Village of Ulm
Principality of Selavetia
Northern part of Sechvennat of Win'Tarra
The village of Ulm stirred awake under the pale dampness of dawn. The scents of wet nets and fish drying on the wooden racks mingled with the smoke rising from the chimneys of the huts that stood on a cliff like a cluster of oysters. Here in Ulm everything was measured by the mercy of the ocean, what it gave and what it took.
Lily was usually the first to awaken. She moved across the packed earth floor on bare feet, her silence born out of habit. The hut she shared with Aunt Mirna, Uncle Jereh, and her cousin Evan was small and damp, the floor earth laid bare, roof left leaking after every harsher storm, walls patched with mud and reeds that stuck out like bones of a dead animal.
Her aunt Mirna slept behind the faded curtain that acted as a poor imitation of a wall. Jereh and Evan were already out on the sea today, their fragile wooden boat rocking to the rhythm of the tired waves.
Lily knelt by the hearth and slipped into the familiar ritual. Dry sea-grass and the driftwood Evan had gathered caught fire with a sharp crackle. The firelight danced, revealing the room's poverty: the patched walls, the bare earth floor, the pots darkened and worn thin from years of scraping.
By midday, when the sun hung heavy overhead and the village lay quiet, Lily escaped to the plains behind Ulm.
The air was cleaner there, free from salt and smoke, and tinged with scents of wildflowers.
She ran through the tall grass on bare feet, her legs fast and sure, her body agile and free as if she was born from the wind itself.
But the freedom of the plains couldn't last. The boats were returning, and, if the sea was generous today, there'd be work to do.
She returned to the shore just in time to meet them.
Evan was always first to leap ashore, a man's weight already settled in his eleven-year-old shoulders. "Three scorpionfish and a small cod," he would report, his eyes flicking toward Lily. "Just enough to pay the tax."
In Ulm, enough was a precise measure: it meant escape from punishment, survival for another day. It never meant a full belly.
At that moment, in either coincidence or fate's warning, several winged shadows raked across the shoreline and rooftops, stifling the murmur of voices.
The villagers kept their eyes down.
"If you look at them too long," Uncle had once told her, "they'll look back. And not in kindness."
That night, while Mirna salted fish with fury and Jereh tended worn old nets, Lily and Evan climbed onto the roof; their only refuge from prying eyes.
"Look," Lily whispered. Three bright specks wheeled high above, their wings flashing like blades in the moonlight: the Ilari patrol.
Evan muttered of taxes and guards, but Lily's gaze traced their elegant turns, mesmerized.
"Why do you always watch them?" Evan asked, his voice soft.
Lily didn't have the words to describe the feeling; it was something between the longing, the fear, and something else she couldn't name. At last she shrugged. "It's the way they fly...It feels like they're dancing."
There was a terrible beauty in that flight, something sacred and deadly. Comforting and dangerous like the fire.
"Father says that all the evil in the world came from the Ilari," Evan murmured.
Lily swallowed. The faith taught that the Ilari were sacred, spun from the hair of the god Ellevath, while humans were shaped from common clay. To even think otherwise was heresy.
But Uncle Jereh had never particularly cared about it. It was one of the things she loved about him.
Later that night, like every night before bedtime, Lily drew out a small wooden box that she'd kept hidden beneath her straw mattress. Inside the box there were three yellowed parchments; the letters from the mother she had never met. "She must have been as highborn as humans can get," Mirna once said. "Perhaps an artist in service to one of the Houses." Literacy was a gift the Ilari bestowed only on the chosen. Mirna's sister; Lily's foster mother, had never known the writer's true name. Lily herself could not decipher the script, but she believed the pages held her answers.
Why were her eyes so bottomless black? Why did her skin sometimes shimmer with foreign light? Why did looking at the sky made her feel like a moth drawn to a flame?
Outside, the sea kissed the sleeping shore.
She knew the day would be bad the moment she began her regular morning trip toward the well. The sun had broken over the cliffs, casting long shadows across the path.
She felt the burns of their stares even before she saw the village children.
They fell silent as she approached. Boys stopped their shoving; girls let their stones fall. A cluster of curious, uneasy, hostile stares fixed upon her.
"There she is." Dorin, the miller's son, jabbed a dirt-stained finger at her, his grin flashing sharp against his tanned face. His fists were already balled, ready. For him, throwing insults was a game that apparently never ceased to entertain.
Lily's hands tightened around the rope handles. Say nothing. Fetch the water and leave. She'd learned that lesson long ago.
But Lina, Dorin's sister, lunged forward. Her fingers grasped a fistful of Lily's hair and yanked hard. "If you're one of them, why's your hair dark like ours? Shouldn't it be snow-white, you mongrel?"
