*Scene 01* 6:45 (Libation)
We came around to the front of the inn. The others had procured a bottle of whiskey from the innkeeper’s storage. Inside, Begglar sat at one of his own tables nursing a glass of the amber liquid trying to settle his nerves. It was not something I would have recommended, but in that moment he appeared to need it.
We came in from the shadowed doorway, and I approached Begglar as he took another swallow from his drink. The whiskey was of the kind one would normally take in small shot glasses, but he had poured a large draft glass of it. He scowled and winced at the burn of the potent drink and then caught my eye, tapped the side of the glass and muttered, “Medicinal purposes.”
I nodded, not sure of its particular qualities to make him any better, only that it might dull the sharpness of the fear he visibly felt at the moment.
“Where’s the family that was here?” one of the others asked.
“Saw them, did you? Well, no matter now. I gave them a room upstairs and locked ‘em in it. They’re in danger, sure enough. We all are. But it felt right. Yes it did. ‘Bout time I did something that felt right,” he muttered to himself and took a long drink from the glass.
I sat down next to him at the table, and put my hand on his shoulder. I could feel the hard bone of his scapula jutting out, much different indeed. His back used to be solid and thick. Muscled.
He had been a large man, solid as the large oak table that he now slouched forward on.
Begglar could once give you a bear hug that would’ve made you turn red in the face and the veins stand out on your forehead. Now he looked like he’d seen too many harsh winters, and the stout oak had aged and grayed.
“Begglar, I need to take them to the Stone Marker. To see the prophecy of this land. But I don’t remember where it is. I need your help finding it.”
Begglar ignored my question, and muttered, “There’s a letter come for you. Had it in my possession some many months now. Back when the last post rider came through,” he gestured up to the cabinet near the kitchen.
“A Ranger said you might be by one day, through these parts again, but you’ve been a long time coming and I almost forgot about it until just now.”
He pushed himself up from the table with effort and a groan. I offered to get it for him, but he waved me away, irritated.
“Best get this off my person. If the Protectorate guards find it…,” he paused thoughtfully frowning.
“Anyway, tis your business what to do with it. ‘Tis one of them tales, you and those like you been seeking out for years. Sent from one of the guests, used to frequent here. A tale of her country far away.”
He reaches for the cupboard and cabinet door, sees us watching and pauses.
“D’ya mind turnin’ t’other way a bit.”
We look away, to humor him, while he rummages through the bins muttering to himself.
“Ah! Here tis!” he pronounces, the sound of doors and drawers being closed is heard, and he comes back around to me presenting me with an ornately boarders envelop, with a wax seal, broken and the flap slightly opened. I look up at him, and he shrugged. “I dinna know when you’d be by an you must admit, its been a very long while. Couldna make heads or tail of why you’d want a simple fairy tale, but that’s your business not mine.”
I took the cream-colored, ornate envelop from him and tucked it into my traveling coat pocket to read later.
“Now about the stone marker,” I began. But Begglar’s hands went to his ears and he stamped his foot.
“Do ya have ta go there now?! You’ll no be finding it. I done a terrible thing. Helped em do it, anyways. Please don’t press me about it any further tonight! Ya ken help yerselves to that larder. Nine ta ten rooms upstairs. Well’s outside for water. There’s hay in the loft. It’s not necessarily clean, but it is warmer than the night winds’ll be. Sorry I canna be too much help to ya. If you’re bound and set on findin’ the marker, I’ll lead ya to it in tha mornin’. More’s the pity. But now I’ll be takin’ this here,” he picked up an old bottle from behind the counter, and that there, he grabbed another and tucked it under his arm, “And I’ll be sayin’ good night to yee. There’s a tapped barrel over there in the corner, if you’ve a mind for a little libation yerselves, and your welcome to it. Good night!”
And with that he grabbed the newel post of the stairway, grabbed his grimy apron and determinedly marched up the stairs and out of sight. A moment later, a door slammed. Rather loudly.
My friends turned to me, eyes questioning.
I waved the saddening scene away, trying to make light of it.
