Questions (Part 3)

***The following is an excerpt from Raina's Story ****

Bartles’s face washed with a somber realization. “You don’t remember your father at all?”

“Just that he called me his princess,” she sniffled.

He nodded knowingly. “So, you have no knowledge of this realm?”

She shook her head.

“What do you know of your ancestry?”

Raina knit her eyebrows, as she continued to shake her head.

Bartle leaned back against the wall. “Oh my,” he sighed. “I must say this is not what I anticipated at all.”

The two of them sat together quietly, both their brows furrowed with ineffable confusion, for what seemed like ages.  Each moment brought a new question, and Raina was overwhelmed by the burden of it all.  She didn’t know where to begin, but before she could even try Bartle suddenly jumped to his feet and started to pace the woody bedroom while muttering to himself.

Though it hardly seemed possible, Raina was further perplexed by his abrupt shift in behavior.  Her eyes followed Bartle as he rapidly looped the room.  She tried to make out what he was saying, but his hushed and hurried tones made it rather difficult.

After several minutes, Bartle eventually spoke up.  “I thought you’d know more.”

He said it as though he was addressing her, but he continued to circle the room with his eyes trained on the floor.  “I thought you would understand our world, and your purpose in it.  I assumed you’d have knowledge of the prophecy.  Mother said you would have questions that I must be prepared to answer, but I never expected…”

When he came to a stop Raina realized just how dizzy she had become from watching him.  She craned her neck back to look at him.  He met her gaze with an out reached hand and a determined expression.  “That’s it then. We must speak with Mother.”

Not sure what to make of this decision, but accepting her now perpetual state of confusion, Raina brought herself to her feet.

“Hurry, there is much to discuss,” Bartle explained.  He grabbed her hand, and pulled her across the room.  Just before they reached the door, Raina noticed a photo of a familiar man on a shelf, but there was no time to ask about it.  Bartle threw open the door, and whisked her into a hallway like none she had ever seen before.  Wooden walls and knotted doors covered the wall behind her and extended around a vast circumference.  The floor, which looked as though it had been whittled into an intricate argyle pattern, only stuck out about three feet from where she stood.  There was an ornate wooden banister before her that stretched the entire boundary of a wide open area. Across the way, Raina could just make out the other side of the corridor, which looked similar to where she stood.  Remembering that they were inside a tree, and possibly the largest one she had ever seen, Raina attempted to peer over the banister to see the base of the structure.  Only, before she could get a good glance, Bartle wrapped his hands around her waist.  “What are you ̶ ” Raina turned to confront him, but he crouched before she could finish, and then they were in the air. Certain they were falling, she closed her eyes and clung to his chest

As her body rose, Raina’s insides struggled to keep up.  Her heart dropped into her stomach, and her brain seemed caught in her throat.

When everything made its way back to the right place, and her brain felt securely in her head, Raina opened her eyes to look around.  She clung desperately to Bartle’s chest as she took it all in. However, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.  They were flying up the center of an enormous hollowed out cypress tree.

To be continued...