Songbird

Ch 1

It is happening again.

My head is throbbing. I try my best to conceal the feeling, but it is apparent, I’m not a good enough actor.

My Latin tutor sat across from me and gave me a small frown. He asks something a couple of times in Latin but I am not paying enough attention to translate. He finally resorts to French.

“Are you alright, Wren?”

“Yes, sir,” I say, giving him the best smile I could muster. “I’m sorry if I don’t seem in it. I hardly got any sleep last night.”

He gives me a wary look, not believing my excuse. “It is obvious that you are not well enough to continue with today’s lesson,” he tilts his head in a sympathetic way. “Try to get some rest. I’ll ask your Grandmother to get you a doctor if this continues.”

And then he was gone.

Not entirely.

With each throb of my head, his energy trail grew stronger. I can see it better. I trace where he’d come in and sat down, then walked out. It was like a scattered beam of light suspended in the air. It surrounds him constantly and is unique to him, a dark shade of blue that reflected his intelligent no-nonsense attitude. Anytime he moves, some of the aura falls off like breadcrumbs, leaving a trail in its wake.

He’s not the only one.

I can see the orange trail of how the maid navigated around the study in order to dust the bookshelves this morning. If I look harder, I can see the peach of my Grandmother’s as she sat in her chair reading two weeks ago.

The first time I started seeing auras and energy trails was with the first headache nearly six months ago. They seemed to come and go with the pain…. and they seemed to happen more frequently.

I don’t have to turn around to feel a trail of baby gray coming up behind me. I can just sense the presence. Like I can feel my Grandmother in the garden and my tutor getting into his carriage and the baker five miles away making baguettes.

Our butler speaks. “Duchesse de la Mage requests to see you, mademoiselle.”

“Alright, thank you,” I say, getting up and smoothing out my blue dress. My Grandmother said I should always wear blue, as they bring out my violet eyes. I straighten out my back, and stick my chin in the air.

A lady always walks with poise and grace. Everyone else is beneath you, my dear.

I don’t always agree with my Grandmother’s rules, but I always abide by them. I never run the risk of making her furious.

I follow our butler to the garden where my Grandmother is asking the gardener to plant some violets near the pond. My Grandmother loves her garden and she labors on it. Every single flower imaginable is planted with painstaking preciseness and is organized into perfect catagories so the mix of colors would have order and still be pleasing to the eye. Many have asked, even offered to pay, to spend an afternoon in her garden, but she has denied all of them. Yet, she never placed a bulb into the ground. The “gardener” she is talking to now is the head of her gardening department and has spent many years traveling the world and studying plants. She only trusts him to oversee the planting.

Now, she asks him to give us a moment.

She holds up her hand, gesturing for me to stop. She approaches me and tilted my chin upwards, clicking her tongue.

“Oh, Wren,” she says, “What am I going to do with you?”

I move my mouth up and down, trying to articulate some words. I love my Grandmother, but sometimes I don’t know what to say to her. While she is old than many people who lived on our fief, I don’t consider her old. She has white hair, yes. She has some wrinkles, yes. But nothing about the regal way she carries herself or how she seems to be able to recall things that I cannot ever struck me as something an old person does.

Her father was the lord of this fief. Young and in love, she married a few months before her father died. And a few months later, her husband disappeared. He left one day on a trip to visit a nearby fief and never returned. She had fallen into an enormous inheritance of wealth, power, and land, but with no man to rule over her, her subjects became very wary quickly.

She somehow managed to keep her position, but she never divulged in details. She doesn’t like reflecting on her past

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. I divert my line of sight to a sad looking willow tree by the bond, not wishing to keep eye contact with her.

“Nothing to apologize for, dear,” my Grandmother says after a long, exasperated sigh. “I know what the problem is.”

“You do?” I ask, shell shocked. The headaches? Auras? Energy trails?

The dreams?

I dare not tell another living soul. 13th century France is neither the place nor time to flaunt supernatural abilities. A number of things can happen to me. I can either be accused of witchcraft and handed to the church. I can be deemed a crazy person and live the rest of my life in mocked isolation. Or I can be diagnosed sick and be banished to prevent the spread of my ailment. Even if I am slowly going insane, I am not about to tell anyone.

But maybe I can tell my Grandmother.

“Of course I do!” she exclaims. “You’re lonely.”

Hope is fleeting from me. “Lonely?”

“Yes, cooped up the estate, who wouldn’t be? You lack the peer interaction that most young people have. I’ve arranged for some family friends to spend some time with you every day. They’ll be here at noon tomorrow.”

Once again, my Grandmother renders me speechless.

I am fine with being isolated.

I am lucky enough to be born into the provincial life. While many would fawn over the luxuries of living in a castle or the fact that I was set to inherit a fief, being wealthy just gave me the one thing that made life bearable for me.

An education.

Books, music, and art carried me through life. While I can’t draw, I admire other people’s works greatly. I read constantly, almost obsessively. The flow of words are like a stream. Running water is cleaner than still water because the fluidity didn’t let murky things settle. In this case, that is the sad truth that I was alone and friendless or that the only second glance I am ever getting for the next few years would be from the butler asking me if I would want a refill of my drink at dinner.

Sad prospects indeed, but words wash the feelings out of my mind and music can carry them out of sight.

When I played any instruments, I felt myself. It is an amazing feeling, to be yourself. Feel emotions completely. And as I would play my flute, my sadness comes out from me, carried by the melody. Then it disappears. Like an echo, it’s gone and I never feel the same pain again.

Unfortunately, pain is like a virus. It mutates and grows stronger, and then it’ll be back more dangerous than it had been before. Yet, I can always rely on music to banish the feeling again.

With the magic of literature and music, loneliness is perfectly tolerable

I just hope that these new “play mates” are as well.