“Do you think it wise to let him go off like that and get drunk?”
“Leave him be,” I said. “The poor fellow is beating himself up with guilt already as it is. No need to pile on any more. I’m not here to judge him. Poor fellow is doing enough of that himself. Let him sleep it off and we’ll gather again soon to find out what he is talking about.”
With that I help my fellow travelers prepare for the night. The winds will be cold, up here in the seaside highlands. Storm clouds gather darkly on the horizon. There will be much more to do in the days ahead and we will need to be rested for it.
*Scene 02* 2:40 (Upstairs)
Begglar slammed the hall doorway using the sound as a cover to signal to Nell that the noises from outside they had feared did not constitute an immediate threat. He stowed the two bottles of whiskey into a wall cabinet used to service the upstairs and cover a clever block and pulley system to raise and lower service trays between the kitchen and the upper gallery of guestrooms.
Nell cracked opened the door to the guestroom on the far end of the hallway, the only above ground room with secret access to the back stairway.
“Have they gone?”
“Nay, they’ve just arrived and at long last the prodigal returns.”
Nell pursed her lips feeling the moment of dread pass through her with a long awaited release, “Then it was not the Overwatch?”
“The Stone quest has begun again. O’Brian is back in the Mid-World and has twenty-three guests with him. Twenty-three,” he stressed, “There should be no more than twenty, besides O’Brian. The other three are unknowns. Your gift of perception is needed. You were right.”
Nell stepped out of the room and quietly closed the door behind her, “Where is Dominick?”
“He has gone to alert Shimri. The fog below is rising. They should be able to take the family from us tonight.”
“This family is not ready to travel. They’ve barely had even food to feed a squirrel. Did you see how weak the woman is? And the children are so small.”
“Canna be helped. Our time has come. It is the time we prepared for. We have only a day or two left before they come for us.”
“What do we do with the others below?”
“Go down to them. Get Aytama to help you. They will need rooms for the night. Some will have to pair up.”
“What about you? Will they wonder where you are?”
“I’ll get the family ready. Those below believe I’ve gone to get drunk and sleep it off. I doubt they suspect I’d be in any other condition to do otherwise. I’ll meet Dominick and we’ll get these ones out under the cover of the fog. It is going to be a long night yet.”
*Scene 03* 13:50 (Hidden Wounds)
Begglar’s wife, Nell came down from the upstairs and helped us all get a late meal, get situated in the rooms upstairs, and stow our belongings. I saw no sign of Begglar the rest of the evening, so I assumed he had gone off to drink privately or had gone on to bed.
There was some trouble getting Miray settled down with one of the other girls, but Nell and one of the women eventually worked out an arrangement.
I opted to sleep in the hayloft, as Begglar had suggested, and to keep the first watch of the night. Nell stoked the fire in the fireplace and recommended that I get warmed up before going out into the wet and damp, foggy night, so I sat at one of the long tables and drank some of the warm black tea she had brewed for me.
When she and her maidservant retired for the night and most of the others had settled into the guestrooms, the girl, whom the Troll threatened, came quietly down from the upstairs to the table where I was sitting.
Her head was down, and she could not seem to look at me for more than a brief glance. It is clear she wants to say something but can’t seem to find the proper words to do it. She paces a moment and then finally, she sat down across from me and put her hands on the table, one palm over the other. I looked up at her and smiled gently, “It’s okay if you want to leave. I do understand and I won’t hold it against you.”
With tears brimming in her eyes, she faltered and then swallowed and began, “It’s just that it wasn’t like what I expected it to be. There is something more here that I did not bargain for. That thing out there…” She broke off, gathering her courage, but never truly find it.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, “I’m not ready to take on this quest. I can’t face another situation like that. I’m not strong enough yet. It hurts too much…”
She broke down and wept. Long, deep, waves of pain and memory washing over her. Her head down and her hair covering her face as the dam of long-held emotion broke and the hurt washed out in pressure waves built up over far too long a time.
