Chapter Three

"Lyda! You're distracted again."

Lyda quickly snapped back to her senses, having been lulled by the sound of a rushing creek nearby that she could not see. Usually, Iris would conduct her lessons with Lyda at the cottage or off in the woods not far away when the days were nice enough. This time, however, she took Lyda deeper into the mountains, heading west and carrying a burlap sack around her shoulder with everything they would need for today's lesson.

Lyda was excited at first for a refreshing change of scenery but grew tired after the first hour of hiking. She kept asking Iris where they were going and how much longer it would take, but Iris just told her, "You'll see." To Lyda's bewilderment, they walked for over six hours, pausing a few times for breaks, before Iris finally stopped and instructed Lyda to sit down on a large, natural stone slab that was sticking up out of the dirt. She did as she was told, and Iris sat down on the stone in front of her. She began by giving Lyda a brief overview of what she would be teaching her today, but that was around the time she became distracted by her new surroundings.

She had never been this far away from home before. It was a slightly longer distance from the cottage than the Valley was, and what really caught her attention was the plant life she spotted not far away. They were peculiar looking plants, with bushes whose stems seemed to extend somewhat sporadically outward, but the flowers they produced displayed the most beautiful arrays of pink and white. Somewhere beyond the bushes, Lyda could hear the flowing of a spring or river, and she found herself lost in the penetrating sensation of tranquility. That is, before Iris broke her out of it.

"I'm sorry," Lyda apologized sheepishly. "What are those bushes? I've never seen them before." She pointed toward the unknown plants.

"Oh," Iris followed her direction. "They call that rhododendron. They're rather pretty to look at, but some are known to be poisonous. It's important that you stay away from them. Do you understand?"

Lyda gave her mistress a look of confusion. She thought it strange that she had never come across these plants during her studies before. Recognizing poisonous plants was just as essential to a healer as identifying useful herbs. Regardless, she decided not to question it, and just go back through her studies later to see if she missed it somehow.

"Do you know why I brought you out here?" Iris began. Lyda shook her head, so she continued. "My mistress led me here when I was your age. She said it was the perfect place to absorb the tranquil auras of nature. You can just feel it in the air. It envelops you here, like this place is cut off from the rest of the world in its own little paradise."

Lyda nodded her head. So that explained the persistent lulling she was feeling. It was like she could just fall over and doze off peacefully in the comfort of nature's beauty.

"I thought this would be the perfect place to give you your first active experience," Iris professed. "But we'll start off easy, just to make sure your knowledge is top-notch. Can you tell me what that plant is over there?"

Lyda followed her hand as she pointed to her left at a patch of white-petaled flowers with small, bulbous yellow centers. Lyda examined the stems of the flowers, which were covered in little green hairs from the flowers down to the soil. That was all Lyda needed to see.

"That's chamomile," she answered confidently.

"Are you sure?" Iris questioned. Lyda looked as though she was ready to second guess. "What about that over there?" Iris proceeded to point toward a similar looking flower patch on the opposite side of them.

Lyda began to examine this new plant. Just like the other, she recognized it immediately from her studies. The flowers looked identical to those in the first patch, but upon scanning the stems, Lyda saw that they had no hairs, and the leaves, though quite small, were much larger than the others. She glanced back and forth between the two patches for a moment before regaining her confidence.

"Yes," she replied, looking back at the first cluster of flowers. "Those are chamomile. You can tell by the little hairs along the stems. That's feverfew over there." She pointed back over to the second patch. "The flowers look the same, but the different leaves give them away."

Iris's face lit up in a bright smile. "Very good! You didn't allow the flowers to answer for you. Every healer needs to know their plants from top to bottom." She stood up and walked over to the small chamomile brush, plucked one of the flowers from the ground, and returned to sit in front of Lyda. She gently stroked the minuscule prickles along the stem. "But you need to be as vigilant as you can. All chamomile came from far across the sea in the east, but some of them do not have the little hairs that give them away. Sometimes you have to look closer than the first details you see. What if I had a really bad fever, and needed medicine right away? Which herb would you get for me?"

"The feverfew," Lyda answered without effort. "Obviously. It helps to put an ease to fevers and pains in the head, teeth, and stomach."

