The Chosen (13 page)

Luke turned to face him. “I was too busy practicing my swordplay to worry about how to use a goat,” he returned slightly flustered.

David fought a grin. Luke was an excellent warrior, one might even say his friend was on the cusp of being considered a “super warrior”.  At court Luke could manage to charm the shoes off a noblewoman, but put him on a farm, despite all the training, and the charming warrior would be totally and completely lost.

Matt grinned. “This is going to be fun. I get to teach the warrior here how to live on a farm.”

David chuckled, grinning at Luke. “I’d say you are in trouble.”

“Nice of you to notice,” Luke muttered. “I see you aren’t offering to rescue me.”

“The last time I tried to “rescue” you, you smacked me upside my head.”

Luke grinned broadly, remembering. “Oh yeah. I forgot about that.”

Daniel rejoined them before David could reply. “We’ve got three dairy cows, eight beef cows, one bull, six goats, and some sheep…somewhere,” he said, brushing off pieces hay that had attached themselves to his clothing and were, at the moment, proving impossible to remove.

“What do you mean somewhere?” Tyler asked.

Daniel brushed harder at the straw before finally giving up with a noise of exasperation. “Meaning I hear them, but I can’t see them.

The door opened and David turned to see Lord Jasse join them. “Have you checked out the loft yet?” he asked casually, pointing to the almost invisible ladder in one corner of the barn.

Immediately Daniel and Tyler raced up the ladder and pulled themselves up into the loft.

“We have now,” David replied.

Jasse shook his head in amazement. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say they were mountain migpens.”

“You and me both,” Luke agreed.

Laughing Jasse nodded up to where large golden squares sat near the edge of the loft. “Have you ever pitched hay?”

“No.”

Grinning at Luke’s mournful tone Jasse nodded towards a pitchfork standing upright against the wall, “It definitely gives your muscles a work out and it’s excellent for conditioning muscles for swordplay.”

“Don’t tell Matt that or he’ll have me pitching hay all day,” Luke groaned.

Jasse left David laughing at his friend and left the barn, heading behind the house.

Meanwhile Rachel, Elizabeth, and Leia were discovering a river behind the house. For a moment they stood stunned, then Rachel, tired and extremely hot from their journey, not bothering to change her clothes, leapt into the water, Elizabeth and Leia following quickly. For a few moments they laughed and shrieked as they splashed each other with the cold water. Then, reluctantly, they climbed out and stood on the bank, the warm sun quickly began to dry their clothes.

The river, they observed, was about thirty feet wide and, at least where they had been, and over a meter deep in the middle. The water was clear and cool with smooth stones littering the bottom.

“This is amazing,” Leia laughed as she wrung the water from her hair. “Fresh water every day, and we didn’t have to dig a well.”

“Not to mention a quick way to cool down in the heat of the day,” Rachel added bouncing up and down, her head pulled to one side, trying to get water out of her ears.

Elizabeth started to comment when then noticed something. “Look!” she cried, pointing across the river. “A training field.”

Rachel and Leia noticed what they had been too excited to see while immersing themselves in the river, a fact that would have earned them a slap to the head by one of their instructors for their inattention had they still been at school. Beyond the river was a fully functional training field. Together they crossed the river to the other side to get a closer look.

There were seven archery positions, each with four group targets. Each group of targets had different sizes, positioned at different angles. The target groups were positioned about fifty paces apart.

On the other side of the field was a jousting fence and in between the archery targets and jousting fence was a large space for swordplay or hand-to-hand combat practice. Just beyond the fencing field was a tall masonry wall that resembled a castle keep. It looked as though someone had started to build a castle and stopped when the archer’s towers and infantry gate were finished. There were several like it at the school and they were used for mock sieges and tactical planning sessions.

Rachel remembered one particular time where her “teammates” during one such siege had shot arrows into the mortar for her to use as handholds while another “team” had worked hard to protect their “keep”. Too bad she had slipped and fallen on her backside halfway up causing her team to lose the fight.

Elizabeth spotted Lord Jasse moving to join them and waved.

When he reached them, Rachel looked him up and down. “How did you cross the river without getting wet?” she demanded.

Grinning, Jasse pointed to a small bridge they hadn’t noticed, adding a second phantom headslap to their growing repertoire for the day, and then asked, “What do you think?”

“How in the world did they manage to locate a place like this and claim it before the nobles did?” Elizabeth asked.

Jasse laughed. “Because the nobles don’t know about it.”

“Let me guess,” Rachel said quickly. “Elf magic.”

“Good guess.”

Suddenly Leia was struck with a thought. “What do we do for water in the winter?” She asked. “We’re south enough for this area to receive a lot of snow in the winter.”

“Good question, but you needn’t worry, the river won’t freeze over. At least, not unless you experience a deep freeze.”

“Why not?”

Rachel intervened before Jasse could reply. “Elf Magic.”

“You catch on quick.”

Leaving them to return to their water-play, their dripping clothes and hair had been the first thing he’d noticed upon catching up to them, he went searching for the last group of Dragons.

Kathryn, Amy, and Jenna opened the gate that led to the spacious garden. Destiny flew down and perched on the fence as the three girls knelt down to inspect the growth that was just beginning to appear.

“I think this is cermia,” Jenna observed, referring to a sweet seed that grew in bundles, as she pulled out some weeds that had taken root.

“This is definitely sirime and ahrea,” Amy called from the other end of the garden. “Fresh sallat greens directly from our garden, any time we desire them! Oh, I can’t wait!”

