Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (10 page)

Erod stayed silent, studying his feet as he took each step.
 

“No matter what Druce or any of the ‘em say, we need ya here,” said the man. He stopped and faced Erod, who looked up hesitantly to meet his gaze. “You know they can’t protect us. Not all are gonna take kindly to your return. But you been long whispered about. Many’ll be glad.”

“I know not what power I may yet have,” Erod said. “I may be of no use at all.” He stared hard into the other man’s face, at once concerned and confident.
 

The man put one hand heavily onto Erod’s shoulder.
 

“Yes,” he said. “Your power may or may not be enough. But you’ll be with us now instead of out on the wild sea. You’ll be home.” He gave his head a curt nod, and Erod’s face broke into a wide smile.
 

“Ah, I have missed you, Miros,” Erod said. The two started walking again.

“Shouldn’t have left, then,” Miros said.

“You know I had little choice in that matter. Druce would have flayed me alive had I stayed.”
 

“Maybe.” Miros nodded, snickering. “Though that ain’t got nothing to do with your magic, if I remember right. If you had kept your eyes off his daughter, he might’ve let you stay.”

So quickly, and without warning, Erod’s hand shot out and shoved Miros to the side. He nearly fell, but then caught his balance just before his hands hit the dirt. He was chortling now, and Erod walked on as if he had done nothing more important than swat at a fly.
 

We crested the top of the hill, and as we took the first steps down the other side, I saw our destination waiting for us. In the basin of the small, hidden valley, a scattering of thatched roof dwellings dotted the landscape.
 

The village of the Solitaries.

A tall boy greeted us as we descended the hillside.
 

“Go tell Grete,” said Miros to him, and the boy bounded away towards one of the little houses.
 

Erod smiled and looked back at me.

“Hope you’re ready for this,” he said.
 

Ready for what?

As we approached the small house, several dogs gathered around us, sniffing and baying to let the whole place know we had arrived.
 

“I leave you here, Brother,” Miros said, and he clapped him roughly on the back. Erod stumbled.

“Thanks,” he said. And then to himself, “I’ll need it.”

He ducked through the small doorway into the cottage, and I followed him inside. Standing over a tiny stove that held an enormous pot was the largest woman I had ever seen. Erod was big, but she was huge. She stayed focused on the stove as she spoke.

“Brann came with the news,” she said. “I suppose you think I’ll be feeding you up.”
“Hi Mum,” Erod said.

She turned on the spot, her eyes flashing with anger.

“Don’t you ‘Hi Mum’ me,” she spat.
 
Then she walked across the small room and whacked him, hard, across the face. Beneath the submissive look he wore on his face, I could just barely see a smile peeking through.
 

What was it with these people? I shifted uncomfortably where I stood, hoping that they wouldn’t beat
me
with their welcomes.
 

He stood upright again and held his arms out to her, smirking. She stood, arms folded across her broad chest, and glared at him. But after a few moments of trying to avoid his gaze, she finally relented, opening her arms and accepting his embrace.

“You’re no good, you know that, Erod?” she said to the top of his head. “I should’ve thrown you in the river when you was a baby. So scrawny anyways.”

He laughed.
 

She released the hug but kept her hands on his shoulders, staring him straight in the face.

“If you ever take off like that again, I’ll hunt you down and beat you bloody. You understand?”

“Yes, Mum.” Erod smiled.
 

She shoved him away from her and turned back her cooking.

“Who’s this bug you’ve brought in?” she asked.
 

“Just someone I picked up along the way,” he said, his eyes smiling in my direction. “Actually, Mum, we need to call the clan together.”

“What for?”

“We’ve come across some things that Aster here needs to find answers to.”

“He needs answers? What about our answers?” Her fist sunk into a lump of dough the size of a basketball that had been resting on the counter. The air that had gathered between the fibers of wheat puffed out in a whoosh, like the air being let out of a balloon. Her massive arms kneaded the flattened mass, expertly working the dough and folding it over and over as she went.

