Earthbound, Chapter 1

Sunlight gleamed on the surface of the water, lazy ripples distorting the reflection of the clear blue sky above. An osprey circled high above in slow loops. The fish in the lake had nothing to fear at the moment. It had already eaten one of their number, and would not be hungry again for some time.
The wind was soft and slow, and the tall grass that covered the land stirred only a little bit in the breeze. The grass grew long and wild, and underneath the shadow of its blades, two faeries walked along.
“Hurry up, Lyra. We’re wasting daylight.” Orph led the way, swinging a thick wooden stick with a knob at the end at any bit of grass unlucky enough to be in his way. He was tall for a faerie(more than four inches), and broad in the shoulders, though he would still be slim next to a dwarf. His bare muscled chest was the color of sand, and his hair was a shaggy mop on his head. Orph was every bit the rambling adventurer. He strode through the towering grass with an air of confidence about him that all but dared anything to get in his way.
“I’m tired, Orph.” Lyra was something else entirely. Lyra was fourteen years old, younger than Orph by more than a decade. Unlike her tall and strong older brother, Lyra was a small and slight girl, her head barely came up to Orph’s shoulders. She hurried to keep up with him, having to take almost two steps for his every one. Lyra had almost none of Orph’s physical presence or easy confidence. Her limbs were soft and her shoulders were narrow. None of these traits were the first thing anyone noticed about Lyra, however. While Orph’s back had a pair of gossamer wings like that of a dragonfly, Lyra had no wings at all. There had been no injury or accident that had happened to her, and there were no telltale scars to show where her wings had been ripped or cut off; Lyra had simply been born without them at all. There was a word for aberrations like her, an Earthbound, the lowest and most despised of all faeriekind. It was said that the Earthbounds’ lack of wings was a sign that they had been born without an Air spirit, and that they had no souls at all.
“If we keep going at this speed, it’ll be a whole other year before we get to the World Soul.” Orph said.
“We’ve been walking all day.” Lyra said.
“Walking’s the only way we’re going to get there. I suppose you’ll be wanting me to carry you the rest of the way. Or would you like to ride on a palanquin?” Orph teased her, “What will it be, your highness?”
“I don’t need a palanquin.” Lyra said.
“You don’t even know what a palanquin is, do you?”
“I do too!” By this time, Lyra had caught up with Orph.
“Yeah? So what is it?”
“It’s like a bird.” Lyra said. “I heard about them. They live far away on the Big Water, in places where it gets so cold that it turns to ice, and they live on it.”
“That’s a penguin, little girl.” That was the name Orph called her whenever he wanted to tease her. He used it more than her actual name. “And besides, they aren’t real.”
“Can’t we just stop for a few minutes?”
“Tell you what. There’s a lake in…” Orph turned in a circle. “Hold on.” His wings whirred, and he flew up and disappeared above the canopy of grass above. A few moments later, he came down. “That direction.” he pointed the proper way. “We’ll go there and rest.”
It was nearly half an hour before the two faeries made their way out of the tall grass and onto the sandy shore of the lakefront. Lyra dropped her carrying bag and flopped down next to it in the sand.
It was good to feel the sun on her skin after the long journey through the shadowy grass. Although winter would not actually end for a few days yet, the day was warm. It felt good to just lie back and relax.
That relaxation was short lived. “There’s a bird.” she said with some alarm.
Orph sat down next to her and looked up at the sky.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, little girl. He’s got a whole lake full of fish to eat. He’s not going to worry about a couple tiny faeries like us. Ospreys don’t eat faeries unless they have to.”
Lyra watched it circle above, a lone dark shape against a backdrop of pure blue sky.
“It must be nice,” she said, “to be able to fly all the way up there. The world must look so small. I wonder what it feels like.”
“Well why don’t ask the osprey next time you see him?” Orph said. “I’m sure he’d tell you all about it.”
“I could, though, couldn’t I?” Lyra said.
“What, ask him?”
“An osprey is an Air spirit, just like we are. That means I could talk to it.”
“Lyra, I was joking. If you tried to talk to an osprey, it wouldn’t answer. It would just gobble you up in a single bite.”
“You said they don’t eat faeries if they don’t have to.”
“They probably would if you went right up to them. We avoid birds, Lyra. We don’t make friends with them.”
