Gift of Gold (The Year of Churning Bloods) (64 page)

             
“I
’ve told you that Gregor and I are traders when that’s not true. I’m not proud to admit this, but we’re actually Grimlars in training
.”

              “But you said you and your brother...?”

              “I'm not a trader and I never had a brother. I'm a
Grimlar
.”
The word felt gritty with filth as it traveled through my
windpipe
and scraped past my tongue
.

Totara stood without swayin
g
. Time had frozen, and the little warm light surrounding us had gone cold. The man stared at me with eyes I hadn't seen since our first encounter and
I found myself trembling with raw trepidation at the memories
. 

              “Prove it,” he said prudently. I shrugged uncertainly and extended a hand out. Relinquishing a small portion of my energy, I stretched a section of the land upward until it was waist high. Totara leapt back in alarm, while his pupils darted about like marbles in a pond of water.
Without waiting for him to say anything else I began to explain
about the task that Gregor and I had been set.

              “Orthonus is getting stronger
,” I said, holding back the panic in my voice.
“We have to stop him.” Totara’s breathing turned frantic as he grabbed cupfuls of his hair and began to pace around. “But it’s not in vain,” I protested while stepping forward. “The reward should I kill Orthonus is three wishes, but only if I kill him within a year.
”

              “You lied to me
,
” Totara growled.

              “You would have
kicked
me out of your home if I had said anything else
,
” I protested urgently

              “Then
w
hy are you here, if you have only a year?”

              “We need all the miracles we can get
,
” I said i
nnocently.
Totara crossed his arms and paced around the room, seeing me now for what I really was and inspecting me
with a look of
disgust.

              “Are you telling me this because you want your payment early?”
h
e asked
,
flicking out the
m
iracle powder from his pocket? “Are you saying that you never wanted any of this?” He outspread his arms and gestured to the entire pavilion. “ Did you just want to lie, stay a few nights and then be on your way?”

              I shook my head earnestly, but this was ignored.

“You've uncovered the soil of my past that hasn't been touched for seven years, and you expect to just waltz away and never see me again? Have you never considered the possibility that finally having someone to talk to and pass on my trade has been the best time of my seven years here?” Totara threw his hands up and kicked down a nearby stand of well maintained saw-blades. They fell to the floor clattering over one another with a terrible racket
. “W
hat would you care about my trade? You were train
ed to
fight and exploit! You listened to my stories pretending to be interested just
so that you could reclaim your stupid little miracle
!”

              Please! Please listen to me, you don't understand!” I screamed in desperation. The sting in my eyes
was too powerful to have been mere tears. Had someone told me I was crying poison, I would have believed them.

              “Well you know what?” Totara asked, now bellowing at a
n inhuman
volume. “Take it! It's yours! It always has been!” The miracle powder was flung to the ground where it flopped around uselessly. “Who am I to just want company, or a little compassion for the horrible decisions I've made? Nobody
t
hat's who! I lost Rimu, I lost my clan, I lost my beautiful miracle boat; And now
,
”
h
e added, shoulders starting to sag. “I'm going to lose the only friends I've made in seven years, just because the mighty
Grimlar
s said so.”

              Without another word, Totara
retreated
to the safety of the hut. The
miracle
powder simply lay there, blissfully unaware that it was the cause of the worst mistake of my life so far. I stood there on the spot trembling and wishing I had never gotten involved
:
Wishing I had just listened to Umber who was no doubt laughing at my misfortune and misery. I
pocketed
the miracle powder and gave in to the irresistible desire to lay d
o
wn and weep.

             
Chapter
twenty-three

             
Professor Pocket’s Miracle Powder

             
One day find you death

             
One fine day fine cheese

             
Luck is nothing new to you

             
Yet luck can never please.

             
356 days remaining.

              Noticing that Totara had locked himself in his room, Gregor repeatedly asked me what I had done to him. Not even on my dying breath would I have told him I had gotten the powder back.

“What’s the harm in telling him what happened mortal?” Umber asked in a demanding voice.

I jabbed my fingernails into my scalp and slowly took three breaths as I felt my patience ebb away.

              “If I told Gregor I got what we stayed for, he’d have me leave and I’d never get to apologize to Totara.”

Umber groaned in dismay and suddenly swamped my vision with his presence. “So that’s what this is about,” he declared, looking less than impressed. “You want retain this positive relationship of yours with that lumberjack.”

I bit back a response and struggled to make myself more comfortable in the seat I was sprawled in.

