Things just weren't the same since Kayeen had left. Home just didn't feel like home ever since he had walked away from that table and out of their lives. Avril felt like he needed to go too, but he just couldn't. Something was still missing. There was still some piece of the puzzle he felt like he was looking for.
So Avril stayed. He waited. Each morning he would go out and work with his sword. There was nobody who could teach him so he did his best trying to mimic the motions he remembered from Kayeen even though he was sure Kayeen had been just as clueless. At least he was getting a feel for the sword. From the first there was something inside him that he just knew the sword was a part of him. As the days passed, though, his body and mannerisms were coming to the same conclusion.
Avril had taken up the habit of rubbing his left thumb along the pearl as that hand rested against the pommel whenever he was deep in thought. He was doing it now, with his right hand holding a branch overhead when he heard somebody walking with purpose right toward where he was standing. Avril muttered "ascundi" and then slowly backed up right to the trunk of the tall pine.
The man walked to the edge of the forest about fifteen feet from where Avril was holding his breath. There he stopped and examined something in his hand. He nodded his head in satisfaction and then entered the woods and the mist making a beeline for Avril. When he was about five feet from Avril he stopped, looked at the ground in confusion, and then broke into a huge grin. He lifted his head to look directly at Avril and nodded in greeting. He then turned slightly towards the left and began making for their home.
Avril just stood there for a moment in shock and confusion. How had the strange man with curly reddish-brown hair been able to see him? It just didn't make sense. This was the first person Avril had ever seen this close up. Outside his family, he only a few times had glimpsed some random seal hunters along the western coast near the Lonely Oak. Beyond being a stranger where no other strangers had ever come, the fact that the man was able to see what should have been invisible made him a mystery that needed to be solved. So Avril began to follow him as closely as he dared.
As Gavril walked around the tree he saw the cliff right in front of him. Everything looked the same. Well, it all looked the same except the two legs that were dangling over the edge right above the entrance. He stood at the base of the cliff for a minute waiting for the legs' owner to show himself but they didn't seem in any hurry. The legs actually looked quite peaceful and still.
Feeling the chill of the brisk September air and remembering the warmth of the house inside Gavril cleared his throat pointedly. A voice responded from behind the legs, "Patience, patience. You've waited almost nineteen years to pay us another visit. What's a few minutes more?"
Gavril was flustered. "Well, I, ah"
"Yevenna and Sevi are out looking for the last of the berries. If you ask me, it's a futile task. Avril should be heading back from playing with his sword. I'm surprised you didn't meet up with him on your way here."
"Well, I"
"And it didn't take me long to see that all my traps were bare. The mist is not fully hiding the sun today so lets enjoy this nice weather while we still can."
Gavril tightened his cloak against the cold. "Nice?"
"Yes, Gavril." Andrei finally sat up. "Nice."
Gavril looked up at Andrei in shock. If he had not met the man nearly two decades ago, he would have sworn that Andrei was younger than himself. Avril's hair was a little different. He now had a thick goatee where before he had sported a short trimmed beard, but apart from that difference it looked as if only a few days had passed since he last walked into the north.
Andrei was also sizing Gavril up as he leaned over and dropped himself down off the seven foot cliff. "Don't tell Yvenna you saw me doing that." He said, "She keeps telling me we can't afford me getting a broken foot."
The two men grabbed each others shoulders in greeting. Andrei said to his still speechless guest, "Well, you've grown into your height quite well. I don't think I can get away with calling you 'boy' this time around. Let's get inside and wait for the others to get home."
Avril was watching from a distance and couldn't quite make out the conversation between this stranger and his father. When he saw them greet and then head inside Avril started making his own way to the house. While he had been shocked by the appearance of this visitor, it seems that the tables had been turned when the guest had met Andrei. Why was that? And why, after eighteen years of solitude had anybody come now?
He was just pulling back the door when his father called out in a tone of forced cheerfulness, "Avril, come meet your namesake."
There, rising from the table, was the man who had passed Avril on the way to the house. As Avril paused, Gavril said in a clear baritone, "Well, hello again."
Avril knotted his brow in confusion. "Again? How did you see me before?"
As Avril walked around to his place at the table, Gavril sat back down before replying. "There's more to being invisible than just disappearing. I could see an indentation in the moss you were stepping in, there was a bush being unnaturally bent up against the tree trunk, and, most of all, your breath was causing the mist to stir. Next time, hold it until I pass."
At this Andrei laughed heartily. "Son, you live off the land. You should have known better than that."
Gavril, smiling in agreement, turned towards Andrei and said pointedly, "Well, relying too much on being able to speak magik is a flaw of all the students as well as many others in the Society."
