Sylva - Introduction (A dread faërie tale) [Part 03]

My name is Sylva and you do not know of me. Neither do I want you to come to know me, so my name is not really Sylva. I was told by the grandfather of Rodney that I too have faërie blood in me, probably, he claimed, from some distant ancestress who went for a walk in the forest and was raped by a faërie. He would pretend it was a joke, but I could sense a harsh bitterness behind his smile and in the dark of his eyes. Anyway, he is not a man even I would dare cross, so I never told him how he made me feel when he teased me.

Still, my assumed name, Sylva, is my revenge, for it hints at my meaning, that I have adopted myself as a sylvan, a spirit that lives in the woods. Do you sense the anger in my words, does it stain the page? Why so much anger? Why do I offer a curse each day like a prayer, ‘May his eyes rot in his face ' ? Because all I love is dead and I will age and die and he will still be filled with life, sharing in a future I’ll never know. Still, if I have to trust someone with the future, he is our best choice. Damn him!

My love, for years he was Ronarée, only at the end did he revert to a name I could love: Rodney. He did it for himself, not for me, but my heart keeps telling me that he really did it for me, knowing it will help keep him alive within my heart.

I am finding it difficult to write, yet I need to tell our story in a way that brings back to life my ability to hope that he will return. For my Rodney is dead, yet he lives – and not only within my heart. His grandfather spends most of his time listening to the vibrations of his life, which do not fade. He tells me they grow stronger, but I do not know whether to believe him. When he tells me so, it is so, but then I will glance at him when he does not notice me and I see how his cursed eyes dim with a sorrow he refuses to share.

I better start over again, or else I may not be correctly understood.

Before I met Ronarée, I lived my life in ignorance of how pain can wither our dreams and it was said, if a loved one is filled with a grief he or she refuses to abandon, then call for Sylva. I do not easily laugh, but I am told that the way I talk, the way I share their pain, it lightens their load for a while and sometimes they will even smile after only a few hours of my company.

A distant cousin of mine, Isaac, he invited me to his town, for he trusted in my ability and his friend was hurting – or so he thought. Isaac never really understood about the faëries, he thought of them as the fairies of our childhood, some gentle, some spiteful, but all beautiful and magical, which is why he could not believe.

Before I met Ronarée for the first time, Isaac told me about his friend, that some grief he refuses to share is altering him, hardening his heart. He feared he was losing his friend.

As soon as I met Ronarée, I sensed cousin Isaac is wrong, that which he could not identify was that the child was dying. I thought it was due to him going through puberty so late; he was nearly seventeen at that time. I was eighteen and thought I was mature enough to help lead him to a sounder new way of experiencing life, so I asked him to meet me the next morning for a long walk in the woods.

Barely fifty metres into the woods, he startled me. “What is wrong with Isaac? Did you bring me here to confide in me and to seek my help?” He was surprised when I laughed.

Once he understood, he set Isaac aside and asked questions, trying to learn more about me. It was at this time that he first teasingly called me a sylvan and explained the word to me.

This is not a love story. Yes, we met, I loved him and he loved me, but it is only at the end of our story that I came to understand how deep was his love. It is time I speak of those things we lived and he confided during my happy and frightened years with him.

He was nineteen when he suggested I move into his apartment. It was, for anyone else, an odd proposal. “Sylva, I need you to live with me.” He hesitated. “I feel more human than not when I am with you. I need you to keep my heart alive. Will you try?”

He had explained about the faërie and that they are not fairies, that they are from an alternate Earth, but with a different evolutionary past, which led to them casting aside emotions when they pass through puberty. He admitted he feels a strong compulsion to change, to become a faërie adult, for their way of experiencing life feels more balanced. He laughed. “I think it is the fact that we can never remain balanced for long that makes us interesting – and our lives worth living. Sylva, keep making me love you, keep startling me into losing my balance, so that I remain a human of our world.”

I did a good job of unbalancing him, for, despite visits by his mother and grandmother – and the influence they had on him, we married two years later and lived another one and a half years before I made the mistake that destroyed my life.

Ronarée was not interested in politics. Nor did he spend much time on the web, only using it for gathering specific information, as he needed it, or for communicating by email. While on our Earth, he could not sense its ebbs and flows of energies, but when he visited their reality, he could sense ours (during the transition from there to here).

He finally spoke to me about his wondering of what has gone wrong and why it feels as if it is about to collapse. He was speaking of us as a specie, as social units, not about our solar system or reality.