Arlene sat huddled behind a boulder, hoping the rock would hide her tiny figure from her father and those who had come to the council meeting. Grimmal had called the older iteys to a flat cropping at the top of a nearby mountain. Here, shielded by taller mountains surrounding it, the wind did not blow as hard as elsewhere in the Ayalamhi Mountains. The iteys could talk here calmly without shouting to be heard over the wind.
“Why have you gathered us here?” a gravelly voice said. Arlene peeked over the rock; it was Rillim, an itey who lived in a cave next to Grimmal, who was speaking. “We are not scheduled to sit for a meeting until two weeks later.”
“An urgent matter came up. Something we need to discuss immediately,” Grimmal answered. He reached under his belly with his hand and took out the arrow he had hid there earlier. “Do you recognize this?” he asked as he walked over to Rillim and showed him the arrow.
Rillim bent down to study the arrow Grimmal held in his hand.
“This arrow …”
“Belongs to Rachhas’ army,” finished Kremmild.
A loud murmur spread throughout the group.
“Are you sure?” asked a deep but smooth voice. Arlene strained to see who it was that had spoken, almost falling over and revealing herself.
“That is a name none of us want to hear again,” the voice continued. Arlene balanced herself on her hands and then peeked over the boulder again. It was Kharyta, a widowed itey who lived by herself down the mountains. “So if you speak of him, then you better be sure of it.”
“I am sure old Kharyta,” answered Kremmild. “That arrow belongs to the armies of Rachhas.”
“Where did you find the arrow?” It was Kyra who had spoken.
“Arlene found it,” Grimmal said. “It killed the father penguin whose chicks hatched today.”
“The one Garlow was talking about?”
“Yes.” Grimmal then turned to face the others. “My son Garlow says he saw the penguin go downstream yesterday. And today morning, my daughter Arlene found the penguin dead, with this arrow in him.”
“So that’s it then? They’ve found us, haven’t they?” the itey named Nyrran asked. For all the twenty seven years she had lived here with the iteys, she had not interacted with Nyrran much who mostly kept to himself.
“We cannot take Kremmild’s words as fact,” Kharyta stressed.
“I know where that arrow is from. I would recognize that design anywhere,” Kremmild replied, irritated at Kharyta’s scepticism.
“But, just in case, what if it is not?”
“Who was it who shielded the children from his troops?” Kremmild’s voice grew louder.
“You wouldn’t have had to if you had listened to me back then!” Kharyta’s voice became equally loud.
“Calm down, both of you,” Grimmal interjected. “Kharyta does have a point.”
“I am telling you it belongs to Rachhas,” Kremmild insisted.
“We have to move again, haven’t we? Took them twenty seven years but they found us in the end,” Nyrran said.
“You are too paranoid Nyrran,” Grimmal said in an exasperated tone. “Everyone, please calm down. Now, we have three possibilities. One, the arrow does not belong to Rachhas’ army.”
Kremmild snorted.
“Two,” Grimmal continued, ignoring his friend, “is that the arrow does belong to Rachhas’ army but they do not know we are here. Three, as Nyrran is continuously reminding us, we have been found.”
“What if they have found us, like Nyrran said?” Rillim asked. “Where would we go? We came here to Ayalamhi because it was connected to our old home. The only other mountain range is beyond the sea to the East.”
“Yes, and this time we do not have him to help us,” Kyra added.
“Maybe we can pray for him? He might come if we do that,” Nyrran suggested.
“He is not a god; he doesn’t answer to prayers,” Grimmal said. “Besides, we cannot always depend on others to solve our problems.”
“Then what are you suggesting, that we fight our own kin?” Nyrran growled.
“They are no longer our kin. They are corrupted. And who knows how twisted they’ve become in the last twenty seven years?” Kremmild said with a growl.
Our kin? Arlene wondered. Corrupted?
“We cannot run elsewhere and we cannot fight them. We are doomed,” Nyrran replied in a quivering voice.
“You are all jumping to conclusions,” Kharyta said. Her face wrinkled, obviously displeased by the direction in which the conversation had headed.
“First we need to look for Rachhas’ presence in these lands,” Rillim said. “Whether that arrow belongs to Rachhas or not, if his army hasn’t set foot around these parts then we can rest easy.”
“What if he sent a spy to search these lands?” Nyrran asked.
“Then the spy would be an amateur to warn us of his presence by using that arrow. Rachhas would never send a spy like that, not when he was assassins like that girl in white.”
“Diana,” Kremmild growled. “I would tear her into two pieces if I could get my hands on her!”
Arlene shuddered. She had never seen Kremmild this angry.
“Kremmild, please.” Grimmal himself seemed to be losing patience with his friend. “”Rillim has a point. Rachhas would never send a sloppy spy to us. That gives me hope that perhaps the arrow either does not belong to Rachhas–”
“I said it does,” said Kremmild.
“–or, if it does, his troops here are not concerned with us.”
“That is a lot of wishful thinking.”
“Kremmild, if you want to fight them so much then go back to where we came from and challenge them,” Kharyta said.
“For now we have to be discreet,” Grimmal said, ignoring the arguing pair. “We need to send someone to scout around the hills below to make sure there is no presence of Rachhas or his troops in the area.”
“Who are you going to send? They can see us from a mile away,” Rillim said. “Our fur and size do not exactly blend in with the green foliage of the hills.”
