their music. She learnt about Ning, who had grown up an only child and had been so clever that she was youngest ever to speak for the clans in the matters of the world.
Ning would speak and Leda would listen. ‘It’s this city,’ Ning said one night when they were alone, walking through an alley with Leda perched on her shoulder. ‘It’s this city that is draining the land dry. I need to tell you why. I know you understand me. My people speak of the phoenixes as a people of shape-shifters and I know you are one. I can hear it in your song. But you don’t have to change, you just have to listen.’
Leda had startled and almost taken flight, but she remained on the woman’s shoulder. Shifting uneasily, she probably dug her claws into the muscles harder than what was strictly necessary. Ning didn’t move a muscle in her face to show if she was in pain. Instead she gave Leda a reassuring pat on the head.
‘The city runs on magic. You can feel it in the thrum of the walls, the pulse of the pavement, the way it shifts and moves. The man who rules it has made it into a currency and something only the rich can afford. But magic is meant to be used by everyone. It needs to be worshiped. The rich think that it comes down to sacrifices and that it will satisfy the magic. But it needs the love of a people, not the blasé indifference of a few. They’ve forgotten what magic means and the city needs to be powered with more magic than there is. So the man who rules this city – this so-called king – is planning to round up a huge sacrifice. All the unwanted in the city. He thinks it will fuel the city for a few years.’
Leda listened with horror.
‘I’m telling you this, because my people think that the phoenix is the wisest creature in the world,’ Ning said and her voice was soft and wet with tears. ‘If there’s a chance to stop him, to free the magic and return it to the lands, a phoenix should come up with the answers to how.’
Leda thought, ‘But I’m just a girl.’ Slightly more terrified, ‘I don’t know this world well enough to have answers.’ And, ‘I don’t know how, but I’ll try.’
She took off with a reassuring trill. Reassurance she didn’t feel, sure, but reassurance nonetheless. She spent the next few days locked in her ivory room, thinking hard. Ning had said that phoenixes were wise, but Leda didn’t feel particularly wise. The only plan she could come up with was to follow her father, so she dressed in her shroud and followed him when he left. He used the seven league boots, so she had to struggle hard to keep up with his giant steps. She kept close look on the walls and buildings they passed, begging the city not to move or change, to remember the way. Twisting fast through the alleys and streets, until they found themselves underground. She could feel the pulsing of magic stronger in the room and saw the ghostly blue sheen. She’d found the literal heart of the city. It was fettered and pulsing unhappily. Magic was sentient and it didn’t belong caged, no more than birds did.
She left before he could discover her. That night she urged Ning onto her back and the woman, sensing the urgency in the phoenix’s trills, climbed on without asking any questions. Leda stumbled on the take-off, balance off-thrown by the extra weight on her back, but quickly regained her bearing. They pierced through the air as quickly as Leda could fly. Her grandmother had been right – what use did a phoenix have of seven league boots? Leda got them there faster than the boots would have. Her heart swelled with pride when Ning’s eyes widened in amazement. She trilled with joy when Ning pressed a kiss against the top of her head and murmured the same sound that was either a ‘thank you’ or a prayer.
Leda settled back to watch as Ning went to work. It wasn’t particularly dramatic – no spectacular light shows or dramatic sounding chants. Ning conversed civilly with the bindings as she asked them to release their prisoner and smoothed her hands over them. They fell away with protesting, reluctant groans. But Ning was relentless, until the last fetters fell away. The ground underneath them shuddered and suddenly the magic surged free. Leda chirped an exhilarated laugh as she felt the magic pulse and return to every part of the city. Ning was laughing breathlessly when she collapsed onto the ground next to her. Her beautiful brown eyes looked upon Leda with adoration.
‘The king will fall,’ she said with surety in her voice. ‘The balance will shift more equally.’
Leda nodded, still in her bird form, and thought about the tower in which she’d grown up a prisoner. She thought of her father, who’d left her wanting for nothing except freedom, and her mother, the phoenix whose wings he’d cut. She remembered her childhood – standing with her nose pressed against the window and watching the city stretch out beneath her. As all of these images went through her head, she realised that she wanted the tower to fall. They’d build a new monument. A monument of the newer, more equal society that Ning and the clans would build.
With that thought, she let the shroud fall. She sat as a human before Ning for the first time and awaited her judgement. Ning was sure to see the resemblance to the king in her features. She fidgeted under the wide-eyed stare, but Ning’s response wasn’t what she expected. She breathed out, ‘You’re beautiful.’
