The Sleepers of Saint Garfir

     Acacia stood at her side, a red teacup in her hands. The lutari’s hazelnut eyes were wide with relief.

     “Everyone,” she shrieked, “come here!”

     At once, Miphie’s field of vision was accosted by faces appearing from every direction. Acacia, Flute; Lucenza, Vaso, and Augusto—they were all here, awake, and crowding her space with slightly uncomfortable urgency. As she tried to sit up, she realized she was in a bed. Her bed. A familiar threadbare Doglefox rested against her pillow.

     She decided that cold and black as her somnolent sleep had been, her mind had finally decided to conjure up some dreams. Then Augusto pulled her into his arms with a force that could only be felt in the waking world. Vaso—Vaso, who was awake, whose mounting weariness over the past week had vanished as though it had never existed—squeezed her hand and Lucenza smiled with such warmth, such unhindered reassurance, that the Draik felt a swell of sorrow. Miphie adjusted her perception: she was really awake. She felt flush with alertness, her eyes darting from one face to the next and to the next.

     Finally, breathlessly, her father released his embrace. Miphie slumped gratefully into her pillow.

     “The Aurora Lilies?” Her voice was hoarse. Just uttering three words made her breathless. Miphie’s eyes flickered to the window: the courtyard outside was brightly lit, the sun at its zenith above. “How long was I asleep?”

     “Two nights.” Flute had taken off his glasses. Without those round frames, his eyes were about twice as large. Vicious dark crescents graced the area under them. The gnorbu’s fluffy hair had lost its cloudy texture, and now held the attributes of a poorly-maintained shrub. “We weren’t—sure if you’d wake up…”

     Miphie’s breath hitched. What could she say to that?

     “Welcome back, Miphina.” Her gaze found Augusto. His remarkable eyes were pink-rimmed, almost quivering. She considered her hands, one of which was still securely intertwined in Vaso’s grip. A peculiar iciness prickled her fingertips. Bone-deep. Coming into direct contact with the somnolence in the sick trees had marked her. “Tell me what happened.”

     A shadow stirred in the corner. Edith was leaning against the dresser, removed from the group. Two sleepless nights had marked the kyrii as well. Her Candy colour had lost much of its lustre, and her hair, her most striking feature, had been carelessly tugged into a braid, hanging like some lifeless rope down her back.

     “Passing out when you did produced a series of problems for us.” She tugged at her sleeves rather roughly. Her lilting intonation rang with a bitter edge which Miphie did not like one bit. All angles and edges. “Any more observations we could do were stopped short, so we gathered up as many Aurora Lilies as we could find and tried to retrace our steps out of the woods. We followed our trail of luminescent mushrooms, but without the map your plant-whispering provided, we were going around in circles. Obviously, having to carry you didn’t facilitate the task.”

     “But then that ghost appeared. Right in front of us.” Acacia sat down at the edge of the bed, causing Miphie to slide down towards her. The lutari’s characteristic liveliness had also been tempered. “She guided us back towards town. We finally reached the inn when the sun was rising.”

     What followed was an entire day toiling over the lilies. They had precious few days before the blooms withered away, and so they had to work quickly to devise a potent tisane to negate the most advanced somnolence effects. Fortunately, Flute’s hypothesis had been sound: the Aurora Lilies’ properties were a near-perfect antithesis to the penumbra, and with Lucenza’s help, Acacia, Flute, and Edith had transformed the Sleepy Aroota Inn kitchen into a veritable apothecary. Vaso became the first to respond to the floral tea, followed by Augusto. They awoke as if from a trance, all signs of somnolence vanished.

     Miphie’s case had been more difficult. While Acacia and Edith administered the brew to the townsfolk, Flute and Lucenza kept adjusting their potion. They reduced nectar from the flowers into a thick syrup, which was methodically drip-fed to Miphie. The Light Faerie posited that, as Miphie had come into direct, energetic contact with the roots of an afflicted plant, the somnolence had sunk marrow-deep. Even now, Miphie couldn’t quite shake the fatigue weighing on her muscles. Her mind was attentive, but her limbs felt like they were gathering into small puddles at her sides.