“We have some of them, too. And,” he looked at me for approval for what he was about to say, but he didn’t wait for it before he spoke, “he’s got gold.”

Her hands froze atop the mountain of dough, and the room went silent.
 

“What?”
She turned around and fixed her hard gaze on me.

“It’s true, Mum,” he said.
 

“How’s this?” she asked me.

I opened my mouth, to say what, I didn’t know, but Erod saved me.

“It’s a story for the elders and the clan to hear together,” he said.
 

“Seein’ as he’s sittin’ in my house, I think it’s a story I’m ready to hear right now.”
 

“No, Mum,” he said firmly. “Tonight he will tell his story, and I mine.” Erod stifled a yawn. The warm cottage combined with our lack of sleep over the past couple of days was catching up with us, but my eyes remained open and alert.
 

“We need rest, Mum.”

She glared at him for a moment, her eyes flitting angrily back and forth between us. But then her stern face changed from anger to understanding. The hard edges remained, as if a moment ago she had been talking to a boy, and now a man.

“Go on then,” she said, removing the long apron from her front. She hung it next to the stove and headed for the door. “I’ll be back.” She left the mound of dough, unfinished and forgotten, on the counter, and closed the front door firmly behind her.

Erod lay back on a couch of sorts that sat up off the floor and groaned loudly at the relief of resting his muscles. That left me with the lumpy mattress in the corner.
 

“Will we be safe?” I said as I sat down. I pulled a wadded blanket from the floor over my legs. It smelled like a barn.

“Safe enough,” he said, his eyes drooping. “I told you, they’re afraid of magic.”

“And you ain’t no ordinary man,” I said. He smiled.
 

“Nope.”

But as he drifted off to sleep I wondered how this clan was going to react to our arrival here. I dug my hand into my pocket and felt the smooth outline of the gold medallion. Before I first traveled into the Fold, I never would have thought a piece of gold could be worth so much. I would have to hold onto it tight.
 

But just how tight, at that moment, I never would have guessed.

Hours later, the front door to the tiny hut banged open, and my eyes flew wide. A freshly killed deer dangled from the shoulder of a man at least eight feet tall. Its blank, black eyes cast an empty stare around the room as he turned to close the door behind him. He dropped the carcass to the floor like nothing more important than a bundle of soiled rags, and in two strides was at the foot of the couch where Erod lay, snoring loudly.
 

The man lifted his foot and shoved Erod roughly. His only response was a snorting sound as his slumber was temporarily disturbed. He shoved him again, harder this time, and Erod’s eyes squinted in the dying light of the day. He raised his hands to his face, rubbing it blearily as the man came into focus before him, and then he smiled.
 

“Pa,” he said.
 

“Hmph,” the man said. “Get your arse up off that sofa and go clean the deer. You got a lot of work to make up after what you pulled.”

I backed myself up against the wall, trying to stay invisible, not knowing what to do. If these two came to blows inside this tiny hut, I was sure to be squashed flat.

Erod stared at him blankly for a moment, and the slightest hint of disappointment crossed his face for just an instant. Then he laughed.
 

“Yeah, alright,” he said. He motioned for me to follow him, and as I did so the man settled himself heavily into one of the wooden chairs around the small kitchen table. I may have been fast, but the more time I spent around Erod, the smaller I felt. With the introduction of his father, a man I felt sure could have broken me into two with no more effort than snapping a piece of kindling, I was filled with the intense desire to disappear entirely.
 

Erod didn’t introduce us, and he didn’t wait for me to help him with the deer. In one long motion he grasped the two back legs of the animal and threw its body over his shoulder. A thin trail of blood dripped from its neck, trickling onto the wood floor, but Erod paid it no notice. He heaved open the door to the cottage and stepped out into the late afternoon sun, me skittering along in his wake.
 

He stopped as we exited the small house, breathing deeply and then catching my eye.
 

“My Pa,” was all he said. I nodded.
 

