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It was fall when she took flight.
Elysium was somehow too loud and too safe at the same time. Where ambrosia and everburnt sun should calm her, it only reminded Jaheira that she did not belong. Perhaps it was fear that if she truly put down roots she would wither entirely. Perhaps it was the pesky tug of her mortal blood– the whispers of age in her skin that caused the nymphs to gasp and recoil to their groves as if she bore a curse. But when the ever-chittering forest of Jaheira’s mind began to whisper fly, fly– well. Call it an old witch’s intuition or simply call her a mad old woman. But a lifetime of pricking up her ears had served her fine enough.
She had served the Gods well, had bled for Greece twice over and died in its sands, but could not rest upon her laurels in Elysium as the other heroes could. Oh, how she yearned for the imperfections that lay at the foot of their mountain. For the gasp of cold seawater as it lapped at the spot beneath her breast. For dewberries, either too tart from the last frosts of spring or too fat on summer sun. Meadowgrass beneath her feet in the mornings and tanned furs by the fireplace at night. Toothaches soothed by mint leaves. Scrapes that ran red. Old lovers long lost to the Styx.
Mortal life, as silly as it were.
Jaheira stayed as long as she could. Long enough to see Rion take up the bow for Lady Artemis and draw her first blood from a moonlit stag. Longer still to see Jord plant his grove somewhere between here and there– the ubiquitous there they all yearned for and could only watch through veils and vines. There was no keeping them from divinity. All she could do was wrap the sun-bless hilt of Belm ‘round both their hands and whisper good luck.
When she offered one final lamentation for Khalid, who’s soul had slipped down to the Underworld before her own, they all knew.
“At least stay until spring, mother,” they told her through tadpoles hatched too soon and strawberries small on the vine.
"Bah. Let an old war dog die in dignity once more,” she replied through swarms of frogs and sweet berry wine.
That had been her story: that she was slinking off into the woods like a wounded animal. She knew even on solid ground there would be many springs to come– Jaheira had little say in the matter, and so she said little.
It was better if they didn’t know. It was better if they stayed in paradise– they had never known the beyond, after all. They had been born of nameless nymphs and left at an old hero's doorstep. Innocent things. Jaheira had the inkling they hoped she would tend the little saplings into great heroes, that they might catch the eye of some greater god so their parents might swoop with claims of my blood, my kin, how I’ve missed you so.
She kept them as innocent as she could, but they yearned for greatness. As they settled into life she could do nothing but watch as they chased those same battle highs that got her killed.
Ah, youth.
Only a madwoman would choose to live out her life in feathers and furs over the fields of Elysium. But Jaheira knew the wilds would cradle her well. Ichor may run in her veins now, but even Olympus could not deny her blood belonged to the bear, the bird and bee.
One day she’d return wrapped in those same pelts to those same children at her feet and whispers from the nymphs. “Do I frighten you, little ones?” She’d ask, having known the ways of the world once more. Then they’d titter like little bluebirds and perhaps she’d feel more at home resting in their perfect fields.
It was fall when she took flight, and she would have never known if she stayed.
Jaheira had forgotten how the coming winter sapped the green of the world. How the coldsnap air settled on her skin, whispering soon. How beautiful it was to see the world balanced upon the loomneedle between life and death.
She was a great white raven amongst the red maples. She was a hummingbird, iridescent green. She was a fox and a hare and hare felt the beating hearts of both in turn. She was everything the world was made for.
Even in mortal form, she simply was. No longer shade nor goddess nor mortal but something between the veil. Both feet planted in her own tended fields. Tethyr, she called the island. Her tether to the mortal world.
As the leaves turned she, too, sank into the inevitability of change like it was warm spring water. The wilds around the edge of Greece became her kingdom. The birds chittered but the mice gossiped far more, and Jaheira learned the world sat in a peace she could never find for herself. No more young ones sent off to war. No more meddling gods– though meddle they tried, their voices did not carry so far as they did when she was mortal. Still, there was some great cacophony of change around her: of changing winds and different kinds of heroes. One that sounded discordant with her old druid’s song.
When the first flush of frost coated her wings, Jaheira settled in a cottage high in the mountains. She slept upon soft pelts and laced the cedarwood walls with saffron and thyme. She watched, content, for peeks of ships on the horizon and their great, billowing white sails. For the last of men coming home before the world froze over.
