Chapter One: An Adventure Marred

Tranith Argan: Book 5

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After sneaking away from her family to take part in the adventure, reality creeps into Alessa’s mind.

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The ship moved through the water so effortlessly it had to be elven. With little wake left behind, it stretched eagerly toward its goal. The blue-green water of the Elven Channel sparkled from the sun, and that sparkle drew Alessa’s eyes as she leaned over the side in thought. Two days had passed on their voyage and in that time her emotions had dropped from excitement to anticipation to uncertainty to confusion and now dread. Dread not for what lay ahead but at what she left behind.

By this evening two full days will have passed since her mother got her note from Tassair the hawk. Two full days of what she knew must be frantic efforts to send a message to this ship, to Aren specifically, to get Alessa sent back. Could Tassair prevail over the other birds sent as messengers hour after hour? Had they journeyed far enough that it would be too late to turn back even if a message were to reach them? What would Aren think of her when he heard this news? What did she think of Aren, for that matter?

The glint of the water again captured her attention. Looking north she clearly saw Dragon Island in the distance, and even a few dragons barely visible near the horizon. They must be beyond Restar to the south, she thought. Surely that is far enough to prevent a turning back even if a message arrived this moment. She glanced up at the sky in an involuntary motion at this thought. Nothing. Good old Tassair, faithful friend! She might get away with this, she thought, and the exhilaration smothered the dread yet again.

“Breakfast?” asked Aren as he approached her on deck. She had, of course, heard him coming for quite some time—one does not sneak up on an elf—but she chose not to turn in his direction until he was right upon her. Then she turned, smiled, and accepted the piece of fruit he held out for her. Taking a bite she said, “Thank you, Aren. Nice weather for sailing is it not?”

“I am no sailor,” he said, “much preferring a horse or to travel by foot, but I think it good weather too. Our Erenár brothers are doing an excellent job,” he continued as he gestured toward the crew adjusting the sails.

“We all have our roles to fill,” said Alessa after a pause to swallow.

“I am glad your role was with me,” said Aren.

Alessa gave him a quick look and then relaxed and nodded. “Me too.”

The sea breeze felt bracing on their skins. Being elves they could discern much that was carried on the wind. Each scent carried a tale of the lands over which the winds had blown before getting to this point. Living as an elf carried with it the ability to take in a myriad of senses at any moment. All of this was processed automatically, without conscious thought by these two elves enjoying the sun and the wind on such a beautiful day.

“You and I have drawn close,” said Aren as he stood next to Alessa by the side. They both looked at the sea but their thoughts steered inward.

“I will admit, Alessa,” continued Aren after he saw that Alessa was not going to respond, “that for a long time I thought of you as a youngling for you are, what, only several score of seasons in age.”

Alessa turned to face Aren whose blonde hair blew in the wind. He was a handsome young elf—not as young as she, but still relatively young for her people—and that youth is probably what drew them together in the first place. He was her friend and had been for some time.

“Things have changed,” continued Aren as his blue eyes turned serious. “You have changed.”

“Oh,” said Alessa, “in what way?”

“You no longer seem the youngling. You have grown up in my eyes, nay, you have grown up whether it is through my eyes or not. Your experiences in the western lands have shaped you, have molded you into an adult among our people despite your lack of seasons. You are a full-grown elf, Alessa.”

Alessa started at these words as her mind followed her eyes toward the southern shore in the distance. Restar must be passed by now but the Great Plain lay in that direction and it was just a few weeks ago that she was walking across it being chased by the autarch’s men, trying urgently to make it to freedom. She thought about her imprisonment in the autarch’s cells, her treatment by the saarks (before they had befriended them), that awful grank she made herself taste. Her heart sank again as she remembered the village on the Elven Plain that had taken them captive and the tragic aftermath of their rescue. Maybe Aren was right, she thought, my experiences have forced me to grow up quickly.

“You have grown up,” Aren repeated as he tried to get Alessa’s eyes back on him and away from the shore. “Do you not feel it? I see it but can you feel it within you?”

Alessa slowly nodded. “Yes, I do feel different.”

“Does it feel better? Do you like the person your experiences have shaped you into becoming?”

Alessa thought of the village on the Plain.

“I like some of what I have become,” she answered slowly, “but not all. I have seen suffering and injustice and pain. Such things have changed who I am inside but what it has left me is a feeling that I have been inadequately prepared for this world and I need to learn much more in order to fully understand it. You talk about me as an adult, and I suppose I have thought of myself as one at times, but what I have experienced has in many ways shown me how young I am.”

“Oh no, that is simply not true,” objected Aren, “for you know so much of the world. I am a knight of the Llaraín Findára and have seen much of this world, yet what you described of your journey taught me much that I did not know. I envy you, Alessa, for what you saw.”

“Do not envy me,” said Alessa shaking her head. “What I experienced was not an adventure but an ordeal.”

“Yes, an ordeal,” said Aren, “but one that taught you much and through which you emerged unscathed.”

“Not unscathed,” said Alessa returning her gaze to the south.