     “We just kept on giving you the stuff, every thirty minutes, all day and all night, and you still wouldn’t even so much as stir in your sleep.”

     “There was just no way to know if what we tried would work,” said Lucenza. Her golden wings glinted in the sunlight, creating fascinating speckles of light along the walls. Miphie had to squint to look at her. “Those were long, difficult nights. We all took turns keeping vigil, until finally, just now, you opened your eyes. Honestly, I was going to seek help from Academia if you hadn’t woken up today. ”

     Miphie had the absurd urge to apologize.

     “Why do you say you’re sorry?” Augusto kneeled at her bedside. His eyebrows made soft, concave crescents on his forehead.

     She shrugged. “None of you got any rest because of me.”

     “Meef, I think I speak for everyone when I say,” Vaso smirked, “we’re just relieved you’re back. And at this point, some of us have had more than enough sleep.”

     Lucenza eventually shepherded everyone out of Miphie’s room. The faerie insisted the Draik rest to recover her strength, and she was not permitted to set foot out of her room a moment before. Unfortunately for Miphie, the last thing she wanted to do now was sleep. She lay in bed, clenching and unclenching her hands.

     The chill in her fingers would not subside.

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     The sound of clinking ceramics eventually roused Miphie from shallow sleep. Her mind had spent the last hour conjuring strange, looping images of the twelve founders of Altador. She lifted her head and beheld Edith in the doorway, balancing a large tray at her side. She had changed her clothes, and now looked the picture of summer vacation: a soft linen dress matched the ribbon in her long hair. The Academia Magika emblem glinted on her bodice.

     “Are you hungry?” Not waiting for an answer, the kyrii placed the wooden tray on Miphie’s bed. It consisted of a mug of hot tea, smelling of honey and lavender, and a fig sandwich. The sandwich had been cut into triangles, just like how she used to request them as a child. The thought of her father cutting her sandwich twisted her stomach. She thought of warm afternoons completing schoolwork on the kitchen table, and autumn nights harvesting the first pumpkins of the season with Augusto. It made her sad. She reached for the Aurora tea, hoping it might warm her fingers.

     “Thank you,” she said softly, after a careful sip. Its soft, floral aroma reminded her of summer trips to the northern Altador mountains. Over the cup’s rim, she watched Edith fiddle with her skirt. It seemed the Kyrii couldn’t decide if she wanted to lean against the dresser or stand straight. She eventually settled standing stick-straight against the furniture. It didn’t look very comfortable. “Where is everybody?”

     “Your father is in the kitchen. Everyone else is out bringing Aurora tea to the houses. I think Vaso went straight to his grandmother’s.”

     Miphie nodded. The tea soothed her throat but did nothing for her hands. The low afternoon sun cast amber rays around the room. In that light, her fingers appeared slightly purple.

     “The penumbras you picked, they’re in the vase over there. By the way.” She followed Edith’s gaze to the open window, where a wide-necked bottle had been left, filled with the strange flowers. Their petals were shut tight, but they would open again in a few hours.

     “It was smart of you. Picking them.” Miphie glanced at the Kyrii, who was staring approximately five feet in front of her. “You want to make a kind of preventative remedy. Am I correct?”

     Miphie raised her eyebrows. She quickly looked down at her tea, as though it was the most interesting thing in the world. “Nothing gets past you,” she observed, incredulous. “Even I couldn’t have told you why I needed to pick those flowers so urgently. It felt like I was sleepwalking when I did it.”

     “You have an herbalist’s instinct, Miphie.”

     She felt her face flush. “You too, Edith,” she said. The whisper hovered like a feather above them. “Did you know that there’s a penumbra flower in the school conservatory?”

     “I’ve seen it, yes. In the Shenkuu greenhouse.” Edith’s voice wove delicately through the air.

     Miphie nodded. “Just one. I wasn’t able to recognize it at first, because it’s closed during the daytime. The plaque above: it says it’s native to Shenkuu, but it’s not endemic. It can grow here, in Altador.” Miphie glanced at Edith and cleared her throat, making her voice less hoarse. She knew she was rambling. “Do you know the other name for it? It was all I could think about when I woke up. The Dreamer’s Curse. Like the Altadorian founder—the air faerie. Well, I don’t think it’s actually a curse, just an unfortunate name for a plant. But the Aurora Lily. Do you know what we call it here, in southern Altador?”