Until the sea began to fight back, with its toothsome whitecaps and tides like the roll of a panther’s back.
Jaheira had no fear of the world around her: those tides ran hot through her blood, too. Storms pounded on her door. She could imagine the rain was warm, lit by her roaring hearth as it pattered then raced down her windows. Her gardens gave her hearty roots and berries hardened against the world but still so sweet. She warmed herself with roiling stews and wool wraps freely given.
The last of the leaves departed their branches and Jaheira watched the world die in quiet peace, half human hands laced around hot mulled wine.
She was home.
*
But like a sailor drunk on berry rye, the north wind always came with such trouble on its breath.
Or perhaps, Jaheira thought, it was trouble that found her. She had been flush with in her first life, after all– why should eternity be any different?
Jaheira had come to learn the winters here. It had taken some coaxing– some gentle hands upon frothy, iced-over shores and soft whispers to the land.
Snow would melt where she walked and ice would drip from the evergreens. “Ah, such tears! No sense in weeping over your barrenness. Spring still comes for you, after all,” she would scold the spindly trees as they gave her firewood. Then they’d burn themselves up in her hearth, eager to fight back the cold. Quick and hot and reckless without a care for the coming spring.
The wolf mothers, once shadows at the edge of her cottage, padded close with pinned back ears. “Come, make your home with me. Mind the mess, won’t you, I’ve been alone for some time.”
The world slowed, and she slowed with it. There was peace beneath the blankets of snow, like the warmth of a morning buried deep within one’s bed. She had her hearth and her pelts and her wool. Even Tethyr itself seemed to cloak herself in a coat of fog, as if she too was resting her old bones.
Neither of them could ignore the ship on the horizon, though.
Wood, silk, and cotton it may be, but it was far from her domain. It carried the stench of soldiers and gods alike. When it beached her shores she felt it– like an axe, splitting her in twain to watch the ichor mix bleed into the sand.
She could feel her wolves bare their teeth. Hunched, sun-stricken sailors poured onto her beach. Each one a troublesome ant, scrounging and scavenging for their hill– or hull, as it were, pocked marked with barnacles and dripping with seaweed. All faceless. Sailors who would be carved away like bedrock by the ocean they so loved. Men of no consequence.
Save for one.
Not a man at all. Some wind-whipped force of storms had stepped foot on her beach. Jaheira watched from the keyhole of her cottage as the Captain looked at her island like she could wrest the peaks from their mountains and pin them into submission. Such mortality in her. One who spit at the thought of death.
One like herself, once.
Her crew did not kiss the shores like in the stories. Instead they rooted up the beach like wild boar. They wracked and tore and gobbled at sloe berries still bitter on their vines.
It was not long before they found her, with a trail of trampled life in their wake. It was only because Jaheira allowed herself to be found, of course. Foxes made for fine companions but there was something about the sun-soaked captain that intrigued her. Bring me tales of mortal life. Bring me stories of Grecian hearths and the heroes that yearn to come home.
Minthara was her name. Her skin was darkened and weathered and her hair streaked the colour of snow. Jaheira could see she bore scars beneath her leathers. The twinkle in her eyes told each one had its story.
“Hail.” She had a voice made rough by sea salt and battle cries “Are you this island’s keeper?”
When she bowed it was by law alone– it was simply a to do, a reverence between gods and men and her: the shade druid in between. Jaheira could see the hard-cut cleverness in her eyes the moment she stood and shook the salt from her hair. She meant no deference. Tacit and cunning, this Minthara only knelt so she might slice at an enemy’s heel.
“Hah. Not even I can keep an island, Captain. But we are old friends.”
The curls of Jaheira’s fingers ‘round the clay mug might have well been a pull of her sword, given the way the crew reacted. Oh. For all their captain’s southern bravado, they feared her.
Jaheira watched carefully for the pinch of the captain’s shoulders, for the drift of bandaged hands to the hilt of her sword. Minthara merely smiled.
“It bends to your will all the same, it seems. An admirable thing.” Her eyes glittered as her gaze took in the home Jaheira had made. Charting, no doubt, but wholly unafraid of the wolves at her door. “And what might I call you? Beyond druid.”