He moved off to a large tree that stood twenty paces from the house. Rigged up to one of the lower branches was a thick, metal hook, a fat ring of rope hanging from its end. Erod held the animal’s head and thrust it through the noose, which tightened as the deer was released from his back. He gave a long sigh with the lifting of the weight from his shoulders, and stood back to admire the catch.

“Good hunter, my pa,” he said. “See how there’s only one wound, here along the throat.” His fingers moved over the neck of the dangling carcass, briefly pausing over the almost unnoticeable hole in the skin. He looked at me for my approval. I quickly nodded, trying to keep my mouth closed, despite my horror at this situation.
 

I had never hunted before, and though I had helped Kiron some with the preparation of chicken meat for our travels to Stonemore months before, I had done most of the work after the actual killing had occurred. Now I was faced with the dead animal itself. A month’s worth of meat, to be sure, but still in his furry clothing, uncut and unprepared, his tongue lolling out from one side of his mouth. I gulped.

“Grab me the knife,” Erod nodded towards a large tree stump a few yards away. Several tools lay on its surface, and I grabbed what looked like the sharpest of them and returned it to Erod.
 

With a precision and quickness I hadn’t expected, he slashed down the belly of the deer from throat to pelvis. The stomach and intestines of the once beautiful creature sagged out of the gash, and Erod’s hands expertly caught them before they splattered to the ground.
 

I almost lost what little food remained in my stomach. I turned away, the sight and smell of the chore overwhelming to me.
 

“Ah, so now you’re gonna be a baby, are ya?” he said. I gulped again, trying not to be sick. “If you plan on eating, you ought to learn how to do the work. Get back over here.”

I turned my head, unwilling at first to look at the carnage that lay behind me. But Erod had moved the long lump of intestines away to the other side of the tree, and looking at the animal now was more easily stomached. Soon, he stripped the skin off the giant beast, and after that I had less of the sensation that I was ripping apart an innocent forest creature and more that I was simply participating in what needed to be done to survive.
 

For the next hour I was Erod’s errand boy. After skinning the deer, he began the long process of butchering the meat into segments manageable for cooking. Soon, I was running back and forth between the skinning tree and a tall drying cabinet that stood next to the house, carefully sorting and arranging the meat on the racks in preparation for preservation. By the end of it all I was exhausted, but I also felt oddly accomplished. Watching Erod handle the deer had taught me the basics of a skill I never would have had the opportunity to learn back on Earth. Meat was a rarity at home, with so little viable grass to feed the animals. But here, while I might find hunting to be an unsavory task, I felt my stomach give an unmistakable rumble of hunger upon the completion of the butchering chore. I was truly looking forward to dinner.

Erod wiped his hands, stained red from the work, onto his dark pants and expertly threw the knife into the tree stump, where it stuck firmly.
 

“Walk around before supper?” he asked me.
 

I shrugged. “Sure.” I felt less nervous than I had this afternoon. More accomplished and, unmistakably, taller. I wiped my own stained hands on my pants and fell into step beside him.
 

At the tree, nobody had bothered us. Erod’s family home was on the outskirts of the village, and perhaps not everyone had yet heard about his return. But as we approached the heart of the place, in full view of the inhabitants, we were greeted with a variety of responses. Some shuttered their windows as we walked past. One older woman even spat in our direction before closing the wooden covering with a snap.
 

Others were friendlier. Some smiled tentatively, and occasionally someone, usually a man, would shout out a greeting to Erod. After several people did this, something that had been nagging at me all day floated up to the surface.

“Why do they talk like that?” I asked. He glared in my direction. “I mean,” I stumbled, “why don’t you sound like them? You grew up here, didn’t you?”

Erod heaved a heavy sigh.

“I’ve never quite fit here,” he said. “It’s been told that, when one is born with the curse, as I was, you can tell from the moment he opens his mouth to speak. Even a toddler can give himself away with just a few words, for those that escape him are rarely of the native tongue. Just as when I speak now, just about anyone can see I’m an outsider.”