Beginnings

“If there were ever a sight more brilliant, more triumphant, more perfect than this,” I proclaimed. “It would be the arrival of God Himself on this very Gulf shore.”

At least, I am supposed to have said such a thing. Albert Swift credits me with having said these words, but I do not know how he would have heard them, as he was still on the ship at this time. Indeed, I would never have uttered that exact phrase, as in our religion we believed God to be an uncontainable spirit, a being impossible of description, and therefore not bound by such human characteristics like gender. But use of the word “himself” is scarcely the vital error in this declaration. More importantly, I took very little interest in Rafael’s arrival, and I certainly never thought to compare his presence to that of God.

That is not to say that we were entirely uninterested in Rafael. It was not every day that a king requested passage through our lands, and foreign and uncrowned though he was, we had every intention of entertaining him to the best of our abilities. But the truth was that my brother Davidt—who was also present—and I had far greater and more pressing matters on our mind at the moment. Our youngest sister’s conspicuous absence, and her suddenly-mysterious whereabouts, was the day’s primary topic of conversation. She had disappeared with little warning and our best guess was that she had gone to meet Rafael and his fellows as their ships docked. To our surprise and Davidt’s raw disdain, she was no where to be found.

We were not concerned for her safety, as young Ariane had a long history of running off for weeks at a time. It was her little game. Just when we had grown accustomed to her presence and begun to believe she had settled down, she would vanish, telling no one where she had gone. I remember the first such disappearance: I was eight at the time and she had just turned five. We were playing some sort of a hiding game with a few of our fellows in the fields and brush on the palace grounds, but Ariane had been missing for too long. When it became clear to me that her discovery was not imminent, I quickly fell into a state of panic. Without a word to my friends, I ran for the palace and informed several servants that my sister had gone missing. “You must find her now!” I insisted. Tears of frustration and horror burst from my eyes, and my commands soon became all muddled and incomprehensible. I adored my sister and the thought of anything bad happening to her terrified me beyond words.

As servants combed the grounds in search for her, my father held me to his chest and allowed me to scream and cry to my heart’s content. My affliction continued for nearly two more hours, until my father roused me and told me to look to the chamber door. There I saw my smiling mother, holding little Ariane by the hand. My eyes were bright red and my face wet and stained with tears as I ran to wrap my arms around both of them. Ariane seemed confused and a bit annoyed. “What is the fuss?” She must have wondered. “Why was everyone so upset?” In retrospect, I am sure that she thought very little of this whole affair. It seems she had hidden within a cluster of trees before being distracted by a fawn, which she followed into a small clearing, surrounding a pond. The hiding game forgotten and the fawn having escaped, Ariane then began playing in the dirt, which is what she was doing when a servant found her.

This is my memory of it, but my image might be incomplete or skewed. I had thought that the entire household had been in a mad search for her, but it is possible that I was alone in fearing for her safety. I do not think I was wrong, even now. She could easily have slipped and been lost in the pond, or been mauled by a wild animal. “Never let her from your sight again, mother!” I demanded. “We can play these games no longer! Protect her—let no harm come to her again!”

These shouts would continue for several more minutes before my mother finally calmed me. “Look, she is happy and fine right now. Do not worry, Andrew.” Her voice soothed me, as I assumed this meant she would do as I told her. Of course I was being unreasonable; they could not shelter Ariane from every cruel or terrible force in the world. They had very little reason to besides, as my mother was a free-spirited woman driven by love of adventure. She raised her daughter after herself, and although obviously my mother would never want Ariane to be placed in any danger, she wanted to breed exactly this desire for exploration.

As a youth and into her adulthood, Ariane continued to disappear without warning, but after that initial incident, she was always careful to leave a note behind. These notes rarely detailed her whereabouts, but at least they signified that she had left by her own will, and that she would return some time in the near future. There were even occasions when she would offer us a bit of information before she left, like when she first fled to the Auveyr. She was twenty-one then, and we were very accustomed with these antics.

It was at an informal dinner when she first posed an innocent little question. “Davidt, what might I do to merit an increase in my allowance?” She asked our elder brother, as we siblings all took a meal together. This was not the unimaginable request—although her innocent style was certainly unorthodox for a girl above the age of ten—but instead the set-up for an even greater question. That was the way with Ariane, we had quickly learned: she was always testing her boundaries, always saying one thing to prepare for another.

Davidt thought little of it. “You need not do anything. Were something to befall you that might need more money, I would gladly grant it to you.”

“That is logical,” she responded, before shoving a bite of beef into her mouth.

We were all silent for a moment, waiting for Ariane to explain why she had wanted more money. A minute passed and no explanation came. Finally Davidt took her bait, asking: “What suggests the subject?”

She looked up, feigning surprise that he was interested further. “Oh, I thought I might need funds for a move to Sill.” Once again, this thought was punctuated with a bite of food.

Ariane had done her best to act very casual about this, but we were collectively stunned. The rest of us were all married by now, but none of us had left our home at Appero Palace. Even my eldest sister Alix, whose husband was something of a celebrity in the old empire, made her home here with the rest of us.

I knew the game, so I took Ariane’s small steps with her. “What is in Sill?” I asked, adopting her tone, as though we discussed something trivial like the quality of the wine.

“That is precisely what I intend to learn. I have always thought it might be enjoyable to explore the swamps of the southern border.” She affected a dreamy sort of countenance, gazing up and to the right at the fanciful image of Sill that lived in her mind.

My wife Nathia cut in before I had the chance to continue this delicate discourse. “Explore? What sense is that? You are a noblewoman, you have no business exploring!” You will excuse Nathia if she seemed a bit abrupt; under normal circumstances she had the uncanny ability to cut through subtlety or complication. But now, that she was heavily pregnant with our first child, she scarcely had any time for the gentle tug-of-war that had become so common at Masdilt gatherings.

Ariane recoiled slightly, surprised that she had been challenged so openly. “No, I do not intend to don a pair of boots and trudge through the slushy mires as yet untouched by man!” She laughed suddenly, to dismiss the conclusion that she viewed as utterly foolish. “I simply want to experience life in a wilder place; a location virgin to kings and princes that might afford me a glimpse of a simpler life than this.”

Nathia began to shout at her: “Is this not good enough—”

Sensing that Nathia’s approach might lead to unnecessary conflict, Alix cut her off. “That our mother’s ancestors come from that place has nothing to do with it?”

“I suppose it is natural that I should be drawn to the Auveyr for that reason.” Ariane conceded. “However, it is no reason that I have consciously chosen this task or this place for this time in my life. There are forces in me that attract me to do one thing or another. You might call it a sense of adventure but I believe it is best left without assigning a word that will only be partially adequate. I cannot remain still for too long of a time, and I must obey this mighty spirit that is within me.”

I saw Nathia begin to seethe in rage. Knowing that she loathed this romantic description of Ariane’s blatant disobedience of societal norms, I grabbed my wife’s hand to calm her anger.

“Ariane will be Ariane,” Davidt said. He smiled in spite of himself, apparently having given up questioning her for the evening. “I should not be surprised to hear you make this request, so perhaps I should have been considering it for some time now. Give me a while more to think on it and you will have what you need.”

We dropped the subject for what remained of the meal, but Nathia had plenty more thoughts on the matter.