Columbine's Tale

Prologue - Tarya

TaryaYou will forgive me if I speak in my own tongue. The broken words of Litonya strangle what I wish to say, and it is imperative you understand. I am blunt, they say, so I give you the truth without fancy words to make it more savoury.

For three hundred years the players of Litonya travelled the land, leaving devastation in their wake.

If I had been honest with myself I would have seen the wrong when I first joined them, nine seasons ago. Once, I was a person who stood against any who brought pain to others, whether deliberate or no. But then my child, my beautiful Liliana, was taken from me and murdered by superstitious fools who feared her ability to see the future. I learned it was futile to stand against those who, because they are many, believe they are right. Yet never did I think I would stand beside those who did wrong, and join them in their wrongdoing. I can only say my grief made me unable to see, yes?

When Mina joined our troupe and travelled with us to the artisan competitions in the royal city of Aurea, I hated her. I thought Uberto planned to replace me. That Mina would become the new serving maid in the performances. I never expected she would become my friend, the first person I could tell the full story of my little Liliana’s death, outside of my country of Rien. I never expected she would waken my grieving soul and draw me back into the world to live and fight once more.

Mina showed us something wonderful. She wove stories into our playing. And she did something more. For when she was onstage she did not just transform herself, as we did, taking on a character drawn from the dream realms of Tarya. No, she could transform the very air around her, as we discovered during the royal competition, when she brought buildings and scenery out of Tarya and into the waking world for all to see. Though they had no substance, the illusion was perfect. No wonder the king proclaimed our troupe the new Royal Players.

But we all knew, I think, there was more to Mina’s gift than that miracle. None of us in the troupe could forget how she saved Aldo’s life, in the town of Clusone. And though, to the townsfolk, nothing appeared out of the ordinary on that occasion, for those of us who knew Tarya there was … some absence, something that told us Mina and Aldo were gone from their bodies, even while Mina still spoke. I think we all knew they had gone to Tarya, though to where I could not tell. Then Aldo was healed. One moment he was dying, the next moment healed. How I wished for that gift.

For the players, Tarya has always been a source of inspiration for our entertainments. When we don our masks we can reach the heavenly realms of the Tales. Once, it seemed an enormous gift. But Mina’s gifts far surpassed ours. For her, Tarya is a place of power and healing. She found something none of us even suspected might dwell there. Even those who had done this for many years. She found a source of power, and she won us a place at the palace. Then she ran away.

I understood why. She had to find her missing brother. I would have done anything to bring Liliana back, if I could. But other things drove her away also. Dario said she found out she wasn’t the only one who knew the hidden face of Tarya—that it could be a place of harm as much as of healing.

What Mina learned still horrifies me. All those times, when we took the dreams we found in Tarya, it was merely to create our performances. We needed the stories that lived in the Place of Dreams, to turn them into the scenes we showed onstage. That was the way things had always been done, throughout player history. We trusted to the weight of years, accepting without thinking. But some of us sensed what we did was wrong, I’m sure.

It took Mina to open our eyes to what we were really doing.

Chapter 1