Chapter 2: Anthem


The gentle river Ilara was used to had never been more rapid than what she now struggled against, her arms aching from their effort to keep her riverboat heading in one direction. Several times she thought it was going to overturn but a burst of adrenaline had given her enough strength to steer the boat off to the side of a curve where the jutting ground protected her momentarily from the raging current. She had spent an entire night struggling to keep her boat in one piece and going in one direction, and now the sun was rising as she came to a fork in the river. She found enough strength to slow her boat and examine which way to go. She knew the fastest way to the town was through the narrower way, where the waters would crash against her boat the whole way and possibly deny her any safe place to land and rest for the night. The wider opening looked calmer, but it gave her slight misgivings. She did not have any idea where that way would lead, but that actually added to her sudden desire to veer course and take the unknown way. Even if she hadn’t had the adventurous spirit she did, her exhaustion would probably have led her to the same conclusion. Seeing how alluring it would be to have a bit of rest and a more likely chance of finding a safe place to dock her boat, she made her choice and began the final battle against the current until she was calmly floating down her new course.

After an hour of smooth sailing, Ilara began to look for a place to stop and rest for the hot part of the day. The forest surrounding the river was thicker than she had thought it should be. She stopped several times to pick at the brush with her paddle to find a clearing but each time she was disappointed. She kept going further and further until the sun was in the middle of the sky and an ominous stillness made her uneasy once more. Before long the river’s strength was picking up. At this point Ilara was exhausted and her eyes were strained from a lack of sleep. She began getting clumsy in her fatigue, letting her boat hit types of debris she would have been more careful to avoid hours earlier. When she began to despair of finding a place to land, she thought of just tying her boat to a log or low-lying branch along the river to regain her strength. One such anchoring point came into her vision and she paddled toward it, all the while the river seemed to be flowing more and more strongly. About to grab hold of the tree branch, her hand slipped and her boat continued forward with the strengthening current. One horrifying glance up and something she had been too tired to realize set in: this river was quickly coming to a drop-off, and the sounds of falling water crashing against rocks of indeterminate distance below came thundering to her senses. "God of heaven"… her voice took off without her control and formed words she didn’t hear. "Deus, help me!" she muttered under her breath as she turned in her seat and began paddling fiercely against the current and off toward one bank. It was pointless, even with the adrenaline coursing through her and making her limbs useful and her mind quick, the current was too strong to fight. She turned back again as she saw the approach of the ledge and out of instinct grabbed hold of the sides of the boat and pushed her feet into the bottom, every muscle tensing as forcefully as the next.

Her eyes were wide and her heart was in her stomach as the boat reached the end and began tipping forward with the flow of falling water. Weightless, Ilara and everything she could claim as her own careened downward and time seemed to slow to a halt. An eerie calmness took her and she found herself looking around and catching sight of the beautiful scene before her: the immense waterfall and the peaceful lake it flowed into, the wild hills and trees around it, the water droplets as they passed before her eyes and the strands of dark hair that were flowing freely around her face. This is my end, she thought, and the way time slowed and varying memories pushed themselves to the front of her mind in stark clarity actually fooled her into believing it were so.

As alternately quick or sluggish as time seems to arbitrarily flow, the moment of stillness ceased and a powerful, chaotic disturbance sped things up before the darkness of unconsciousness.

Coughing, Ilara awoke and expelled the water in her lungs. Her head ached in tune with her body and a cold numbness made her teeth chatter. She made the rash decision to crawl toward the dry ground, as she was currently lying in the rocky shallows of the lake. As soon as she supported her weight on her left arm, she felt a surge of sharp pain in her wrist and collapsed back into he shallow water. Looking down she saw red clouds spreading in the water. She had bleeding cuts on every limb and her ribcage stung and throbbed.

"I’m alive," she whispered to herself and closed her eyes at the pain of sitting up. She frowned and wondered how it was possible, then inwardly shrugged and brushed it off as luck. No Supreme Being could care enough to save her meaningless life, so what else could it be?

She cast a brief thought to her outcry to Deus, the god her older siblings had raised her to believe in. It was done out of desperation, but she was almost ashamed she had let herself be weak enough to cry out. She needed to be sufficient for herself, and even if she couldn’t be, Deus would stay as distant as always and no hand of help or voice of loving-kindness would He reach out to her. It was better to be in control and leave the tough things up to luck; chances were better there than with a god she couldn’t trust.

These cynical thoughts passed and she struggled to her feet. Her legs had minimal damage, most of her pain coming from her left side along her ribs, shoulder and wrist. Coming up to the sandy shore, she surveyed her surroundings and spotted her pack, still tied securely and seeming to be intact along the waters edge fifteen feet in front of her. More luck. She turned and looked for her boat. Tattered chunks of carved wood were scattered on both shores and many fragments still floated out over the calm waters the waterfall poured into. One piece the size of her hand floated toward her and she bent on her knees to lift it up with her right hand, discovering even with cautious movements that pain was inescapable.