“What if we did, though? If I could talk to that osprey, I’d ask him to let me ride on his back. I’ll be the first faerie to ever ride a bird. Then I’d be a better flyer than any other faerie.”
Orph laughed. “Lyra, Queen of the Birds. That would be short story. She rode a bird way up into the sky, and then fell off and went splat.” He mussed up her hair, and she punched him in the arm and got up. “Ouch.” he said, but she knew that it didn’t hurt.
Lyra went to the water’s edge. She didn’t wear much in the way of clothes, just a worn pair of leggings and a cloth around her chest that tied together in the back. she stripped these off and waded out into the water.
Swimming was a kind of flying, in a way. Lyra loved the water. she could move in any direction, and it didn’t matter that she didn’t have wings. Wings were useless underwater, so here, she wasn’t worse than any other faerie. Lyra had gotten very good at swimming. It was a freeing feeling for her.
She floated on the surface of the lake with her face in the water. A shape came up through the shimmering light. It was a fish with scales like a rainbow that danced in the sunlight. One eye turned up to look at her. The fish was so close that Lyra could reach out and touch it, so she did. The skin was slick and slippery. Lyra tried to hold on to it, but the fish moved away, and with a single flick of its tail it was gone into the murky depths.
Lyra flipped her body over to get some air. She wondered how far down the lake went. Orph had told her stories of submerged kingdoms underneath the Big Water where the nixies ruled long ago when the world was still young. He said they lived in huge cities of stone and rode in chariots pulled by seahorses. He also like to talk about sea monsters, eight armed krakens and eels with teeth like daggers, sharks so big they could swallow you whole and not even know you there. Lyra knew none of those creatures lived in lakes, but who knew what was at the bottom. She’d heard a story once about a pool that didn’t have a bottom at all, it just went down and down forever and anyone who fell into it would never come back to the top.
Her thoughts were interrupted when something raced up from under her. The surface of the water erupted as the fish leaped up into the air and soared over her, blocking out the sun with its huge body, water catching the light in a brilliant display of sparkling colors. The fish landed with splash that washed over Lyra and pushed her under the surface. She watched the fish dart away before going back up, laughing happily.
The sky was turning dark when Lyra went back to the shore. Orph had made a circle of stones and was vigorously trying to start a fire with a pair of sticks.
“You stay away.” he said when she came near. “The last thing I need is to get water all over this.”
Lyra pulled on her clothes and sat down next to him. She took her long brown hair in her hands and wrung the water out of it.
The wood smoked, and before long Orph had a fire going in the ring of stones, and the heat felt good on her wet skin. The evening sky was a dark shade of purple and on the horizon orange clouds glowed in the light of the setting sun. High above the first star had appeared in the sky.
Lyra looked at the forest that loomed ahead of them. The only forest Lyra had ever known were the mangroves that grew all along the coast of the Big Water, but everyone knew better than to go into that wood. There were crocodiles, big nasty scaly monsters that hid below the still water whose jaws could snap close at lightning quick speed, and cannibalistic tribes that Orph called the dark faeries. He claimed to have encountered them once, but Lyra didn’t believe that. Orph loved to make up stories about all the incredible things he’d done, and whenever Lyra called him a liar, he would just laugh and say, “How could you know, little girl? You weren’t even born yet.”
The mangrove trees had always seemed so tall to Lyra, but now she saw that they were nothing compared to the trees of the great forest ahead of her. Even from this distance, she could see how incredibly huge the trees were, and there was one that towered above them all. Its trunk was as wide as a hundred of the other trees, and its branches spread out over the forest around it, so high that the tops of the smaller trees didn’t even reach to its lowest limb. Through the thick green leaves she could see lights dancing, blue, yellow, all different colors sparkled with a light that stood out against the darkening sky.
The World Soul. Everyone knew what the World Soul was, but it was one thing to hear stories about the great tree and another thing entirely to actually see it in person. The world Soul was the largest tree in the whole world, and in it’s branches lived more faeries than there were anywhere else.
“How many faeries live there?” she asked.
“Oh, thousands.” Orph replied, “Millions. More faeries than you can even imagine. And that’s not even counting the ones who will be coming like us.”
The Vernal Equinox was one of the most important days of the year. It celebrated the end of winter and the spreading of new life. And what better place to celebrate new life than at the place where it came from?
