Elixa, p.1
Elixa, page 1
part #0.50 of The Torcal Trilogy Series
elixa
Paula Wynne
Prado Press
London, United Kingdom
Author Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Paula Wynne.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” via the web address below.
Paula Wynne, Prado Press: http://paulawynne.com/contact
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions or locales is completely coincidental.
Development Critique: Samantha Allen
Development and Line Editor: David Imrie
Cover Designer: Travis Miles
Author Contact
Join Paula’s mailing list to find out about new books:
http://paulawynne.com/vip-news
Follow Paula on:
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/paula-wynne
http://www.amazon.com/author/paulawynne
https://www.facebook.com/paula.wynne
https://www.facebook.com/authorpaulawynne/
https://twitter.com/paulawynne
Paula runs BookLuver.com and features monthly book giveaways at http://bookluver.com/book-giveaways.
Win A Kindle
To celebrate the launch of Elixa, I am giving away a Kindle Fire. Check the back of the book for the entry link. Hurry as the giveaway ends soon.
Also by Paula Wynne
The Grotto’s Secret
The Sacred Symbol Wynne
The Luna Legacy
Elixa
Coming Soon
Flying Without Wings
Cold Feet
Praise for The Grotto’s Secret
“Past and present blend masterfully together in this page-turning thriller; guaranteed to leave readers wanting more.” Angela Crouch
“The Grotto’s Secret is a fast-paced, exhilarating thriller that left me panting for more.” Ros Brookman
“A good read. I was hooked very early in the story and kept hooked throughout. The Grotto’s Secret is for fans of Kate Mosse and Dan Brown.” Graham Bird
Reader’s Praise for
The Sacred Symbol
“I was hooked by the first chapter of The Sacred Symbol. A page-turner right to the end. Another masterpiece from Paula Wynne!”
Richard Butler
“I have just started The Sacred Symbol and I'm enchanted! I don't want to stop reading.”
DeeAnn Murphy
“Recommended for fans of Dan Brown,
a brilliant read”
Sue Brown
“Reminiscent of Dan Brown, the Sacred Symbol combines history, mystery, and thriller to
capture you from the first chapter and eagerly
keep you turning pages.”
Jane Geiger
“The Sacred Symbol is full of suspense to the end.”
Corinne Lehmann
“The Sacred Symbol' is an intriguing story. Wow! I can't put it down. So many little plots all intertwined to make up a bigger picture.”
Irene Adam
“Amazing how Paula Wynne is able to go back and forth between centuries and not lose the reader. When I started The Grotto's Secret, I was concerned about following the plot, but it held me enthralled. The Sacred Symbol is no less mesmerizing. Really glad I discovered this author and her talents.”
Linda Frank
For my husband Ken Sheridan
You are my elixir!
For my reader
If you enjoy this story, please read the personal note at the back of the book to see how The Torcal Trilogy characters came to be and how
special their story is to me.
“Nothing in life is as sacred as our
hopes and dreams.”
Elixa
“A man's true wealth is the
good he does in this world.”
Muhammad
570 - 632CE
Inspired by a real-life historical event …
1
Elixabet Luz
June 18, 1178 A.D, Sierra del Torcal
With rigid muscles and a clenched jaw, Elixa Luz ran through the rocky labyrinth in the twilight.
Away from Abadía del Torcal.
Her stomach knotted. Every word she had just heard burned through her heart, searing and hotter than the summer’s night.
The sweet scent of wildflower blossoms filled the air as their petals were tugged by the breeze. Normally she loved the smell, but today it sickened her.
Tears rolled down her peach blossom cheeks, but she had no time to waste with crying. Even wailing and screaming, or beating her fists against a stone wall to the point of injury, would not help her now.
High in the sky, the moon curved into a crescent. In less than two weeks it would be full, and rise in an orange sphere over the mountain.
The best night of the month.
But those nights had been ruined.
Only minutes ago, she had heard the worst tidings of her life.
She was to be married off to Mendoza, a man from far away who she had never talked to, had only laid eyes on a few times. A man she could not possibly come to love. She would have to leave the abbey forever.
Everything in her world had come tumbling down.
As Elixa scrambled between the boulders, her long, golden hair swirled around her face and fell upon her shoulders. She pulled the locks into a knot and fanned the perspiring nape of her neck. Huffing, she swatted away a mosquito as it buzzed around her ears.
She turned to glance at the abbey. Her precious home.
Although aged, Abadía del Torcal stood proud on the southern ridge of Sierra del Torcal. Amidst a group of rambling buildings, the chapel rose high above the steep cliffs that surrounded the abbey.