Her fingers curled around the back of Leda’s neck and pulled her in for a kiss. Leda went willingly – heart soaring and trilling joyously – and kissed the woman she’d wanted since she saw her first time.
And maybe they didn’t live happily ever after.
But they lived together and built a new world together.
Gift for: Bat
By: [to be revealed]
Gift type: Fiction (~3700 words)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rating: PG
Warnings: Non-graphic violence, some disturbing themes
Summary: Leda’s home was a tower of glass and steel. Disconnected from the world outside, she desperately wants to be a part of it.
Giftcreator's notes: This ended up referencing to a wide source of fairy-tales – the main character is intentionally named after a figure in Greek mythology and there are influences of Rapunzel in the story, but it mainly draws on a Norwegian folk tale as a backstory.
Once upon a time there was a little girl with skin as pale as moonlight and hair as fair as flax. She was very beautiful and very sad, but most of all she was very lonely. Her home was a tower of glass and steel – the epitome of the modern times – and when she pressed her face against the glass, she could see the entire world stretching out beneath her. It was a gorgeous view. It was also a terrible view. She could see the rich in their beautiful robes of silk and unicorns or winged horses were harnessed to their carriages. Gryphons and wyverns would glide through the air – so effortlessly graceful and free that it made jealousy seethe in her chest. They would dive and then snap up one of the poor, who twisted helplessly and fruitlessly in their talons. She would swallow the horrified lump in her throat as the beasts carried off their prey. The splendid city of glass and metal was filled with dark seedy allies where the poor struggled just to live and where nobody seemed to care if a wyvern carried off with a human being.
This girl wasn’t a part of their world. Not really. She’d never left this tower – the ornamental heart of the city – and walked those streets that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere. She’d never touched the fine silk or seen the unicorns up close. She’d never been a part of a world where the rich had all the access to the magic that they could possibly want. Where the middle classes drove cars fuelled by magic, instead of the extraordinary carriages drawn by magical creatures. Where the poor lived and died under the glamorous surface without anybody noticing them, except from a tiny girl sitting in the window of her prison.
She’d begged to be allowed out, but her father would always say, ‘No, Leda, it’s too dangerous. It’s too a brutal place out there for you’, and keep her imprisoned. She never wanted for anything. Her rooms where decorated in cream and ivory with ethereal gold decorations (swirling patterns that had no other meaning than to be pretty). She was given paintings, books and the most beautiful handcrafted instruments any human had ever seen. But she was never given what she wanted the most – human companionship. Her father was always so busy with his work for the city, and her mother was a pale shadow haunting the corridors.
Caught in this tower of glass and steel, cut off from everybody else, Leda grew up into a lovely woman. She still watched the outside world with longing, but had resigned herself to living in the tower forever. The city pulsing with life and death below her wasn’t meant for her. Her life was meant to be in here, preserved between glass like a beautiful butterfly that was too fragile for the outside world.
There were three things that happened to change Leda’s destiny, even if it would take her years to understand it. It began with a woman who came to see her father. She was different from the servants coming and going, different from Leda herself and her parents. Her face was round in shape and almost flat with a pencil-straight nose. Eyes with a feline tilt took in everything as she was ushered past Leda’s room. The young girl’s heart pounded. The woman hadn’t seen her, but Leda had seen her and her beautiful foreign clothes. Without thinking over her actions, Leda followed her father’s advisor and the strange woman. Her name was Ning Ruan, Leda learnt after eavesdropping while Ning was shown into her father’s chamber.
Leda waited outside for just another glimpse of the woman. She was hidden in an alcove and the servants passed her by without noticing her. At one point her mother shuffled past, but Leda dismissed the notion that she’d seen her. Even if her mother’s eyes had been directed towards her hiding place, the stare had been vacant. Sometimes Leda thought that her mother didn’t recognise her.
She almost fell asleep in the alcove, when the door opened with a bang. The beautiful woman strode out of the door. Her anger was visible in the short, cut off motions of her stride and stiff bearings of her shoulders. Had she been a cat, her hair would have been on an end, but as she was not, it remained sleek and carefully pinned in a bun. Leda’s father – almost as rough in appearance as Leda was finely sculpted – hurried after her. His voice was cold when he told Ning to reconsider. He never asked – he only told.
‘My lord,’ Ning said carefully, softly, but with just a hint of steel, ‘the clans have been quite clear regarding their stance on your endeavour. I’m afraid that there’s nothing to reconsider.’