Lily jerked free. "Let me go," she said, her voice flat and devoid of tears.
"What's that, ghost girl?" Lina seized her wrist and thrust it toward the sky. A cloud had covered the sun, leaving her with disappointment. "Blah - it doesn't shine. How come you only glow sometimes?"
"Leave her alone," Evan's voice cut in. He stepped from behind the well, his arms crossed, his expression cold. "We've got work to do."
The whispers slithered on.
"My father says her real father was one of them," Dorin sneered, jabbing a finger toward the heavens. "That her mother took a silver coin to let him into her bed. That he paid your family to take you in. It was apparently enough for them to pay taxes for five years, while the rest of us starved."
Lily's stomach twisted. She didn't grasp every word, but she understood the venom behind them.
Evan's fist smashed into Dorin's nose. Blood spurted. "Bastard!" Dorin howled, lunging back. They crashed into the dust, in a tangle of flying fists and sharp insults.
Lina seized Lily's hair again, dragging her down. Lily shoved her hard in the belly. Lina stumbled, then lunged again, but Lily caught her arm and bit down, hard. A scream, a sudden step back.
"Crazy girl!" Lina spat, her eyes bright with furious tears.
"ENOUGH!"
Jereh's voice severed the air like a blade. The boys broke apart: Evan sporting a blossoming bruise, Dorin bloodied nose. The girls froze, Lina cradling her bitten hand, Lily with her hair forming a wild storm around her face.
"What is this?" Jereh's voice was low and dangerous. "What are you: savages, brawling at the well?"
Silence.
His gaze swept over them. "Home. All of you. If this happens again, the consequences will be worse than fists."
They scattered without a sound. Lily gathered the buckets, her hands trembling. She felt Evan's eyes on her and knew, with a cold certainty, that this was not over. It was never going to be over.
When she returned, she found Mirna stuffing logs into the hearth.
"Why does everyone hate me?" Lily's voice broke.
Mirna turned slowly, solid as the cliff itself. "They don't hate you," slipped out instinctively. "People tend to fear what they don't understand," she rasped after a pause. "That fear sometimes can masquerade as hate."
"What is it that they don't understand? What is wrong with me?" Lily's fists were clenched at her sides. "Why do they call me a mongrel? Why..."
"Enough." Mirna's eyes darkened. "I will not allow those words to be spoken in this house."
"You know something," Lily pressed, stepping closer. "I see it in your face. You know why they whisper."
A silent war flickered behind Mirna's eyes. Her knuckles whitened as she laced her fingers together.
"My sister took you in when you were an infant. You know that," she said, sinking into a chair. "They brought you by night, with those letters you keep. They said your mother - the one who wrote them - was human, and that she died bringing you into this world."
"And my father?" Lily whispered.
Mirna's mouth became a hard line. "They did not say."
"But you know." Lily pointed upward. "The whispers say he was one of them. I see the elders make warding signs when I pass." She held out her hand; in the dim light, her skin flickered, just for an instant. "Explain this, Aunt."
Mirna's dark-honey eyes searched her face, unreadable. Then she reached out and gripped Lily's hands. Her grasp was firm, not harsh. "I do not know," she said. "And even if I did, it wouldn't change anything. It does not matter who your father was. You are ours, not theirs. That is how it was, and how it will be. Do you understand?"
Lily stuck out her chin. "And what about the coin?"
Mirna frowned. "Which coin?"
"The one you were paid to take me."
Mirna's eyes went round. "Who told you that?" She frowned. "That millers boy, is it?" Her voice was a note above whisper.
A muscle in Lily's jaw twitched. "So it's true."
Mirna closed her eyes and sighed. "My sister received some...gold. Yes. Some silver trickled for a couple of years afterwards and then the man who brought it simply stopped coming." Her gaze sharpened seeing Lily's distraught expression. "And no, he didn't say anything and we didn't ask. Better that way." She finished in a tone that didn't leave room for debate.
Lily nodded, but her thoughts were already sailing toward the clouds. Only they seemed darker now.
When Mirna slept, Lily drew out the box. The letters were old, their edges frayed, the color dulled to murky yellow-brown, ink faded to shadow. She held them up to the moonlight, as if the words might surface from the page if she wished for it with enough force.
Perhaps they knew the name of her father. Perhaps they knew why she had been abandoned.
But the paper kept its secrets, and once again Lily was alone, with her great dark eyes and nameless longings.
She didn't put the box away this time. She held it in her lap, thumb tracing the fragile edges as if the caress could set the words free.
"One day," she told the moon, the wind and the sea. "One day I'll find out."
"And when I do..."
She didn't know the rest. She just knew her journey had just begun.