“You have my admiration in any case,” said Aren, “for you experienced much that a knight never has. Imagine being imprisoned by the autarch! We knights on the borderlands never have any such adven- uh, ordeal. We have the boring lot of patrolling the lands that have faded in beauty and which are virtually untouched and untraveled upon. Oh, the experiences I wished for have finally come to me in this journey though. And you are with me!”

Alessa smiled at this.

“What precisely am I to do about you when we reach High Point?” he asked. “What did your father want me to do in order to protect you.”

“He wanted you to keep me on board at all times and to have a guard with me.”

“Sensible enough,” said Aren, “if it were possible, I would be your guard and stand with you. Alas, I can do no such thing since I must lead my troop of knights in the attack. However, you will see quite a sight from the ship and I hope to make you as proud of me for my endeavors as I was of you for your, uh, ordeal.”

“I have always been proud of you, Aren, you need do nothing special on my account.”

“Have you been proud of me?” he asked brightly.

“Of course,” she replied, “I have always admired the knights. Well, until very recently.”

Either he did not hear that last remark or he let it pass in the glow of praise that preceded it.

“Then we feel toward each other the same thing,” he said happily.

“What do you mean?” Alessa asked, her instinct raising caution in her heart.

“I told you earlier that you have grown in my eyes,” he said. “All along you have seemed young, but now you seem mature and wise, and with that maturing has grown something else within me that I am sure you have seen for yourself and I think have felt in return. Alessa, I am in love with you.”

Her cautions confirmed, the words still jolted her. Am I to be chased by everyone I know, she thought? Her mind drifted back to the tunnels under Mount Majestic and the feelings she had for Felanar in the darkness. She thought about those kisses and the thunderbolt of emotions they had unleashed.

She thought about Felanar’s words for weeks afterward, when Helóne’s expressions of anguish had scared her away from the idea of returning Felanar’s love and how impossible she felt it was to explain to him why in a way that someone not an elf could understand. The idea, that inappropriate notion of a man and an elf loving each other, swirled in her mind and caused her to almost feel dizzy as she stood on the deck.

But in that moment something else in her mind slid into place, something that felt neat and safe and right, something that seemed to her to offer hope and not fear. Yes, she thought, she had grown up. She need not fear love itself, only the love that held out promise of pain. Love was not the problem, she reassured herself, it was merely the recipient of such feelings that needed to be properly chosen.

Alessa gazed into Aren’s blue eyes and in her heart she stepped right up to the edge of the abyss.

“I love you too,” she said as she leaped into the void.

Aren grabbed her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. Alessa yearned for those same emotions she felt in the tunnels, and it seemed to her that those feelings did indeed return. She kissed Aren with great feeling, holding him tight to her body and letting the emotions take hold of her. She was in love.

The Erenár crew was not. Several of the elven sailors who were on deck had glanced at Aren and Alessa while this was going on and more than one had visually expressed disapproval. During the extended kiss now taking place, a high-ranking crew member called out for Aren’s guidance in a way that was clearly designed more to break up the embrace than to get needed information. Aren, not being in his clearest mind, did not catch the implication and excused himself from Alessa in order to attend to this call. Alessa watched him walk away with love in her eyes and stood there for some minutes afterward just lost in the moment.

“Thy conduct is not proper,” came a voice from Alessa’s right. She turned to face an Erenár sailor who had been attending to the anchor rope near the ship’s bow. This elf now stood a few feet away and his face showed clear disapproval.

“Excuse me?” said Alessa, confused by this opening. “What do you mean?”

The elf nodded briefly and Alessa noticed his thick blonde hair that tumbled over his shoulders was picked up by the sea breeze and blown this way and that but never in a way that made it look out of place on the elf.

“It is not my place to judge a briniswyn elf, I know,” he said using the traditional elven word for princess, his face still showing displeasure, “but the Erenár way is not thy way, milady.”

“Erenár do not express romantic feelings in public, I know,” said Alessa, “but I am not Erenár.”

“Thou art on an Erenár ship, and while among us thou shouldst act according to our traditions.”

“I fail to see the harm of it,” objected Alessa.

“The old ways are the best way, as our people always sayeth. Even if thou dost not see its wisdom, wilt thou not cooperate out of friendship between our peoples?”

“I do not agree that the old ways are always the best ways,” said Alessa, “and if I can speak in freedom, I think this is what keeps the Erenár from advancing in this world. Your old ways hold you back.”

“I have lived one thousand seasons and more,” replied the sailor, “and thou hast yet to see one quarter of that time. Pay heed to experience, briniswyn.”

Alessa found his words burning inside her. Did he not know what she had recently experienced? Had he no idea of the wide world she had seen? Of those thousand seasons, how many of them had been spent on the unchanging sea? But she controlled herself and replied evenly, “My views are not yours, and I understand this. If what I have done is offensive, I will keep that in mind and try not to offend in public in the future.”

The elf sailor nodded again and walked off.

Why must I constantly be told I don’t know what I’m doing, thought an annoyed Alessa. The beauty of that moment with Aren was tarnished by the scolding she had just endured. Must everyone tell me the old ways are best? Is there no one among us who wishes to start some new ways? Then she thought of Aren’s relative youth and his enthusiasm for new ways and she felt better. A new generation of elves will show the way, she thought as she again gazed at the horizon.