Chapter 1
~ Away from Home ~
It was a truly impressive sight—one impossibly tall mountain, hundreds of miles in the distance and yet at the same time seeming as if it was looming up over the plains from just beyond the next grassy little hill. As far as anyone remembered, no one had ever bothered to give this mountain a name; all the others in the surrounding area seemed like barely more than little hills in comparison, so simply calling it “the mountain” was enough for most anyone. If someone wanted to be really specific, all they would need to say is “the big one,” and anyone who was at all familiar with the area would immediately know what was meant. Of course, to most people the mountain was little more than the background scenery to their everyday lives, always visible far off in the distance but rarely the focus of much attention. Nobody had ever dared to actually climb it; trying to make it to the top would surely be hopeless without days’ or even weeks’ worth of supplies, and no lone explorer ever thought, even for a moment, that they could reach the summit on their own. Most people preferred to avoid even entering the foothills around the mountain itself, as there were always rumors of mysterious disappearances in the area, sightings of monsters with metallic skin and strange lights in the sky. Some even said that there were entire cities located along the mountainside, populated by some unknown tribe with pointed ears and unnaturally-colored hair.
As it turned out, one such pointy-eared individual happened to be walking down one of the rough trails that dotted the mountain, hurrying along as fast as she could go without slipping on loose rocks and risking injury. She stopped for a moment and shivered as the wind picked up, causing her bright-orange hair to blow all around wildly. Clutching her traveling cloak with one hand and pulling it closer around her for warmth, she took a moment to shrug off the cold and then went right back to walking as if nothing was wrong. Her other hand remained inside her cloak at all times, tightly wrapped around some object she apparently wanted to keep hidden from anyone who just might happen to be watching. She continued down the path for another hour before stopping to rest, sitting down behind the crumbling walls of some nearby ruins in hopes that they might provide at least a little shelter from the wind. For a few minutes she sat there quietly, catching her breath; apparently the trip down the mountain was a bit more than she had been expecting, and looking down over the edge made it more than obvious that she was still not far from her home at the top. She sighed, and for a second seemed just about ready to give up… until something in the distance caught her eye.
“Clouds,” she mumbled aloud to herself, “The clouds are moving in…”
It was exactly as she had said—all around the mountain, clouds were beginning to roll in, blanketing the area with grayish-white fog and shrouding the upper reaches of the mountain from sight. Though the arrival of the clouds brought a cold chill to the air around her, the little girl almost seemed to be encouraged by their presence; she started rushing down the trail even faster than before, trying to get below the clouds before they obscured her view of the trail below her feet. Before too long, she had worn herself out once again and sat down on a flat rock to rest while the clouds continued to move in and her view of the mountain became progressively whiter and whiter. At this point, anyone else would feel hopelessly lost, afraid to move forward for fear of plummeting over the edge; this unusual little girl, however, simply smiled at the sight of the whiteness all around her and reached inside her cloak, pulling out an ancient-looking scroll and partially unrolling it with both hands. Adjusting herself slightly, she laid the scroll down on the rock in front of her and began to silently read the mysterious words written upon it. Though she had been taught how to decipher and pronounce them ever since she was old enough to read at all, the symbols on this page still seemed unfamiliar to her; it was almost as if they had actually changed since the last time she had read it. Though she didn’t know why, it was always this way with the scroll—every time she looked at the strange writing, something looked different from the way she remembered it. Sometimes it was as if she simply hadn’t noticed something before, while other times she was sure that the letters had been written or arranged just a bit differently the last time she had looked over them. Nobody had ever answered her questions about this, so eventually she had simply stopped asking. When she was young, she assumed that it must have been something she was not yet old enough to understand, or something that simply could not be understood. More recently, however, she had begun to suspect that the truth was that all those she had asked—despite their age and the wisdom they supposedly possessed—didn’t even know the answer themselves.
She shook her head and blinked, pushing away the thoughts that kept interrupting what she was trying to do, and then went back to reading from the scroll, this time speaking them aloud (albeit quietly.) As she spoke, the words began to glow with a golden-orange light, which soon began to stream off of the page and project outward several feet before finally fading. As she spoke the last few words, the light intensified, flaring outward so brightly that it could be seen even through the thick layer of clouds that surrounded the mountain. For a moment, there was a flash of orange so bright that the girl was forced to close her eyes; a split-second later there was a rush of wind that nearly knocked her backward, and she scrambled to get a good grip on the scroll and make sure it wasn’t blown away. When she finally opened her eyes again, a bird of incredible size was hovering in the air in front of her, apparently floating almost weightlessly despite the fact that its wings were completely still at the moment. The bird flapped its wings once, very slowly, as it began to descend; even this small amount of effort was enough to kick up enough wind that the girl’s hair and cape fluttered for a moment and dust and small rocks all around her were sent flying. After hovering for another moment, the enormous creature finally landed, perching itself on a boulder several dozen feet below the trail. The little girl just stared up at the bird in awe—though she had seen it once before, it was hard to ever get used to a being of such size and power suddenly appearing from out of nowhere like that. Another few seconds passed in silence, until finally the bird glanced around, cocked its head slightly to the side, and looked directly at her before letting out a questioning squawk.