I put my hand over her hand and just let her cry. Tears are healing. We need them for release. She had carried these burdens and wounds far too long by herself. No words came to mind that could help her. She just needed someone to be there while she cried. Someone who didn’t judge her for it. Someone who would just listen.
After some time, she lifted her tear-stained eyes, her cheeks brighten in the firelight from the hearth.
“I’m so sorry,” she said once more, and the silent tears continued to rain as she struggled to catch her breath and composure. She half laughed and almost broke again when she said, “Back there with the Troll, memories I had pressed down and never dealt with suddenly came back to me. And I couldn’t…”
Her hand went to her mouth, covering her trembling lips, again try to hold back the sobs.
“I haven’t dealt with it. I wouldn’t…deal with it. But now I’ll have to. Won’t I?” again with a defensive laugh.
“Only I can’t do it here. I can’t do it now.” She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“I understand,” I assured her again, “No one here judges or condemns you if you don’t continue. There will be another time for you. If not here, somewhere where you can feel safe.”
She laughed at me, with a nervous and cynical sound full of doubt, yet wanting to believe it.
“There is no place safe enough for that,” she wiped her mouth and looked away into the firelight, taking in a few shuddering breaths.
“That thing out there. What is it exactly? How can it do what it does?”
I sighed and slightly shook my head.
“No one truly know the how about things that happen here. We say we do, but in some way, we are deceiving ourselves into some semblance of security. Are we safe? I don’t know that we are either here or back in our lives in the Surface World. What I do know is that, wherever we might be, we are loved, and wanted and uniquely special to a perfect Father.”
“Father!” she fidgeted with her fingers. Her eyes growing distant and narrowing, as she seemed to be transported back into a memory she looked at with a certain defensive disconnectedness.
She dug at her fingernails abstractly, narrowing her eyes.
“That is what the Troll zeroed in on. My relationship with my father. I want to believe what you say about this all loving and all caring Father, but I can’t. I can’t get past the prosaic reality and image of my own father.”
She was silent a moment. Continuing to dig at her nails and brushed a wing of her hair out of her face where it hung against her cheek.
Finally she said, “Daddy said I’d never amount to much. Said I’d probably be pregnant by sixteen and living on the street. Never hold a decent job and be passed around from man to man. That was his assessment of me at the age of seven years old. That my life would be just some dirty joke told in a smoky pool hall. That my phone number would be written somewhere on a bathroom wall for pervert to call me and ask me for a date. That was what he told me before he left us for some floozy in Florida.”
She swallowed back her tears, shivered a bit, and seemed to find a certain calm. Her eyes grew distant again as her sight probed and sifted through piles of buried memory. She wiped her eyes as she raised her head again.
“It was raining the night he left us,” she said quietly.
“You know that verse that says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust?”
I cleared my throat and nodded.
“Well, it was sure falling that night. Coming down in sheets.”
She sniffed.
“Mom, acted like she never saw it coming. Her entire world came crashing down on her, when he told her. She begged him to stay. Said he could keep his new girlfriend, if only he wouldn’t abandon us. That was to moment I lost all respect for my mom. Crying and watching them fight through the window on the front lawn as he packed up our only vehicle. I saw mom grab his arm as he dragged her through the dirt. I saw when he cuffed her in the side of the head, and punched her in the stomach. Later, my mom would tell me that it was my fault that he left.”
She said all these things in a detached calm that was eerie to listen to and gut wrenching to hear it so quietly told as if none of it mattered.
“My last image of my father was him driving away in our only car, my mother doubled over in pain on the front lawn for all of the neighbors to see and do nothing. And all of this, while the rain continued to pour down.”
She was silent again, her eyes unfocused and now unreadable. She stared vacantly at her hands on the table before us. My comforting hand still over hers. She took in a long breath, and at last, her eyes raised to mine.
“So.”
“So?” I asked.
“So, I need to leave here. Back to the real world, where there are no such things as Trolls that make you divulge your deepest, darkest secrets to strangers who can do nothing for you. My problems are my problems. Yours are yours. Back to the ‘Big Girl’ world. Back to another day of proving my “father” wrong.”