     Edith shifted slightly, making the floorboards creak. “Why are you telling me about folk etymology?”

     “Syiana Lily. That’s another founder. The light faerie. Two flowers, with totally inverse properties. Named after two faeries who were allies. It’s so odd—they almost complement each other.” Edith had walked to the window now. Miphie couldn’t see her face, but she imagined her stormy eyes were observing something outside. She finally uttered the only question that mattered: “Why aren’t you out with the others?”

     Another pause stretched between them, long enough for the sound of buzzing Moaches outside to become relentless in Miphie’s ears.

     “‘Why do you behave as though you’re better than us?’”

     Miphie startled, sitting up slightly. The mug clinked against the plate, producing a hollow squeak. “I’m sorry?”

     “What you said two nights ago, while we were in the woods... I can’t stop thinking about it.” Edith raised a hand and brushed a wispy touch along a flower petal. “I never meant to make you feel small.”

     “Oh.”

     “I…” Edith faltered. Miphie had never heard her hesitate before. “I was supposed to go to a school in Faerieland. To the Preparatory School of Magic and the Arcane Sciences. That was the path they’d set out for me.” Edith did not turn from the window. A moach had flown onto her head, and her ear flicked it off. “I thought, if I could just be the absolute best at Academia, I’d make it up to them.”

     ‘Them’ was the great epithet standing in place for the Lockwood Dynasty. Edith’s family. A collection of the most powerful and affluent mages, druids, and royal advisors in Neopia. The elephante in the room whenever someone conjured the kyrii’s name.

     They were a great topic of lecturing in History of Magic, and even if Miphie hardly paid attention to the professor in that class, she could not ignore how much influence the Lockwoods had over much of the magical world. Some members belonged to the Order of the Red Erisim. Others advised great rulers. Edith’s own mother was a royal mage to King Altador… all of this may have slightly coloured her perception of Edith Lockwood.

     The only Lockwood to have been accepted into the second-best magic school in Neopia.

     “That… can’t have been easy,” Miphie said. She cringed: every word in that sentence was wrong.

     “No it wasn't. Isn’t. I’m in the top percentile of students. I’ve only taken advanced placement classes. My teachers think I’m one of the most gifted Elemental Magic students in Academia history. And it’s still not enough.” She breathed carefully as if the air had been disturbed by her admission. “It will never be enough.”

     Miphie frowned. Forget what she’d said about flowers, she and Edith were from totally different worlds. She could not understand why the Kyrii wasn’t satisfied, why her family wasn’t satisfied when being a third-year student at Academia Magika was a coup in and of itself. When being accepted into this school had coaxed such genial pride from Augusto’s eyes. But then, she suddenly felt a sparkle of empathy towards the kyrii. Strange as it seemed, weren’t they both struggling with feelings of inadequacy at school?

     “I think what you’re doing is enough,” she finally murmured. Edith turned, and her misty gaze was the most uncovered, the most vulnerable it had ever seemed. It made Miphie’s throat clam up.

     “Alright,” the Draik hurried to say, which felt stupid, given the circumstances. She set her tray on the side table and stood up so fast, that her vision blackened for a moment.

     “What are you doing?”

     “The trees are still dying, aren’t they?” Miphie realized she was still in that preposterous school uniform. She would have to change into something more practical, and right away.

     Edith blinked. “Yes.”

     “So then we have to go back to the clearing.”

     “Yes.”

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     “You want to go back into the forest?” Augusto sat back on his heels and wiped his earth-coated hands on his pants. They were in the inn’s vegetable garden, the glare of the afternoon sun at his back. This year’s tomato crop appeared promising.

