The Tales of Tarya, Books 1-3

Chapter 5 - Transformations-2

Rico was startled by how Mina captured familiar aspects of his life. He relived his despair at the changes in Katriela through the vivid reminder of how gifted and full of life his wife had been.

Yet the end of the story was not despairing. In Mina’s tale, Katriela did not become lost in the shadows of hopelessness. Instead, she managed to break away from her parents’ domineering ways, with her husband’s help, and present her work to royalty. She became official seamstress to the queen, gaining wealth and prestige. Most importantly, she was able to create the dresses that danced in her dreams.

~

Mina spoke the final words of her tale, releasing her listeners to return to their lives. Around Katriela, a last few shining dust motes drifted down and disappeared. With a slight disjunction Mina returned to her body.

Katriela herself broke the awed silence that filled the divina. Leaping from her seat, she ran to thank Mina. When she turned back to face Rico, he gasped at the transformation in his wife. Before him stood the vibrant young woman he had loved so well and thought gone forever. Carlo’s jaw hung open too. Both men ran to embrace her.

Carlo reached her first, then stepped aside as Rico reached to swing his wife around joyously. She laughed out loud, kissing him passionately, her face glowing. To Mina’s surprise, Carlo pulled her into an embrace, thanking her over and over. He ran back to his sister as Rico finally released Katriela, and held her at arms’ length.

The transformation was startling. It was as though some artist had taken a palette of fresh paint and restored an old portrait. No longer leeched of colour, Katriela chatted happily, restored to life.

Sofia came to Mina’s side and spoke softly. ‘You did it. She’s a different person.’

Mina nodded. She stumbled sideways against Sofia, who looked at her closely.

‘Are you ill?’

‘I’m … just tired.’ Straightening her back, Mina looked across at Katriela, now talking eagerly with her husband and brother. ‘I really did it.’

The shadowed girl was gone.

Finally Katriela turned to Mina and thanked her profusely, until Rico interrupted her, eager to leave, to resume their old life.

‘Katriela’s family will want to see her. We should take her home,’ he said.

‘You will always have our gratitude,’ Carlo added. ‘If you are ever in Clusone our hospitality will be boundless. But now, let me buy lunch for you all, since the day has moved on.’

They split into two parties, Carlo and his family taking Dario, Luka and Lisette to fetch food, and Mina and Sofia, with Paolo trailing behind, taking the wagon back to the field outside Pedon, ready to resume their journey.

‘Are you sure you’re not ill?’ Sofia asked without preamble once they had stopped.

Mina climbed down from the wagon and sat heavily on the grass. She shook her head. ‘I could do with a drink.’

Before Sofia could move, Mina stopped her with a hand on her arm.

‘We need to keep going, Sofia.’

‘I think you should rest before we travel again. You look exhausted, no matter what you say.’

Mina shook her head. ‘I mean the healing. We need to keep doing it. Katriela’s not the only one.’

Sofia nodded and went to fetch supplies. Mina gazed across the field, her mind hectic. When Sofia returned with pomegranate cordial and some sharp cheese, Mina launched into her thoughts before the story teller had even taken a seat.

‘Every performance the players give, every scenario they show, is somebody’s dream. They harvest them.’

‘And that’s what you did, gave Katriela back her dream?’

Mina nodded. ‘I’ll show you.’

Paolo, lying on the ground nearby, moaned softly. Mina stood, beckoning for Sofia to stand too. She began a tale of a young girl from an isolated village who discovered a world just beyond her own. As she wove the tale she tried to draw Sofia into Tarya, but found it hard to conjure the energy. Heaviness swept through her limbs. She wanted to lie down.

Her eyes fell on Paolo. She realised how much work lay ahead, healing the harm the players had done. Drawing on the last reserves of her energy, she pushed to bring the tale to life, to show Sofia what she had seen when she first discovered Tarya. She had never consciously taken someone into Tarya before, but Uberto had, so she knew it was possible. As soon as she found herself at the Horizon, with its webs of crisscrossing threads, she reached for Sofia’s etheric body and, hoping she wouldn’t harm her thread, used a surge of will to draw the story teller to her.

All the light in the air pulsed, and Sofia was beside her. Her jaw dropped and she turned slowly.

‘This is Tarya?’ she asked, then clutched her throat, startled. ‘This is nothing like what I caught glimpses of. Wait. I can’t talk out loud. Why can’t …’

‘I can hear you,’ Mina reassured her, inside Sofia’s head. ‘This is just how it works here. Let me show you.’

She began by teaching Sofia how to move her etheric body across the Horizon, until the story teller could easily traverse the confusion of glowing shapes and threads that echoed the real world. She learned to move faster and began to explore. Drifting upward, she neared a hovering silver orb.

‘What’s this?’

‘Don’t touch it,’ Mina warned. ‘It bites. That’s a dream. That’s where the players get their canovaccio from, the stories they perform onstage. When they take dreams from people, they create these orbs and leave them here until they need them. Look.’ She pointed. ‘Over there.’

Sofia saw another orb nearby, then another beyond, and another. They were everywhere, hovering amongst the light shapes that formed this world.

‘There are hundreds.’

‘And every one of them needs to be restored to its dreamer.’