It hurts so much to see the shroud of toughness and bravery be pulled back over her wounds like a winter sweater. I don’t know exactly what to say to her. I have had no context for such pain and any words I could muster would seem so empty now that she has put the tough-girl exterior back on.
Quietly I ask her, “Do you mind if I ask you your name?”
She stares at me for a hard moment and pulls her hands away, wrapping herself in them as if feeling a sudden chill in the air.
“Why?” she asks, with challenging eyes.
I flatten my hands on the table as if smoothing out an imaginary tablecloth, feeling the wood grain beneath. I almost say something, then hesitate and check myself.
“Alright. No need for names. I just want you to know and remember, as you return to the Surface World tomorrow that there are people here that imperfect as they may be, do want to have you as a friend and could care about you, if you ever gave us a chance. Fair enough?”
Her arms were still folded as she slowly stood up and watched me for a moment, measuring my words.
“You are welcome to come back anytime. I’ll have one of the others provide an escort back in the morning. Be sure and keep your torch. It is yours to light at any time, should you wish to return. No one will judge you for leaving. And if you one day come back here, your arrival will be celebrated by all.”
Quietly she turned to go up the stairs to one of the upper rooms she would share with one of the girls.
At the bottom of the stairs, she turned once again, and whispered, “I’m sorry.” And then quickly and quietly ascended the stairs.
*Scene 04* 4:21 (Millstones)
It was late, and I went and tamped down the fire, thoughtfully poking at it with a poker. I would keep the first watch of the night, and one of the others would spell me in a few hours. I would sleep in the barn loft, with the moon shining through the hayloft door. It would be a long night. Much had happened. I was so saddened to see this wounded soul go. So much pain. So many burdens she carried all alone, and she is so defensive and mistrusting of everyone who would be her friends.
Bad people abound out in the world. They may not have started out that way, but for various reasons, they get there and cruelly abuse others in both word and selfish deed. Maybe they too suffered abuse from someone else they trusted. But there is no cause to perpetuate cruelty. To darkly pay it forward. At some point, the pain must be dealt with. They will have to seek Someone greater than themselves to trade all of that hurt, for healing. But to do so they must be willing to make themselves vulnerable yet once again and trust the Healer.
For those whose definition of father, mother or friend has been so tainted, they must learn that there is another reality to those terms. That those cruel incarnations are poor substitutes for the real thing. I think in each person’s own heart they wish to know this. There is a part of them that still desperately wants to know that they are loved, and can be loved, and even deserve to be loved, and valued and cherished. Old definitions gained by harsh experiences are extremely hard to displace.
As I settle down for the night, I watch the moon above paint the lonely road ahead with silver light. Fog is growing around us, so not much can be seen of it.
I think of the blessing of my own father and mother, not what I deserved, but what every child born of mankind would wish they could be born into. Nurturing, loved, accepted. Praised and cheered on. Given the tools to make sense of life, and thrive in spite of it. Being pointed to The Hope which drives me on this ongoing quest. Knowing that I am both loved imperfectly and love perfectly at the same time. That, at least, those definitions I learned were not so far off the mark of what was intended in the Ancient text that renews and sustains me.
And I remember again a moment in the Perfect Father’s life where he took small trusting children in His lap and spoke a warning to all of the adult parents and men and women gathered to hear His message.
“6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and [that] he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” [Matthew 18:6 KJV]
By my reckoning, there are too many stiff and selfish necks out there in the Surface World, lately, and not enough millstones.
*Scene 05* 4:20 (Rider in the Night)
The fingers of fog crawled along the grounds of the inn, up from the lower road that extended down through the small village of Crowe.
A figure on horseback rode through the rising, foggy drifts up to the back of the inn and dismounted. It cautiously approached the back of the inn moving quickly on light feet, silent as a shadow.
The horse was secured to an adjoining fence post with a slipknot and the figure then ducked low and proceeded into the skirting brush to an obscured and angled cellar door.
The fog was slightly luminous from the muted glow of moonlight, shining high above the scudding clouds.