“I’ve got reghire and shcein,” Kathryn called quietly as she ran her hands over fresh growth sprouting up from the ground. The red and green roots were a basic staple of sallats and were delicious when stewed. The smell alone was strong enough to permeate the air and rarely was a dinner gong needed when the two ingredients were included in that night’s meal.

Jenna found hermea, a thick bulbous root that was blue and tasted good in stews, artise, a thin round tubular root that was used to add flavor to nearly every recipe, and verisce a few rows down from the cermia. “I hope everyone likes verisce,” she commented sticking her hands into the dirt, feeling the thick, brown tubular root that would produce a fluffy yellow center when cooked that was excellent when paired with butter from cow’s milk and schein.

Amy looked up from the plant she had been inspecting. “Why do you say that?”

“Because there looks to be about six rows of them!” Jenna laughed.

“Hey I’ve got melons down here!” Amy announced excitedly. Both Jenna and Kathryn hurried over to see for themselves.

“This is redine,” Jenna said as she turned the growth over, the red rind glinted off the sunlight where she pointed over two rows. “That’s breceia and further down is lemine.”

Amy looked at her. “How do you know all of this?”

“I’m an herbalist as well as a healer,” Jenna explained. “I’ve spent years learning about different plants and their uses. I spent radians in my parent’s garden growing up.”

“So are plants your second gift?”

Jenna nodded. “Yes. We actually knew about my gift with plants before my healing gift.”

Amy stood and noticed an orchard at the other end of the garden. Another small gate led to the entrance. Passing through she noted what kind of fruit the trees bore. “We’ve got amere and orchere growing next to each other!” she cried looking at the red and orange fruits. “How is that possible.”

Kathryn and Jenna hurried over, then Jenna grinned. “I’ll bet a Guardian with the gift of plants put it here. After all, a plant Guardian can make just about anything grow anywhere.”

Kathryn thought back six years to when she saw an oak-like tree grow before her very eyes and considered it very likely and quite possible Jenna was right.

“Ooh, pumera!” Amy called after a few more minutes. “I love pumera!”

“How about liera and menei?” Jenna called back. “I’ve got a tree full of them.” Liera and

Menei were often used to lessen the sweet flavor of certain drinks or add flavor to fish.

“Both?”

“Yes!”

Amy raced over to see the tree that had two different kinds of fruit. “That is remarkable!”

Kathryn, by now, was on the opposite side of the orchard. She leaned against the fence that surrounded the trees and looked out. “Come look at this!”

Directly in front of her, perhaps twenty feet, stood another fence. Inside were eight pigs, all fully mature, one very possibly pregnant.

Beyond the pigs perhaps thirty sheep roamed the grass inside another pen. Their white coats in need of a shave and the bells around their necks tinkling like wind chimes.

Next to the pigs was a chicken pen with more chickens than Kathryn wanted to count. 

Jenna pointed, fingering over the chickens. “What are those?”  Beyond in a separate pen were several dozen large chicken-like birds with legs nearly as long as hers.  They were cloaked in feathers dappled with different shades of gray and a bright yellow strike on the underside of the plumage. They had immense pale green eyes set in a flat-billed elongated head that was strikingly similar to a gooses’.

“I have no idea,” responded Kathryn. “But if they are good eating one will feed all of us with plenty of leftovers the next day.  Pausing she added, “Or a week for that matter.”  

  It wasn’t long before the birds had displayed their annoying habit of baying like a troop of bellows horns and stomping their feet when alarmed.  However, they were quite gentle and particularly enjoyed the company of people, sheep, and goats.  It was their dullness of mind that persuaded the Dragons to name them pribbles.

“Nice,” Amy commented as she stood next to her friend. “All the amenities without having to go into town for the market.”

“That’s the idea.”

The girls turned at Jasse’s voice. He smiled at them from his position midway through the garden. “Come on back to the house. I’ve got some things to tell you before I leave.”

He turned and they followed. “What do you think of the garden?” He asked.

Jenna smiled broadly. “It’s astonishing. I would never have expected to see such variety or such spaciousness.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

Destiny called to Kathryn, who whistled a reply. Jasse looked at her curiously.

“She’s wondering why we left her alone,” Kathryn explained as Destiny came towards them at full speed.

Jasse laughed, “So much for the ever vigilant eagle.”

Destiny perched on Kathryn’s outstretched arm and clicked a reply to Jasse’s comment.

He sighed. “You’re a bad influence on her, you know that right?”

Once Jasse had corralled all of the Dragons around the kitchen table at the same time, a feat of no small measure by any means, he addressed them.

“As I’m sure you’ve noticed this place has everything you need to sustain yourselves without going into town,” he began and they nodded. “It will continue to supply you for the rest of your live
s
i
f
you live on what you have.”

“What does that mean?” Lindsey asked.

“Basically it means you don’t eat huge meals and don’t have a huge wardrobe.” He looked at Natalie when he spoke about the wardrobe.

“Why are you looking at me?” she protested.

Matt laughed. “Come on Natalie. You’d shear all those sheep down to their skins and still not have enough fabric for your extensive wardrobe.” The girl had brought no less than twenty satchels with her to their new home. And all had been near to bursting their seams.

She pouted and Jasse continued. “This meadow is your sanctuary. Only Guardians can enter and only you can see it.”

“How is that possible?” David asked. “We couldn’t see it until we entered it.”

“The magic of the Elves distorts the forest around the meadow to make it appear to be a sheer cliff, a large mound of rock, or not even to exist at all. It’s never the same thing twice in a row. The magic now knows that you have been assigned here and will grant you the ability to see it when you are close enough”