She took the remaining fragment of her home and took a slow seat in the tall grass surrounding the lake. She rubbed her thumb across the delicate iris carved into the stained wood that had once formed part of the riverboat’s sturdy wall. Anger and disappointment mingled across her brow and she tried not to cry, looking through blurry eyes at the other massacred shreds of Daelia’s former masterpiece strewn about the lake. She lay down in exhaustion and anger and closed her eyes.

Unconsciousness took her again. She slept through the afternoon and into the evening. When she awoke, she was assaulted with the realization of her circumstance and the throbbing and stinging of every part of her body. Her eyesight was blurry and she felt dizzy; she had a goose-egg on the back of her head to account for it. She had a scrape over her left brow and bringing her hand over her face, she discovered it caked with dried blood and stinging at the touch.

Several moments of fuming and groaning and a fight with her will brought her to her feet to retrieve her pack. Everything was in order, though a little wet. This made her spiteful at her own pack, if such a thing were possible. She shoved it about and treated it like refuse in light of the loss of what was dearer to her. What is the retaining of amenities compared with the loss of a comforting, priceless memento as her boat had been? She had her quiver of arrows and her bow within the large pack, and for these she was grateful, but it gave little comfort in light of her loss.
She fished through the pack and retrieved an ointment Sam had given her. With this she treated her wounds and bound them in torn cloth. Finding that her wounds were mostly superficial and only her left upper body was much affected, She made a sling for her left arm and adjusted it for comfort. She easily took to favoring her right as she tested her abilities by gathering her things back into her pack. Carefully, she strapped her bow and quiver to her back, a more deliberate motion now that she was being careful with her left side.

When she was finished, she closed her eyes and tried to evaluate her condition. She felt pain, but nothing she could not bear. She knew she had damaged her head, but the dizziness had worn off and she was too upset to just sit still, even if she had still been dizzy. She decided to move on.
Before she turned to make her way through this foreign wood, she carefully crouched and took hold of the stray remain of the boat she had found earlier. She looked again over the lake that now sparkled in the moonlight and up at the waterfall she knew not how she survived, and placed the piece of wood in her pack. She could not leave every shred of Daelia’s gift to the decay of the elements. She would not let every piece of her former life be taken from her.

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After a full night of hiking over the forested hills her misadventure had destined her to traverse, Ilara found a clearing in between two small hills and deemed it as good a place as any to make camp. The sun was rising, her usual cue to get some rest when it wasn’t possible for her to take pleasure in the sunrise. She settled down under a pine and was asleep before the sky had lost its morning blush.

She had been asleep through the early morning when the sound of feet through tall grass awoke her. She opened one eye slowly and remained still, her nose telling her there was a beast in her camp.

All she could see were gigantic, black wings, spread open to a width as long as most trees are tall. She slowly and quietly sat up, reaching for her knife, knowing her injuries would not allow her to use her bow. What in the world? –she could not decide what kind of creature it was that had invaded her camp. It’s wings spread out a bit further, as if stretching, and then swiftly folded together over the back of a catlike beast. It’s back was to her, displaying its long, swaying tail, strong back legs adorned with fierce ebony claws, and the back of it’s head, which was covered with a thick black mane of the same tone and shine as its wings and fur—it was a male. It was some kind of winged lion; the likes of which Ilara had never seen or heard of. It walked slowly to her pack, a fair distance from her place beneath the pine branches, and nudged it with its nose. A soft, rumbling growl escaped its throat. It hadn’t noticed her—yet.

Ilara remained frozen, knowing not how to react to the creature. She was in no state to attempt to subdue it, like she would have been apt to do had this beast happened upon her a few days ago, but now she berated herself for her lack of readiness. Why didn’t I just take the set course? She asked herself, wishing now more than ever she hadn’t sought the unknown. If she had known the river path she had taken would lead to the loss of her boat and the loss of her ability to defend herself, she would have taken the rougher, surer course without a second thought. Still, she was where she was now and there was nothing to reverse it; she would meet with her fate whatever it may be, and she might as well meet it bravely.

She held her knife in the preparatory throwing stance, keeping her aim decidedly on the side of the beast’s chest, hoping it would just leave so she could avoid the need to fight such a majestic creature.

Perhaps it was the racket of her harsh breathing or the pounding of her heart that gave her away; the beast turned its head and looked directly into the eyes of the poised Ilara. It leapt in one bound to stand in front of the pine and stare down at her, its head just under the lowest boughs, and its wings held steadily spread to the fullest of their span. Spreading its teeth and growling what seemed to say, "Foolish creature, you’re now my prey," the lion crouched lower and moved slowly closer to her, it’s golden eyes intent on her own.

