The Woman Who Searches, Part 1

I am very far from home.

I have not seen my family, my mother or father, sister or brother, for twenty years.  I don’t know where they are, or if they are alive.  All that I know is the Queen has not been found yet, and so I must go on searching.

It has been seventy years since Jun died.  I was not even alive then; I am a young Daughter of Auriel.  I wish I had lived in her time.  I hope that I live in the time of the new Queen.  I hope that I live past today.

The land I have come to is called Persh, it is a place of fog and rain, of lonely desolate places.  I haven’t met many people, though I’ve seen many buildings standing empty against the cold gray sky.  I have come to the edge of the land, where sea crashes against high cliffs, and I come on foot.  Early this morning I was set upon by thieves, who stole my horse and all my things.

There are people in this place, but I’ve met none that I liked.

I have half a mind to search out a Gate and leave this world, this foul cold corner of hell, but Gates, like decent people, are few and far between here.  I must worry about the approaching night.

I come to what looks like a wayside inn, and step inside.  I’m greeted by dimly lit silence, but there is a bell sitting on the deserted front desk.  Just as I reach for it, I hear footsteps on the stairs, and draw back.  I have no money or anything of value to bargain, not anymore, and I hope I am not expelled into the twilight.

An old man walks down the stairs, leaning on a cane.  He leads with his cane, it is the first to land on each lower step, and I watch his progression with a tired, transfixed fascination.  He has a trim white beard and mustache, his face is kind, and I regain hope.

At this moment, I hear music creep faintly to life, from some distant room.  It’s a melancholy song, like rain drops falling softly in the night.

“Good evening,” the man says.  And then, unexpectedly, “Come, we’ve been waiting for you.”

“For me?” I echo, my surprise badly guarded.

“Yes.  You are the woman who searches, are you not?”

“My name is Verenez Auriel.  I need a place to stay for the night, but I have no money.”

“We don’t require your money.  But you must come with me.”  He holds out his free hand, the other leaning heavily on the cane.

“I can do some work — housework — to pay my keep,” I offer.  I don’t take things for free.

“We have a task for you, come.”

He beckons again.  I follow him; we walk past the desk and the stairs till we come to a sitting room in the back.  I can still hear the quiet, plaintive music, it grows louder the further back we go.  There’s an old woman waiting for us, in a faded once fine dress.  But she is not making the music; there is a small girl seated at a piano.

There is something not quite right.  I stare at the girl, wondering, and the old woman speaks to me.  “She’s a doll.  A living doll.  Do you have such things where you have come from?”

“No,” I answer, with a shake of my head.  We don’t, and I’m glad of it, for this thing is chilling to look at.  So like a human, but cold and white and dead behind its eyes.  It doesn’t even turn to look at me when I enter, nor reacts at all when we speak of it.  It just keeps playing that sad, slow song.

“She is like the child that was my daughter, once,” the woman says.

I tear my gaze away from the living doll to fix it on her mistress.  “My name is Verenez Auriel,” I introduce myself again.

“I have been waiting for you.”

There it is again.

“You have?”

“I see things,” she says, and taps her head, “in here.  I am old as the cliffs, and when you live as long as the earth you walk on, you begin to see such things.”

“May I sit?” I ask, and she nods.  I fall into a chair across from her, so tired from walking over rocky ground.  All I want to do is sleep, but there is a question I must ask.

“What task do you have for me?  I must work to repay you for shelter.”

Her eyes trail over to the dollchild, and she says, “My child was murdered long ago.  My Ilina was taken from me, and I do not know who took her.  There is a tower, I have seen it in my head, and if you go to that tower, you will find all the answers to the mystery of my murdered child.  You must find the tower.  You must discover the answers.  You are the woman who searches.”

I’m silent for a few moments I’m tempted to say that this is a task worth more than a night’s stay at an inn.  But I hold silent, and listen to the music.  It seems ghostly now, now that I know the doll is a replica of a murdered child.

I find myself agreeing to it.  “This tower, what does it look like?” I ask.  I haven’t seen any towers in this world, not yet.

“It’s hard to see,” the woman replies.  “In my dreams it is always clouded by mist, and the full view is blocked from me.  It’s an old tower, standing all alone among the wild grown trees and grasses.  I hear the sea.”

That will have to be enough.  I eat dinner and go to bed . . . at least I’m being fed for this task, I reason.  I don’t know what I will find at the tower, or if I can find it, but I’m true to my word and now that I’ve promised to look, look I must.

All night long I hear the music.  It lulls me to sleep and dances through my dreams.

In the morning I awake to find that my hosts are dead.  The old man is still in his bed, the cane resting against his nightstand.  The old woman is still in her chair, cold as the cliffs she claims to match in age.  The doll plays on.

I can’t help get the feeling that they’ve died because they’re no longer waiting for me.

I force myself to look at the child closely.  I circle around her where she sits at the keyboard.  I know she is an it, but I think of her in living terms, nonetheless.