‘You will regret this, Miss Ruan. All of you.’
Ning bowed, disrespect etched into her body language even as she remained formal, and when she straightened her eyes flickered over to Leda. The pale girl gasped and took a step back. The woman looked nonplussed for a while, before turning to leave. Leda remained in the protective darkness of the alcove. Her heart pounded as if she’d been running up and down all of the stairs in the tower like she had when she was a child. It was only her temporary paralysis that allowed her to see the look on her father’s face – a look of deep-seethed hatred.
She tried to put Ning Ruan out of her mind like she’d done every other visitor she’d seen. But her face remained with her. In the night she saw her face and heard her voice. The clans – what clans? What endeavour? Why did her father hate this woman? The questions whirred through her mind like insistent flies. She remained wide awake in her ivory prison.
The second thing that would change her life happened at midnight that very same night. She started, still awake, when the door to her room crept open. She clutched her blankets to her chest to hide the fact that she was fumbling for her dagger. It had been a gift from her bodyguard, before she’d insisted that she didn’t need one. A quick glance towards the door revealed the ghostly apparition of her mother, carrying something reverently in her arms as she approached. Leda managed to find her speech again and stuttered in surprise, ‘Mother? What are you− is something the matter?’
Her mother gently placed the thing she’d carried in her arm onto the bed. Leda saw that it was a mass of feathers in white and different shades of blue. She realised that the feathers were attached to the head of a bird with gaping holes for eyes. Despite its almost ghoulish appearance, she couldn’t help but to be drawn to it. It seemed to her a living thing – a living, singing thing – and its song reached out to touch a part of her that she hadn’t been aware existed. She felt the familiar ache of loneliness, of being trapped and captive, well up. The feather shroud would alleviate it; she could feel it in her bones.
Her mother watched her with a sad glance and said softly, ‘I thought as much. It recognises you when it won’t acknowledge me. He’s cut my wings and crippled me, but he hasn’t been able to touch you.’
‘Mother, you’re talking in riddles,’ Leda said.
Her hands reached for the feathers and they moved under her hand. She gasped. The feathers were warm under hand and the shroud undulated. It seemed to be reaching for her. Cautiously she caressed the head, which preened under her hand. She heard a distant trill – weak, but it was there – and the sound filled her heart with joy.
Her mother smiled faintly. ‘In riddles? Rather I’m talking about fairy tales. I know it’s hard to believe, but the man that I married is not the man that is your father. He watched my sisters and I dance on the beach, before the city existed, and stole my shroud.’ She gently caressed the feathers, but the feathers didn’t move like they had when Leda touched them. Her mother’s face crumpled in sadness. ‘I begged him to give it back to me and he would if I agreed to marry him. I did, but my mother – the queen of the castle east of the sun and west of the moon – would not honour my promise.’ Her voice lowered to a whisper. ‘I was sent to break the engagement, but by then I was already in love with him. I told him to come and find me in my home. Such a feat was unheard of by ordinary men and my mother would surely be impressed if he managed to accomplish it.’
For Leda this tale was very strange. It was the most she’d ever heard her mother speak and the man in the tale, so far, didn’t sound like her father. She couldn’t stop touching the feather shroud. It was warm like a living creature underneath her hands. Touching it made something restless – something almost akin to a living creature of which she’d been unaware of, yet it had always been straining against what caged it – settle and purr in contentment.
‘I’m still not clear on how he managed it, but he displayed great courage. He won the seven league boots of a pair of quarrelling trolls. He met more quarrelling trolls and won an invisibility cloak of one pair and a sword that could raise the dead of the other. He spoke to three women who could speak to all the creatures on the ground, in the waters and in the air. The last one – the one who could speak to the creatures of the air – managed to summon my oldest sister and on her back your father rode to the castle. I’ve never felt such happiness as I felt when they landed in the courtyard, a beautiful sight against the silver and gold of the castle walls. My mother the queen was still reluctant, but your father gave her the invisibility cloak and the sword that could raise the dead. He tried to give her the seven league boots, as well, but mother just laughed and wondered what a phoenix queen would need boots for. He took me home and we were wed. My mother helped him lay the foundations of the city.’
‘Phoenix queen,’ Leda said thoughtfully. ‘Is phoenixes what we are?’
‘Of a sort,’ her mother replied promptly, but would not elaborate.
Frustrated with her refusal of answering that particular question, Leda asked another pressing question, ‘What happened?’