“Hello!” she said, smiling and waving in the general direction of the bird’s head. “Sorry I had to bring you out here like that, but… I kind of need some help.”
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In a small village dozens of miles away, however, nothing nearly as exciting was happening. Ordinary people, with their very ordinary round ears, went about their ordinary jobs and chores and pastimes of the day as if absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary. A heavyset man with a thick black beard pulled a cart full of logs down a cobblestone path, stopping outside of each of the plain thatched-roof houses and leaving some of the wood behind as he passed by. Finally, he returned to his own home, dumping the last few logs in the grass alongside the building before putting away the cart and sitting down in a chair on the front porch for some much-needed rest. Which, of course, was quickly interrupted by a woman’s voice calling to him from inside the house.
“Beysal,” she asked, “Was that the firewood just now?”
“Five logs,” he answered, “Big ones, too. Should be plenty wood for the next few weeks.”
Beysal sighed and rubbed his neck for a moment, then stretched his arms and slouched down in the chair. He was just about to drift off to sleep when his wife’s voice once again came through the door, shaking him back awake. She was now standing in the doorway, looking down at him disapprovingly.
“Aren’t you going to chop the wood? We can’t just throw it into the stove the way it is...”
He groaned, then glanced back up at her and answered.
“I was thinkin’ I’d let the boy do it this time, Leah,” Beysal mumbled, looking around the yard in an attempt to find his young son. “He’s growing up, after all… be thirteen in another month. It’s about time he’ll start learnin’ how to do some’a his own work.”
He looked around the yard again, squinting slightly and shifting in his seat in an attempt to see into the neighbors’ yards.
“Where is he, anyway?”
“Oh, he’s probably just off in the woods again,” Beysal’s wife said. “He packed his own lunch and took off earlier with a bag and a net… said he was going to try and catch one of those giant snails people keep talking about.”
“Bah, giant snails… ain’t never seen any giant snails in those woods. Least he’s prepared for the trip, though.”
After sitting quietly for another few minutes, Beysal stood up and stretched once again before heading into his home. He came back not long afterward with a large glass full of some variety of dark beer, sitting back down in the chair next to where his wife had seated herself.
“Just be sure to let ‘im know he’s got work to do when he gets home,” the bearded man said, gulping down a mouthful of his drink before he continued. “Knowing that boy I’ll probably be in bed long before then, but we’ve got to get that wood done before too long, even if it means he’s got to stay up choppin’ wood half the night.”
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Later that night, of course, that was exactly what poor Basjon Gersham was stuck doing. And it was taking forever. Though he had always walked, ran, jumped, and climbed around in the surrounding woods when he had nothing more important to do, he was still nowhere near used to this sort of manual labor, and swinging away at the logs with the rather dull old axe that his parents had provided for him was exhausting. He wiped some sweat from his forehead as he sat down, propping the axe up against the next log and sitting down on another to rest for a while. The sun had set just a few minutes earlier, and now it was beginning to grow dark; when the boy glanced back toward his house, he could see through the little round windows that a lamp had been lit in the kitchen and his parents were busy preparing food for tonight’s supper.
“I should probably get back to work too,” he groaned, slowly standing back up from his makeshift seat and taking a few steps toward the place where he had left the old axe.
Just as he gripped the axe’s handle, he glanced over toward the horizon and spotted several birds flying high in the sky overhead. Or, at least, that’s what he seemed to be seeing at first—after watching for a few more seconds, it became clear that one of these birds was much, much larger than the others, and it seemed to be headed right toward the forest while the others were only circling above the hills somewhere off in the distance. Loosening his grip on the axe, he continued to be distracted by the mysterious bird, watching as it came closer and closer over the next few minutes. Eventually, it came so close that he could actually make out more of its shape--its tail was far too long to be an ordinary bird, with a flare of trailing feathers and something that almost resembled chains dangling behind them. Almost as soon as he had begun to realize just how far this was from a typical bird, it was flying right over his head, coming dangerously close to the ground as it swooped directly over his house. The feathered beast’s flight kicked up a powerful gust of wind as it passed, shaking leaves loose from every tree, rattling the windows of every house in the village, and knocking the already-stunned boy off of his feet. Even the heavy logs were not able to resist this wind, rolling across the grass for several feet before sliding away down a nearby slope. Almost immediately, the door to the house swung open and Basjon’s father Beysal ran outside, glancing around in an attempt to figure out what had caused all the sudden noise.
