Work Text:
All her life Elora has had memories just out of reach. Rain storms make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. The sound of dogs barking makes her muscles tense, ready to flee. Dreams of terrible creatures looming over her wake her in a cold sweat. Raziel tells her that it is to be expected. That her first year of life was marked with more terror and violence than any person should have to endure in a lifetime. Other guardians may have tried to shield her from these memories. After all, her life is so good now, peaceful and calm in a prosperous castle filled with happy citizens. Sorsha had been adamant on telling her the truth. Elora knew all about Bavmorda and the circumstances of her birth. The death of her real mother. The ritual that was supposed to banish her forever. Sorsha has bad memories too, many more than Elora can even begin to understand. It is a comfort to have each other on the bad nights.
It’s not all bad, though. Elora has some good memories too. Some nights she dreams in fuzzy indistinct patches--a sunny room, a soft voice singing a lullaby, and gentle hands rough with callouses stroking the hair from her face.
She knows, of course, of the nelwyn Willow Ufgood. Half the children in the kingdom were named Willow in the years following Bavmorda’s banishment. But it is frustratingly difficult to get anyone to talk about him in any concrete way. Raziel will talk about his aptitude for sorcery. Sorsha will talk about his tenacity and his courage in the face of certain death. Madmartigan knows the most about Willow. He traveled with him the longest, and spent the most time with him, but even then the details are sparse. They spent most of their time together fighting off danger and not enough simply getting to know each other. Madmartigan tells her that Willow was clever. That he had the biggest heart of any man, nelwyn or daikini, that he had ever met.
It makes Elora curious. Between magic lessons with Raziel, sword fighting with Sorsha, and diplomacy with the court advisors, she does not have the time to interrogate her spotty memories. She wishes she knew what was real and what her subconscious has made up to fill in the gaps. The nelwyn themselves are no help. Though they tentatively fall under the protection of Tir Asleen for their services to the crown, the nelwyn do not venture far from their lands. Sometimes traders will come through the castle with goods they acquired from the nelwyn on their travels, but at 14 Elora has yet to see one. She knows Madmartigan sends a letter, once a year, to the village where Willow lives. If Willow writes back to him, she has never seen the return letter.
Elora is fed up. She is tired of the stories that seem too fantastical to be real and the memories she cannot quite hold onto. She decides to take matters into her own hands. She spends weeks studying maps and learning the names of towns. She befriends the page boys tasked with sending missives throughout the land. When the day comes, she uses the techniques Madmartigan taught her in a fit of pique to sneak out of the castle and intercept the page with Willow’s letter. It is surprisingly easy to knock him out. Sorsha has trained her well. She steals his clothes, makes sure he is comfortable in the grass by the road, and rides out on his donkey into the world in search of things she’s not certain of.
The journey is distinctly peril-less. She rides through many towns, across vast plains, over cobbled roads and dirt roads. She wonders often if this place was a place she had been before. Was that rock one that they had rested upon while being hunted? Is that tavern the one where Willow and Madmartigan met again? She cannot be certain and nothing rings familiar to her unconscious memories. The people she meets on the road are surprisingly cordial. They recognize the livery of a Tir Asleen page boy, give her directions when she is lost, and help her purchase more food when she is hungry.
It is two weeks of travel before she finally reaches the village. A woman in the last daikini town had pointed her down a well trodden road saying that the nelwyns lived but a few days further. She has been squirming with nerves ever since. She isn’t sure what she expects to find here.
The first nelwyn comes across her entirely by surprise. She does not see him in the road, short as he is, and almost runs him down with her donkey. But he too must recognize the Tir Asleen crest on her tunic, for he waves off her apologies and offers to escort her into the village. Elora dismounts so that she is not quite so far above him and tries to study him discreetly. She knows from the stories that the nelwyn do not grow very tall, but even so it is strange to see a grown man who she towers over. The village too is like nothing she could have imagined. It makes sense, of course, for the buildings and everything to be built to size, but it is still very odd to walk through a place that she could never comfortably belong. Her guide is telling her about the recent harvest. He does not seem to expect any responses, which is good, since Elora has none. Elora keeps her eyes out for grand dwellings, somewhere the renowned hero Willow Ufgood might call home. But her guide marches her through the village without stopping, out into the fields to a simple farmhouse on the edge of the woods. Perhaps, she thinks, this is merely where the letter is dropped off. Afterall, why would a page boy be given the privilege of meeting with such a high personage as Willow?
