The Secrets of Elderville

With the first rays of light bringing in the new day, and no word from Theo of Jessa’s return, Rose knew something bad had happened to her sister. Bolting in through the door of her hollow, Theo crashes into her desk, his teal wings fluttering intensely, knocking her enchantment books everywhere.

“Theo! What the hell?”, brushing off his shorts, Theo stands and rushes towards his sister, grabbing ahold of both her shoulders, locking eyes he says, in a hushed tone, “We know nothing, okay? Nothing!” He then goes to collect the books and set them back on her desk. Rose stood confused, about to ask her brother what did she not know? When suddenly two royal guards fly into her hollow followed by, “Mother!” Rose squealed, immediately feeling her chest tighten and her palms sweat. “Jessa has missed yesterday’s second and third gathering and when I send guards to collect her this morning from her hollow, she is not there. Then I send them to her teacher Mr. Milo, and he has not seen Jessa for weeks! Dreading that she is at the bottom, I send my guards to investigate there, yet still no sign of her. And so, I ask you both once and only once, where is Jessa? I know you know so confess and your punishment will be less severe.”

Rose glances at Theo whose head hangs low, clutching his wrists. Rose looks down to see she is also clutching her own wrists. As Isobel waited impatiently for an answer, pacing around her youngest’s hollow. After several minutes, the Queen turns her back on her children, facing the door, she comes to a decision. “Very well, you leave me no choice. Both of you shall be sent to the last branch on the elder tree for three months. You will assist our eldest wanderer with whatever he wishes.” Theo and Rose look up at their mother then at each other, knowing exactly who the wanderer is. “As for your sister,” Isobel directs her next demand to the guard on her left, “Send two guards to cut the string at the bottom and then put a twenty-four-seven watch around the perimeter of the tree,” facing her children and seeing their shocked expressions thrilled her inside. Smiling she says, “If your sister wishes to be an outcast, then an outcast she shall be,” turning her back once again, she exits the hollow.

“She can’t do that!” Theo stomps his foot, unable to throw anything for this is not his hollow. “Yes, she can. She’s Queen,” Rose says quietly. She goes over to her bed and slumps down in defeat. “We must do something Rose! We can’t let Jessa fend for herself out there! She’ll die!” he plops down on the floor at the end of her bed, staring at her blank expression. “What can we do Theo? We don’t know a thing about the ground below, we would die sooner than Jessa. And you heard mother, the string is to be cut, how would we get down there? Also, knowing mother, I’m sure both of us are being watched from now on.” Realizing his sister was right, Theo hangs his head once again. Collapsing on the floor next to Rose’s feet, Theo covers his face with his hands. “To make this situation worse, we have to take care of him for three months!”, motioning his hands down towards the floor. Rose dreaded the thought of having to smell him and the difficult decision one faces of what part of his face to stare at. The cold, black eye? Or his gray beard, that always has elderberry juice stains on it. “It’s only three months,” Rose said, trying to lighten their situation, “how bad can Nail be?”

Jessa awakens to a strange and very loud horn. Rubbing her eyes, she slowly rises in a sitting position, and scans her surroundings. She realizes quickly that she was sleeping in an owl’s nest. She rushes to the edge of the nest and looks to the sky, as the sun rises higher, she searches for the owl who took her and questions why it did not eat her when it had the chance? Focusing her sight on the ground now, she sees that she is quite a distance from the bottom and that she is no longer surrounded by mountains and trees but by huge man-made homes. The loud horn noise, began again, redirecting her eyes to the noise’s main source. An enormous shiny blue creature with four wheels, much bigger wheels than the ones back at the village, comes driving up and stops next to the tree she is in. Out of the man-made home, comes- Jessa gasps, “A human!” Jessa had only ever seen a human from the book ‘All About Humans’ found in the restricted section of the record hollow. I can’t believe it’s a human! She thought, wait till Rose and Theo… she pauses. Oh no! Where am I? If there’s humans, then that means I’m very far from home. What am I going to do?! But more importantly, where’s that owl?

