I was humiliatingly sore the next day. My arms weren’t nearly as responsive as I would have liked, and screamed with protest at that. I hauled myself to the bathroom to eat my breakfast, then hauled myself toward the kitchen to wash my dish-- ...I paused between one doorway and the next, stopped with a swivel of the head to peer toward the three others.
Tam and Soryya sat on the cushionless couch while Rodel sat cross-legged on the floor in front of them. Rodel had forgotten about her forkful of eggs, so busy was she with fantasizing about some sort of adventure her class would be going on in near future. Campfire caves, from the sounds of it --that’s what I called them, at least. They were the kinds of caves that were just deep enough that one didn’t need to worry about rain putting out a campfire and, if the ground was sloped favorably, one wouldn’t have to worry about rainwater leeching warmth from blankets. She was hoping the weather would clear up enough for them to stay the night there, and maybe they would get to tell magical stories about forest-dwelling elves and goblins, and maybe they’d even get to see one.
Soryya was smiling fondly at her daughter, while Tam sat forward and pointed his fork at her. “But you know what you really want to look out for? Fairy circles. Look for a set of mushrooms that grow in a circle. Stories say that means fairies are nearby.”
“But fairies are skittish,” Rodel counters. “At least elves and goblins have a chance of coming out to meet me.”
“Do you really want goblins coming out to meet you? You know they come looking for treasures they could steal.”
Rodel giggled around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Goblins are the nice ones. It’s the elves you have to-- look out for--” She trailed off when she spotted me hovering in the doorway. Tam and Soryya turned to look too.
“Oh, heya, Jester! Was breakfast to your liking?”
I held up my plate so they could see it was empty before ducking away into the kitchen. I ran the water on low, though, and off altogether while scrubbing in the soap, straining to listen to those mumbles in the other room. Even without being able to make out the words, I could hear the gentle familial lilt. Those three were a family unit. I had begun to feel… cozy among them, yes, but I could never possibly match that sense of homey belonging. It was an odd reminder --not one that I had ever expected I would need. I probed the sensation in the pit of my chest with a dull curiosity.
When I had finished with the plates and cleaned up theirs, Tam clapped me on the shoulder and insisted on showing me the rest of the town. If the market had fascinated me so, he explained, surely I’d be interested in seeing everything else. Apparently they had a gathering hall too --somehow smaller than the market-- and a farm on the opposite wing of town from the lumberjack where they tended all sorts of livestock. I was curious to see what a cultural center might look like for this village, and doubly curious how they managed to tend to the likes of chickens, sheep, and horses in a place so heavily wooded, so I agreed.
It was another dull, grey day. If I rubbed my fingers together, I knew there wasn’t enough moisture in the air for it to rain, but I still found myself checking the sky every now and then just to be sure. The villagers certainly noticed us --noticed me-- as we meandered down the road. It was amusing to watch their heads turn to watch us in our wake. I let my own head swivel too, looking them straight in the eye for as long as I could. All of them found themselves tripping in their haste to look away after a time.
One teenager was the exception, when he caught on to what I was doing and straightened up and stared back at me until I had turned all the way around and was walking backward. I pointed to the face of my mask and swept finger-eyes at him several times, and he swept finger-eyes back, and Tam snorted and elbowed me. “Don’t go making enemies. We’re a fierce lot if you make us angry.”
But that didn’t scare me. I was strong! I held my arms up and flexed them as mightily as I could manage. The teen flexed too. Neither of us could gauge the other’s muscles with our coats on, but I was fairly certain he would be able to outlift me in any competition. So I paused, flustered, and whipped forward again to cling to Tam’s shoulder to make sure everyone knew I was guarded. I could heard the kid snickering behind me, and that was enough for me to feel satisfied.
The town, Tam explained, may look small as you’re walking down the main road, but it actually supported several hundred people with their homes scattered all throughout the trees. Some of the more isolated homes didn’t even have paths to them. But it was small enough still that roadways were less for navigational purposes than to keep things passable for carts and horses: people knew who and where everyone else was.
