undecided endings part 1

     I had set out some time ago in search of firewood that would last us the night, and to find the small cluster of apple trees we had passed earlier that day, before we made camp.  After quite some time, I gathered a bundle large enough to last us long enough and started back toward my friends and the food that waited there.  The sun had long since sunk below the tree line and the woods were beginning to come alive, as they often do at night.  The chorus of sounds was music to my ears as I walked along through the leaf-strewn wood with my bundle.
     I smelled the fire long before I found my way to the little grove where our camp was set up.  The smoky smell of the fire mixed with the rich spice of the tiny rabbit roasting over it made my mouth water in anticipation.  The rabbit was small, but it was something, and I had yet to taste a dish made by the hands of Adela that I did not like.
     I smiled to myself as I remembered the pride that shown in Rowan’s eyes when he returned to the camp that afternoon with the tiny thing.  Adela and I were not terribly impressed, but the look on his face spoke volumes and we knew that his small catch made him feel like he was contributing to our little group as “the man.”  So we praised him for his success and Adela immediately began rummaging through her pack, looking for spices.  She told Rowan to skin the small creature, and I set off to gather more firewood, hoping to perhaps find something more to supplement our meal on my way.
     Having met with some success, I returned to the small camp, but as I drew nearer to the edge of the little clearing, I stopped and watched my friends in the firelight.   Adela stood on the opposite side of the fire, fussing with the meal and rummaging through the packs.   Rowan had his back toward me, but the tall, still-boyish figure was undoubtedly his.  He slowly turned the rabbit on the spit and gazed intently into the fire, without doubt in another world of thought.
     Neither of them seemed to notice as I stepped out of the shadow of the woods and into the flickering firelight.  I cast down the bundle of kindling I’d gathered and emptied my sack of the few apples I’d found before sitting down close to the fire and letting myself get lost in the dance of the flame.
     Something about that night reminded me so much of the night I’d first met them.  From one perspective, it had been the most horrible night of my life, but on the other hand, it had brought about the best thing that ever happened to me.  I realized it had been almost eight full seasons ago that all of it had happened.
     I thought of my two friends and the lives we lived and how I would not trade it for anything in the world.  We travelled the towns and villages and made our living as entertainers for the public, performing and amazing the people, constantly moving from place to place, always seeking a new audience.  And so we lived, the three of us with our strange family of sorts.  Adela, our mother and guide, Rowan, our big brother, and me, the one who needed them, but had little to offer in return but an unending gratitude.
     I loved roaming the lands and seeing the villages.  Each one looked slightly different, but the people were always the same.  Most were hospitable, but skeptical at first, but by the time we were ready to leave, they never wanted us to go.  The talents among us, they claimed, would be sorely missed after our departure, but we always kept moving.
     Adela’s rich, clear voice had gained her a reasonable reputation throughout the western realm, and drew a sizeable crowd wherever she went, and was, for days after, the talk of the town.  Her exotic elfin beauty alone drew many people, but even the most disinterested were drawn in as she began to sing.  Commonplace sounds were silenced, birds stopped to listen; the very air seemed to grow still as long as her voice could be heard.  She sang of deep sorrow and brave warriors who rode off to war, never to return.  She sang of knights who fought against impossible odds and overcame their enemies with naught but a broken sword and purity of heart.  She sang of the gods and the great kings of old, and every song she sang inspired a sense of awe among her listeners and rarely left one untouched.
     Rowan’s skill for sleight of hand and his incredible knack for illusion also gained the interest of the town folk, and baffled all those present.  Eyes grew wide and jaws dropped as whispers of magic rippled through the throng that came to watch him perform.  Snatching coins out of thin air, making things disappear and reappear, and all manner of other tricks earned him great respect among the various villages we traveled through.
     My skill was quite a different one, to be sure.  I could not sing with the birds, nor could I baffle an audience with any trick.  I was a storyteller by trade.   Sometimes I told stories to the children of the towns on market days, and they seemed to enjoy it well enough, but children could not bring in the money we needed.  My real talent, however, was my ability to blend in with my surroundings so well that I could go virtually unnoticed, even by those who want to see me.  So I used my skill to become the invisible assistant to my companions, making sure they had everything they needed for their acts, and collect the few coppers they earned along the way.  It was not a glorious, and it did not receive much attention, but I loved it.
     My thoughts were brought back to the present by a loud pop from the fire before me.
      “Thinking again, are we, Ciara?” Adela said, more as a statement than a question.  I don’t know why it still surprised me when she knew exactly what’s going on in my head, but it did.  She always knew where I was and what I was doing.  Sometimes she baffled me with her ability to read me so well, but I wasn’t often surprised by it anymore.
      “Mmhmm…” I said, still watching the fire, trying to ignore the two pairs of eyes I knew were watching me.
      “You’ll tell us what you were thinking of while we eat,” Adela said, taking the rabbit off the spit and dividing it up with her dagger.  I did not particularly care to revisit my past, but something in me knew I had no choice.
     We sat in silence for a time, eating the food and watching the fire slowly burn lower and lower.  When we had finished, Adela buried the apples in the hot coals, letting them bake in the heat.
