The Chaos Circles #4

Jaque tried to get some stray crumbs out of his dark brown head. His shoulder-length hair had always been untamed and none of the strands were at equal length. He always kept it tied back, but many shorter hairs escaped and fell loosely about his face, eyes and ears. He never gave much though about his appearance, but Lya often laughed how he looked like 'that hideous, hairy grassland cat' in the village hall worn old tapestry.

Lya used to never bother about the way she looked either, but it was becoming less obvious as she became older. Her mother made sure that Lya's black hair had been kept very short and neat. During their engagement, she allowed to grow a bit of braid and Jaque noticed that she was becoming very fond of it.

She always had a smaller profile than the other girls, which made her look younger than her fifteen or so years and had secreted recently that she wanted to compensate this by growing thick, shiny locks. Jaque grinned as he thought of how she would react if Mother Samuel decided that her only daughter should be shorn after tonight.

As Lya looked to be too small for her age, Jaque looked to be too lanky. It was a Jaymes trademark to be strong and muscular but he looked more off the Varn's tree. There is very few of his mother's family in Enatuh and none ever came to mid-village. Even as his approaching 19th summers, he was still too bony to work the field ploughs, an honourable coming-of-age duty. He thought bitterly of his eldest half-brother, Reakon, only eight but already brushing down his father's enormous Isna horses.

Jaque shook his head again, more to rid himself that the unpleasant thought.
"Well, all training will be done with once you've done your part. Just don't mess tonight's."
"Still," Lya began, "That's not a fair secret."
"Well, I've said it already, now it's your turn." said Jaque.

Lya looked at the moving sheep, watched as his three sheepdogs, Pat, Mat and Gnat herd them away from the darkness of the forest edge.
"The... King's Mages-" she said the last word as if it tasted bitter in her mouth. "-they are... they're on the move again. An order had just be issued last month. The message came to my father just yesterday."

The King's Mages. Jaque suddenly felt as if his heart had suddenly stopped. The Mages are on the move. So soon! Perhaps they had remembered something. Perhaps they had remembered what happened to Enatuh thirteen years ago. But even so...! He sucked in his breath and his ears felt as if it would burst to the sounds of his own heartbeat, drumming words into his mind. The Truth, the Truth, the Truth, the Truth...

"Jaque, what's the matter?" asked Lya.
She touched his hand that held the shepard's crook. A feel of warmth came to his wrist, first like a sharp needle jab, then like a splash of water. Jaque unclenched his other fist but he could still feel his own nails driving into his palm.
"I know you're worried. But they won't stop here. Our Home is just too isolated." said Lya.

Isolated was right. But not for Mages. Jaque half-wised she knew what he knew. Then it would have saved him the pain of explaining it all to her. But then she would want to escape with him. That he cannot allow, both for her sake and his.

She had already discovered her greatest secret, though she had not yet knew what it meant. That he was glad, for it would be the secret she knew that will help him leave, yet the secret she did not was the true reason he was leaving.

His heartbeat was still loud in his ears. The Truth, the Truth, the Truth, the Truth...

To be continued...