Looking back at Avril he continued, "You remember that fact and you'll do well and go far in the society."
Avril looked back and said, "But I'm not joining the Society."
At this Gavril joined Andrei in laughter. "I don't think you have much of a choice, young man. I didn't walk all this way for my health."
As the two older men regained composure Gavril asked, "By the way, where did you say his twin was?"
Silence reigned.
The next three days came and went like a blizzard. Gavril would have liked to give the boy more time with his family before heading out, but it simply wasn't possible. For one thing he had to get to a town where he could send a pigeon to the Society letting them know of the situation with Kayeen. From what he gathered, the boy was a danger to himself as well as others until he could be brought in. Whoever tried to do so, needed to approach him with care.
A closer and more practical need to hurry was the weather this far north. Yes, in most places September was still early autumn, but this far north winter was already setting in. It would be a few weeks before they made it below the Great North Range and he didn't want to have to wait for spring to cross.
So the already fragmented family had only a brief time before one more child left the nest. At least this time, it was under much better circumstances. Gavril had to admire the stoicism with which Avril had accepted his fate. Since leaving the forest in which he had spent so much of his life he had not once looked back. Yes, his head was down and tears were flowing from his eyes like water, but there had been no hesitation.
On the southwest horizon they could now begin to see the Lonely Oak breaking the otherwise completely flat landscape. Gavril, in amazement, was watching the tree slowly grow in size as they trudged footstep after desolate footstep. There were very few trees that grew north of Trapper's Point. Beyond the first few miles of that outpost there was only Andrei's forest that was fed by the hot springs and this one tree. The springs could account for that far northern forest, but Gavril could not grasp how this tree was able to grow in a tundra that barely was able to manage grass a few months of the year. How on earth could the tree remain standing through the strong winds that were legendary in this area?
It was a mystery that Gavril was trying to work out in his mind when suddenly he stopped. Avril continued on for about ten paces before he realized that he was alone. Stopping, he turned and looked at Gavril questioningly.
"Do you know what tree looks like?" Gavril asked him.
"An oak?" Avril answered, obviously confused.
"Yes, but well you never would have seen it. That oak looks like the tree of life."
Not grasping the full meaning of what Gavril was suggesting, Avril offered, "Isn't that the tree my parents killed? Was that an oak too?"
"Technically yes, but no. The tree was an oak, but it was much, much more. It grew on the edge of a desert, and I guess you could call this," Gavril waved his arm at the tundra surrounding them in every direction, "a desert. The tree was supposed to never die. And it had other qualities."
As he was talking, Gavril was walking up to his young charge. At this point he grasped the boy on both shoulders and commanded, "Tell me what you know about this tree, this lonely oak."
Avril started to answer and only began to understand what Gavril was suggesting as he did so. "Well, this tree is as far south as we are allowed to go. The western coast is famous for its seals that other trappers hunt. They use the oak as a reference point in where to break towards the coast. Kayeen used to come to this tree to practice with his sword until he left. Mom and dad well."
"What?" Gavril prompted.
"Well, they come here twice a year to meet with a trader. Sevyrn, I think it is."
"That wasn't what you were about to say."
Knowing he had been caught, Avril fixed his face in determination. "Well, that is all I am going to say."
"I just need you to confirm what I already know. This tree could save the Society. Tell me, your parents, they come here to this tree and bring something back with them, don't they. When I saw them before you were born, they looked the same age as they do now. They are still doing it, aren't they. They have managed to make the elixir of life."
Being distracted by the discovery he had made, Gavril didn't notice the fist heading for his jaw until it knocked him flat on his butt. Looking up he saw Avril pointing down at him, shaking with rage.
"You and your society kicked them out! You ripped away from them everything they knew and loved! You forced them into the miserable existence that they have tried to turn into a life. And the Tree followed them here! It didn't abandon them like you did! It abandoned you! I will not let you do that to them again."
Avril tried to yank his sword free, but it wouldn't budge. He grabbed the scabbard with his left hand and pulled with all his strength with his right. Finally, at the second such pull, it came free with such a force that it flew straight out of his hand and landed in the ground point first about ten yards away.
Shaking with frustration and rage Avril fell to the his knees and began to weep. As pity replaced his fear, Gavril reached up and placed one hand on the boy's shoulder. Then he pulled his head into his own shoulder as Avril's tears continued to flow. For a moment they both clung to each other as Avril continued to let out all his pent up emotion about his brother, and leaving home, and his conflicted feelings about what his parents had done. As his vision cleared Avril looked over his shoulder to notice that the sword had landed directly in his line of vision to the tree. In fact, it looked as if the blade of the sword had become the tree trunk. Or seen another way, the leaves and branches of the tree were sprouting out from the hilt of the sword.
