Xander paused, and I stared at him. I was completely entranced. As a storyteller, Xander was… remarkable. It was as though I couldfeelhis words.
“One day, when Elyx was eight years old, he went into the forest with his younger sister.” Xander’s eyes opened, and he gave me a smug look. “I bet you want to know her name, too?”
“Yes please,” I whispered.
He smiled, as though pleased he had anticipated my request.
“Saena,” he murmured. As he said the name, his face grew soft. Warm. “Her name was Saena”
“Saena,” I echoed the name, tasting the syllables.Say-nah. “That is a beautiful name. I bet she was a beautiful little girl.”
“She was stunning,” Xander agreed. “From the moment she was born, people knew she would be different. Special. Saena was three years younger than her brother, and she was the apple of his eye. Saena knew he loved her, and she had her older brother wrapped around her little finger.”
Xander sighed. “She was the opposite of him in every way. Their father died when they were young, and Elyx took it upon himself to help raise Saena. Their mother used to say they were as different as night and day. Where Elyx was light, his sister was dark.
“Saena was full of energy, but her brother felt the weight of their tiny world on his shoulders. He tried to take care of the three of them, but it was hard. The world wasn’t kind to youth. Elyx and his family felt that harshness more than most.”
“That’s a lot of pressure for such a small child,” I whispered.
My heart was breaking for the boy. I knew better than most the pain of having your childhood ripped away from you. The agony of having years stolen that could never be returned. Elyx hadn’t grown up in a tower, but by the sounds of things, he hadn’t had an easy life either.
I ached for children whose futures were stolen from them. Youth who were forced, like me, to grow up before their time. Those who lost their lives before they could Mature. Grow. Age. Before they could reach their full potential.
Children were our future. They deserved to be cherished. Loved. Protected.
They should not have been forced to know how heavy the weight of the world could be.
I had drawn closer to Xander and was now sitting a few feet away from him. Reaching down, I picked up a small rock off the ground, rolling it between my fingers.
This story felt important. Crucial, even. And I didn’t want to miss a single second of it.
Xander’s face was grim, his jaw hard as he rubbed the back of his neck. “It was a lot. But Elyx was happy to take on the weight of the world for his sister.”
There was a heaviness to his words that settled deep within me. Something bad was coming. I knew it.
Trepidation filled my voice as I asked, “What happened to them?”
“One especially hot day in the summer, Elyx decided to take Saena to the nearby river that ran through the forest. She had been begging him to go swimming from the moment she woke up, and he saw no harm in it. The river was an hour’s walk from their home, but their mother seemed especially preoccupied that morning. The village elders had been in an uproar the past few days and something had them on edge.
“Elyx could sense the tension in the air, and he wanted to give his mother a break. Saena was quite a handful, you see? She was five and had so much energy. From the moment she rose with the dawn until the second her eyelids fluttered shut, she never stopped moving. She always had stories to tell, chattering about this and that. So that morning, Elyx gave his mother a kiss on the cheek, told her, ‘I love you’ and walked out into the woods with his sister.”
“Elyx sounds like a wonderful brother,” I said, rubbing my hands over my arms.
Xander’s lips tilted up as he looked at me. “That’s kind of you to say. I think he was.”
“What happened next?”
“That hot summer day, Elyx and Saena played and swam in the river for hours. Morning gave way to the afternoon, and still, they remained hidden in the forest. It wasn’t until their stomachs were grumbling that the two siblings decided it was time to get back to their tiny village. After all, Elyx was certain his mother would be missing them. But as they drew nearer to the village, he realized something was wrong.”
“No,” I gasped, drawing my arms around myself. “What was wrong?”
Xander removed his hands from behind his head, shifting to hold them in his lap instead. He began twisting them together, his voice deep and tinged with sadness as he continued.
“The forest was silent. The birds weren’t chirping, the deer weren’t moving, and even the insects had stopped their chattering. As they drew closer to home, Elyx knew in his gut that something was wrong. There was a strange smell in the air, one that set alarm bells off in the boy’s mind. His stomach twisted upon itself as each step became more difficult. When the edge of the woods came into view, Elyx grabbed Saena by the waist. He lifted her up into a nearby tree and told her to climb to the very top.
“Saena stared at him. ‘Why can’t I come with you?’ He told her they were just playing a game, but that he had to go back to their home quickly. He’d come back for her, he assured her. Mollified, she scampered up the tree as Elyx grabbed his small pocketknife from his tunic.
“Armed with his tiny weapon, he left his sister in the woods and continued towards their home. He told himself that he was just being silly, that there probably wasn’t anything wrong, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened. And then…”