“Get over yourself!” Umber bellowed. “The world is filled with lonely people, and honestly helping only one is not going to change the rest of the world.”

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Umber’s words stung with a point of truth. By leaving now I would be ruining the life of one man but possibly saving the lives of hundreds more. Was I even responsible for those lives anyways? Totara had said a jailkeeper was someone who decided right and wrong for a person, yet didn’t a hero do all of those things? I stroked my face with a trembling hand as an unwelcome realization came to me. “Is a hero the same as a jailkeeper?” I laughed nervously and tried to throw this sticky thought away. “Surely a hero would have a clear sense of what’s right,” I thought to myself defiantly. “Surely a hero would know better.”

              “No one can know everything,” Umber responded coldly. “If you mean to tell me that you know what’s right for everyone then you’d only be living a lie.”

              “Explain,” I insisted quickly.

              “Okay. Consider what would happen if by some ridiculous quirk of fate, you got rid of all war,” Umber said, trying not to laugh. “Not like you could ever do that, but still, just pretend.”

              “Yes quite funny,” I snapped irritably “Get on with it already.”

              “You would agree that no war would be much better for society. However what about all the blacksmiths and armourers?”

              “What about them?” I replied sourly.

              “They would lose all of their jobs!” Umber exclaimed loudly. “They would have no other profession to turn to, and you as the hero would be responsible for all of their losses.”

I bit my tongue and fastened my clenched fists around the edge of the chair.

“If you think heroism is doing what’s right for everyone, then you’ll lose,” Umber said after a moment of silence.

              “Well what do you think heroism means?” I asked feeling suddenly lightheaded.

              “I don’t know,” Umber said as if I was being idiotic. “In fact, I don’t care to know because I’m not the one here that constantly strives to be one.” Umber broke my gaze and glanced over to the locked door to Totara’s room. “If think it means staying here in the middle of nowhere to baby a single distraught lumberjack, then by all means do so. There’s nothing more I can say that would convince you otherwise.”

As Umber flashed out of view I took one more discreet look at the miracle powder in my pocket and sighed uncomfortably.

              After nearly an hour of asking non stop questions, Gregor finally lost patience and threw me against the hut wall, snarling as his eyes flashed green. He tried everything he could to scour through my memories, however Umber halted his every advance. After a few startled silences, he threw me to the ground and furiously began to rub his temples.

              “How
do you always do that
!?”
h
e
shrieked as if in genuine pain
.

              “Do what?” I asked
,
innocently masking a smirk with my hands.

              “Get that orange cloud thing to block your memories! Don't
be stupid
Jacob, I know it's just another stupid distortion trick.”

I shrugged to myself and Gregor held a fist dangerously close to my face.

“Oh but don’t you worry. I’ll find a way to get past you,” he added with a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

His unease made me a lot happier than I’d care to admit.

With Totara bolted up in his room all day it soon became apparent that I was going to have to carry on
with his work
until he decided to come out. This meant I would have to cook, clean, hunt, cut trees, saw wood and hoist the flag for traders all by myself. The reason I s
aid “
all by myself,
”
is
because
when I asked Gregor to help me, he snorted with indifference and spat at my feet.

              “Good luck with that
S
unshine
,” he replied nastily.

              “Why won’t you do any work?” I asked, desperately trying to keep my voice calm.

              “Nobody’s making me,” he stated, carelessly propping his feet up against the dining room table.

I sighed and pressed my whited knuckles into my teeth. “I’m making you,” I explained slowly.

Gregor raised his eyebrows in surprise and blew a bit of air out the side of his wide mouth.

              “See Sunshine, the last time I checked, you’re nobody.” Gregor tipped both of his thumbs upward and sighed proudly. “And since nobody’s making me work, I don’t have to work.”

              “How am I supposed to do this all by myself?” I asked, stamping my feet in agitation.

              “Ask the lumberjack,” he said, folding his hands behind his head. “After all, he’s had to do this alone for something mental like seven years.”

My mouth suddenly fell open as I realized that Gregor was right. Totara
had
worked alone for quite a long time and if he could do it, then surely so could I.
Immediately after thinking this, I began to feel
guilty again
. I tried in vain to ignore this and
went about my work
. Every tree I fell, I would have to strip of its branches, separate it in two
and roll each
piece
to the side hut where I would
chop
it up for the merchants. The work was immensely difficult without anyone else to help me and I found myself being taunted by the
fact
that both Totara and Gregor were getting away with not doing anything
at all
. I began to
wonder if
wha
t I was
doing
was really necessar
y
.