The Three Sisters 

Prologue

Already, the first signs of winter were evident to every creature of the upland. Frost lay in the shadows of the tussocks of dry grasses and the outcroppings of gray stone that thrust up from the thin turf.

Ground cherries that somehow escaped picking by hoarding winter sleepers withered on the stem, and the air was thin with the absence of birdsong and insect chirring. The river that ran from the high mountains and cut across the uplands had shrunk to a narrow trickle with here and there a still pool filmed over by black ice thin as eggshell.

Near the top of an outcropping of stone, moved a stoat, long and keen eyed, nosing the air for danger and prey. She had spotted evidence of the wargs come out of the black forest to ambush the herds of aurocs and winterhorn that made the long journey to the southern lowlands every autumn for better pasture and to escape the freezing winds of the uplands. 

She scented a cave lion on the air before she spotted her slipping through the brown burdock and bent grass. She liked to follow a cave lion. They weren't the most efficient hunters, but they almost always took down an animal far too big for them to eat or drag away, leaving a feast for the stoat if she moved in before the carrion birds and carrion symbionts could make short work of it. And a cave lion would never go for something as small as she. 

The warg were different. They were smaller, but incomparably more vicious than any lion or bear, even more than humans. Warg would explode from the trees and crash through a heard of giant aurocs in a frenzy, slitting open bellies with their tusks and tearing out throats with their serrated teeth. Though not as large as a lion or bear, they were terribly strong and could snap a leg bone with a swipe of the paw. 

Though they often killed more than could be eaten, they had no need to hide or drag away the carcass as the symbionts that lived in their mouths were deadly to all but a warg. A carcass could lie for days and not a single carrion bird or symbiont would light on it. 

The cave lion quickly retreated through the grass. The mother stoat soon saw why. A man had appeared atop the crest of a ridge. Men were dangerous. Even to a cave lion. 

The air around him seemed to shimmer somehow. Like summer heat from a stone. Though she’d never seen one before, she had heard of this sort of human. Picture makers. Storytellers. Rare humans whose symbionts could suspend in the air like a cloud and turn their thoughts into life sized pictures of the stories they told. She had heard that the images were so real, you could almost touch them. 

Foolishly, he was alone with only a tall walking stick. It was rare to ever see one alone this far from the towns and cities that lined the shores of rivers and the sea.  Protected by walls and rich with the most intelligent symbionts. In packs they were almost unstoppable. But alone? This one was quite old. She could smell the years he had wandered the land. Not fear, not the tang of bravery, but the quiet scent of acceptance. Only great age could produce that.

The cave lion would soon figure out that he was on his own. She’d be back.

The stoat settled down to wait. 

*****

He only had a few more miles to go. He would make it. After all, hadn’t he travelled hundreds, maybe thousands of miles as a Storyteller? But he was a different man then. 

He didn’t know what he carried then. The stone around his neck, so near his heart. The heart of light that lay in its green core burning softly in the sun. His heart. His heart had always been weak, except when he wore the stone. 

It only had to get him a few more miles. He should be to the town before sunset.

Fine flakes of snow began to float in the freezing air. 

Just a few more miles to go.

He had to tell her. She wasn’t the only one. She wasn’t alone.

Chapter 1

Cerys pulled herself heavily from the powdery midwinter snow. She wiped her damp woolen mitten, already stiffening in the evening air, across her stinging eyes. Hot breath poured from her nostrils as she hefted her father’s long-handled symbiont net in determination, her fingers barely able to reach around the handle. 

A little way off, casting a warm, cheerful, orange light that matched the setting sun, floated a fat, bacteria-like, lantern symbiont that was nearly as big as she was. Only moments before, it had dragged Cerys, face first, several yards through the deep snow until it was able to shake off her net.

Cerys’ father had given her the task of rounding up the town’s herd of nearly a hundred lantern symbionts to line the main road into town in preparation for the winter Festival of the Three Sisters that was to take place in two days. Of course, it was just a way to keep her occupied while her friends prepared for the Symboling ceremony. 