"That's true," Iris agreed. "But what if you came across a chamomile plant that lacked the one simple detail you knew it by? If you brought me this instead of feverfew, all you would do is give me a good night sleep with a burning head."

The two of them laughed at her joke. Iris laid the flower on the rock between them, smiling proudly at her student. "You're doing great, Lyda," she said sweetly. "Almost as good as me. I believe you could be a mistress to some lucky student one day."

Lyda wanted to smile at her words, but her face suddenly fell down as if in sorrow. Iris took notice of this and asked her what was bothering her.

"Iris," Lyda said, looking her in the eyes. "Why can't you tell me more about the Spirits?"

Iris felt a wave of anxiety cross over her as she was quickly reminded of the stern conversation she had with Lyda's parents about this. They never told her why they forbade her daughter from learning about the divine figures of their ancestors, but who was she to question what they believed was best for her?

"I'd love to, but your parents won't allow it."

In a tone that almost shocked Iris, Lyda said, "My parents don't know what they're talking about."

"Hey!" Iris felt her blood run cold for a second, but it quickly faded away. "You shouldn't talk about your parents like that." She glanced into the woods on either side of them as if expecting to see somebody observing them. She then leaned in close and whispered with a grin, "The Spirits are watching!"

This joke only made Lyda bow her head in displeasure. Iris regretted saying anything.

"I'm sorry," she said, reaching over and gently lifting Lyda's chin. "I'm sure your parents have their reasons, even if they don't seem like they make sense. Still, I have to respect their wishes, and so do you."

Lyda tilted her head to the side. "But didn't you say this place we're in is cut off from the rest of the world?"

"It certainly feels that way," Iris affirmed.

"Well," Lyda began to twist her words, "wouldn't that mean what we do here doesn't matter out there?"

Iris looked both confused and concerned at the same time. "I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"Come on!" Lyda persisted. "We can talk about the Spirits out here all we want. Nobody's gonna know."

"Lyda-"

"Please?" Lyda begged. "I promise I won't say a word." She leaned a little closer to her mentor and, in a tone of voice that was almost skin-crawling, she said, "And I know you won't either."

Iris stared at her with a disturbed expression. Lyda sat there quietly, waiting for her to respond with an eager grin on her face. Eventually, Iris grew a smile of her own, thinking that somehow Lyda was right. She did not understand why her parents were so livid about her learning about this part of their culture, but surely there was no harm in a friendly conversation this far away from anyone who might hear them.

"Alright," Iris conceded with a laugh. "Just this once. You can ask me anything you want to know."

Lyda's face lit up with glee. "What were you telling me before?" she asked without hesitation. "About the ones called the Twins?"

For a moment, Iris looked as though she was about to regret this decision, but she immediately shrugged it off and proceeded to lose herself in everything she knew about the Spirits, particularly the ones that Lyda wanted to learn about. She told her about the great Spirit of the Sky, who gave birth to the patron deity of their ancestors: the Light Spirit, Sel. She told her that it was Sel who preserved the light of the world in the moon, to protect the world from the Darkness when the sun sank over the horizon.

When Lyda asked about the Darkness, Iris then told her that the Light had a twin brother; an evil twin who wasn't born, but rather forced his way from the womb of the Sky Spirit to pursue his brother, killing her in the process. This twin became known as the Darkness. Lyda asked if he had a name, but Iris only shuddered and claimed that the name was lost with the last remnants of their ancestral tribe. Nevertheless, she explained that the Dark Twin's only goal was to snuff out the Light and cover all the world in its Darkness. This led to a great war between the two brothers, which their people believed was waged in an endless, twelve-year cycle, taking the form of a devastating winter storm that swept over all the mountains in a single night. Lyda's jaw dropped. She remembered such a terrible storm occurring three years ago. It was the most horrific storm she had ever seen, and at the time, she thought that surely they would all freeze to death even in the comfort of their cottage.

Lyda found it impossible to contain her excitement as they talked endlessly about all the Spirits, but none gripped her interest nearly as much as the great Twins. No matter how hard she might have tried, she could not take her mind off them. It sounded as though they could wield the power to destroy the entire world if they so desired. She begged Iris to keep going on about them, but Iris said that it was all she knew. Lyda was not content with that. She desperately wanted to know more. She had to.