The World Soul was far more than just a tree. It was the very first living thing that ever grew when the world was new, and from the tree came all other life. Without the World Soul, plants would not grow, children would not be born. If the World Soul did not exist, nothing else would live, anywhere.
When Orph had asked her if she wanted to go to the Vernal Equinox festival, Lyra had been ecstatic. She was still looking forward to seeing the World soul for herself, but the thought of all those faeries made her wary.
For an Earthbound like Lyra, meeting other faeries was a risky venture. Earthbounds were pariahs. Some pitied them and others hated hated them, but all agreed that the Earthbound was an abomination. In her fourteen years of life, Lyra had never met even a single other Earthbound. when she was younger, she had once asked Orph why that was, and he very reluctantly told her.
“When a baby is born without wings, often times they will be abandoned. The baby will be taken, maybe by the mother, maybe by someone else like her mother or someone from the village, they’ll take the baby out and and they’ll leave it where it won’t be found, and nothing more will ever be said about it. They’ll just go on like there was never a child at all.”
“Is that what happened to me?” Lyra had asked, horrified. “Was I left out to die? Is that why I don’t know my mother?”
“No, no Lyra. She didn’t do that. She loved you more than I’ve seen anyone ever love someone else. ” He sighed, and for a moment it looked like he was somewhere far away. “She… died, but she told me to watch out for you, so that’s why you’ve been stuck with me.”
Orph rarely talked to Lyra much about her mother, or really anything else about things that had happened in the past. He liked to say it was better to think about the future, but Lyra could tell that there was a lot of pain in Orph’s past. She didn’t ask him about it often. He did so much for her, so why bring up subjects that caused him pain?
Lyra warmed her hands over the fire. “What if they don’t want me there?” she asked, pointing at the giant tree in the distance glowing like a second moon.
“Then they’ll just have to deal with you.” Orph said, “And if anyone wants to give you trouble, they’ll have to deal with me.” He picked up his stick and held it threateningly. “People can think whatever they want about you. That doesn’t make them right.”
His words didn’t make Lyra feel any better. “They are though.” she mumbled.
“Lyra…” Orph started, but she cut him off.
“I know what people say about me, that I don’t have a soul. I’m a mistake. I was made wrong.”
Orph reached out and took her hand, tightening his grip when she tried to pull away. “Listen to me, Lyra. You aren’t made wrong. I don’t ever want to hear you say that ever again. I don’t care what anyone says, this is what I’m saying. I know you, they don’t. They don’t know anything because they’ve never met anyone like you. You have a bigger heart, and a better soul than anyone I’ve ever met, certainly more than I do.”
Lyra didn’t say anything. It was not the first time they had had this conversation. Orph loved her, and he probably meant what he said, but kind words wouldn’t give her wings, and they wouldn’t take away the feeling of envy she felt every time he took to the air while she was left. Orph wasn’t an Earthbound. He didn’t know how lonely it was to feel like he weren’t a real member of his own race.
Orph started talking again. “And if you’re still worried, it’s forbidden to do hurt another faerie while on the World Soul.”
“There’s a law against it?” Lyra said.
“Laws are for dwarfs, we don’t need them. Anyone can just make up any old law. This goes much higher than that. The World Soul is the most sacred place in the whole world. Anyone who would harm someone else in the place that all life comes from is tainted forever. Even the animals know that. You won’t have to worry about any birds trying to eat you there. They’ll just wait until you’re out of the tree to do that.” He said with a laugh. “I’m done talking about this. Play me a song on your flute, little girl.”
Lyra may not have been able to fly, but nobody was better than her when it came to music. She had a small wooden flute Orph had gotten her once a long time ago, and he loved listening to her play on it. He liked to say that the World Soul had given her that talent to make up for her lack of wings.
Maybe he was right. When Lyra put the flute to her lips and began to play, she didn’t feel so bad. The beautiful notes filled the air and Orph lay back on the sand and closed his eyes.
When Lyra was done playing, she put the flute back in her bag and went down to the edge of the lake. She wanted to see if a fish would jump out of the water again. She was surprised when she saw a little boat. There were two figures in the boat, but they were too far away for her to make out their features.
One of the figures held a spear above his head, watching the water intently. Suddenly, he drove into the water, and a little fish floated up with the spear sticking out of its side. Both of the fishers lifted it into the boat.
They took out paddles and the boat began to move. Lyra realized that they were coming in her direction. She could see them more clearly now that they were closer. The men were blue skinned, with green hair that looked like seaweed, and their eyes were big and round like a fish’s.
