The Dream Map- Prolouge

Prologue

Cora walked into Aertis' cottage just as she had every morning for the last few months.

"Good, you're here," Aertis declared. Cora paid no mind to his urgency.  His wife, Jaielle's contractions were well underway and Cora was the assistant to Laiya, the lead midwife of Sendozor, who was to deliver the child.

"It's good to see you, Milord," Cora told him. "I'm surprised you are not out practicing your targets in the forest by now. Jaielle tells me you often set out even before sunrise...."

"Ahh!" Jaielle cried, more out of frustration and annoyance than pain. She appeared from around the corner holding her stomach.

"She appears to be fine once the pains pass," Aertis explained. "But she hasn't slept. She's been pacing around the cottage for some time."

"You should have sought Laiya and me as soon as the pains began," Cora scolded.

"Jaielle insisted on my waiting. She said you would be returning soon enough of your own accord, and here you are."

"Well, yes, I am, and Jaielle's progress appears normal as far as I can tell, but you should not have taken it for granted. You should no sooner attempt to deal with the matter of childbirth, as I should try to shoot an apple from a tree.  You must tend to your own vocation, and let me tend to mine."

Cora's assertiveness surprised Aertis. Only when enthralled in her work that Cora would dare act so bold. Other times she was meek and humble, often calling Aertis "Milord" though his social standing did not require it. Laiya had instructed Cora to make regular visits to both Jaielle and Miva, the Miller's daughter, for both were large with child and would be ready to deliver at any time. 

Jaielle's position in the Village of Sendozor, although modest, was above that of Miva's and so Jaielle received more frequent visits during her pregnancy. Miva had conceived her child without a husband. Jaielle and Aertis had spent five years in matrimony before she conceived. Everyone assumed the god and goddess had cursed Jaielle with a barren womb, for none of the potions and elixirs that Laiya had concocted seemed to do any good. 

Then, one cool autumn evening when Aertis had stayed too late working in the forest, Jaielle wandered outside the cottage.  She looked in the direction where Aertis would be practicing his targets, but she may as well have been looking out into nothing.  She could barely see her own feet in the starlight. Jaielle had gone out like this dozens of times before hoping her husband would appear, but whether he did or not, Jaielle would always retreat to the cottage and wait.

However, on this particular night Jaielle sensed something was wrong, and she could not simply wait. She retrieved the lantern from the cottage and headed into the forest. Hints of snowflakes had begun to dance in the blue-black sky when Jaielle found her husband in a partial clearing, laying half-upright on the ground. Jaielle kneeled next to him and saw that a broken branch had pierced Aertis's ankle. Blood had frozen on his heel, and across the back of his lower calf. Jaielle touched the wound instinctively and a ruddy stain melted into her palm.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"Not anymore," he answered, and he pulled himself to his knees, kissed his wife and eased her cloak off her shoulders and onto the forest floor. The late autumn chill vanished and sudden warmth shot from the sky. A band of shooting stars replaced the snowflakes, and the air around Jaielle and Aertis turned warm as a summer day. The couple remained there until sunrise.

When the couple returned from the forest, reality seized them. They soon learned of Jaielle's pregnancy and Cora had kept a lingering intrusive eye on Jaielle ever since. Jaielle suggested once that Cora was more interested in being near Aertis than tending to Jaielle. Aertis declared that the thought was silly, but wondered off and on if there was anything to his wife's suspicions. He assured himself that he would certainly never choose a midwife's assistant over Jaielle, the Merchant's daughter. However, sometimes, Aertis would harbor a secret pride in thinking he could.  Whatever thoughts of infidelity fleeted through his mind they were bound to pass along with the odd moods of Jaielle's pregnancy. As freely as Jaielle had given herself to him that evening in the forest, it was with the same determination she withheld her affection while she was with child, and Aertis yearned for the birth of the child as much to reacquaint himself with his wife as to meet his new heir.

"Didn't I tell you she would be here as soon as dawn broke?" Jaielle told her husband. "She's been hovering around me like a vulture for the past month." Jaielle paced across the dirt floor, stopped to hold her stomach again, and yelled a little louder. Cora helped her to the cot.

"She will be fine?" Aertis asked.

