Episode 70: The Upper Dell (Gramm)

Hands that smelled like rose petals and eyes that glistened like a lake met his own, “Where do you belong?”

Gramm felt the pressure of reality crashing into him. He had been in a trial. She wasn’t waking up.

He felt her body against his. This wasn’t Indigo. This was his Jade. Indigo had never wanted him; even a trial would not have convinced her to love him.

They looked almost identical. They felt almost identical.

He tore himself.away from her and looked out the window. In the trial, his view was full of a winding gravel road between copper pastures.

When he gazed out, he did not see his trial home. He saw trees that stood towering above him in the old growth of the Upper Dell shore.

He saw home.

“We’re home,” he announced. He wrapped his arm around Jade.

He hoped she was Jade. They had three children – two girls and a boy.

He had a daughter from before. A princess to the throne of the Upper Dell. The Upper Dell, his life, was coming back to him piece by piece through the veil of a fog he had been stuck within for too long.

Jade sat up, from her cocoon within the jumble of sheets on the bed. They slipped down her body and she stood. 

Gramm watched her, the image of his previous wife echoing in his mind. Jade looked too much like her. 

In the room, he could sense there were two others. He smiled to Jade, then looked over at the two selkies, Cadha and Nathaira. As the elected selkies, they were in charge of the trial and ensuring qualified leaders passed. 

“Congratulations, you have passed your trial,” Nathaira said to him. Her long brown hair swished as she moved across the room. “You are now king of the Sylph throne. Unfortunately, it was deposed in your absence.”

Gramm bit back his concern, and worked things through his mind; there were few possibilities that ranged from Indigo remarrying into the Lower Dell to the war between nations being lost to the Salamander line. 

Jade was anxious beside him, looking to him for comfort and explanation.

“How long has it been,” Gramm asked the selkies. “Where is Indigo?”

“Nearly two decades. Indigo is married and in a new body,” Nathaira replied.

“Why did everything come with me?” Gramm asked, looking around the house that was the backdrop to their conversation. He wouldn’t be able to move the southern ranch house; where it was would be its final home.

Cadha spoke this time. She had the same blonde-copper hair as when he had last seen her, and she looked just as vibrant as ever. Grey scales coated her arms, an echo of the skin she spent most of her time in. “Your trial allowed you to create Jade, when Indigo abandoned you. The trial was in a real realm, and the things you created – your home – are too real to leave behind.”

“My children?” Gramm asked. “Camilla?” 

He remembered the breeze he had felt, the one that meant nothing to Jade. It was Camilla, he knew it was her. She needed help.

“Camilla is in trouble,” he declared.

“Camilla is not afraid,” Nathaira stated.

Fear did not eradicate the real threat he knew she had to be facing. Her struggle was enough to wake him from a trial that had lasted twenty years.

He looked at Nathaira, a woman who should not have been lying to him, confused.

“You may keep your children born of the trial, and your cats,” Cadha told him.

Gramm tried to remember what the cats were. 

They mattered so little, being home in an environment that felt dangerous and confusing.

Onyx stepped forward, “Are we near Sylem by chance.”

Gramm gaped at him. If he had spoken before this moment, it would have saved him significant trouble. It also may have broken the trial and caused him to fail. He wondered if Indigo had left by failure or not; she was in a new body. Perhaps it meant she had failed.

“No,” Cadha replied, to Onyx. “You are in Elesara. Your mate will be here soon. 

“What is going on?” Jade asked.

“Gramm is home but his kingdom is gone,” Nathaira said. Her indignance to Jade, his queen consort, was beyond what he had experienced with the selkies before.

“You must understand it is under different rulership now,” Nathaira told him.

She meant he must understand he had to fight to take it back, though Cadha seemed less concerned about the regime changes. Gramm did not like taking the word of others as fact; he would draw his own conclusions as he always had. 

He took Jade’s hand in his, “Jade.”

He wrapped his arms around her, her body against his and his hands combing down her hair. “I can explain everything,” he promised.

“Even the cats?” she asked. “will be thrilled.”

“I don’t understand the cats,” Gramm told her. He had always thought they were circus cats he had rescued; to have Onyx speak to him…

It was not beyond his concept of reality.

“Have they always talked?” Jade asked.

“No, we  all swore a vow of silence. Yes, we’ve always talked,” Onyx chided. 

“And you’re someone else?” Jade asked him.

“King Gramm of the Upper Dell,” he said, with pride. He had passed his trial, despite it taking too long. He was home now, and he would sort out what he had missed.

He did not regret the time he had spent; he had a wife that loved him, unlike Indigo. He had children.

He needed to find Camilla, still.

He swirled Jade’s hair with the twirl of his finger and a long suppressed intent. His magic responded to him with fervor and longing. “I’m a fairy,” he told her. He wondered if she was too, or if he had made himself a human. She was Indigo in every other way; water magic would make sense.

“I took a trial to ascend the Sylph throne, with my former wife – Indigo,” he explained.

Nathaira sighed, “The Upper and Lower Dells are under the Dragon line now. Drey and Elaira rebelled and defeated both houses. Drey died in the war and his brother married Elaira and took over.”

Gramm reeled a the news; Drey was married to Nell, Indigo’s brother. He was also the crown heir the Salamander line – the Upper Dell’s enemy. Elaira was the crown heir to the sea throne. She had been missing for hundreds of years.

Gramm tried to piece together the different parts of the puzzle. He knew they were withholding something, and he would need privacy and time to mull things over.

“Indigo lost her body when she failed the trial,” Cadha informed him. “She’s in a wiccan body.”

“Where is she?” Onyx asked for him.

“Stay with Gramm,” Cadha insisted. “They will find you.”

“You could try to find her on your own,” Nathaira suggested.  Cadha looked over at Nathaira, a subtle question in the way her eyes were raised. 

Onyx stretched his front paws and lowered his head. He stood and shook his body. 

“Her mother lives at the Senat Gile still. If you go and tell them who you are, I’m sure they’ll put you in touch.”

Cadha’s gaze fixed itself on them.

The last thing Gramm was going to do was let his cat talk to Indigo’s mother. 

“Her mom is there?” he asked, feigning interest. He looked to Jade, “We should go to the Senat Gile. My throne is there.”

“Eutropia will be happy to see you,” Nathaira said through a thin smile, one Gramm knew not to trust.

“Doubtful, but I’ll still go,” he replied. He wrapped his arm around Jade and led her away from the Selkies, toward their bathroom. “Are you okay? We should check on the kids first.”

Onyx jumped onto their bed and curled into a ball. 

It bothered Gramm, but he had more to worry about than how much of his intimate life Onyx had seen or what Onyx was. He had too many questions awaiting answers, but first he would tend to Jade and his children.

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