As if on cue, she feels a great big thump behind her, knowing it’s the owl she steadily turns to face it. It’s enormously round, yellow eyes stared directly into Jessa’s red eyes. For several minutes, this is all it did. The suspense being too much to handle, Jessa finally spits out, “Well?! Aren’t you going to eat me?” The owl’s eyes squinted at her then unexpectedly bursts into a fit of hoo-ing that seemed to be laughter. It then squeaked out, “You wanderer’s sure are a hoot!” It cradled its belly with its wings and laughed some more. Jessa’s mouth dropped open, barely able to utter a word, she finally says, “You talk!” the owl ceases its laughter long enough to reply, “Yes and so can you! Isn’t it marvelous?” it then continues its laughter. Getting frustrated, she could feel her cheeks start to warm, “Why am I here?! You took me from my village, and for what?! Obviously not to eat me, so tell me, why did you take me?!” crossing her arms, she stomps her foot as she glares at the owl. “My, my she told me her sister was bad, but I don’t know, her niece may be worse,” the owl mutters to himself. Jessa’s arms drop, “What did you say?” The owl straightens upright, ruffling down his feathers, “What? I said nothing, must’ve been the wind you heard,” he nervously laughs. Jessa steps closer to the owl, “No, no I heard you say niece. D-do you know my aunt Opal?” Her heartbeat begins to quicken, as the owl fiddles with a twig from the nest. Tired of the owl’s games, Jessa launches up into the air and flies straight towards the owl’s face. Grabbing hold of his sharp beak, she locks eyes, “I’m not sure what my aunt is doing with an owl like you, and I don’t really care at this moment, now explain yourself or I’ll be sure to cast an enchantment to silence you forever,” even though she was fibbing, seeing the terror in his eyes, she knew the owl believed her lie. Releasing his beak, Jessa lands back onto the nest and resumes her stance from before, awaiting the owl’s explanation. “Well?”, she says, impatiently tapping her foot. The owl exhales, “Ok, ok yes I know your aunt Opal, but I can’t tell you where she is or why she sent me to get you,” the owl looks down but then darts his eyes back up at Jessa, realizing he’s said too much. “She sent for me?” Jessa starts to pace in the nest, “but why? You must tell me why and how did she even know I existed? She left before I was born.” The owl wanting to change the subject and fast, suddenly grabs Jessa by her shoulders and lifts her high into the sky. Kicking her legs, she screams, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU STUPID BIRD!” The owl only laughs out a hoot and replies, “You have all these questions that only she can answer, so to Opal I shall take you! Hold on, it’s a bit of a ways down the road, boy is she going to be happy with me once she sees you!”

As they land on the last branch of the elder tree, Theo and Rose peer to their left, into the dark and empty hollow. The only sound being the gentle breeze blowing through the leaves. “Should we knock?” Rose whispers, as Theo raises his hand to, a soft grunt comes from the hollow and out hobbles Nail. Always wearing his squirrel pelt and stench of elder berries, he motions for Rose and Theo to enter.

Slowly, they take in Nail’s hollow, filled with random junk. But not just any old junk, human junk. Stuff Theo and Rose had only ever seen in books that Jessa would show them, like large metal circles with a huge crystal in the center, that humans call rings. They had never seen a picture of an actual human before, Rose lifts her hand to one, mesmerized by a picture of a man with dark black hair and green eyes, the color of the elder leaves. “Beautiful,” she whispers to herself, “What’d ya say?” Theo squints at the man, “I wonder what they’re like? Mother makes them seem evil, but grandmother and Jessa said they were saviors to our kind. Which is true?” Rose drops her hand and turns to face the rest of the hollow, “knowing mother, she was definitely lying. But I think she only wants to protect us from the harms of the outside world.” She picks up a book titled, ’All About the Great Horned Owls”, blowing off the dust it accumulated over time. Rose looks around the room, her eyes focusing on Nail, who is hunched over his table scribbling rapidly; she approaches him slowly, looking over his furry squirrel pelt to see that he is writing a list. Nail swiftly turns around, face to face with Rose who is getting the full aroma of elderberries. He holds up the list, hiding his face, Rose takes it and begins to read it out loud.

