Legend of the Jumi Part I, Prelude
The Wanderer's Path
By The Mana Priestess
"Wanderer's Path" is the name of the tune that occurs in Luon Highway and other assorted places in Legend of Mana.
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The highway of crushed red stones was splattered with blood on that heavy summer day, and the orange air still reverberated with the cries and whispers of the passing souls. The testimony of broken bodies, strewn upon the stratum, served as witnesses to the violence that occurred there a short while ago. Watching this scene of carnage, the young nun found herself tracing the winding, dark red path of the blood trickling beneath the bodies with her eyes, watching it cutting its way slowly through the dust like snaky fingers that were almost alive with their promise of death. And let them promise, she thought; I am not, have never been, will never be afraid of death.
She could hear different voices now; the voices of the shrine's mentors, scolding her, lecturing her with that cold, precise, righteous ire so alien to her soul, slicing at her like icy, thin knives. "Sandra, why this far-off wandering from the temple, why this restlessness, why this perturbed, meandering spirit, why this base urge. Come back to the shrine, to the blessed, calming center that serves as a balm for our souls, come back to the glowing white light, rid yourself of that destructive fire, that darkness." And she knew that she will say, "I don't belong here", and she also knew that they will be good and forgiving, because she had nowhere to go, no other home but that temple. And she will despise them, as always, because she knew that their holy light chokes them, constricts them, destroys them.
And yet, she said to herself, I don't hate them, I can't, I won't. After all, they took me in, and--
And then a soft noise, the faintest sound of a stir reached her ears, and she realized that one of the men was still alive.
She swiftly came over, feeling like her body was slicing, swimming through the thick heat. Not for the first time she reflected, this hot land of eternal summer is not for me; I need greenery and coolness and winds of freedom. I need quickness and energy; this place slows me down, its white threads, its woven holy cobwebs, sticking to me and slowing my progress, detaining me.
She finally found and knelt by the body of the man just a little apart from the rest, as if he sought to distance himself from them. He was lying on the ground in a painfully contorted position that was almost grotesque, one arm folded underneath his body, his face hidden from view. His wide cloak, a bleached green like the color of sun-dried sand, spread upon his body and enveloped it. There were dark patches staining the upper part of the cloak, near the collar.
He groaned, a choked sound rattling from a parched throat. Who knows, she thought with detachment, how long he lay here on the broken red highway in the scorching rays of the merciless sun, slowly drained of his life's blood?
Placing one arm under his shoulder and applying a measured amount of force, the young nun managed to turn him around gently. It still must have been painful, because he emitted another curt cry of agony. She could finally see the bright blood that washed down the left side of his face, turning it into a gruesome mask of red and white. A head injury, who knows how grievous-- she hoped that it was the only injury that he had sustained. She placed her fingers on his chest, just beneath the lacing of the sky-colored shirt. His heart was beating regularly, and there was no evidence of further blood anywhere on his body.
Something bothered her, some irregularity beneath her fingers. Though there was no apparent blood, she felt something on his chest, as if some object has struck him and remained buried inside. Given this fact, it was strange that there was no evident blood, and that he was still alive-- still stranger was the fact that this object was smooth and round rather than sharp and pointed. She immediately parted the lacing of his shirt to examine this odd phenomenon. Her eyes met the sight of a spherical globe, glowing with a clear blue light, that was halfway embedded into the upper part of the man's chest.
She stared at it, her eyes narrowed to a slit. She could not help but feeling a shock at this unexpected sight. A Jumi, she thought. A Jumi! And this far from the sparkling city. How did this come to be?
She had no time to think, however, because she heard her name being called from afar. Quickly and quietly she laced the man's shirt to the neckline and turned around to face the voices approaching her-- younger nuns, looking for her from the shrine. She then decided that she must not let them touch him, not let them discover that he is a Jumi-- no one shall know that he is a Jumi, she thought-- no one but me.
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It took the Jumi warrior five days to recover from his head injury, and Sandra insisted on being the one to nurse him exclusively, using the first-rate medicinal knowledge she had acquired in the shrine. It was the one aspect of her life that she liked about dwelling in that holy temple those last fifteen years, the one task that she excelled at. And it was the reason that they complied to her peculiar wish, though she could very well imagine what the younger nuns must have thought of her insisting to attend solely to such a handsome man as the Jumi warrior. Fellow students as they were, she never liked any of them much. Most of them came to the temple to learn the medicinal skills of the nuns, daughters of wealthy families that sponsored the shrine, and had no intention of staying beyond their years of tutelage-- but she, being an orphan, had to stay, and it set her apart from them, burning between them like a barrier of thin, invisible fire. She did not mind it in the least. Let them giggle and gloat from afar; she watched and waited quietly, could see through them in an instance, and she would use the power she acquired the moment that she wished.
The Jumi warrior had been feverish for the first two nights, but then his flush receded and he slept a healthy, sound sleep-- apparently his constitution was very strong, and he quickly embarked on an excellent way to recovery. But he only awoke fully and made sense of his surroundings on the fifth morning. When Sandra came into the room on that morning he was sitting up on the bed, the cup of water in his hand, which he quickly set on the wooden desk by the table as he looked up at her.