“You flatter me. These old ears won’t hear you calling anything from the shore, which is where you may rest. Farewell.”
She turned to go, half expecting to feel rope-calloused hands grab at her wrist with demands. It would have been easier, to have reason for her witchery.
She learned quickly that Minthara sparred with far more than swords.
“I’ve seen greater hardships than a winter on southern shores. My men are not so battle hardened.” Minthara gestured to the flourishing winter gardens around them. “Nurturing seems to be your nature. Would you truly deny them?”
“Ah, do not give an old witch so much credit. Roots and sprigs make for easy babes.” She let her own eyes wander over the crew, half cowering behind the little stature of their leader. “Sailors, however…”
She could see it in the crew. Beady-eyed little half boys they might be, but their greed shone through like gold. Mortals always want something. The question was not what but how much.
Minthara set her jaw. There was that brazen mortality in her, too– the heroes’ kind that so loathed to ask for help. That, Jaheira could stomach. Or at least understand from on high, from the cottage she built alone and the hearth she fed herself.
“We sail under Athena’s blessing. My crew has bested sea and storms alike.”
And you mean to best me, too?
“Congratulations. Your Athena can keep better eye on you if you sleep under her stars.”
“...We ask that we take refuge here, until the last frost leaves the shores.”
Oh how she hated to plead.
“Bah. We are all running from that old windbag Boreas,” she replied. One of the wolfmothers, padded to her side. She was rewarded with a scratch behind ears that had been half-taken by frost as a pup. “Some of us are only faster than others.”
“We are outrunning stronger storms than the simple northern wind. We would not be here otherwise.”
She laughed. “The great Poseidon himself, then.”
Her words passed over the crew like the icy god himself. Even Minthara, her boots so unshakable on rough seas, seemed rattled with revelation. It was only a second– a moment of chill, like passing through the veil.
But then she smiled again and Jaheira had an inkling that whatever she ran from she had bested with that smile and sparkling wit.
“My words were not just praise. You control these lands, don’t you, druid? Your very existence spits upon the gods and yet here you stand. Unsmited.” She stepped just a hair closer. Jaheira could smell the sea on her very soul. “We seek protection, yes, the kind we will not find on the shore. It should be no hindrance to let us shelter under an army of tree and vine.”
“Mortals bring too much trouble.”
“We bring nothing but the clothes upon our backs.”
There was a melancholy about them. Even the young ones bore fresh wounds, yes. Jaheira could sense the dirt packed upon them as if they lay in their own graves. Looking upon them stirred nothing in her. To her they were half gone already and what was left were grubby hands pulling up the roots she had so carefully lain down.
Minthara, though. Minthara of Menzoberranzan was different. The yearning in her was a spark, a star, a guiding light that tugged her soul to greatness.
It was a wilderness she could not tame.
Yet.
“Would you give your word?”
Minthara tipped her chin like she had already won, like she stood victorious on the battlefield that was her hearth. “Give me a name to swear to and I shall.”
Jaheira chuckled, despite herself. Such pride. As if she would treasure the word of some glittered-eyed brute, as if she would trust. But, nonetheless, she gave her name with grace and watched how Minthara rolled it on her tongue like a sailor’s first sip of wine. Jaheira, Druid of Tethyr.
None of her men dared speak it. They cowered behind their captain like little children. They trampled her grove just the same.
“Do we have a deal, druid?”
“I did not know you were a Goddess, bound by word alone.”
Minthara chuckled: it was a rich, crackling fire of a laugh. “Many have made such a mistake. I am mortal, mostly.”
“So your word means nothing but the sword you will break it upon.”
“It means a great deal to me. Were I a dishonourable woman you’d already lie dead. Let us be allies instead.”
On, there were the wolf’s hackles. This Minthara could spar the old way, too.
“Allies.” It was Jaheira’s turn to laugh. She looked dramatically back to the firelit cedar of her home, to the snow-dampened world around them. “I was not aware there was a war on, forgive me.”
It was then that Minthara truly looked at her. Her eyes sparkled like red amber in the firelight that spilled from her front door. Oh, how she detested her steady footing. It was not about the wools and warm hearth– they had weathered worse. It was losing the game to someone with no titles or battles or blessings to her name. It was about losing.
