Ancient Things We Hold

Chapter 29

Somewhere Clear

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Her heart stopped when she saw it again for the first time.

After tactfully avoiding the ruins of Elisentev, for seeing it again in its sorry disrepair would be like opening the wound of the loss all over again, the group struggled through the dense woods that she had walked through so many times before.

It was as though not a single twig had been moved in the years that she had been away. Even with all the fallen leaves which had had their golden shade blurred by the rain that fell around drenching the ground, she could recognise it all. From the blue-grey streams to the florid trees and the pebbled banks, she felt as though she was a girl again, running along the grass that had been turned to a pathway by the amount of times she ran through the trek.

She hadn't even realised that she missed it. Ealdæ, with its printers and bustle, had distracted her to forget the love of her childhood. The branches jostled in the wind, waving at her return as she ducked beneath them and stepped over them, somehow knowing whenever one was around the corner.

So that she could enjoy it, she willed herself to not allow the sadness of her loss that stood just a few miles away to seep in. Leave her woods alone, she thought to her mind as it kept on trying to remind her of Elisentev.

Echoes of the shouts she made long ago wafted past her ears. She smiled a little to herself as she heard her old laughs and her squeals when she reached too near the water of the streams and its coldness soaked to her skin. However, the smile struck off her face when they reached the middle of the woods, for there it stood. Unchanged and beautiful.

She turned back to Aldwyn. He was looking at it in a similar fashion.

"What is it, Hodaya?" asked Tamar.

Hodaya had forgotten that not everyone knew of the undeniable importance of the tree, how it was always there and how it had kept them together through tears and smiles. It had been the one constant in her life- as a dreaming child, a hopeful girl, a terrified adolescent and a grief stricken adult. She felt a little upset that not everyone had this wonderful comfort in their life. Lord knows how she had survived without it during that first lonely year in Ealdæ.

"The tree. It's where we first met," she replied, weakly gesturing to its grandeur. Then, looking at Aldwyn with a smile, she said, "For old time's sake?"

"One last time," he agreed.

The second her hand touched the rough bark and she began hoisting up the branches, she was taken back to every other time she had climbed that old, rugged tree. It was everything to her. It had always been everything to her.

When she was a child, she did nothing but climb. To her, it was the closest way of reaching the sky and having the world placed before. She used to think that if she looked closely enough she would be able to see the sea outstretched on the horizon.

Aldwyn had never seen the beauty in it before he met her. After all, he travelled the kingdom every summer so had no need to pretend to see its vastness ahead of him. However, the one place in the kingdom he hadn't explored was his own imagination. With all his books and learning, he never took the same to imagine the stories behind them as Hodaya had always done. When he started to climb alongside her, his imagination began to unfold.

When they were thirteen, they decided that their races as they clambered up the tree were becoming too repetitive. After all, three years were spent racing in the same manner. It was then that Aldwyn, following on from the imagination that Hodaya spoke so highly of, suggested the stakes were raised in their minds only.