She has pale white skin and long black hair, with bright blue eyes.  I wonder how faithful this doll is to the child, but it’s all I have, and so I memorize the face.  All I have is the thought of a lonely tower and the face of a long dead child, but still, I go in search of answers.  I’ve made a promise.  I owe a debt.

---

I search long and hard for the tower.  Sometimes I forget that I have come here to look for a queen; I have already given up that hope, after all.  I don’t expect the queen to be here.  There is nothing good about this place.

When I find the tower at last, it is just as the old woman said.  Mist lies heavy on the air, and I cannot see all the way to the top.  I’ve come to this place after days of seeing no other life, no other building, just the wildness of trees and grass.  The tower is old and crumbling, and I can smell the sea.  It stands upon rocks on the edge of a cliff, one stray step and you fall into the churning waves below.

There is one door at the foot of the tower, and I open it.  I can tell that it has been locked, but this is no barrier to one such as me.  I am in the tower now, and it’s so dark I can’t see.  I wait for my eyes to adjust, if they can, and wonder if they will.

I hear a noise, a scurrying, and I wonder if it’s mice, or worse, rats.  I wonder what mysteries I can unravel in a place such as this.  Perhaps all I am to find is child’s bones.

Before I can take another step or think another thought, I am suddenly knocked over onto my back and I see a blur of something run past me.  It runs out the door, into the wild, and disappears into the mists.

I hurt where I’ve struck the ground, and I sit up, shaking my head.  I’ve no idea what hit me; it moved too fast.  Was it an animal trapped inside, eager to get out?  Or spooked by my entrance?  What animal is that fast and strong?  Some strange animal native to Persh?

I get up and look out into the mist, then back into the darkness of the tower.  Both seem equally impossible to decipher.  I wish I had a light.

I hear something then, coming towards me.  It’s the shuffle of footsteps and the tap . . . the tap of something.  A walking stick perhaps.  I wait, apprehensive, for I’ve met little in the way of friendly people in this land.  Here I am, all alone in the wild, and the steps tap nearer.

From the mist emerges a figure, an old man walking with the help of a cain.  I start, recognizing the old man from the inn, the one who died in his bed.  There is no courteous smile behind his white beard and his eyes fix on me with no more humanity than that of the doll child.

I don’t know what I should do.  He’s an old man, and yet I feel danger.  Even if I had never met him, did not see him dead, I’d sense it.  There’s something cold and frightening behind those flat black eyes.

I turn and run back inside the tower, shutting the door.  Engulfed in darkness, I fumble with the lock.  It falls into place with a reassuring thunk and I sigh.  The footsteps outside keep approaching, and then stop.  I hold my breath.

Tap tap.  Tap tap.

He’s knocking on the door with his cane.  I do nothing, say nothing.  After a few long moments, I hear the scrape of feet turning on stone.  Then the shuffle, shuffle, tap, shuffle, shuffle, tap of the old man walking away.

I wonder what answers I’ve found here.

---

I’m afraid to go outside, now, and there isn’t much I can do in the dark.  I try not to imagine nasty things inside the tower with me, and lay down on the hard stone floor to sleep.  I’m tired enough from my travels and accustomed enough to sleeping on cold hard ground, that I am able to drift off for a time.

When I wake, it’s brighter inside and I can see some things.  There’s a curling staircase leading up the tower along the walls, and I begin to climb.  It goes up and up, and I dare not look down the higher I go.

When I get to the top I see many mirrors, and there are glass windows all around.  I look out and see mist, but through the mist I can make out the vast ocean with its crashing waves.  There’s a bed of dirty linens on the floor, and bits of rubbish and bones picked clean strewn about.  But these are animal bones, if my eyes don’t deceive me — remains of rabbits and birds, not a child.

I didn’t really think I’d find child’s bones anyway.

I realize now that the tower is a lighthouse.  I’ve seen the like before, in other worlds.  I’ve been to many places in twenty years, and humanity likes to builds their societies upon the sea wherever they can.  A tower like this is a common thing.

It does not look like it’s been put to use in a long while, though.  The windows are dingy and many of the mirrors are broken.  There’s no sign that a flame has been lit in all the years I’ve been traveling the worlds.  Someone has been living here, though.  Living in filth, clearly — but the tower has not stood empty.

I wonder if the thing that knocked me down was this tower’s keeper.  It makes sense to me.  The locked door, the frightened fleeing.  And the old man.  The dead old man.  I would keep my door locked, too, if the likes of that roamed the out of doors.

To find the answers I promised to find, I must speak with this curious person.  I assume it’s a person.  If this is their home, they must return to it someday, so I must wait.

It occurs to me that they will not be able to get in with the door locked, but still I hesitate.  The old man might get in if I unlock the door.

I become resolved.  I am a Daughter of Auriel, he is just an old dead man with a cane.  I have been beaten and robbed in my travels through the world of Persh, but I will not cower forever in a tower for fear of what lurks in the out of doors.

I go back down and undo the latch.  I don’t open the door, I’m not that bold, but it will have to do.  I go back upstairs to wait.