The gathering hall consisted mostly of a single room with a whole lot of benches in it. There was a huge fireplace --truly massive, the largest hearth I had ever seen-- set into one wall, and the archways that framed with were carved with intricate patterns upon intricate patterns. In fact, there wasn’t a single archway or support beam in the whole building that wasn’t finely-carved to preserve one story or another. That alone fascinated me. Running my fingers along the grooves, I could imagine the skilled craftsmen that had surely dedicated days and weeks to immortalizing these histories. More than that, there were animals, leaves, vines, swirling winds, abstract faces, symbols --the stories themselves were a whole other fabric to consider.
“We’re a people steeped in folklore and fairytale,” Tam explained when he saw me tracing the lines of a fairy’s wing. “It comes with the territory, being in a deep mystical forest and all. And when it snows and we’re all stuck inside, it’s something to keep us from going crazy. We have great big potlucks here and sit around to play games and tell stories. If you stick around that long, I think you’d like it.” He slanted a glance my way, and I knew he was trying to glean some nugget of insight as to my intentions.
Instead, I pointed to a symbol that looked vaguely humanoid, but the facial features were all creased and twisted out of proportion to look menacing with pointy ears stuck out to either side.
“Oh, that’s,” he laughed self-consciously, as if he was the one to blame for the tales, “that’s a goblin. Legends say they look tough and mean, but they’re actually pretty friendly, if reclusive. It’s the elves you gotta look out for.” His grin slanted wider than such a comment really called for, and I could see the fond recollection in his eyes. He was thinking of his daughter.
I studied that warm glow in his eyes for a moment, but turned my attention back to the wall. He talked me through a few more of the stories. Some panels told the whole story through a series of representative symbols and scenes. Some panels had symbols from all different stories crammed all together one after the other. It all made such a rich tapestry that the room itself seemed to breathe with it. At length, I found myself just sitting on a bench looking around at it all.
Tam watched me, perhaps unsure what to make of my curiosity, and sat down on a bench to wait patiently. He, too, looked around the room and breathed softly, that faintest smile lighting his eyes.
We were both so lost in our reverie that at first the pop didn’t register. It was distant and muted, and took me a moment to lift my chin and cock my head in the way of a dog trying to listen.
“Hunters,” Tam explained. “They must’ve chased something into town limits--...” No. There was something different about it. A second and third pop, and like prey animals hearing a twig snap, we just knew. We had bound ourselves up in the beautiful tapestry of history and fantasy woven together --so thoroughly that we were oblivious to the tension that had been steadily pulling the air tight.
A scream, and Tam spasmed up to his feet. He stopped there, though, frozen with indecision. “They’re here,” he gasped.
He didn’t wait for me to ask who --I found myself too stiff to ask anyway-- but grabbed me by the arm and yanked me over to a window. The view immediately outside the street was starkly peaceful and uninteresting, but we could hear the shouts beginning to double up, and triple up.
The teen I had very decidedly beat in a staring contest came bolting down the road, veered off to come slamming through the door to the gathering hall. He swept the place with wild eyes before finding us. He tried once, twice to formulate words but was gasping too hard. “I-- They-- The troops are here! They got-- They’re all around us. S-somehow they got behind us. Tam, your--”
“Soryya and Rodel,” Tam gasped before I had connected the dots. Behind us, to those villagers, meant to the west, to the mountains, the direction away from the war.
The teen didn’t wait for us to shake free of our stupor before sprinting off again.
It was at this point that I realized Tam still held my arm, because his fingers grew vice-like, clamping down until they quaked. “We have to get to the house,” he gasped. “We have to--” But he was so terrified that his feet were rooted to the ground. He wanted to move, but couldn’t persuade himself to it.
I put my hand over his and yanked him out into the street. Head whipping left, right, left, I caught glimpses of people running. I couldn’t tell if those were tendrils of mist or smoke snaking through the trees. The popping sounds and the shouts of panic became crystal clear out in the open air. They suddenly felt real, and close. I tightened my grip on Tam’s sleeve and ran.
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