“What in the name of…”
Basjon picked himself up off the ground, shaken a bit by his sudden fall but not injured. He dusted himself off a bit, then ran past his father in a rush back into the house. His mother looked a bit stunned as he went barreling past her, grabbing a lamp from a nearby shelf and hurrying to light it before running back outside once again.
“Jon, what’s going on?”
Her son paused for a second in the doorway, turning his head back toward his mother. He wasn’t quite sure how to explain what he had just seen to his parents, but he went ahead and tried anyway.
“Um… there was a bird,” he said, grabbing his backpack off of the floor where he had left it earlier. “The biggest one I’ve ever seen! Really weird-looking, too… and, well… I think it landed over in the forest somewhere.”
The old woman sighed, knowing that there was no way to stop her son once he became this excited about something. She simply nodded, pointing toward a walking stick that he usually carried with him on his trips into the forest.
“Just be careful…”
The boy glanced toward where she was pointing, and only just then realized that he had forgotten to pick up the stick along with his other supplies. He took a few quick steps back into the house to grab it and then rushed back outside, passing by his father (who was still very confused as to what was going on) and heading in the same direction that the bird had flown. The exhaustion of his chores seemed to have been instantly erased by the excitement that the monster bird’s sudden appearance had caused; nobody watching would have ever suspected that this boy, leaping over rocks and climbing up rocky paths and rushing between trees, had been sitting around breathing heavily and bored out of his mind just a few minutes earlier. Before long, he had cleared almost a full mile of land, going further and further into the forest; there were no longer any clear paths here, and certainly no signs showing the way to the nearest village. He kept going until eventually he reached a small clearing in the trees, setting the lamp down between several mossy rocks and looking at the ground for any signs of a giant bird landing nearby. He was so focused on this task that he didn’t even hear a set of light footsteps coming up behind him. While the boy pushed through the tall grass in a desperate search for oversized avian footprints in the dirt, an undetected visitor was watching from just a couple feet away, puzzled at his actions. Several more minutes passed, and just as Basjon was ready to stand up and move to a different area of the woods to continue his search, an unfamiliar voice suddenly came from behind him.
“Hello!”
The boy jumped to his feet and spun around, not sure exactly who or what he was about to see; he brandished his walking stick, prepared to fight off whatever bandits or monsters might await him out in the wilderness. Instead of either of those, however, he found that the unexpected voice had come from a little girl with long orange hair, dressed in usual clothes and wrapped up in a traveler’s cloak. Though still a bit startled, he calmed down a bit and lowered his weapon.
“Um… who are you?”
“My name is… oh my!”
For a moment, the girl’s eyes widened and an unusual look came across her face, stopping herself in mid-sentence. She took a few steps toward the boy, staring intently at some part of his face; after a few seconds, she apparently figured out exactly what was wrong with what she was seeing, and reached up to grab one of the boy’s ears.
“What happened to your ears?”
“My… ears?”
The boy jerked his ear free from the stranger’s grasp and backed away a little. Of course, he had no idea what this unusual little girl was talking about. As far as he was aware, nothing at all was wrong with his ears. For a few seconds, he just stood and stared at her like she was crazy (because, for all he knew, she just might have been)… and that was when he noticed something was definitely different about her.
“Your ears, they’re… pointy!”
She blinked.
“Um… yes… aren’t everyone’s ears pointy?”
“No, ears are round,” he said. He reached up and tugged on one of his own ears to emphasize his point. “See? Round. Well, not exactly round, they’re kinda funny-shaped, but… they’re not pointy.”
For what seemed like several whole minutes, the two just stood there in the clearing, staring at each other, both wondering exactly what was going on (and what in the world was wrong with the other’s ears.) And then, almost simultaneously, they both burst out laughing.
“Hahahaha! They’re… so… pointy!”
“Round! Round ears! Haha… I, I’ve never… hee hee!”
After a while the two managed to calm down, though occasional giggles and snickers still broke out when either of them caught a glance of the other’s ears. Eventually, they both regained their composure, and eventually Basjon managed to ask (once again) for the mystery girl’s name.
“So, um… what was your name again?”
“Oh… sorry,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I’m Aykathla. And you are?”
“Basjon Gersham,” he answered, “Sometimes people just call me Jon. What’s your last name?”
“Um,” Aykathla mumbled, “Last name? What’s that?”
“What, you don’t even have a last name? Where are you from, anyway?”