"Where am I?" The question was curt, seeming to demand an immediate reply. Sandra was far from willing to comply to a question uttered in such a way, so she seated herself by the bed, pretending to fold her hands neatly in her lap, a gesture befitting a nun; and as she did so, she observed him steadily and minutely. She knew that he couldn't see her expression through the thick white veil that concealed almost all of her face. As habitual to the nuns of the shrine, she was dressed in pure white-- hat, veil, long-sleeved shirt, pantaloons, cloak and boots-- all these covered her head and her body, and left nothing visible but her large, remarkable eyes. And she thought ironically to herself, all that white concealing the real me, its purpose to turn me into a puppet of their making, the chaste white apparition, a ghost of my true myself. Yet she did not mind it; she knew that those who fathomed the true image of things possessed power; a power to manipulate those who do not.
He answered her scrutinizing gaze with a serious expression-- his dark hair, tousled over his forehead, made him seem like he was peering at her challengingly from behind it, made him seem somewhat suspicious of her. And she thought herself with amusement, what a handsome man he is; my age, I believe, perhaps a little younger-- no need to look at me in this hard, suspicious way with those blue eyes of yours-- I shall not bite you unless I wish to.
She finally chose to answer his question, and told him the shrine's name and location. He seemed to relax a little at her reply, and leant back on his pillow. "I was attacked on the road," he disclosed-- out of his own will, for she did not inquire. "Bandits, perhaps. I recall seeing the shrine, but it seemed far off, resting on the top of a high, towering cliff. I think that I managed to kill all of them, but they injured me pretty badly as well-- I lost consciousness after I got the last one-- in fact, I was sure that he had killed me, but I guess that I was wrong." His tone was a little wry now, and something in it made her like him a little better than before.
"I found you, and brought you here," she told him in sedate tones, specifically designed to put him at ease. "It was not the first time, you know, that I meet people frantically scrambling up the paths leading to the temple, seeking either medical aid or a safe sanctuary from prosecutors. You are not the first man that I have discovered dying near the shrine, nor will you be the last." Her irrepresible smile tilted the corner of her mouth, though he could not see it. "You were ill for five days."
He was silent for a moment, eyeing her; she sensed that he was taking her measure carefully. Finally, he spoke. "I seem to recall being nursed by nuns, these last few days. Though you all look the same to me, I am pretty sure that it might have been only you. Something about," he hesitated, then reluctantly completed his sentence, "your eyes. I could recognize the same eyes looking at me. It became a little bit of a repeating nightmare after a while." He gazed straight at her again, an expression of inquiry in his eyes, of suspicion, perhaps a little of wariness-- and she understood the unasked question in them.
He is afraid that he would be discovered a Jumi.
She spoke with her clear voice, her dark and beautiful eyes, that possessed that ever-present, cynical glimmer of amusement within their depths twinkling now. "I am flattered to be remembered this way."
She couldn't tell whether his suspicions has been lulled, but the ironic tone in which she spoke her reply drew a reluctant smile from him for the first time.
"I never did thank you, did I?" he remarked, leaning forward. "I don't wish to seem ungrateful. My name is Elazul, and I am"-- a slight pause followed, that she understood well-- "a wandering knight. And what is your name?"
"My name is Sandra."
Another pause followed, then he looked down, his fingers smoothing the white covers of the bed, and remarked quietly, "You have good healing skills. I did not expect to be healed that quickly in an ordinary way."
"And in what way are you used to being healed?" she inquired. She already knew all about the Jumi healing tears, the reason that the Jumi were hunted and declined, the reason that they locked themselves inside their cold, glittering, hard city of jewels, away from the world of the living, locked themselves away like the nuns lock themselves in the temple she lived in. And, though she concealed it, she wished to know more about that city, wished to know more about the Jumi.
But, as she has foreseen, he avoided her question, murmuring a noncommittal answer.
A silence followed-- it seems like there was nothing else to say. She understood that he was on his guard again, and that she would draw nothing else from him at present. So she rose from her seat, and told him that she will be bringing him his medicine. This done, she checked on the wound and displaced his bandages with fresh ones. After she performed this operation, Elazul lay back on his bed, his eyes on the wall, seeming to be lost in thought-- no doubt wishing to be alone. She respected his wishes and withdrew
Sandra thought of Elazul all that morning, all that day. Something drew her to him-- not the least being that he was the first Jumi she has ever seen. She wished to ask him questions about the Jumi, and carefully weighed her options about approaching him in the right way, the way that will disarm him.
It was a complicated matter; but as it happens, she never had the chance to accost him and test her approach. Weak as he seemed, the next evening he left the shrine without telling anyone, and vanished as if he had never existed.
When Sandra was informed of Elazul's disappearance she was thoughtful for a long while. Then, one burning evening, when the heat was almost unbearable and rippled in the air like a living thing, she seated herself with a pot of ink and a goose feather and composed a short letter on a crisp, cream-colored piece of paper. When she finished, she inscribed a curious address on her missive, directed to a person called "A. Reynard".
Three years passed before Sandra and Elazul met again.
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