Every child participated in the Symboling during the festival in their twelfth year. It was the most exciting thing that happened in anyone’s lifetime. It was the ceremony where their own symbionts, living on their skin like moving tattoos since birth, settled on the unique pattern they would keep for the rest of their lives. It was believed that the patterns they formed were the symbols of the first language and held deep secrets whose meaning was lost in time 

Cerys had no symbionts. Unlike her friends, her skin had no turning spirals or sinuous shapes of blue that moved and changed with the moon and seasons, that darkened and thickened when she was angry and became delicate as spiderweb when she was sad. Her skin was plain like a newborn, only as greenish grey as a lichen on a stone. Her hair too, was several shades of green. Her father attributed this to her mother, whom she’d never known. But in all her life, amongst the thousands of people who passed through their town on the way to the City of Nix, she’d never seen a single person like her. 

Her father tried to distract her from thinking about being left out of the Symboling by having her help with the preparations for the main festival. The lantern symbionts she had to corral usually lined either side of the Main Street to bathe the revelers in their multicolored lights. The town was very proud of their herd of lanterns, as they coordinated the most beautiful light show in time to the music and mood of the festival. Unfortunately, they were also stubborn and didn’t like to be herded into their positions without a great deal of cajoling. She suspected that was why she was given this task. To keep her out of the way. Well, she had placed all of them but one and it was only just getting dark. This stubborn lantern refused to take its position.

“Right!” She stalked across the snow towards the creature. “I’m not playing now.” 

She was so light and her snow boots so wide, she barely sank into the surface as she marched up to the stubborn symbiont hovering about three times her height above her. It was pulsating a yellow-red now, its light emanating from its bacteria-like body in rhythmic waves down its length. 

“Worried now, huh?” she smirked. “Don’t you dare move!” 

She swung the long net up, which was much harder than her father made it look. Resembling nothing so much as a giant butterfly net, its ten-foot handle was not only heavy, but incredibly awkward for someone barely five feet tall to swing over her head confidently, which is why she swung it up far too hard. Why the momentum of the net made her trip over, falling backwards so hard only her boots and mittens, still grasping the handle of the net, stuck out above the glistening surface of the snow. 

The lantern symbiont pulsed bright pink and drifted down about a foot or so above her waving boots, bathing the snow in its beautiful light. Cerys shouted a number of words at it that it was just as well couldn’t be made out from beneath the snow. She pushed snow from her face. “Don’t you dare laugh, you,” she threatened. She struggled like a turtle turned over on its back, arms and legs flailing fruitlessly. “This is not over!”

It hovered over her thoughtfully a few moments as she struggled to turn over, until it became bored and began to wander off. It was then that two enormous hands belonging to a mountain of a girl scooped it from the air and tucked it under her arm like a package. She grabbed one of Cerys’ boots and plucked her from the snow like a winter turnip. Skadi, tall and solid as the great standing stones, was crying with laughter as she peered into the hot, upside-down, indignant face of her best friend.

“So, are you going to put me down or just stand there laughing?” Cerys had her arms folded and was trying her best to look serious and dignified while dangling in the air, which set Skadi into another fit of laughter causing her to drop Cerys unceremoniously into the snow headfirst. 

“Sorry!” Skadi, plucked her from the snow by her coat and gently set her upright. Skadi was a head taller than Cerys’ father and nearly twice as wide even though she and Cerys were the same age. Her attempt to wipe the snow from her friend’s head and face knocked Cerys’ hat off and nearly knocked her over again.

“Ok, Ok,” said Cerys, “You’ll wipe my face off!”

“You should have seen yourself!” Laughed Skadi, adjusting her grip on the struggling symbiont as it tried to wriggle free of her grasp. It furiously flashed through its entire repertoire of colors, angry red, ultraviolet, blazing orange, and electric blue. 

“Well?” Said Skadi to the sym. “Are you ready to behave now?” The lantern sym grew still, its color returning to a warm yellow glow. The line of fine cilia that encircled its body undulated in petulant waves. 

“That’s better,” she said sternly. “Now get to your place in line! What will the other lanterns think?” She released the sym from her grip and it rose a few feet above their heads before blasting a brilliant white light dazzling their eyes like staring into the midday sun. Then, it went dark and disappeared into the evening before they could recover from the blinding flash.

Cerys shouted out a frustrated string of expletives that was way longer than anyone her age should know. “I am going to be in so much trouble!” She trudged in the direction she assumed the lantern went. “I’m going to pop you like a balloon you little -”

But Cerys’ shout was swallowed by a swirl of snow churned up by a freezing night wind that cut across the wide valley. Without the lantern sym’s light, the only illumination was the moonlight on the snow, and further off, the glow of orange light cast by the lantern syms that obediently lined either side of the main road into town. 