The mother’s pale eyes, which had lit up brightly during the earlier part of the conversation, dimmed. The change back to the shadowy creature she’d been before happened frightfully fast. She’d been so radiant, but now she looked broken. Plucking at the fine sleeves of her dress, she said softly, ‘The city, it grew. With it came new responsibilities, new plans, new greed. I didn’t notice the change in him until too late – when he’d already stolen my shroud, hid it, in effect cut my wings. By then you were only a few months old and I couldn’t leave. Later I think I forgot how to. I never stopped searching for my shroud, but when I found it and put it on, it was like a dead thing to me. It wasn’t a part of me. I had forgotten what it meant to be free and fly.’
Leda was startled to see bright, furious tears in her mother’s eyes. Her mother didn’t look at her anymore, rather passed her, towards the window. She watched the night sky with barely veiled frustration and said, ‘Birds aren’t meant to live in cages. I can’t let him cut your wings like he cut mine and by the moon, he’s tried. He’s tried, but you haven’t let him.’
‘You want me to run away?’ Leda surmised.
‘Not yet, but in the future,’ was the quiet reply. ‘You need to learn how to fly, before you can escape. Escape only at the time when he wants you to marry, because he won’t be seeing to your happiness. He will marry you off to whoever will benefit the city the most.’
Leda never doubted that her father loved her. She just thought that he might love the city more and it was therefore she let her mother help her put on the shroud. Her heart pounded with excitement, blood roaring in her ears, palms sweaty with excitement. The hood was settled over her head and she felt her body heat up and start to tingle. The gentle warmth swept over her and she shrank. There was no pain, no discomfort, just her body morphing to another natural state. She saw herself reflected in the mirror and she chirped happily. Her body was mostly white with the exception of the tail, which showed white interwoven with icier shades of blue, and the longer decorative feathers attached to her head, which were dark blue. So were the tips of her wings. Her beak and legs were the same shade. Only her eyes remained the same almost black colour.
Her mother opened the window. Using the bed, Leda awkwardly took off in a glide and sailed through the window. She should have been terrified to be at such a height, but she wasn’t. She was exhilarated. She felt invincible. The rhythm of flight seemed to be instilled into her bones. She swerved and ducked wyverns and gryphons diving after her, trilling out a spirited song. She was soaring through the night sky. It belonged to her. How could she have gone so long without this – without the gift of flight?
From that night forward, she would dress in the shroud and open her window. She’d explore the beautiful city and watch the people still out during the night. Mostly, she found herself drawn to the poor quarters. The horror of it – of families not having enough to eat while the rich threw food away, of families living in buildings so cold the limited water froze to ice, of wild magical beasts attacking them – made Leda return. She found a man dying from the wounds from a wyvern’s claws and cried. She discovered that her tears had the power to heal in this form.
Three things would change her life and the third thing was when she was reunited with the beautiful Ning Ruan. She didn’t recognise the woman first. She was out of her fine garments and walking among the poor as if she belonged there. She would give a helping hand everywhere she went. She repaired draughty windows and mixed medicines for the ill. She gave away food to those not too proud to refuse and told them stories that her clan had passed down to her. Leda found herself following her and soon helping her. Ning didn’t question the sudden appearance of a phoenix by her side. Instead she whispered something in her language that sounded like a ‘thank you’ or a prayer when Leda would help her heal the ill and wounded.
When they weren’t busy, Leda would perch on Ning’s arm and listen to the stories she told. Ning would absent-mindedly stroke her head. The people kept a respectful distance from Leda and didn’t touch her with permission. It took her a while to realise that they thought that she belonged to Ning. She realised that she wouldn’t mind if that was the case. Warmth would fill her whenever Ning petted her and she would sing her prettiest songs for the woman, just to watch her smile. Ning took to talking to her like she was an equal, like she could understand the words, and Leda learnt about the night sky and the constellations. She learnt about magic and Ning’s clan, Ruan, who were mostly known for their music. She learnt about Ning, who had grown up an only child and had been so clever that she was youngest ever to speak for the clans in the matters of the world.
Ning would speak and Leda would listen. ‘It’s this city,’ Ning said one night when they were alone, walking through an alley with Leda perched on her shoulder. ‘It’s this city that is draining the land dry. I need to tell you why. I know you understand me. My people speak of the phoenixes as a people of shape-shifters and I know you are one. I can hear it in your song. But you don’t have to change, you just have to listen.’