The figure produced a small key from a pocket and unlocked the cellar, leaving the horse to graze in the damp evening light, while he descended below.
The underground was dark and the air inside the cellar passage was musty and stale.
“Da?”
A soft click from inside, indicated an interior door bolt was pulled back and Begglar’s face peered through the narrow aperture, faintly revealed by flickering candlelight.
“Shimri and the others are not far behind me. Are the travelers ready?”
“Just bundling up. Help me gather the supplies. Is Sable tied nearby?”
“To the corner fence. Father, Shimri told me they’ve capture a Xarmnian scout and one of the local farm boys. The scout was terrified when he was captured. Not from our men, but from something that had attacked his company earlier this morning. They could not get much out of him, but it backs up to story this man told. Something new has come into the Mid-World and it is moving underground.”
“Not new, son. One of these has come here before, long before you were born. I believe this one is here now because of the other guests that have joined us. One of these others are leading it. We all must be very careful.”
Begglar handed one of the bundled packs to the young man, and carried two others under his arms. They quietly moved through the short underground passage and ascended the stairs emerging out into the diffuse moonlit night. Billows of fog roiled around them, making the silver view difficult to see beyond a few feet, but the two knew the grounds well enough to walk through it blind.
They tied the bundled packs to saddle of the dark horse, now hidden completely within the fog bank. The stallion quietly nickered and a low rumble came from its throat, but the younger man calmed the horse by caressing the horses velvety nostrils allow the stallion to smell his familiar scent.
Begglar, turned and spoke quietly to the wispy shadow of his son.
“Now go get the man and his family. Remember, no names. We don’t know them and they don’t really know us. It is safer that way if they are ever captured.”
“Should I get Zohar from the stable?”
“I have already attended to that. Bring the family out quietly. Then go back inside and help your mother. I will take them on to meet Shimri and the Storm Hawk and the Lehi. You’ve done enough for this evening. Go get warm. Your mother and Aytama saved you some supper, but you’ll have to eat it upstairs.”
“Father, this damp air is not good for you. If you catch a chill…”
“Nonsense! I’ve weathered a good many cold and much wetter nights in my time, than you, so be quick about it. I’ll be back in a few hours. Stick to the plan we agreed to. We knew this day would come. Now be off with you.”
Reluctantly, the boy turned and retreated again into the feathered whiteness to do as he was told.
*Scene 06* 2:37 (Underground)
Deep underground. Seismic level shifts crashed and crushed large amounts of earth and rock, as an incredible ramming force plunged into the dark fathoms of the Mid-Worlds substrate. A pounding, pulsing of beaded flesh, coiled mountains of muscle, gristle and bone, tore savagely at the ground tunneling its own cave system. A bellows of breathy force and champing teeth ate into the earth, funneling plumes of dust through pounding gills that coughed out a sinuous froth that melted the ground around its prodigious bulk. It twisted and writhed, coiled and canted, side to side leaving a viscous glowing ooze in its driving wake. A tangled net of phosphorescence striated the freshly cut tunnel, pouring out of the monstrous scales as the beast from the sky and shore–Sheol–A worm of consumption–A subterranean funeral train, moving at the speed of a railed locomotive, dug its way further in and further onward towards the vector of the one whom it sought most to devour. The smoke of its violent travel signified and swirling with a burial shroud of dust, filled the tunnels masking the monster’s vigorous pursuit.
A guttural thunder of barely intelligible words, sifted out of it’s lunging maw, around the grit and powder of poured and vented earth…
I’m coming…I am coming…I am coming…I am coming…for you traitorous leader. I am the darkness…I am Sheol…I am the power of the grave waiting to eat your body…soul…and spirit!
*Scene 07* 8:15 (Finder in the Fields)
Fogs covered the lowlands, beneath the rise to the small village. From a steppe plain, down a declivity but still above the highland valley the fog merely formed a low shrouded ceiling. A rider on horseback waited in the shadows, astride a tall black mare, she, in fact, called “Night Mare.” The horse was lean and strong. Iridescent black and polished silver by the wet of the night. Chilled but taut, champing and ready for action. The rider surveyed the vague moonglow, reading the night sky and scanning the dark treeline for movement.