     “We stumbled onto something there last time,” Miphie insisted. Augusto had a hardness to his gaze and in the raise of his eyebrows. None of it felt particularly encouraging. She fiddled with a button on her top. In her haste to dress, she had missed a button all the way down, and now the lines of her shirt were skewed. From behind the Kougra, she could see the distant forest. Many of the trees had been stripped of their leaves, and their bony branches reached toward the sky in supplication. “I’m sure that if we can find a way to get rid of the flowers in that clearing, we’ll save the trees. We’ll make it so that no one will be at risk of falling to the somnolence anymore.”

     “She’s right.” Edith nodded vigorously, “Miphie has a way of navigating the woods without getting lost. And now, with the Aurora tea, we can make sure that she doesn’t fall to the somnolence again.”

     Augusto rose to his full, grizzly height. He began combing a pensive hand through his silver beard while he spoke. “Miphina, I don’t know… what about your other friends? Do they know you’re going back?”

     There was no time to go looking for them in the village. Miphie and Edith needed to reach the penumbra before they bloomed in the moonlight and reached their full, radiant power. Besides, the distribution of medicine around Saint Garfir was more important than whatever foolhardy mission Edith and Miphie were about to embark on. Miphie squared her shoulders.

     “I’m not looking for your permission,” she said, injecting as much resolve as she could into her cadence. “We need to head back into the woods before the penumbra blooms again. We’ll be back by nightfall.”

     She was certain her father hadn’t heard the quiver in her voice.

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     They had no trouble spotting the Ixi in the tree line. She flitted between the branches, her hair a curling thunderstorm looming behind her head. Her blank eyes and reaching hands implored them to follow her. Watching the ghost, Miphie held the stem of an Aurora Lily—one of the few which had been extracted intact from the clearing. She would ask for its guidance through the forest, just as she had with the ginger roots. The lily’s clement warmth coursing up her arm would hopefully mitigate the somnolence running like a current through the trees. Edith had also brought a thermos of Aurora tea, in case either of them became too tired to continue.

     This time, the Draik would not risk connecting with the dying trees. Her fingers prickled at the memory.

     The air between them was taut. Miphie felt that the chasm she shared with Edith had narrowed and then widened again. She wondered anew what kind of impression her family and her little town made on this Lockwood. Was she envious? Callous? Beside her, Edith slung a bag over her shoulder, her silver lyre peeking out.

     “Back in the clearing,” Miphie contemplated, breaking the silence, “I felt the strangest tug from the ginger. Like there was something there, summoning it.” She took a tentative step into the undergrowth, and her feet sank ankle-deep into the decaying leaves. Edith followed close behind.

     With every step, Miphie sensed the tether between the flower and the something at the heart of the forest tighten. It pulled her in, and she fixated on the crystallizing certitude that she was missing something essential.

     The leaves muffled their steps as they retraced those familiar miles. More light could trickle through the barren branches, and in the late afternoon daylight, Miphie and Edith saw what they had not before.

     Petpets. Dormant, nestled close to the base of the trees. Altachucks, Arootas, and Garfirs. They found them everywhere, their little bodies hardly rising and falling as they slept.

     Edith shivered. “Fyora…” she muttered, stepping over an aroota sprawled on the path. “It’s some miracle we didn’t step on any of them last time.”

     “Maybe the ghost was making sure we didn’t.”

     They pressed on. Without leaves for the sun's rays to trickle through, the light painted a pallid tableau throughout the forest. Trees rose like sallow, grey strokes of a paintbrush. Miphie had never been to the Haunted Woods, but she imagined that this was how the trees looked during the day. Barren, famished branches, yawning gaps where the greenery should have been.

          “You know, you haven’t made good on your promise.”

     “My promise?” Miphie glanced at Edith. She couldn’t recall having made any promises in recent times.

     “After Presentation Day,” she shrugged, “we agreed that you’d teach me how to communicate with plants.” She said this with the kind of certitude one used to state that Tyrannia was hot, or Terror Mountain was cold. Miphie recalled their peculiar encounter at the library, but ‘making a promise’ was not the term she’d use to describe that interaction.

     “You said you let yourself become an extension of the plant,” the Kyrii said. “Obviously, this is a common application in much of the Transmutation school of magic. Telepathy is the act of extending one’s will to another being. And the anumatum spell is easy enough to replicate.”