      “Now,” she said, looking up at me, “what was it you were thinking about?”
      “Oh,” I said nonchalantly, “nothing really…”
      “Ciara, we both know you too well to believe that,” Rowan pointed out, “and you know we’ll get it out of you eventually.”
     I realized he was right and told them that I had been thinking back over the past and how much things had changed for me since I had met them.
      “Yes,” Adela said softly, “it was not by accident that you came to be with us.  The life you led before that was not for you.”
     I said nothing, but silently agreed.  I wasn’t the only one of the three of us who had left the life I knew in search of something.  Adela herself had left the peace and prosperity of her people in search of a more adventurous life among the mortals.  She had pitied people she had heard others tell of.  The stories she heard of the wars and disease and poverty compelled her to leave her land and join the world of men in hopes of brightening the lives of as many of the pitiful creatures as she could.
     Somewhere along her travels, she encountered a young pickpocket, no more than eight years of age, who she noticed, seemed to have a touch of destiny on him.  When she inquired as to his background, he seemed unable to recall much about his past.  And so she took him off the streets and brought him along with her wherever she went, teaching him other uses for his gift, and shaping his character to the best of her ability.  It was through her encouragement and praise that Rowan had honed his skills and grown to be the respectable young man that sat with us.
     From the very night I joined them, Rowan and I had been fast friends.  He was kind from the start, but quiet and unsure what to make of me, but I quickly coaxed him out of his shell, and before the first week was out, we were playing like old friends.
     Adela often left us alone at the camp while she went to villages to get supplies, and Rowan and I used the time to get to know each other.  He showed me many tricks with coins and small rocks that amazed me for hours at a time.  He pulled coins out of my ear that had, a moment before, vanished before my eyes and did all manner of tricks with his picture cards.  But what I loved most to see was the illusions he conjured.  He made rainbows in the air and summoned fairies from a flame.  Some nights he would make stars disappear or call to the wolves and bears and I could hear them in the brush outside our camp, but he never let them in.
     And in return, I told him stories.  I told of distant lands with mountains that burned the very rocks, and of great ships that sailed upon the seas and their greedy captains that searched the world for gold and riches.  He loved the tales of adventure and danger and asked me to tell them over and over and every time I told the stories they became clearer in my mind, almost real.  Sometimes when I told them he said he felt like he was almost a part of the story; little did he know, I was.  I found that my mind put me into the stories I told and I lived the tales I spoke of as if they were real life; it both frightened and amazed me.
     After a time, Adela began to bring us along on her trips, claiming that it would do us good to learn to blend into the cities.  And so we went and saw the people and how they lived and acted and related to one another.  We saw how Adela changed her mannerisms and gait to match those of the townsfolk and did the same.  It was easy for me to blend it.  It always had been.  Rowan had a bit more difficulty, but, with practice, learned the skill.
     Over the years we grew closer and closer under the watchful eye of Adela, and in a short time he became like the brother I never had.  We could talk about anything and everything.  More often than not, we would stay up late into the night just talking until we were told to go to bed or go without breakfast in the morning.  Our common bond was that of our pasts.  He could not remember his, and I tried to forget mine.  We never spoke of the past and I had never told him was what had happened the night we met.  We had an unspoken understanding that neither of us wished to discuss it.
     When the apples were popping from the heat, spilling their hissing juices over the hot coals, Adela removed them from the fire and set them on a cool stone before collecting the wooden plates and announcing that she was going to wash the dishes.  Rowan and I offered to do them for her, but she insisted on doing it herself, as usual, so we stayed by the fire and waited for her return.
     I lay on my back and gazed up at the stars that shone brightly above the clearing and lost myself once more in thought, wondering what life would have been like had I never met my friends until Rowan spoke.  His words surprised me, but at the same time, I had known they would come in time.
      “You and Adela speak of your past and the night you followed her back to our camp and joined us…  but you never say what truly happened,” he said hesitantly.
      “I know,” I replied, still watching the stars, knowing he brought it up because it had been bothering me all night. “It was…”  I didn’t know how to finish the thought.
      “Can you tell me about it?” he asked, genuinely curious.
      “If you really want to know, I will tell you,” I said, “but you won’t enjoy it.”
      “I feel like there’s a part of you I don’t understand, and I think it would help if I knew the truth.  If you can tell me, that is.”
      “I will tell you then,” I said, thinking that it might be good to talk about what had happened and get it out in the open so I could leave it in the past once and for all.
     “Ciara,” he said, “I want you to tell me what happened.”
     “I said I would tell you.”
     “No,” he said, “you know what I mean.  I know that in telling me you will relive what happened, and I want to be there, too.  Don’t tell me the story… tell me the story.”
     I sat up and looked him intently in the eyes.  He doesn’t know what he is asking, I thought, I don’t know if I can do that… but his face was sincere, and he didn’t look away or waver in his stance.  Somehow he knew it would work.
     “Give me your hand,” I said.  As I took his hand, I once again locked eyes with him.  “If you want me to stop telling the story, let go of my hand.  Otherwise, it will keep going until it is finished.”
     He nodded gravely, and so I began…