They were nixies. Lyra had seen them before. They lived in small communities along the Big Water, but she’d never had much contact with any of them. She didn’t know if the nixies would be dangerous or not, but one of them had a spear.
Lyra retreated back to the fire and shook her brother awake.
“What’s the matter?” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“There’s two nixies coming. I think they want our fire. One of them has a spear.”
Orph looked at the approaching boat. “Let me do the talking when they get here, and be ready to run if things go bad.”
He took his stick and laid it across his lap. Lyra sat down next to him and let him put a protective arm around her.
The nixies landed their boat on the sand and pulled it up away from the water. One of them took the spear and the other one lifted the dead fish over his shoulders. They both came walking toward the fire.
Orph stood up, knobby stick in hand. “What do you need?” he called out.
The nixie with the spear said, “You have a fire and we have a fish. Much easier to use your fire than to make a new one.”
“You’re welcome to share it then. There’s room for all of us here.” Orph said.
The nixie nodded, and both of them came and sat by the fire. The one carrying the fish dropped it on the ground with a plop. Orph waited until they had laid their spears in the sand before he put down his stick. “My name is Orph and this is Lyra, my sister.”
“I am Ro.” the nixie who had carried the fish said.
“And I am Aul.” said the other one. He was looking at Lyra intently. “You are faeries?”
“We are.” Orph said.
“You are.” Ro replied. “What is she? Faeries have wings like dragonflies, that is known.”
“I’m a faerie.” Lyra said defensively. “I was born without them.”
Aul said, “The girl is touched by the Aether.”
Lyra had never heard that word before. “I’m touched by what?”
Aul pointed up at the sky, which had grown dark and full of stars. “Long ago the world was made out of Air, Water, Earth and Fire, and all of us are spirits of those. You are Air and we are Water. Things were not always such. In the long long ago there were the Aether spirits. Beings of Star and Void”
“Elves.” Orph said. “They lived in castles woven out of starlight and taught the faeries how to spin glamers out of the air. I’ve heard the stories.”
“Elves.” Aul agreed, “They were the Star people, and the daemons were made of the Void. They walked this world, but they were not of it.”
“That’s because they don’t exist.” Orph said. “There’s no such things as elves or daemons. They’re just stories.”
“They live above us now.” Aul continued, ignoring him. “They leave us their gifts, but they are not given freely. They take something in return. In our village, there was a child born with no eyes, and when we saw him we celebrated the gift the Aether spirits gave us. An eyeless nixie can see the future and warn us of danger before it comes. A Seer is the most honored member of a village.”
“Well I can’t see the future.” Lyra said.
“Future sight is a gift given to Water spirits.” Aul said. “Some nixies have the gift, but the merrows who live in the deep dark all can do it. You are an Air spirit. You will have a different gift. Your wings are the price the Aether spirits took for the gift they gave you.”
“Well I wish they’d kept their gift then.” Lyra said. “How good could it be if I don’t even know what it is?”
“It is not for us to ask such things. We must live the best we can with the gifts we are given, and trust that they were given wisely. You were given this gift for a reason. You must find what that reason is.”
“Aul’s gift is his talent for talking your ears off.” Ro said. “I am hungry, and talking will not cook this fish.”
Before long the nixies had the fish roasting on a makeshift spit over the fire. The skin crackled and hissed from the heat, and the smell of cooked meat filled Lyra’s nose. Lyra had never eaten fish before, and the smell was strange to her nose. It made her feel nauseous.
“You are going to the Tree of Life?” Ro asked.
“We are.” Orph said.
“We see many faeries coming this time of year, and we see the light and hear the music from the Tree. We dance along with it in the village.”
“Have you ever been there?” Lyra asked.
Ro laughed. “The Tree is very tall and we do not like such heights. Nixies go deep underwater, not high in the air. That is the faeries’ domain. Still, we celebrate the spring in our own way, and a spring that comes warm and early like this one is one to celebrate.”
“Is it?” Aul said.
“Of course it is.” Orph said. “How could it not be?”
“Do not get him started.” Ro said.
“You have seen the Mountain smoking.”