     “Right…” Miphie murmured. She supposed that her ability could be equated to creating an empathetic link with the plants. “It’s more like… before I can perform the anumatum spell, I’m listening,” she finally suggested.

     Edith’s arched an eyebrow. “Listening? But what’s there to listen to?”

     The Draik ran her tongue along the backs of her teeth for a moment. “You know the vegetable garden in front of the inn?” Edith nodded, perplexed. “Well, that used to be my garden. Before I moved to the city, before Lucenza told me I should apply to the school, I spent a lot of my free time there. I didn’t just grow tomatoes and thyme. I used to forage the wild herbs growing at the edge of the woods—vervain, foxglove—and I’d grow my own. I matured tea plants and tried to cultivate whatever pretty wildflowers I saw growing in the shade. Augusto bought me a gardening guide so that I could learn how to raise everything.” While she spoke, her mind conjured vibrant images: verdant spring in Saint Garfir, the scent of soil and wet stone, and the weight of a spade in her hand.

     “Do you want to know the most important thing that the book taught me? All those pages about plant care, watering schedules, fertilizer, sunlight… they only painted half the picture.” Miphie raised her lily to eye level. One of its root hairs had curled amicably around a finger. “Plants each have their own individual traits and preferences. Like us. I could have two tomato plants from the same parent and I’d learn that one preferred lots of sunlight, but the other didn’t do so well in the same amount of light. It was all about observing them, listening to their needs, and learning who they were. It was… letting them teach me.”

     Edith had stopped walking, lost in thought. Miphie wondered if she had been understood. Her chest tightened. “When I was studying for my presentation, I accidentally lost control of my clay figurine. I almost destroyed some of the rarest plants at our school.” Her admission rang shakily in the shade of the trees. “The only reason I wasn’t expelled that day, the only reason I was able to save each of those herbs and flowers—the only reason,” she laughed hoarsely, “why I passed my presentation at all, was because I listened to them, and they told me what they needed.”

     Taking one of Edith’s hands, she gently tucked the lily into her palm and softly closed her fingers around the root. “Listen: what is it saying?”

     Edith’s eyes fluttered shut. Miphie stood close enough to observe a little crease deepen in the kyrii’s brow. Minutes passed. Edith finally sighed and opened her eyes. “I can’t sense anything.” She looked to the side, her cheeks flushed.

     “It’s okay!” Miphie hurried to say. She did not want to see Edith ashamed. “Let’s try again. I’ll also hold the lily.” She wrapped one hand over the root and felt the tips of her fingers tingle appreciatively at the contact with the plant. After another moment, she took Edith’s free hand in hers. And the Kyrii tensed slightly in her grasp, and her hands were not cool and fragile as a winter stream: they were warm, and they were solid. Miphie’s breath hitched in her throat. She found that her chilled fingers welcomed the touch. “Maybe if we form a circle, we can amplify the sound.”

     The silence stretched and stretched and stretched, but this time, it relaxed and thawed. Miphie invited the veil of quiet to drape over them. Edith gasped softly.

     “I feel something,” she whispered, afraid to shatter the delicate connection, “a fuzzy energy in my hand.”

     Miphie couldn’t hide the eager quiver in her voice. “What is it telling you?”

     Edith pondered a moment. “I can’t say,” she finally admitted, releasing Miphie’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

     Hearing that phrase come from Edith was so preposterous, Miphie nearly laughed. “No, no, it’s alright—don’t be sorry,” she said instead, taking the flower back into her hands. “You established a connection with a plant! You just have to continue honing your listening. Maybe you could apply this power to your earth faerie magic?”

     “Yes, maybe.” Edith produced a shy smile. “You’re a good teacher, Miphie.”

     The Draik felt her cheeks warm. “Let’s keep going.”

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     They arrived at the clearing at the onset of twilight. The air was brothy and still, and Miphie wished she had brought a hair tie because her green strands clung to her scales. The field of penumbras rose before them, a blanket of iridescent periwinkle bulbs producing a striking contrast to the dark ground. The moonglow would reach the centre of the clearing in less than an hour, and the bulbs would unfurl their petals.