‘Reconsider.”
The command was all she offered.
Appearances were so deceiving, weren’t they? Jaheira wondered what she might find beneath Minthara’s salt-painted armour. No matter. It had not been so long since she played the game of gods and men.
“Ah, I cannot say no to a handsome face like yours. Come in from the cold, then, and mind your manners.”
She said the words like a spell and the crew stumbled in. Come in, come in– like the siren they believed she was. Well. Even Minthara, straight backed and soldier true, seemed to sway a little at the sight of a warm hearth.
“We thank you, sister,” she said gruffly.
Chaos brewed around them. The sailors poured over her home like an infestation. Their beady eyes trained up her hens and their mouths dripped with the thought of meat. Grubby hands pulled at every fraying string. Clay rattled and calls for wine rattled her windows.
“...We?”
Minthara studied her like she was some puzzle to solve. Ah, in a way she was, Jaheira supposed. What reverence will you offer this strange old woman?
She did not cry for women’s work, but she did not call off her men either. Something kept her tethered to these foolish boys, Jaheira knew.
Minthara set her jaw again. “I thank you.”
“Such civility, I simply must serve you first.”
Were I a dishonourable woman you’d already lie dead. The captain’s words echoed in Jaheira’s head as she busied her hands in the hearth room. Perhaps it was the truth, perhaps a lifetime of swords to her throat had made her a paranoid old woman. But Jaheira could feel those beady eyes on her back, could see them flash in the darkness of her garden as they counted each corner point of her house. Damned little scavengers at her door.
Even scavengers have teeth.
And she spoke of honour. Bah. Honour was for foolish heroes and Minthara was no fool.
Flowers hung drying above her hearth. They shook on the twine, trembling and delicate in the face of men. Do not be afraid, little things, she whispered, lacing sweet sorcery into her words, let’s see how they blossom, hm?
They felt like velvet in her palms and fell like snow into the sailors’ wine.
Jaheira pricked her finger with a pin. As the precious little ruby beaded upon her skin, she let it drip into golden honey and mixed it until it shone as amber as Minthara’s eyes. Then, upon the table– half-cut tree, raw with bark on the edges and oiled to shine– she lay cup after mismatched clay cup.
The sailors clamoured over themselves like wild animals to taste, taste, taste. They were only stopped by Minthara’s silently raised hand.
“Stay yourselves.” Her hand was stiff in the hold, as if she were commanding a legion of archers. “Allow our host to drink first.”
That same hand hovered over the feast of honeyed wine. If she were to poison them, surely it would be every cup? She could see Minthara’s mind alight behind her eyes.
She plucked one she had stained with turmeric. It was as yellow as the sun. Their fingers brushed as Jaheira took the cup with the curiosity of a youth.
Minthara waited for her to take the first sip and Jaheira swallowed the mug in three. She drank so quickly she felt tiny beads run down her chin and stain her white dress. Tethyr’s herbs rooted deep in one’s belly, she knew– until they blossomed tall enough to turn a mortal to what she was within herself. They would do nothing to her.
The captain waited for them to take root. And waited, and waited. Glass broke, somewhere upstairs. A wolf howled at the treeline and something yelped closer in the dark.
“Satisfied?” She teased, quietly with her voice wracked with raw honey. “Come now. Be merry, Minthara.”
Minthara gave no quarter. “Never.”
But she gave the archer’s pull all the same. Her men drank up each offered cup like water and bellowed for more, more more.
And more they would have.
They ran wild through her gardens, they chased her hens and waved swords at her wolves, who had retreated to the treeline. They only were corralled with more meat, more wine, more shiny things served to them as if they were ugly little princes. Jaheira whispered a thanks to each hen, each suckling pig and each plucked date that filled their endless greed.
Minthara watched it all from the head of her table. If her men were pretend princes, she carried the air of some wayward queen. Jaheira could see it in the tilt of her chin; in the way her words were so calm, so easy, and yet spoken with the conviction of divine law.
Words spoken with a palm on the hilt of her sword, still. No. The Minthara would slaughter just as easily as her men. She would only cut a little cleaner.