Moving would have done little good, and since her body set itself like stone in its place, she didn’t fight with it to gain a useless flight. The beast edged closer, its eyes glaring at her as emotive as that of a human—displaying an angry thirst for violence. It would have been easy, at this point and with her skill, to launch the knife the small distance and hit the beast between the eyes, but the thought—in the infinite span of a moment that can produce such complex movements of the mind—was somehow repugnant to her. What else could she do? On impulse, Ilara dropped the knife, closed her eyes, and did the first thing that came to mind—she sang.
The words and melody of her song were as foreign to her as they were to the lion-beast. She did not know she knew the song until it poured forth from her lips; an old melody her mother sang to her as a very young girl. It was a lullaby that bespoke the turn of the seasons and the ever-steady sun shining over it all. Tears came to her closed eyes as she sang, not knowing how she would live through this; not knowing if it mattered.

A moment for no more than a line of verse passed and nothing had happened. She sang on with unsteady voice. Two lines. Three. A stanza. Words came from nowhere. Her song was soon ended and she opened her gray-hazel eyes to see the beast standing calmly before her, his stance passive, head tilted to one side, and golden eyes set on her face. Shocked, Ilara stared. He sat down, much like a dog, holding her eyes captive with his own. He tilted his head the other way as if to request her to continue. What else could she do? She opened her lips again, a bit more calmly now, and began a song of which she had recollected as she had sung the one before it. It was an anthem of the deeds of Deus. How ironic, that worship should pour forth from her lips—steadier now than before—to a god she saw as distant, for a beast she thought untamable, and that it should be the very thing to save her life.

When her song was ended, the lion-beast got up and approached her. He sniffed her face and tunic and licked her cheek; the rough buds scratched in a way reminiscent of kisses from her father’s beard-covered face as a young girl. Feeling relieved as well as triumphant—lucky, again—she placed a hand to the lion’s thick mane and it was silky and warm. He rubbed his head against her arm and walked slowly out from under the tree and sat down in the middle her camp, yawned, folded his massive wings over his back, and laid himself down in passive observation. She stood up and walked over to him, marveling not only at the intense beauty of the strange creature with fur of obsidian and eyes that stared at her with the brilliance of sunbeams, but also at the absurdity of her safety.

Before she could discern what next to do, a shadow fell across the campsite. Dark clouds moving in so quickly? A glance up proved otherwise; two winged lions descended quickly, their combined shadows separating over the grassy clearing as they landed before her. With first observation, Ilara saw they were of the same species as the one who preceded them, but the arrivals were female—and as aggressive as the first had been prior to her songs. One was a red-brown from tail to wing, the other a less unusual tan, and both nearly as large as the male.

As the new arrivals took the expected course—stalking slowly forward with teeth spread and intent clearly to make the human their prey—the song-soothed male placed his body in front of Ilara’s. His wings spread to cover her so that she could see nothing beyond them. It was not long before the others attacked his protective stance and he took them on in defense as Ilara fell back to watch. Of everything she had yet experienced, this was perhaps the most surreal.

Her eyes followed the fierce struggle that ensued between her ally and the intruders; it was obvious that though the fight was unevenly matched, the male had the advantage. It was not long before the dull-tan colored lion was subdued and sent flying away unsteadily, it’s face wounded and bleeding and its left paw held awkwardly up from a debilitating bite. The red-brown was more determined it seemed. Ilara began to fear for her male when the female struck him a vicious blow to his side and blood from the wound shined as the sunlight hit his dark fur. Still, her hero fought on. Finally, feeling both relief and repulsion, Ilara watched as her ally held the female down with his teeth in her jugular until she ceased the struggle and lay dead. The victor released the fallen beast and let out a roar of triumph that made Ilara shudder.

Questioning herself only briefly, Ilara approached her protector and stood beside him looking down at the defeated. It was a pity such a creature had to die. Now Ilara’s attention returned to the mercurial beast at her side. His wound catching up to him, the beast collapsed at her feet and his eyes shut. She quickly took to tending the wounds with the supplies Sam had given her—she sewed the wounds shut with a needle and thread when they had been well cleaned and the last of her ointment at been applied. The beast just lay there as she worked, occasionally opening his bright eyes only halfway—a signal Ilara quickly realized was a request for a song. In the act of singing to the beast and wiping away the last of the blood on his fur, Ilara began to see that he and she were now irrevocably connected. He had shown her mercy and protected her in the span of a few minutes, and she had tended his wounds and soothed him to sleep in return.

Drowsy from the exertions of the past hour, having been awakened from equally as wearying occurrences from the day before, Ilara lay over the beast and he protectively covered her with one wing. Before she fell to a heavy sleep, she grasped a clump of thick hair from his mane and whispered, "Thank you, my beast. Anthem; I’ll call you Anthem."