Nervously, Elora leaves her donkey to graze in the field with the other animals and knocks on the front door. It takes only a moment before a woman answers. She has braided gray hair and a kind smile on her face, wiping her palms against her apron as she greets Elora. “Well hello. Are you here with a letter then?”
“Yes,” Elora tries to pitch her voice slightly lower, as she imagines a boy’s might be. “I have a letter for Willow Ufgood from Madmartigan.”
“Of course, of course. Willow’s out just now with the High Aldwin, but he should be back soon. Would you like to come in? Have some tea?”
Elora can only nod mutely. There is something about this woman’s voice that calls to that pit in her memories. Her earlier nerves have disappeared with the sound of it. Discretely, she scrapes her boots outside the door and makes to follow the woman. So this is the home of Willow Ufgood. But what a strange home indeed! It is humble, small and cluttered with a life well lived. As she steps inside, stooping her head under the low ceilings, she can see pieces of mending left on a chair, books stacked near the windows, bits of detritus scattered about where their owner has failed to put them away. The woman is bustling into a kitchen area, and so Elora follows, her back hunched. There is a girl, perhaps close in age to her, although Elora cannot be sure, sitting at the table shelling peas from their pods. The girl looks up in interest at her entrance.
“Is it really that time already?” The woman makes an affirmative hum as she sets the kettle over the fire. “Dad’s gonna be pleased then. He’s been complaining that he hasn’t heard from him yet.”
“Have a seat there if you like,” the woman directs her to the table. Elora folds herself down, self conscious suddenly for her long gangly legs in the cramped space of the kitchen. “I’m Kiaya, Willow’s wife. This is our daughter, Mim.” Mim waves lazily, still focused on the peas spread across the table.
“I’m El-” she has to cough at the near slip, “Elliot. My name is Elliot.”
“Well it’s a pleasure to meet you Elliot. I’m sure we’d love to hear about your journey here. No troubles on the road?”
It is surprisingly easy to fall into conversation with Kiaya. She has a calm manner about her that puts Elora at ease. She tells her about some of the things she has seen over the two weeks and Kiaya listens attentively. Soon enough, the kettle over the fire begins to squeal and Kiaya turns away to pour hot water into a cup.
“You can take your hat off, you know. We don’t stand much on ceremony around here,” Kiaya throws over her shoulder, still fussing with the tea. Elora flushes. She hadn’t even realized she was sitting inside with her hat on. She must seem like a terribly rude child. Hurriedly she whips it off her head, running a hand through her hair to loosen it from where it sticks to her scalp. Her curls bounce down around her ears, one stubborn curl coiled against her forehead as it has been since she was a child.
She’s not expecting the crash of pottery hitting the floor. When she looks up Kiaya is staring at her, eyes wet and mouth gaping. Mim has jumped to her feet, looking as concerned as Elora feels. Elora makes to stand too but Kiaya waves them both off, bending down to pick up the shattered pieces of the tea cup she had dropped. “It’s nothing, nothing, I’m fine. Just thought I saw something. Mim dear, would you go out and help Ranon finish with the field? I’d like that to be done before your father gets home.” Mim shoots one last concerned look at her mother before leaving the kitchen.
Elora is not sure what to do. Kiaya keeps staring at her, a strange look on her face. The silence stretches between them, but before Elora can do something else stupid, there is the sound of a horse coming down the road outside. “That would be Willow then,” Kiaya says, smiling tremulously. Elora attempts a smile back. Her nerves have returned tenfold and she doesn’t know what to expect. She can hear a man’s voice greeting his children, the front door opening and closing as Willow enters his home, his boots thudding loudly in the entranceway.