It was Jaheira’s last thought as she pressed a mug of wine into the captains’ hands.
Minthara looked up as if woken from a dream. Jaheira was reminded of her wolfmothers, then, in the way her eyes narrowed from firelight wide irises to pinpoint needles.
“Do you always drink after your men?”
“Should they be poisoned, it would be no great loss,” she murmured, as if still waking up. Something covered her face. A soft brushstroke, a veil of a smile. “Such Dionysian revelry is pointless now. I tend to drink alone.”
Their fingers brushed again as Minthara took the wine. She bore sailor’s hands– soldier’s hands– with bandages ‘round their knuckles. Jaheira could not help but wonder what lay beneath them, and how it might feel to trace the split seams of battle on her skin.
“As do I. Drink alone, that is, I am not so above the revelry.” Jaheira tapped the rim of her mug to hers. “To our evergreen loneliness, then.”
She could see Minthara’s lips twitch in a smile she fought to keep down. “And to your evergreen grove.”
It was a clever enough strategy. She was certainly smarter than any of the drooling crew who’d sooner stumble inside, slaughter her wolves and drink her wine to sickness. No. Jaheira could feel the spider leg tickle of Minthara scratching battle plans in the sand. She was simply another story to them. The druid of Tethyr, they’d write, a once-queen killed for the crime of keeping the gates closed.
She claimed not to be satisfied but she drank the wine just the same. Jaheira watched the flex of her throat and the flash of her scars in the firelight. There was an unmistakable braid of blood around her neck like a scar from an old rope.
Or old trouble.
‘So guarded,” she teased. Just close enough so she might count the sun moles upon her face, before she changed. “Such temperance even with wine on your tongue. Do not tell me you don’t trust me?”
Minthara barked out a laugh. “Hah. Temperance. I can only hope they write such things about me in my tale. But temperance does not win wars in any sense of the word.”
Jaheira was brazen, then, for what was a life of solitude if not for growing wild and unchecked? She plucked the clay mug where Minthara had left it upon her table and held it out to the shorter woman with a smile.
“Certainly not this one.”
They were alone in the cabin. Shadows passed over fogged-over windows as the sailors gorged upon her garden and terrorized the animals. A little quieter, now. Hah. Perhaps the animals were winning.
Minthara tipped her chin up. A show of her throat was invitation enough from one so guarded.
Jaheira tried not to revel in power– truly, she did. She had retired from such foolish notions. She had died once for them and returned from the underworld with that fire extinguished by the River Lethe.
But when she brought the cup to Minthara’s lips, when that clever-eyed hero let her mouth drop open… oh. Perhaps the Gods had been in a fine mood when they let her come back. Perhaps they had left just an ember of it behind.
The captain growled and glared over the rim but she let herself be sated. Sip by sip by sip. They stumbled back together, both drunk on it, until the solid body of Minthara and her swords thumped against her bedroom wall. Jaheira, spurred on by the sound, curled a hand around the back of her neck.The captain’s gasp echoed in the empty mug. It was the sound of someone who had been lost at sea for too long. Jaheira held her tight by the scruff like the little wolfpup she was and–
Ah. Those embers lead to follies, of course. For winters on Tethyr were sluggish and unforgiving and lonely when the incessant chirp of the wilderness bedded down till spring.
Touching another, touching Minthara, was the first flush of perfect spring. Like the sun in the sky when there was still frost on the ground.
Sparkling, clever eyes studied her beneath the cup. Jaheira almost feared to lower it. When she did she found that same triumphant, battlefield smile. The wine had made her lips red as if they’d been taken by a rough kiss. A single bead of it dripped from the corner of her mouth and raced down her neck like a fresh kill.
What would the tales say, Jaheira wondered. Who pressed tentative lips to cheek, who tangled her fingers in white curls and bit down hard? Who dragged the other to the bed of pelts and knelt between desperate legs? Whose mouth was slicker in the moonlight, and who’s sweat soaked through the furs?
Minthara shook out her braid and let her hair fall free. It was as white as the caps of a rough sea.
“You are curious, druid,” She said through heaving breaths and a smile. “How long has it been, lying down with only wolves?”
“I will tell you in the morning.”Jaheira thumbed the wine from her chin. “You are the first one I am taking to bed.”