"I expect so, but there are never any guarantees in this. It shouldn't be long, Milord. I am here now," Cora said. "I believe tradition dictates that you must carve and string a bow for your child today. Fetch Laiya on your way into the forest. Let her know it is time."

Aertis obeyed, still impressed with the way Cora took control, as her mentor was not yet present. By the time Laiya arrived at the cottage, the baby was ready to be born. With just a few of his mother's pushes, Laiya guided the newborn into the world and wiped him clean in the basin.

"Congratulations, Jaielle," Laiya said as she dried the boy with linen cloths and handed him to Cora. "You have a son."


Jaielle looked up over her own knees to get a look at the baby, and Cora handed him to her.

"Bless you, Madam," Cora said. "You will be naming him Aertis, I assume, after his father."

Jaielle took the baby tightly in her arms are stared seriously into his eyes. Not even Laiya, who had delivered thousands of babies, had ever seen such a stare in a new mother's eyes.

"No." Jaielle declared.

"But, it is custom...." Cora interjected.

"No!" Jaielle said more sternly, and the baby almost cried, but laughed instead, examined his hand and put his fist in his mouth. "His name is Kylion," she reported, as if she had not been the one to make the decision. "I sense something fierce in him."

Laiya laughed, and reached for the baby. "All new mothers sense something fierce in their children. It is the birth adrenaline. A few days of feeding every two hours will cure you of that. You will come to your senses."

"My senses are quite intact, Laiya," Jaielle stroked the top of Kylion's head, and ran her finger over the curve of his ear. "You may go now. Thank you for your assistance. "

They stood motionless as they waited for Jaielle to break out of whatever world she had entered with her son and back into theirs.

Jaielle looked up at them. "Perhaps you should check on Miva," she suggested. "It must be nearly time for her to deliver as well."

Cora considered her words carefully before she spoke. "You will reconsider the name, I hope," she said. "So many years passed before your son was born. Surely, you do not wish to deny Aertis his namesake. It is tradition, Jaielle."

"Tradition!" Jaielle snapped. "Not law. The mother is to protect and guide her child until he is old enough to begin training. This includes choosing a name; one that will grasp his identity and his place in Sendozor. Pychar and Krytia intend great things for Kylion. He is to make is own traditions. Now go, both of you, before I file a report with the Militia."

The midwives left and they glanced back over their shoulders, and shook their heads as they departed from the cottage. It was clear that Jaielle felt the god and goddess were to be involved in her son's life.  She had mentioned their names: Pychar and Krytia, Twin God and Goddess of The Two Moons. It had been years since anyone had referred to the god and goddess by name, except for Orin the old man who lived in the forest. He was rarely even sited much less spoken to, or taken seriously. 

Long ago, the villagers had believed that The Night of Two Moons was a blessed occurrence reserved for the village of Sendozor. They were to stay home on those nights; for it was then that Pychar and Krytia designated Sendozor as their playground. Villagers were especially wary of going near the Enchanted River, which separated the peasant quarters from the King's castle. No one knew how the god and goddess might respond if someone got in their way. The people retreated to their homes out of respect and fear. More and more time passed and eventually no one alive in Sendozor could recall The Night of Two Moons. No one, except Orin, even watched for it, and all the superstitions faded into the dust of legends.

After Cora and Laiya left, Jaielle examined Kylion more closely. She had known from the first moment she learned she was carrying him that there was something special about him -- beyond the way that all babies are special; chosen, she sensed. Jaielle searched for a mark on Kylion to prove her suspicions.

Jaielle searched across her son's arms, shoulders, neck, and back, across his torso, and over his legs. She found nothing -- Not so much as a freckle, not a single variance from the peachy pigment of Kylion's skin. Then, on the back of his ankle, she did see a faint yellow dot, so small that six dots the same size would surely fit on Kylion's tiny fingernail.

"Could that be the mark?" Jaielle whispered to herself. Disappointment weaved into her voice, and embarrassed her. She knew that she was a simple daughter of a merchant, wife of a humble archer. There was no reason for her to expect her child to be destined for anything other than an ordinary life, but no matter how she tried, she could not seem to shake the feeling that Kylion was destined to change all their lives forever. 