Leda had startled and almost taken flight, but she remained on the woman’s shoulder. Shifting uneasily, she probably dug her claws into the muscles harder than what was strictly necessary. Ning didn’t move a muscle in her face to show if she was in pain. Instead she gave Leda a reassuring pat on the head.
‘The city runs on magic. You can feel it in the thrum of the walls, the pulse of the pavement, the way it shifts and moves. The man who rules it has made it into a currency and something only the rich can afford. But magic is meant to be used by everyone. It needs to be worshiped. The rich think that it comes down to sacrifices and that it will satisfy the magic. But it needs the love of a people, not the blasé indifference of a few. They’ve forgotten what magic means and the city needs to be powered with more magic than there is. So the man who rules this city – this so-called king – is planning to round up a huge sacrifice. All the unwanted in the city. He thinks it will fuel the city for a few years.’
Leda listened with horror.
‘I’m telling you this, because my people think that the phoenix is the wisest creature in the world,’ Ning said and her voice was soft and wet with tears. ‘If there’s a chance to stop him, to free the magic and return it to the lands, a phoenix should come up with the answers to how.’
Leda thought, ‘But I’m just a girl.’ Slightly more terrified, ‘I don’t know this world well enough to have answers.’ And, ‘I don’t know how, but I’ll try.’
She took off with a reassuring trill. Reassurance she didn’t feel, sure, but reassurance nonetheless. She spent the next few days locked in her ivory room, thinking hard. Ning had said that phoenixes were wise, but Leda didn’t feel particularly wise. The only plan she could come up with was to follow her father, so she dressed in her shroud and followed him when he left. He used the seven league boots, so she had to struggle hard to keep up with his giant steps. She kept close look on the walls and buildings they passed, begging the city not to move or change, to remember the way. Twisting fast through the alleys and streets, until they found themselves underground. She could feel the pulsing of magic stronger in the room and saw the ghostly blue sheen. She’d found the literal heart of the city. It was fettered and pulsing unhappily. Magic was sentient and it didn’t belong caged, no more than birds did.
She left before he could discover her. That night she urged Ning onto her back and the woman, sensing the urgency in the phoenix’s trills, climbed on without asking any questions. Leda stumbled on the take-off, balance off-thrown by the extra weight on her back, but quickly regained her bearing. They pierced through the air as quickly as Leda could fly. Her grandmother had been right – what use did a phoenix have of seven league boots? Leda got them there faster than the boots would have. Her heart swelled with pride when Ning’s eyes widened in amazement. She trilled with joy when Ning pressed a kiss against the top of her head and murmured the same sound that was either a ‘thank you’ or a prayer.
Leda settled back to watch as Ning went to work. It wasn’t particularly dramatic – no spectacular light shows or dramatic sounding chants. Ning conversed civilly with the bindings as she asked them to release their prisoner and smoothed her hands over them. They fell away with protesting, reluctant groans. But Ning was relentless, until the last fetters fell away. The ground underneath them shuddered and suddenly the magic surged free. Leda chirped an exhilarated laugh as she felt the magic pulse and return to every part of the city. Ning was laughing breathlessly when she collapsed onto the ground next to her. Her beautiful brown eyes looked upon Leda with adoration.
‘The king will fall,’ she said with surety in her voice. ‘The balance will shift more equally.’
Leda nodded, still in her bird form, and thought about the tower in which she’d grown up a prisoner. She thought of her father, who’d left her wanting for nothing except freedom, and her mother, the phoenix whose wings he’d cut. She remembered her childhood – standing with her nose pressed against the window and watching the city stretch out beneath her. As all of these images went through her head, she realised that she wanted the tower to fall. They’d build a new monument. A monument of the newer, more equal society that Ning and the clans would build.
With that thought, she let the shroud fall. She sat as a human before Ning for the first time and awaited her judgement. Ning was sure to see the resemblance to the king in her features. She fidgeted under the wide-eyed stare, but Ning’s response wasn’t what she expected. She breathed out, ‘You’re beautiful.’
Her fingers curled around the back of Leda’s neck and pulled her in for a kiss. Leda went willingly – heart soaring and trilling joyously – and kissed the woman she’d wanted since she saw her first time.
And maybe they didn’t live happily ever after.
But they lived together and built a new world together.
Poll #10960 A Song Only You Can Understand
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 5
I enjoyed this!
Yes
5 (100.0%)
no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-04 05:52 am (UTC)damn that was beautiful.
SEVEN SISTERS YESSSSSSSSS
no subject
Date: 2012-07-05 04:57 pm (UTC)