Despite the walls sagging in some places, the chapel’s stained-glass windows lifted their faces to the sun each day, resolute in bathing the praying monks inside in a stream of beautiful coloured light.
Along with the chapel, various cottages and buildings housing the tiny community’s workshops and stores, were given sanctuary by a tall stone wall. Only the occasional gate and dirt track led to the outer structures, which were a barn and a mix of stables and animal pens.
Beyond those buildings the mountain rose up in walls of solid rock. As a child, Elixa had imagined the mountain was looming down over her, tracking her every move like a strict parent.
Lately, though, she had come to understand that it was a benevolent protector watching over the whole abbey. Until just a few years ago, Elixa had been forbidden to venture beyond the walls. Yet now she knew the labyrinth of rocky crevices and pathways better than she knew how to bake bread.
Far below the rugged limestone landscape of the abbey, comprised of boulders and rocks that looked like thin loaves of bread stacked on top of each other, lay a green valley. And it was to there that the inhabitants of the abbey had to trek for their water.
Although a small group of monks lived at the abbey, with several other people like her and Mamá to look after them, most of the community lived on the western slopes and foothills, which were not as steep as the eastern side.
That was where Rosa had lived.
Elixa’s stomach knotted as she thought of her childhood friend.
Elixa and Rosa, Rosa and Elixa, inseparable and more often than not following Enrique around like puppies. Growing up, he had been like a big brother to them both. Until the day she had failed to return from her walk.
That was the day, sobbing in Enrique’s arms, that Elixa had suddenly become aware of his strength, and the authenticity of his caring nature.
They had spent days, weeks, months scouring the boulder-strewn slopes for signs of Rosa, but finally they had had to accept what everyone else believed, which was that she had either been taken by one of the groups of bandits that occasionally passed through the area, or by a rogue wolf.
The thought filled Elixa’s mouth with a palpable sourness. Neither possibility provided any crumb of consolation.
The community children, about twenty of them of various ages, were taught in a small cottage beside the barn where a few monks gave them different lessons.
Soon after he turned twelve Enrique, already as tall, fast and strong as many of the other men, had been taken out of school by his father to become a full-time hunter, and his absence had left a gaping hole in Elixa’s world. As she grew, she too had taken on many tasks around the abbey and her days of schooling had dwindled towards their end.
One of these tasks was to seek out and gather herbs and wild plants for the cooking pot, which she did daily.
When these foraging trips took her down the valley with the water carriers, Elixa would often look back up and marvel at how the abbey seemed to balance on the edge of the precipice.
Visitors to the abbey said that the overwhelming sight filled them with awe, even daunted them.
But for her the feeling it evoked was love. For every public and private place in the abbey, for all of it was her home. Every broken and crumbling piece of rock.
For all of Elixa’s sixteen years, Brother Luis had kept his flock under his angelic wings, and she loved him for that.
But not tonight.
Those things he had said to Mamá had made her dislike him, possibly even hate him. That was a sin, she knew, but who cared about sinning tonight, when her life had been ruined in one short pronouncement?
The abbey’s bell tower formed a striking contrast, of man’s endeavours against the natural mountainous backdrop. With its silhouette in her mind, she swivelled around and hurried along the rutted dirt track, following it down through labyrinths of rock to her favourite cavern.
Had she been a hawk, it would only have taken her seconds, but even with her long, lithe legs the journey took her ten minutes of picking her way through the rocky crevices and open-air tunnels.
Of all the people who lived at the abbey, Elixa was the most at ease in the wild landscape outside the abbey walls. Now, she turned a corner and found a position just inside a wide cave mouth.
There were lots of potholes, fissures and caves up here on the mountain. Most of them did not provide safe shelter, only a steep fall into a black pit, but some had shallow caverns where she could creep inside to get some relief from the baking heat, a cool place to rest and recharge.
She bent her tall frame to slip inside.
Here she could be alone and ponder what to do about the terrible edict she had heard. Nearby, an owl hooted from a high boulder.
‘Hurry, little mouse,’ Elixa murmured. ‘The owl will catch you. Just like I am to be caught.’
The long, wild grass tickled her ankles as she slumped down and looked up at the moon. Her hot skin boiled under her thin chemise and she pulled it up and flapped it to drive air over her body.
Mamá did not approve of this simple way to cool down, but she struggled against the baking heat which only gave reprieve in the winter months, when the temperatures plummeted. Now, in June, it was already too warm, and she still had to endure many months of scorching heat before donning more clothing to face the harsh winter.
For a moment she stared at the moon, dreaming of wading in the stream in the grotto below the mountain. She imagined the water washing over her boots, tugging at the hem of her dress.