Clean

Organize

Cook

Clean after meal

Leave

Repeat next day

Rose sighs and glances at Theo, who is surveying the hollow, then looks at his sister, mouthing the word, “fuck”. For they had never cleaned nor cooked their entire life, being royalty and all. They walk towards the collection of rings, with their backs to Nail, Theo whispers, “I’ve never cooked before!”, he glances back wiping sweat from his forehead. “I know, we’ve never cooked nor cleaned before but it can’t be that bad, right?” Rose says. They both turn to face Nail again, only now he is crouched by the window, where there are two sticks leaning against the wall, and another one in his hand that he is carving with a tiny shard of red glass. “Think he’s planning on skinning us and draping our skins over his neck?” Theo says jokingly, Nail slightly turns his head towards them. Startled that he could hear him, Theo jumps a little and picks up a broom, sweeping in a panic. Rose giggles and walks towards the piles of books, grabbing a cloth, she begins to dust each book while also reading their titles, making a mental note to ask Nail if she could borrow them at some point.

For what seemed like forever, which it always does for Jessa, her and the owl finally land on a branch in a huge tree. The biggest one she had ever seen, and the tree grows in front of a large home, painted a light blue, with two of those silly, metal looking things in front of it as well. “Best go inside now, she’s been wanting to meet you for a long time,” the owl motions towards the trunk of the tree where she could make out a little hollow. So small, she had to scrunch up her body to enter it, but once her eyes adjusted to the slightly dim hollow Jessa gasped at the things inside. Little lights attached to string hung all around and large pieces of paper with drawings of wanderers. But soon she realized that all of the drawings were of the same wanderer with silver hair. In the middle of the hollow is a tube of sorts that begins at the floor and stops midway to the roof. Then suddenly a piece of rolled up paper shoots up from below, and she hears footsteps running away from the tree outside. Jessa quickly looks out the doorway to see a human lady darting inside the big house, how odd, she thought.

“Jessa?” She quickly turns her body around. From around the tube, comes her silver haired aunt wearing a beautiful silky silver top and skirt, “Aunt Opal? Is it really you?” Opal walks closer, “Yes it really is. I’m glad to finally meet my curious little niece. Though you’re not so little anymore,” Opal smiles and opens her arms. Jessa, without hesitation, runs into her arms warmly embracing her long-lost aunt.

“You sent for me? By owl? I thought I was a goner when he picked me up,” Jessa and Opal now sit by a small window with a view of the big house, sipping butterfly pea tea. “Cornelius? He’s harmless. I nicknamed him Corny; I enchanted him the first time I saw him. He was stuck in a man-made trap. His big owl foot was caught in some string, he was struggling so much that he was making the string grow tighter around his leg, so I had to cast a vocal spell and communicate to him that he needed to be still for me to cut the string off. He hasn’t shut up since that day, the rascal,” Opal smiles and sips her tea. “Anyways, getting to the point. Yes, I sent for you, Cornelius has been keeping tabs on you for me for quite some time. Updating me on your adventures, I was told that you and I are quite alike in a lot of ways.” Jessa sets her teacup down, “Who told you that?”

“My mother, who else would risk sending me letters? Mother would give them to Nail, and Nail would hand them to Corny and Corny would give them to me and so on.” Jessa smiles, remembering her grandmother’s defiant ways against her mother. “But grandmother never told me you were writing each other. She acted as if she hadn’t spoken to you ever since yo-…” Jessa stopped herself, unsure if the topic of her aunt leaving the village was a touchy subject or not. “Ever since I left? Yes, well I asked her not to because of your mother. If she knew where I was and that I befriended a great horned owl, Isobel would’ve sent the royal guards after me and killed Cornelius.” Jessa, unfazed by this, only nods her head in agreement. “So, the question still remains, why send for me?” Jessa intertwines her fingers, as her aunt collects the teacups and puts them in the wash basin. “Well, I sort of need help. Your help, specifically. You see there’s this human and well I think she could help save our village from certain doom,” Opal, looking down at the dishes, glances up at Jessa, whose jaw has dropped open in confusion. The only thing she can say is, “what?”

End of Chapter Three.