Mina drew them out of Tarya, shifting back into her body easily, but when the transition glow had faded, she saw Sofia’s eyes were still vacant.

It took long, terrible moments for Sofia to return. Mina could hardly breathe. Nothing had ever gone wrong with the return from Tarya before. Finally Sofia’s skin became suffused with colour, and something clicked behind her eyes, bringing them to life again. She was back.

Instantly alarm flickered across her face. ‘Mina, you don’t look well.’

Mina shook her head, then stopped as a searing pain burned in her forehead. ‘I’m fine … I …’

She stumbled and sat on the grass. Paolo rushed to kneel before her, rocking back and forth as he stroked her knees.

The pain subsided. Mina straightened her back.

‘I’m fine. Really. Maybe I’ve caught something. We need to start. There’s so much work ahead. Now you’ve seen what you’ve seen, do you understand why we have to stop the players taking any more dreams?’

‘Of course.’

Mina looked at her brother.

‘And we still have to find Mourini, wherever he is now. We’ll take Paolo home, then go back to Aurea to talk to the Council of Muses. They rule over the players. We can’t stop the players alone and I still don’t want them harmed for what they’ve done. The Council will know what to do.’

‘On our way, we’ll search out those whose dreams were stolen, and restore them,’ Sofia added. ‘If you can teach me how you reached Tarya, I should be able to help. I’ve never seen more than glimpses before. I felt like I was really there. If you can help me create the link, I’m sure I can tell the tales that will restore dreams to people.’

Paolo moved behind Mina, stroking her hair, cooing softly. The gentle sound was overridden by loud voices as Dario, Lisette and Luka returned. The men carried a large wicker chest between them. They placed it at Mina’s feet, flipping the lid up to reveal bottles of mead and port, preserved fruits, pies, coffins of hard salted dough, no doubt full of stewed meats, and even, Lisette revealed with a smile, a handful of frosted fruits wrapped in a napkin.

‘They dropped us here and went to get a second basket,’ Luka declared as Sofia and Mina explored its contents with delight.

‘Carlo insisted,’ Dario added, ‘and promised to refill both baskets when we reach Clusone. I assume we’re still heading back to Andon to take Paolo home?’

Sofia nodded, quickly explaining the revised plan to do healings on the way.

‘Can you teach us the healing also?’ Lisette asked after they had discussed how many dreams needed to be restored.

‘I think so,’ Mina said. She didn’t dare confide to them the secret fear taking root: if she couldn’t teach them, their plan would soon fail. She couldn’t do it alone. An aching tiredness dragged at all her limbs. It had begun as soon as she touched the silver orb of the dream. Time enough to tell the others later.

‘We still need to know what to do when we find Mourini, and how to heal Paolo,’ Sofia said. ‘And the others like him. It has to be a different process, right?’

Dario slapped his forehead. ‘The key mask,’ he said. ‘It’s a plain mask only Harlequin is allowed to wear. All the player masks are connected to it. We should have asked Mama Tina for it before they left. I doubt we could heal him without it. It’s always used when gold threads are harvested to create new characters. The threads pass through it before they’re placed in the player masks, so we can draw on a character and transform onstage.’

Mina and Sofia looked at each other in silent communication. Mina nodded, too tired to speak.

‘We have it,’ Sofia said. ‘But Miranda said it was Uberto’s link to Mourini, so it could be dangerous to try anything with it. Perhaps if Mina had seen the gold threads being harvested she might have been able to work out what to do.’

Dario shook his head, but it was Lisette who spoke. ‘I’ve seen the harvesting but it doesn’t help. I never understood the connection between the key mask and our masks. Only Harlequin knows exactly what happens to the gold thread.’

Dario looked around at their discouraged faces and broke the despairing silence. ‘And his family.’

Mina caught the gleam in his eyes. ‘Including his adopted family.’

For a moment they were in a private world. Hope fluttered in her heart.

Luka broke the moment. ‘Healing the golden threads should be a much smaller task than restoring everyone’s dreams, shouldn’t it? I mean, there’ll be a lot less of them.’

‘This is right,’ Lisette replied. ‘We do not take on a new character often.’

‘The big problem will be finding them. Not the characters, the actual people,’ Dario said. ‘Litonya is a big place.’

~

‘I can’t do this. I can’t go in.’

Fear played across Amora’s features as she drew a shawl tight around her shoulders

They both turned to look at the building before them. Jal wondered how his father had ended up here. Arriving back in Aurea, Jal had helped Miranda settle Uberto into their accommodation, a small cottage provided by funds set aside for retired players. Afterward he had gone to see the city wardens about his father’s imprisonment. Prepared to argue to his last breath that his father had never practised Arcani and should be released, he had been confused by the official’s manner, subdued and even pitying, until the man explained Peter Fiorillo was no longer in custody, but had been transferred to Souls’ Rest.

‘He collapsed when they questioned him,’ the man said with a hint of sympathy.

It sounded so peaceful. Souls’ Rest. But Jal had grown up in Aurea. He knew the name was seldom spoken. Families hid their shame at having someone reside there. If the name was mentioned, only ever in passing, the speaker always dropped their voice as though to speak it any louder would be to bring down its dark curse.