Kiaya calls out to him, “Darling, there’s a page here with Madmartigan’s letter.”
“Oh, right? That’s good then, was wondering when they’d be by. I’ve got the return letter here somewhere.” His voice. It is like hearing something she forgot from a dream. She doesn’t recognize it, per se, but it feels so familiar, even calling out from another room as it is.
“Dear I really think you should come in here,” Kiaya insists.
“Alright, I’ll be right there. Don’t see why you're in such a hurry unless the boy has pressing business to be on his way.” With that he finally enters the kitchen. He’s older, like Kiaya is, and he wears simple clothes that do not betray the position he should have as savior of the realm. He looks fleetingly at Elora as he passes to kiss his wife on the cheek, but Kiaya nudges him pointedly back to her. He looks again, then squints at Elora, as if there’s something there that he’s not quite getting. Elora finds herself holding her breath. With a sudden gasp and a tensing of his body, Willow calls out softly, “Elora? Is that really you?”
She can only nod dumbly but it is enough. Suddenly Willow is laughing, rushing towards her to throw his arms around her in a hug. Distantly she can hear the sound of Kiaya laughing too. Willow pulls back, putting his gentle calloused hands on her face. Oh, she thinks, oh. That’s why she sounded familiar. The lullaby voice. The gentle hands. “My god, just look how you’ve grown.” It takes Elora a moment to realize that she is crying. They are all crying. But it is a good cry. She reaches her own arms out to hug him back.
She spends that evening with the Ufgood family. Between the rambunctious Mim and Ranon, Kaiya’s warm motherly presence, and Willow’s obvious joy to see her, she forgets all about being nervous. She forgets she has a destiny, forgets she has a kingdom to one day rule. She sits in that humble kitchen with two of the people who had been the first to love her, and she feels some part of herself slot into place. She tries to stay up with them as late as she can, begging them to sit with her far into the night. She is tired from her many days of travel, though, and eventually she drifts off in the pallet they made for her by the fire, drifts to the soft lilting sound of Kaiya’s voice, and the gentle strokes of Willow’s hand through her hair.
The next day, she has to return home. Already she is sure Sorsha is despairing over her absence. There are still dangers in the world afterall, and she is still a princess. They all linger over breakfast, none of them quite willing to admit that she must go. Willow is the first to break, handing her a letter for Madmartigan. “Now you be careful on the road back. And make sure this letter gets to its rightful place. I’ll hear about it if you don’t.” He blusters, but Elora can see the tears shinning just inside his eyes. Kiaya packs extra bread into her bag and pulls her down to leave a sweet kiss on her forehead. For all that Elora is beloved by her people, she has never felt loved quite like this before.
She hugs both Willow and Kiaya goodbye at the door, all three of them not able to hold the tears back from their eyes. When she mounts her donkey to follow the road back to town, she can’t help but keep herself turned in the saddle, waving to them until the last possible moment when they disappear between the trees.
She is not even a minute out of the nelwyn village when Madmartigan falls into place by her side. Elora should be more surprised by this than she is. Of course he would have known she’d go and followed her. “How long?” she asks.
“Since the palace gates. I saw you planning, you’re not as slick as you think. But, there was no stopping you from going. Figured the best I could do was just follow along, make sure you didn’t get hurt.”
They continue on for a bit in silence, Elora still absorbing all that has happened. Eventually she asks, “Do you ever miss him?”
Madmartigan smiles. “I think so. I think I miss having someone like that to believe in me. But he’s got his family, and really deep down I know Willow just wants to make a better life for them. He’s happy here and that makes me happy too. He knows he’s always welcome if he ever wants to visit.”
Elora nods. She thinks she can understand that.
The bad memories are real. She knows this, has always known that they aren’t just nightmares or random sense memories. But there is something to knowing that the good memories are real too. That the sunny room exists. That the soft voice and gentle hands are together still. Elora’s life is good now. She has a comfortable home and guardians who love her. She looks back, barely able to catch a glimpse of smoke from the nelwyn houses rising into the air. She thinks that, maybe, just knowing is enough.