In her mind’s eye, she visualised Enrique’s large hands dipping into the water as he filled the twin barrels, before loading them onto his wide shoulders. A few water carriers had donkeys to carry their pails, but most of the men carried barrels hanging on both ends of their shoulder harnesses.
All of the fit and healthy men in the community had to join in the water carrying, and Enrique was one of them. And, even though still young, he was perhaps the strongest of them all. On other days, he ranged far and wide, hunting fresh meat and game for the small community,
His almond-coloured eyes matched his mane of hair, which fell upon his broad chest, most often in a tangle. Whenever Elixa joined the water carriers, it was a terrible torment to stop herself from reaching out and touching the tangles.
It took hours to get down to the stream, and she couldn’t even lift the water vats that their strong bodies lugged all the way up the mountainside. Instead, she went along to gather wild foods, and the water carriers were equally amazed at her ways of knowing exactly when and where to look for the roots, herbs and berries that provided the glorious flavours for Mamá’s stewing pot.
Tomorrow she would take another journey with the water carriers. Would it be her last one, now that she was to leave the sanctity of her home?
For though its white stone labyrinths and rocky corridors daunted most people visiting the abbey, to her this mountain brought only peace and comfort, for it was her true home. She loved it as much as she loved the boy, now grown into a man, who filled her dreams.
At the stream tomorrow, she would dare do what she oft dreamed of doing. Lying down in the water and letting the blessed icy cool it brought from the heart of the mountain wash over her.
But instead of thinking about the heat, she must do something more important.
When he filled the containers, she must catch his eye and send him a silent message. If he knew of her love perhaps he would choose her as his bride, so she did not have to marry Mendoza, the hidalgo, the nobleman who owned lots of land and property in the surrounding area.
But even if this miracle could come to pass, would it be too late?
With a bitterness twisting her belly, she glanced up at the moon, her confidante these past years with Rosa gone, and without Enrique, who never had a moment free from his chores.
Only the Moon Goddess knew her secret desire to lie in the water.
Suddenly a voice cried out, ‘Elixabet!’
She jumped up, startled.
The evening was closing in, sending shadows to creep amongst the towering cliffs.
Mamá had often warned her not to come this far. Word had been sent from the village below the mountain that rogues were afoot. A group of Italian conscripts had deserted a ship in Málaga and had come north to hide out in the countryside, pillaging and stealing from small villages. Her mother also had a terror of wolves. Not so much the pack, which could sometimes be heard in the distance on still nights and which kept respectfully far away from people, but of the rogue wolf. That occasional animal with insanity in its bloodthirsty eyes, that left the pack to creep up, slavering, on the community to search for the young, the weak, or those foolish enough to venture outside the walls alone.
The voice cried out again. Pebbles shifted beneath someone’s feet as the owl’s sharp cry warned of an intruder.
Elixa held her breath.
2
Within minutes, Brother Luis Ximenez appeared, puffing and panting into his grey, chest-length beard. ‘Elixabet Luz! I have been searching for you. Why did you run off?’
‘I wanted to pick wild oregano for Mamá.’
Telling lies to a Brother was also a sin, but how could she tell him the truth? That she had been eavesdropping on him and Mamá again.
He raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘At this time of the evening?’
She pulled a face. He had a strange way of knowing when she lied.
Although owned by the crown, the abbey had been self-governed for many years. The old abbot had died and several of the elder monks had elected Brother Luis as their leader. He proclaimed himself unworthy of the role and insisted on still being called just Brother, despite his leadership over the few people who had somehow come to live in such a remote place.
In a slow movement, Brother Luis slid down onto a rock beside her and stabbed his flaming torch pole into a pile of loose stones. Fires could spread easily through the dried grass that filled the gaps between the rocks in this dry heat, so he took care to ensure it was securely wedged.
As he removed a wine costrel from his girdle, his hood dropped from his head, revealing the receding line of his hair, the same colour as the pewter goblets he used for Eucharist.
The abbot was round like a Torcal boulder, which was largely due to his loving Mamá’s cooking too much. But it was a good thing to be solid and durable, like a rock, when it came to taking charge of their whole community.
With his blue eyes closed, he sipped the wine.
While he swallowed mouthfuls of it, she watched with narrowed eyes. Her tongue slid over her dry lips as she imagined his wine to be cool water coursing down her parched throat.
After a moment, the abbot clasped his large hands over his wine-barrel belly and sighed, ‘This wine is wonderful. We are thankful that Brother Grigori brought his winemaking skills to the abbey. Although, it would be a blessing if we could get more water carried up to the abbey, so the monks would not be so driven to quench their thirst with wine!’