The girl stopped for a second, put one hand to her chin, and thought about it for a moment. Since she had lived in one place all her life and outsiders were strictly forbidden there, she had never actually had any need to describe where she lived to anyone before. The only thing she could think of was, of course, the mountain that she had walked (and flown) down to get there.
“Well, um… I used to live up on a mountain,” she said, pointing off in what she assumed was probably the direction she had come from, “Somewhere… over there, I think.”
Jon blinked and stared at her for a second, looking like he had not quite caught what she had just said. Then he opened his mouth as if to say something and instead just let it hang open, apparently not quite able to come up with the words. Aykathla, of course, was confused.
“What’s wrong?”
“The mountain,” the boy said, “You said you came from the mountain…”
This, of course, was big news to Basjon, who had spent most of his life hearing that nobody lived up on the mountain—or worse, if it had any residents at all, they were some sort of monsters rarely seen beyond the boundaries of its foothills. Though rumors had spread that ancient cities dotted the side of the mountain, most of those made it sound as if they were long abandoned, not places that were still populated. And yet, there she was: a girl who had come from somewhere up on that very same mountain, presumably one of the many cities that were said to have been built upon it at some point in the past.
“That’s right,” she said, “I used to live in a tower at the very top of that mountain.”
“Well… where do you live now?”
She stopped to think for a moment, glancing around. She had spotted some houses on the way over, but as her ride had not wanted to land in the middle of a highly-populated area where they might be seen, she wasn’t sure exactly how to get back to them. There certainly wasn’t anywhere to stay in the middle of the woods, anyway.
“Um… I… I don’t know,” she stuttered, “I… kind of had to leave in a hurry… I haven’t really figured out where I’m going to be living yet.”
Basjon grinned.
“Well, my parents have an extra bed nobody ever uses back home,” he said, “Maybe you could live with us for a while?”
She seemed to think about the possibility for a few seconds, but before she had a chance to say anything she was interrupted by yet another question.
“Oh, and did you see that giant bird? I know it landed somewhere around here, but I can’t figure out where.”
Aykathla suddenly froze. She was already lucky that the first person she had encountered didn’t seem suspicious of her ears or lack of a second name (which, as she had just found, were not as typical down below the mountain as they were atop it), and wasn’t frightened by the fact that she had come from a place that he apparently thought was uninhabited. Just freely admitting that she had the power to summon a gigantic armored bird through an ancient scroll, however, would probably be a bit much for just about anyone. So, of course, she decided to pretend that she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Giant bird?”
Basjon sighed.
“How could you not see that thing? It was huge!”
She shrugged.
“I think I’d remember if I saw any giant birds,” she said, glancing around for a few seconds. “Besides, it’s… um… a little bit late for birds to be out, isn’t it? If there are any birds around, they’re probably sleeping now.”
At the very mention of sleep, Basjon yawned. It was getting pretty late; he wasn’t sure exactly how long he had ran through the woods searching for the bird he had seen, but it had already been getting dark before it appeared, and he was starting to remember just how worn out he was from chopping all that wood before. He picked up the lamp he had brought with him, walked past where Aykathla was standing, and then kept walking, out out of the clearing and back toward the village he called home.
“Come on,” he said, turning back toward her for a second, “You need to find somewhere to sleep tonight, right? The closest village isn’t too far if you go this way.”
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Beysal and his wife sat in the two chairs in front of their house, watching the woods for any sign of their son. He had been gone for more than an hour now, and—like any decent parent would—they were starting to get a bit worried. Though both were growing tired, the two would always shake themselves (or each other) back awake before they completely dozed off, keeping watch outside of their home for the one member of the household who was currently not accounted for. Just when they were thinking that maybe they should go out looking for him, the sound of footsteps through the grass behind the house caught their attention—and although something about these footsteps sounded a bit different than usual, neither of them were quite awake enough to figure out why until the source of the footsteps came into view.
“Mom, Dad!”
Basjon had just come around into the yard, followed a few feet behind by a young girl who seemed to be absolutely exhausted. Though it was too dark outside to see much of her features very clearly, it was obvious that she was breathing heavily and having a hard time just standing up.
“Jon,” the boy’s father said, taking a few steps away from the porch, “Who is this?”
“Her name’s Aykathla,” he said, glancing over to her for a moment as if trying to make sure he had pronounced it right. “She was lost in the woods, so I brought her back over here.”
“Well, that was nice of you,” his mother said, “Why don’t you take her back home now? It’s about time for bed.”
“I can’t take her back home.”
“And why not?”
“She’s from the mountain,” he answered, causing both of his parents to suddenly snap wide awake. “She doesn’t have a home around here.”
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