“We’d better get back,” said Skadi. “It’s getting cold and you’re already soaking wet.” 

This wasn’t entirely true. She had been soaking wet, only now it was starting to freeze on the surface of her mittens and parka. The thick insulation was still warm for now though. She brushed the frost from her eyelashes. About a hundred yards away, near the tree line she thought she could just make out a soft pink glow making slow circles above the snow. 

“My dad will be so mad if I lose that stupid lantern,” she said, pulling the long-handled net from the snow. “I don’t think anyone’s ever lost one of the herd before. I’d better not be the first! See, it’s just over there.” 

Skadi scanned the area Cerys pointed out with a stiffening mitten. She frowned. “That’s too close to the forest Cerys,” she was serious now. Her massive arms crossed, and she seemed immovable as a stone. “It’s stupid to get so close at night. Are you crazy?”

Cerys knew it was stupid. She also knew that she, but especially her father, would never hear the end of it if she lost one of the town’s prize lantern syms. No way was she going to let that happen. “Come on,” she pleaded. “It will only take a minute. It’s not like there are any wargs around here anyway.” She put on her best sad eyes. “Please?”

Skadi’s hard expression softened. “Ugh,” she shook her head. “You are shameless.” 

Cerys beamed. “Let’s go while it’s distracted. You take the net.” Skadi took it and in her hands, it really did look like a butterfly net. “I’m going to sneak up and surprise it, then you catch it in the net.” 

Skadi looked skeptical. “And how am I supposed to sneak up on anything?” She gestured to her bulk, which belied her speed and agility. 

“Don’t give me that,” smiled Cerys. “You just appeared out of nowhere a moment ago!”

Skadi grinned. “Let’s get this over with before you freeze solid.”

It took what seemed like half an hour for Cerys to creep through the blowing snow to within a few yards of the sym. It had wandered much closer to the tree line of the forest that covered the hills on the northern side of the wide valley and stretched for miles beyond. She wasn’t sure she believed most of the tales told by the Storytellers about the vicious forest wargs and haunted trees that whispered the last words of those who were lost in its depths and a hundred other stories of things no one had ever seen with their own eyes. Still, this close to it at night, the dark beyond the tree line seemed menacing, like it was waiting to swallow up anything that dared enter it. 

Right. Time to get this over with. Cerys jumped from her crouched position in the snow and ran as hard as she could towards the floating creature. It’s hard to really surprise a sym. For one thing, it’s impossible to know which way it’s facing, or even where its eyes are located. They just sort of “see” with their whole bodies. So, Cerys was surprised when the glowing lantern didn’t move at all. Could she tackle it right out of the air? And then her boot caught on something heavy just under the snow throwing her face-first into the freezing powder. 

Once again, a giant hand pulled her out and set her on her feet. Skadi stood over her with a triumphant grin, the rogue lantern floating resignedly in the net over her huge shoulder. Cerys was ecstatic. 

“Yes!” She threw her arms around the warm bulk of her giant friend. “You’re brilliant!”

“Um,” said Skadi pointing to Cerys’ foot. “You lost your boot.”

“Oh!” In her relief at seeing that stupid sym in the net, she hadn’t even noticed that her woolen sock was soaking up wet snow. “It must be stuck on whatever I tripped over.” 

She searched around the snow for the lump that had sent her flying. Her boot was lodged against it. She pulled, and when it didn’t budge, she braced against the bulge and made ready to pull again. That’s when she felt the fingers wrap around her ankle.

Cerys recoiled violently as though she’d stepped on a white-hot coal, sending her tumbling backwards. 

“What is it ?!” 

“Something. grabbed me. under. the snow,” said Cerys through snatches of breath as she made her way against the wind to Skadi. “Forget my boot, let’s go back!”

Careful to keep her distance, Skadi used the long handle of the net and her tremendous reach to suspend the glowing sym over the disturbed snow of the little mound. Uncovered by Cerys’ frantic jump and the sharpening wind, lay the figure of a person buried beneath the snow. Their ungloved hand lay limp near her discarded boot. 

Both girls stood frozen to the spot. 

Then they ran as fast as their snowshoes could carry them.