“The only inconspicuous would be your daughter Grimmal,” Kharyta said. “Surely you’re not going to send her?”
“I’ll ask her,” Grimmal said. “Arlene?”
Arlene ducked behind the rock. If her heart were beating, it would perhaps be thumping like a wild horse galloping through an open field.
“I know you’re here Arlene,” Grimmal said. “Please come out. I need to talk to you.”
How had he found out?
Sheepishly, Arlene stepped out from behind the rock, her head bowed with embarrassment.
“I d-didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she stammered.
“What is she doing here?” Kremmild asked with a growl. “This meeting is supposed to be confidential. What are you doing here Arlene?”
“Oh, leave the poor girl alone,” Kharyta snapped. “She’s lived with us for nearly three decades. She’s one of us now.”
“Thank you Kharyta,” Kyra said. Kharyta nodded with respect.
“You have questions,” Grimmal stated.
Arlene nodded.
Grimmal let out a long sigh. “This day was due. Not only to you Arlene but to all the younger iteys that live with us.”
“Something happened to you. Something bad?”
Grimmal hung his head. Arlene could see sadness in his face.
“Are you really going to send her?” asked Kyra.
“I won’t force her,” Grimmal asked. He looked directly at Arlene. “I won’t force you. I will let you decide for yourself.”
“How can I decide if I don’t really know what’s happening?” Arlene asked.
Grimmal looked at others enquiringly. They all nodded. They had decided to let Arlene in on their history.
The large itey looked down at the small human girl he had adopted twenty seven years ago. Was this particular moment the reason why he had brought her to their doorstep all those years ago?
“Come with me,” Grimmal said.
“We are not originally from the Ayalamhi mountains. We moved here nearly three decades ago; actually, we ran here. We iteys are originally from the Wenepoh Mountains that lie, according to the humans and orcs of this land, to the far west from here.
“Or, if you knew that the world is round, the mountain range is attached to Ayalamhi and you can get there by travelling east.”
Grimmal waited, waiting for a reaction from Arlene.
“You don’t seem surprised to hear that the world is round,” he commented.
“I thought it was obvious that Arëth is round. The sun is round and so is the moon. It makes sense that our world is too,” Arlene replied.
“You are a strange one. Well, he did warn us that you’d be … peculiar. We iteys know that our world is round because of the perilous travel we made. And we made that travel because we were attacked by the Rachhas Empire.
“His kingdom lay in an island down south of the Wenepoh Mountains. We knew he was no saint but never expected him to invade us.
“At first we were confused. Our mountains were worthless to him; nothing but bare rock with a lot of ice and snow on it. Unless he wanted those which we would have given to him happily. No, he attacked us and we, being a peaceful and armless race, had no defence against his onslaught.
“He had our elderlies killed and the children taken. I was young back then and a group of us–”
“The council members?”
“Yes. There were more of us back then. We tried hiding in the mountains but his most feared warrior, the woman in white called Diana, hunted us down.”
Grimmal’s voice became low. His eyes became glassy, almost teary.
“It was genocide Arlene. They laid a siege around the mountains and attacked us slowly. Thousands of us were killed. Thousands more, innocent children and females at that, kidnapped for purposes we don’t know. My parents died in front of my eyes, suffocated to death by Diana. They took my brother too; he was Garlow’s age then.
“Kremmild he … he almost died trying to defend his sister. He shielded her from dozens of arrows and passed out from the pain. When he woke up, they had taken his sister despite his efforts to protect her. So you can see why he’s adamant about recognizing the arrows.
“Rillim lost his parents too; Kharyta, her son and her husband. Old Nyrran was taken and tortured. When we rescued him, he was almost dead. All of lost our families in that single month
“If it wasn’t for him, the same man who brought you to us, we would all be dead up in those mountains.”
“Who is he father?”
“I don’t know. None of us do. We were about to be assaulted inside the caves we had built to hide in when suddenly everything grew quiet. We came outside to discover all of Rachhas’ troops unconscious on the snow and him standing atop them. He told us that he would provide us a safe passage to Ayalamhi if we promised to do a small favour for him in return.
“That favour was you.”
The air grew still inside the cave Grimmal and Arlene were in.
“So, you took me in as a favour,” Arlene spoke, breaking the silence.
“Yes,” Grimmal answered solemnly. “We were desperate Arlene. We took what chance was given to us. He kept the enemy asleep until we crossed a narrow mountain pass that brought us to this land. To these new mountains which we made our new home. Out of eight thousand, less than five hundred of us were left. We started anew, choosing to forget the past.
“A few months after we had settled here, he brought you in. Your body was frozen and dead but he did something that brought life back to you. And, as we had promised, we took you in.
“But please don’t think badly of us. We may have taken you in to save our own skin but over time we grew fond of you. You became one of us. I adopted you as my daughter and you are, indeed, my daughter. We love you; never think we don’t.”
“Then why do you want to send me on down to scout?”
“I don’t. That’s why I said I would let you decide for yourself. I don’t want you to go. In fact, I wish that you had never found that cursed arrow at all.”
Silence again fell inside the cave.
Grimmal awaited Arlene’s answer, desperately hoping she would choose to stay. Kyra would kill him if he let Arlene go down to the hills and into potential danger. What if something happened to Arlene? He would never forgive himself. Garlow would hate–
“I will go.”
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