Page 34 of Awariye

"How do you know?" I asked, helping him set the bread on the table and out of reach of the dog, arranging our things.

"I have a phantasm on Uli's shoulder, a little wren," he explained. "It happened without my choosing last time, so I've been practicing doing it on purpose from now on. I can hear what happens near him, the hooves of the horses and what Uli says. The phantasm even survived me passing out. I still don't know what fully happened to me or why I lost consciousness. The magic came too quickly and was just too powerful for my mind to fathom."

A stone dropped in my stomach, and all my collected calm scattered to the wind. "Do you hear him fighting?"

Wren nodded.

My strength left and I sank to the bench, bending over and pressing my face into my hands, elbows into my knees as I proceeded to lose my shit.

Immediately Wren was at my side, rubbing his hand up and down my back. "What's happening?"

I bent down further, forcing myself to slow my breathing, but it still came in shallowly and then sped up again. I pushed words out of my mouth because the breath needed to form them necessitated deeper and slower pulls of air. Our tradition taught that the act of breathing reconnected a person to Nature because every breath we took was of Earth’s atmospheric body. In magical terms, exhalation released stuck points, hangups, and spiritual clutter, whereas inhalation could be used to breathe in one's higher soul.

Just the thought of my immortal soul coming in through my solar plexus as my lungs expanded served to put me back in touch with my emotions, not fully out of the panic, but also no longer so lost in my own mind. "How do you handle this? I'm in love with Igor, and I could lose him."

"Don't even think it," urged my friend. "Uli feels me there with him, so I have to keep my mental and emotional state level. Even while I perform this invocation and care for the lanterns, I have to believe in him with all my strength so he can fight without worrying about me."

That got me to look up at him, and I found determination in his eyes.

"We are in the hands of our gods," he reminded me. "Live or die tonight, they are with us, and always have been. There is an angel, a mighty being, standing with your higher soul, Awariye. Your immortal soul is sleeping in that angel's arms until you fully invoke him and finally come awake. You are never alone. All of us have people who love us, who will help us across the river, should we step through the veil tonight."

How could he be so strong? And yet I saw the way he looked at me, that he needed me to be there for him, too.

"I will help you with the lanterns," I promised. "I need to learn how to do this, so I can step in if you pass out."

He put both hands on my shoulders and touched our foreheads together. "Thank you. Come, the horses are running. There's still time."

* * *

I concluded we needed a pot of tea if we were going to sing through the night, so we hustled back to the kitchen and kept Bello with us by bribing him with treats.

Sigrid and the other staff were bustling around in preparations for the welcoming party that was custom for when the warriors came back. Evelyn popped in to help; her children were still sleeping but she too was wide awake after having her spouse spring from the bed.

Wren and I made standard tea with the customary alpineKräuterherbs.

"If we can figure out what works tonight," Wren leaned in and said softly, keeping out of the way of the staff as the kettle came to a boil, "we should record the process and send a copy to Marit for the library at Diana Monastery."

Wren so rarely mentioned Marit and Corbi, his former lovers and fellow monks. I wondered how he felt about all this; those three had been inseparable back in the day. "I can deliver it once the pass clears. Do you want to see them?"

Wren's brown eyes widened in shock. "Of course, I want to see them. I miss them like crazy, though I've been much better with you here. Part of the reason Uli and I fell into bed together so quickly was because I felt so shattered at leaving them, the hole in my heart so empty."

I bumped his shoulder and quipped, "Are you saying you did a rebound from two monks with the Danubian High King?"

I thought Wren would lighten up at my teasing, but instead he looked sad. "No, not at all. Uli found me grieving them. He swooped me up with his easy affection, and I handed my heart right over. I don't regret loving Uli; I'll never leave him."

"That wasn't what I meant," I chided gently.

Then he smiled. "I should've known you wouldn't jump to that conclusion. Sorry, Awariye, I'm not just tired, I think my consciousness is switching toward the task ahead of us and I'm not thinking clearly."

Clarity of thought was exactly what we needed right now. Our tradition didn't allow for trance states because it involved a loss of control over the situation and a surrendering of one's will, something extremely dangerous when dealing with such potent forces.

I tried to bring him back around to the topic at hand, grateful our upcoming tea had caffeine for mental focus. "You three were glued at the hip back before I left the monastery. Did something happen to allow you to separate?"

"No, nothing happened," he answered, his expression pained. "The instructors always told us not to fall in love with our partners, because our duty to the gods came first. After all this, I think that practice is very flawed."

"I think so too," I agreed. "Seeing how happy you were together taught me what a healthy relationship looks like. With you three to compare my flings to, I eventually just gave up on sleeping around."

He patted my shoulder affectionately. "Corbi, Marit, and I never said those words. As ordered, we followed the rules, and never said that we loved each other. I'd naively thought that we'd kept our hearts in check, but up alone at that mountain shrine, far away from home with only a dog and seven lanterns for company, I realized my heart had made its own decision. I had loved them after all. I don't know how they felt or currently feel. We never talked about it. I want to see them again, show them that I'm in a better place and I hope they are too."

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