     Miphie yawned. A subtle headache had begun to thrum behind her forehead. Even with the lily in her hands and the Aurora tea they had packed, they were not completely immune to the penumbras’ pull.

     She traced a careful hand along the trunk of the nearest linden tree. If she shut her eyes and brought all of her attention to her fingers, she could discern the faintest thrum of energy pulsating from the heartwood. It fought on.

     “I don’t understand it,” Edith approached another sapling. The kyrii didn’t look at all tired, her eyes shone with rapt clarity. “Other parasitic plants also leech off of trees, but I’ve never known the effect to be so vast.”

     “And so quickly destructive,” Miphie agreed. She wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve. She looked down at her shirt: it was filthy, with soil and bits of leaf clinging to the fabric. Miphie glanced at Edith and squinted: her white dress still looked fresh off the clothesline. How did she do it?

     “These trees are barely alive after only a few weeks of the sprouts’ infestation when it would take any other parasite years to completely finish off a perfectly healthy tree.”

     “Something else is going on. These woods have a reputation for being enchanted,” said Miphie. “Maybe the flowers are suppressing some kind of magical trait in the trees.” This seemed to amuse the kyrii.

     “Miphie, you ought to know by now, that all forests are enchanted.” Edith’s eyes shimmered like starlight. And then the Kyrii did something which caught Miphie completely off guard: she laughed. It rang with the clarity and sterling quality of a glass bell and caused Edith’s angular shoulders to quiver. “Really, Miphie, as a budding herbalist, that’s the first conclusion you must draw!”

     Utterly bewildered, the Draik blinked at the flower in her hands. “You’re… right?” It made her want to giggle too. What a strange thing to laugh about—was Edith delirious from the somnolence?

     But she could dwell on Edith’s eccentricities later. Yes, perhaps tonight, when they returned home, safe and sound. Right now, the Aurora Lily’s petals were beginning to shut, the thread connecting its essence to Miphie’s becoming frayed. She could sense the dwindling pull leading northeast of the clearing.

     “It’s just a little further. Edith, stop laughing, come on… ”

     Leaving the clearing behind, they stepped back into the shadow of trees. There, the penumbra flowers which snaked up the sides of branches were smaller. Evidently, they had difficulty thriving away from the moon’s light.

     They came to a small stream. On the opposite bank, Miphie could see old-growth trees, their broad trunks pale and hidden beneath coats of lichen. These were the forest’s primaeval origins. Behind the grove rose a sheer, wooden wall. The setting sun shot a crimson line around the grove, casting the wooden structure in copper. Whatever moored the Aurora Lily in her hands was emanating from beyond the wall.

     While the stream was narrow, it was also deep. When Edith and Miphie crossed it, the clear water rose to their shins. They pushed their way into the grove, and Miphie glanced once more behind her: the ghost Ixi, who had shadowed them at a distance, was not following them across the creek. She paced along the opposite bank. Something was keeping her from coming closer.

     Her scales prickled and tensed: something ancient and powerful resided here, and as she turned to face the wall, she understood why:

     “Twelve heroes of Altador…” she whispered, and Edith echoed.

     The great wooden facade they had mistaken for a wall was not a wall at all, but the sleeping form of a mammoth, Woodland-colored garfir.

     “What in Neopia is that?” Edith’s eyes were wide and awe-filled. They rounded its looming scorpion’s tail and great, spiralling mane, which looked to have been artfully carved into its bark.

     Miphie had never seen a Woodland Garfir before, much less one of this size. Standing on her toes, her shoulders barely cleared the beast’s muzzle. Its formidable, stony claws were blanketed in soft lichen and moss, and across its hide, from its broad shoulders to the whorls carved into its haunches, penumbra flowers grew in tight, greedy clusters. Their stems emerged from the ground, and they snaked up the garfir’s sides in coiling vines, their tendrils grabbing like claws into its body.

     The flowers might have produced a picturesque effect if not for their beastly implications. For the Garfir had succumbed to the somnolence, and all at once, it dawned on Miphie, like the flimsy winking light of daybreak, that essential truth which she had missed.

     The legend rose before them, all doubt cast aside. They beheld the progenitor guardian of Saint Garfir.

     To be continued…