Noticing that Avril had stopped crying, Gavril gave him a pat on the back and then pulled himself away to look at him. "Come, lad." He said, "We need to continue south. Let me tell you a bit more about the tree."
As they both stood up and brushed themselves off, in the cadence of a bard sharing a familiar tale, Gavril began, "In the days when the earth was young, nothing grew, nor lived anywhere on the planet. It was much as you see in this frozen tundra. Everything was bleak and barren as far as the eye can see.
"Then the Creator made a path from the heavens to earth, and out from that path with him came a brilliant light. This light was the first that the earth had seen and it chased away all the darkness. In that light, the Creator looked on the earth and saw the potential for what he could make of it.
"From another place in the heavens he reached up and pulled a tap and water came and flowed over all the land. Then, wading in that water, he pulled the land up high in some places and dug it deep in others. All the water flowed into those deep places and in that way the mountains and the oceans were formed.
"The Creator then began to walk all across the earth and everywhere his foot touched the ground, trees began to grow. Every time his robe touched the ground grasses, flowers and bushes began to grow, and in this way the earth began to come alive.
"The Creator then looked back at the pathway to heaven from which he first came to earth. Not wanting to leave it always open he caused the path to spin and swing. As it spun around the earth the sky would grow dark when it fell below the horizon. Then the Creator took some sand from one of the ocean shores in his hand. Holding it close to his lips he blew gently over the sand and it began to glow. The Creator then threw the sand far into the sky. Where that sand came to rest we now see the stars.
"The Creator looked across everything he had made at this point and he was very pleased. There was steadfastness in the mountains. There was power in the oceans. There was beauty in the trees, and there was fragility in the flowers. Everything was beautiful and everything was good, but the life the earth knew was still very stagnant. So the creator waded into the seas and began creating all different types of fish and whales and reptiles. Then the creator pulled in some of the winds and filled them with all types of birds and insects that scattered over the earth. The Creator then gathered up some of the ground of the earth and from it he formed all of the animals that walk and crawl over the land.
"Again the Creator looked over everything he had made and was very pleased. But what good is a work of literature that no one else can understand, or a work of art that no one can appreciate the value of? So the Creator gathered together some of the apes he had created and put a part of himself in them. Then he reached out and touched the most beautiful of the trees and he blessed it. He then caused those apes to eat the seeds from that tree and when they did, they became the first of men."
As he continued, the two reached the place where the sword had landed, Avril pulled it from the ground and, after wiping the blade, returned it to its sheath.
Gavril went on, "The Creator then gathered those first men together and he began to teach them about everything he had created. He taught them to till the ground and he showed them how to fish from the sea. He showed them how to pull iron and copper from the mountains and how, with fire, to shape them into tools. Above all, the Creator instilled in them an awe a respect and a joy for everything he had created.
"The Creator then brought those first people back to the tree he had blessed. He told them that this tree would never die and that there were specific rules on how it should be treated. Only those to whom he had given the ability to create, those who could speak magic, were given the right to eat the seeds from the tree."
At this point the two were passing directly under the Lonely Oak. Gavril saw and picked up two acorns from the ground nearby. He handed one to Avril and he began to pry the other open with his knife. As he did so, he continued on. "The roots of the tree were not to be dug up and no branch was to be broken. Every leaf that fell from the tree was to be left where it lay or where the wind had taken it. Finally, no tool was to be used on the tree.
"In thousands of years those rules have not been broken. The Society, a group of individuals who were given the ability to speak magik, to create, was gradually formed to protect that tree and enforce those laws. While at first it was just some dedicated individuals, over time that Society grew to incorporate and regulate every individual in whom the ability rested. But first and always, the Society is the enforcers of the rules the Creator gave those first people.
"That is why your parents were made outcasts. They knowingly and willingly broke not rules made by men, but those given to us by the Creator himself. That is why they have become outcasts. It is not that they have angered a group or broken some social customs. No, they have disobeyed the one to whom they owe their very existence.
"Some have said that the Tree is now dead and have called into question everything the Society has known to be true. But those who know, understand this is not so. The tree is gone, but it still lives on."
Gavril stopped and pointed with his knife to the sword at Avril's side. "At the heart of that sword and your brother's sword is a seed from the Tree of Life. As long as those swords exist, the Tree lives on.
"You, Avril, and your brother as bearers of the swords, are now the true guardians of the Tree. That is why I must hurry to get you before the Society and why it is imperative that someone finds and brings your brother."