The Mountain had loomed at the edge of Lyra’s world her entire life, the giant monolith of stone dominated the northern horizon, hiding the angry furnace that was its heart. It was the realm of the salamanders, nightmarish creatures who made their kingdom on its slopes and ruled over the ash covered wasteland that surrounded it. That was the realm of Fire, and all the stories about that place were terrifying.
“Let the Mountain belch.” Ro said. “It means nothing.”
“What is he talking about?” Lyra said.
“You have heard stories of faeries long ago who lived in the starlight castles they had learned to make from the elves?”
Lyra nodded. She knew all the stories. Her favorite was of the faerie queen Orra, who tragically fell in love with the prince of the elves and lost her kingdom for it.
“There are no starlight castles now though.” Aul said. “No kings and queens of faeries, just faeries living in the wild and on the Tree of Life. The time of Air has passed. After it was the time of Water. Nixies lived in underwater cities and ruled kingdoms beneath the waves of the Big Water. Now we do not. The ruins of our cities stand empty at the bottom of the black sea, lost forever. Nixies live in huts of mud and we eat fish, but we do not rule them. Merrows once were revered, and people came from all over to hear their futures and bring offerings to sate the sea witches’ hunger, but now there are few merrows left in the world, and they hide deep underwater and nobody but a few ever see them. Now it is the time of Earth. Dwarfs build their citadels and fight their wars between themselves and their goblin enemies.”
“The dwarf kingdoms are magnificent.” Orph said. “But what does this have to do with spring?”
“The time of Earth is coming to its end.” Aul said. “And the time of Fire will follow it. The Mountain is smoking more and more. Soon it will erupt, and spread its flames across the whole world.”
“Aul believes in children’s tales.” Ro said. “The world is as it was yesterday, and tomorrow it will be as it was today. An early spring means more food, and the Mountain can spew all the smoke it wants. It has a heart of Fire, and fire makes smoke. That is all.”
Orph had Lyra play her flute for them all. When Aul heard the music play, he smiled.
“Perhaps that is the gift you were given.” he said. “You are a beautiful player.”
Ro began to sing along with her music, some nixie song she didn’t know. Aul joined his voice with Ro’s and Orph joined along once he had learned the words. Lyra was still awake when they’d all gone to sleep, sitting and staring at the distant shadow of the Mountain.

When Lyra woke that morning, Orph was still asleep next to her. Ro lay on the other side of the fire pit, but Aul wasn’t there. She rubbed her eyes and saw him down in the lake, submerged up to his waist in the rippling water.
Lyra went down to the water’s edge and watched him. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Aul turned and said, “I am getting wet. One should never start a day off without submerging in the water. It is where nixies belong. Our spirits are made from its essence.”
“Oh. Can I ask you something?”
“I believe you just did.”
“Nixies can breathe in the water, can’t they?”
Aul laughed. “We would hardly be Water spirits if we could not, now would we? We were made for the water.”
“Well, why is it that you live on land instead of water then? If you belong in the water, why did and Ro need to come up on land to sleep with us? And why do you build your villages on the shore?”
Aul sighed. “It was not always so. The water is dangerous. Once nixies ruled under the sea, and all the creatures under the waves were our subjects, except for the merrows. The Big Water was ours, and all the rivers and lakes and streams. Faeries and dwarfs and goblins all lived in awe of us, and in fear too, for nixies disdained the land and the creatures who walked on it. I doubt those nixies had much in common with the ones you see now. They must have been regal and proud and magnificent. Do I look regal to you, child?”
“No.” Lyra said.
“No more than you do. That time is gone now. The fish do not call us masters anymore. If we lived in the water with them, they would eat us all up, so we build our huts on land and live our lives under the sun. But the water is where we came from, and we cannot bear to be far from it. Would you want to live underground, away from the open sky?”
Lyra hated being underground. All faeries did. All that Earth surrounding her, pressing in on every side and no sky above… it was interminable.
“Is that why you aren’t going to the World Soul then?” she said.
“Up in the air.” Aul shuddered. “The air is meant for your kind, faerie girl, and you are welcome to it. I would sooner have my lake. Now enough of this talking. Play me a song while I swim.”
After Ro woke up, the two nixies climbed back into their little boat and set off across the glittering water.
“Orph, do you think the Star spirits gave me a gift?” The boat was just a dot, lost in the bright blue lake under a bright blue sky.
“I don’t think stars care about anything that happens down here.” Orph said. He shouldered his bag and tossed Lyra’s into her chest. “Now come on. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”