Doubt crept into Jaielle's mind for the first time since she had found her husband injured in the forest. She'd sensed Pychar and Krytia's presence that evening, although she herself did not notice Two moons. She'd been able to heal Aertis that night, and felt certain that Pychar and Krytia would continue with the miracle. Still, the mark was so small that Jaielle could not tell if it was a mark at all. She did not know if the village women were right in saying she had gotten too emotional with her pregnancy and her impending motherhood, or if that miniscule mark actually meant something.

*********

When the midwives left the cottage, they went straight to find Aertis. The tradition of naming boys after their father was a cornerstone in Sendozor. Certain skills were proven through time and it was an abomination to suggest anything different. The midwives found Aertis just inside the forest, seated on a rock polishing a smaller, newly carved bow.

"Your son is born," Laiya announced as she and Cora came into Aertis' clearing.

Aertis set down his polishing rag. "Then why are the both of you here? Jaielle will be weak from childbirth. She should not be alone with the boy."

"There is a problem," Laiya told him.

"My son?" Aertis panicked and dropped the bow to the ground.

"Your son is beautiful, Milord," Cora told him. "Not a finer babe in Sendozor, not even in the king's castle."

"And Jaielle?" Aertis inquired.

"As strong as an ox...." Cora stated.

"Good," Aertis said. "Then you will be getting back to your work in tending to Jaielle and young Aertis, and leave me to do mine."

"This is the problem," Cora told him.

"Do not toy with me, Miss," Aertis said. "Is my son disfigured in some fashion where he will not be able to serve as my apprentice when he is older?"

"As Cora told you," Laiya explained. "Both Jaielle and your son are in perfect physical health. But we are concerned with Jaielle's mental state."

"You are concerned about her mental state and you left her alone with my son?"

"She threatened us with the Militia, Milord," Cora said. "She is insisting that the boy be called Kylion despite tradition. She dismissed us from the cottage the moment I handed her the boy. She claims the god and goddess have chosen him for something,"

Aertis looked straight at Cora. "Is it so ridiculous that my son would be destined for greatness?"

Cora stammered a bit, and turned her eyes away from Aertis. "It is quite possible," she told him. "All the more reason he should carry your namesake."

Aertis paced around the clearing. "Go tend to Jaielle and the boy. If she threatens the Militia again, wait outside. I'll be there in an hour."

When Aertis got back to the cottage, he found Laiya and Cora at the fruit stand just around the corner.

"How is she?" Aertis asked.

"I should have such energy-even without having children." Laiya told him. "Jaielle had no problems. I could have delivered your son blindfolded."

"I am certainly glad you didn't," Aertis told her. "And the boy's name?" he inquired.

"Kylion," Cora stated. "She won't budge on that."

"I will talk to Jaielle, from what you say it seems the boy's birth has affected her some way. I would like to employ one of you as a nurse in my cottage. You will be under my direction, and Jaielle would not have the authority to contact the Militia. Are either of you available?"

"Yours is not the only child in Sendozor. You may enlist Cora, if she agrees. She would stay on call with me, of course. I may need her in case of a difficult birth."

Cora smiled and nodded. "I'll do what I can, Milord," she told him.

"Very well, then. You may take the cot in the nursery. I'm sorry I cannot provide more private accommodations, but I am a man of simple means. Wait for me in Laiya's tent. I'll find you once I settle things with Jaielle."

Cora nodded and headed back to the village with Laiya. Aertis went home to his wife.

"The midwives tell me we have a son," Aertis told Jaielle. She had emptied the basin, padded it with blankets and rags, and Kylion was sleeping there as if it were a cradle. "There seems to be some confusion over his name."

"There is no confusion," Jaielle said. "His name is Kylion."

"Now, Jaielle, you know custom dictates...."

"Custom?" Jaielle barked in a whisper as not to wake her son. "You would make your son a slave to custom?"

"And you would make your husband a laughing stock? You'd make our son an outcast-the only boy not bearing his father's name?"

"I would make my son an individual," Jaielle said. "Not bound to the limits of his father. He is chosen by the god and goddess, Aertis, as we both are, chosen to raise a child destined for great things."

"You've never seen me as limited before," Aertis told her.

"Perhaps I see things clearer now."

"Perhaps your new motherhood has overwhelmed you. I've enlisted Cora to stay with us, assist you as necessary."

"It isn't necessary," Jaielle told him.

"Yes, Jaielle," Aertis stated, "I believe it's quite necessary."