By The Gods's Ears

Chapter 2-1

CHAPTER TWO

“B-b-b-but,” Emmeline sputtered, “I do not want to marry anyone.” She shook her head back and forth and flailed her arms about uselessly. “H-h-h-he just said,” she sputtered again, “h-h-h-he only said h-h-h-he would show me the sea!”

Murielle nodded in grim affirmation. “So that is what he told you?”

“Oui, Mama, oui,” she spit out, “Oui. He said he would show me la mer. That is all. Oui.”

A low moaning drew their attention to Gilles who was sinking slowly to his knees, his face buried in his hands. “No, no, not my little girl!” he sobbed.

With a loud, agonizing scream, Gilles tore his face from his hands and without a glance to his wife and daughter he scrambled on his knees to the altar, clouds of dust swirling up around him from the dirt floor as he went. “Oh, great Golden Child, please hear my prayer!” Gilles pressed the fingertips of his right hand firmly on his forehead and began mumbling inaudibly.

Murielle rolled her eyes and sighed heavily in disgust. “Yes Gilles, that will help very much,” she spat sarcastically. “The god who cannot bring the rain will deliver us from this.”

“Mama!”

“You disagree, child?” she snarled with nary a glance to her daughter.

“N-n-n-no,” she stammered, “but there must be a misunderstanding with the Prince.”

“There is no misunderstanding, Emmeline,” she rounded on her again. “The Prince intends that you will be his bride.” She paused a moment, watching her husband still muttering his foolish prayers. Then she added with a low sigh, “Whatever that means to him in his sick and twisted mind.”

Emmeline shook her head and flailed her arms again. “What... whatever do you mean, Mama? We... we will tell him that there has been a... a… mis… misunderstanding!”

“Emmeline! It is only you who are misunderstanding!” Murielle wrung her hands and began to pace in a tight circle. Emmeline opened her mouth to speak but Murielle cut her off. “Jul….” Murielle paused briefly and took a breath. “Many travelers have told me stories of the Prince.”

Emmeline looked at her mother blankly.

Murielle swallowed hard. “Let me tell you but one story.”

Emmeline huffed and flipped her hair.

“On a hunting trip in the West,” Murielle continued unabated, “the Prince came upon a small, isolated tenant farm. The couple there had a single child, a daughter. A very young daughter. She was about the age you are now, pretty, and she possessed a head of long flaming red hair. Jocelyn was her name. When the Prince saw her, he immediately requested her hand in marriage. Jocelyn’s parents were thrilled at the prospect and allowed the Prince to take her back to Darloque.

“A few people remember seeing her enter the city and the castle–the red hair marked her easily–but then, she was seen no more.”

Emmeline’s brow furrowed. “What do mean by ‘seen no more’ Mama?”

“She was never seen again–at least not in Darloque. After a long time with no word from their daughter, Jocelyn’s father made the journey to Darloque, and inquired at the castle as to her status. After a lengthy wait, the Prince himself greeted the farmer. ‘I have no idea where your “thieving b***h” daughter is,’ he told the man. He continued, saying that a few days after bringing her to the castle he had returned from a hunting trip to find her gone and several pieces of gold and silver missing, as well as a small chest of his deceased mother’s jewelry.

“The farmer was beside himself. He replied that his daughter would never do such a thing. He added that she had not returned home, she was too young to be on her own, and where would she have gone?

“The Prince flew into a rage, shouting and cursing. After screaming at the man that he had made a grievous error trusting the daughter of a serf, the Prince then ordered his guards to throw the farmer out of the castle. Pulling himself from dust, the farmer wandered throughout the city, seeking his daughter, and crying to anyone who would listen about his missing daughter and the treatment he had received at the hands of the Prince. He even went so far as to return to the castle and attempt to attain an audience with the Old King. The guards stood silent, ignoring his pleas. After some time of this, one of the guards with nary a word, placed the tip of his spear on the man’s chest. The farmer ceased his cries and left in the slow trudging step of the defeated.

“It was quite some time later, perhaps the following season, when a group of travelers from Darloque claimed to have seen Jocelyn in the far Southern town of Alzenay. They said they saw her in the… in the… in a bad part of town. The flaming red hair was unmistakable. They also said she was… well… in a bad state. Not one of them believed the young girl could have come to that place on her own. The Prince most certainly had sent her there.”

Emmeline stared sadly at her mother, her mouth agape. “Did Jocelyn ever return home?” she asked quietly.

Murielle inhaled deeply and released a long sigh. “When he heard the story, the farmer traveled as fast as he could to Alzenay. He inquired about the town and eventually found a woman who remembered the girl with the fiery red hair. She told him that the girl had been… that… that a group of soldiers, mercenaries, had taken her away. But that had been almost half a season previous. When the farmer questioned her as to where the mercenaries had gone, she shushed him and told him that she could find him another red-haired girl much prettier than that one. He pushed the woman aside and continued with his frantic search. But he never found Jocelyn.”

Murielle released a long, weary sigh. “I have said too much,” she muttered under her breath.

Emmeline’s mouth had gone dry. She rasped her tongue across her lips. “What shall we do now,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

What shall we do now? Murielle asked herself. Keep your wits, she heard her father’s voice insist. She needed to calm herself and clear her head. Every problem has its solution, her father had always told her, and one merely has to discover it. Murielle knew that with reason she could find the solution.

Gilles was still on his knees before the altar to Lord Aufeese, fingers to forehead, muttering inaudible words of prayer. When Murielle had first met him, his devotion to the gods–Lord Aufeese in particular–seemed quaint and added to his rustic charm. Now, so many seasons later, his devotion had grown annoying. He seemed to think that Lord Aufeese, Mava’s golden child, could solve anything, even though it was evermore clear that he would not, or could not.

If he even exists at all, Murielle added. In all the length of her life, she had never seen any sign that the gods were anything more than flights of fancy created by the ancients and supported by the superstitious masses seeking any easy path out of their problems. In none of the ubiquitous temples to the various gods she had visited had she ever seen one of the gods. Since she had come to be with Gilles, she had visited the Temple of Aufeese in Darloque more times than she could count. The building itself was impressive: a massive, intricately designed facade fronted by immense stone columns reaching into the sky and a grand stained glass window featuring every color of the rainbow. Inside, a towering white marble statue of the Golden Child himself stood behind the altar. Daily, the faithful prostrated themselves before the altar beneath this grand statue of Lord Aufeese. Priests hovered about, assisting the faithful in their devotions: helping with sacrifices, instructing novices on prayers, and doing what good men of religion should do.

Yet, regardless of her feelings toward the gods and religion in general, she could find no fault in the good priests she had met at the temples. The memory of Emmeline’s first trip to the Temple of Aufeese in Darloque sprung into her mind unbidden. She was still young and had never been away from the farm before. The High Priest welcomed them warmly and approached the little girl first. He was kind looking, an older man with streaks of gray in his long hair and beard. He squatted before Emmeline, his eyes level with hers, as she tried to hide behind Murielle’s skirts. He spoke with the soft voice of a man who possessed a vast experience with young children.

“What a pretty little girl,” he exclaimed, winking at Murielle and Gilles. “Have you ever been to the Temple of Aufeese before?”

Peeking out from behind Murielle, she shook her head nervously.

“I believe that if Lord Aufeese were here now he would be jealous because you are so pretty.”

This elicited a smile from the girl, but she still hid behind her mother.

“Will you let me show you the altar,” the Priest asked in his gentle manner, extending his hand to her. “I do not think Lord Aufeese will mind if you look at it.”

Emmeline looked nervously from her mother to her father, then her eyes turned to the Priest. The Priest’s blue eyes sparkled, and he winked. “I think there may be some candied figs up there too.”

Emmeline broke into a huge toothy grin, stepped from behind her mother’s protective skirts, and took the Priest’s hand. He led her up to the altar, telling her about temple and the statue as they walked hand in hand. He launched into a well-worn tale of Lord Aufeese and his exploits with the Wild Hares while Emmeline stood with him before the altar, transfixed by his every word. At last, he reached into his robes and withdrew the promised treat, a huge, candied fig. Her eyes lit up with delight as she reached for it.

The Priest held out his other hand, stopping the girl. “Always remember that Lord Aufeese loves you,” he said, pointing to her. “He always wants the best for you, and he is always watching over you,” he added, tilting his bright blue eyes toward the statue behind the altar.

She nodded very seriously, her eyes transfixed on the fig. With a great flourish he gave the treat to Emmeline. “Will you come back to visit me again?”

She hesitated briefly then broke into another huge grin, nodding furiously while clutching the fig in a death grip.

“Good! I am very much looking forward to it!” With that he let her run joyfully back to her parents, clutching the fig in her tiny fist.

Murielle had never met a temple priest who was not a good man. Even outside the confines of the temple, each was kind and giving. Good men, she thought, wasting their time serving a fantasy. A fantasy indeed. Gilles was a good man as well, and his faith and prayers had come to naught. She had long hoped that just a little of his faith would one day come into her heart, but his faith had only hardened it. Murielle had finally settled on the belief that all things were random and generated by some callous machine of the universe–impartial and unfeeling, incapable of being swayed to move in any direction by the feeble pleas of the victims locked within its gears.

Emmeline waited for her mother to say something, anything. She desperately wanted her to tell her that this was some kind of joke, an elaborate hoax perpetrated on her to teach her a lesson for not obeying her parents. The deep pain in her mother’s eyes told her this was not the case. There was no punch line to be told, nor any deceit to be revealed. Her father’s muttered prayers offered at a fevered pitch told her this as well. He was a religious man, a pious man, who took his obligation to the gods very seriously. But when he prayed with this intensity, Emmeline knew the situation was particularly dire. And it scared her. Soon her mother’s fearful silence and her father’s fevered muttering were too much for her to bear. Emmeline had to speak, to say something, anything that would break the spell that had come over their household. But before she could get a word out, her father leapt to his feet with a shout.