The field of wheat bore an unlikely scar. An oblong trench, dialogonally cut across its golden rows that urged a constant funereal hushing “shhh, shhh” under the influence of the night winds. The trench was a subterranean death mark. What she had feared was true. Another monster was now present in the Mid-World.
They had captured a wayward Xarmnian scout, devoid of his mount yet retaining his characteristic bravado. He had a small lad with him that he had cuffed and struck numerous times until the rider had commanded one of her men to apprehend the assault, and lash the brute, before he killed the boy.
“All dead!” the delirious man raged, when the rider’s sentry wrapped the end of his bullwhip around the man’s raised fist before he could use it again against the cowering boy.
The Xarmnian had seemed confused when the whip restricted his raised hand, and twisted him bodily away from the lad. A boot to the man’s face broke his nose and caused him to stumble and fall to the ground, pulled by the whip, coiled over the saddle horn of the intercessor’s mount.
The soldier cursed through his bloodied face and twisted nose, spraying blood on the ground. “You dogs’ll pay for this!” he growled, and the man was pulled further, his arm popping as if it was being wrenched from the socket.
The whipbearer responded in a strong commanding voice, though muzzled slightly behind his kerchief scarf, “Who are you, Xarmnian?! And what are you doing to this boy?!”
The Xarmnian laughed over bloodied lips and spat, “Who are you to demand anything of me, masked dog?!”
He glared up at the masked man who had him bound with the end of the whip. He tried to jerk free, but the mounted man’s horse backed away, further pulling the Xarmnian off balance.
“I am here on the King’s business, which is none of yorn. Let me be!”
The masked man was silent and glanced back at his party of other riders and the one smaller rider whom they seemed to defer to.
The smaller rider moved forward, its face fully masked with only the eyes and bridge of the nose showing.
The voice issuing forth was calm and soft spoken, and the Xarmnian was perplexed by the incongruity of it with his own expectation.
“Why are you alone? Xarmnian patrols only ride in company. Where is your team?”
The Xarmnian was sullen but thoughtful, he did not meet the eyes of his questioner when he answered under muttered breath, “Dead. All of them. The ground opened up and something took them. Took them all, save I and the whelp there.” he nodded, gritting his teeth at the boy.
“What business does Xarmni have with the eastern highlands to the sea?”
The Xarmnian raised his chin in defiance, blood trails streaking his beard and chin, his nose now purple and swollen. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
it was clear they would get no further cooperation out of the defiant man, so the smaller rider, gestured to two other riders towards him.
“Take him. Bind him.” the leader gestured, “Bring the boy.”
The young lad had fallen to the ground and looked warily from each of the riders, fearing that their intentions might also bring him further harm.
One of the riders dismounted and kneeled down and held his hand out to the boy, who raise his arm again, red with welts and bruising, fearing a further strike.
“It’s alright, son. We are not here with this man. Quite the opposite.”
The flare of distrust and fear in the boy’s eyes gradually softened as the masked man kneeling before him continued to hold out his open hand toward him.
Finally, the boy spoke, through a cut lip. The Xarmnian had been cruel in his own fear, taking the loss out on the boy.
“They came and killed my Dah,” he spoke painfully, tears spilling from his eyes. “Just stabbed him for no reason. And then…”
Fear deepened again, causing the boy to tremble.
“What’s your name, son?” the kneeler asked gently, trying to keep the traumatized boy’s focus.
The boy regarded him as if he had not understood the question.
Gently, the man asked again, “How are you called, son?”
“Amichai, but Dah…,” tears welled, “Dah called me Michai.”
“Michai, then,” the kneeling one spoke calmly, “can you ride with us? Show us if what this Xarmnian says is true?”
The boy nodded, glanced fearfully at the Xarmnian, now bound hand and feet by one of the other riders who had him secured. The Xarmnian glared at the boy, gritting his teeth threatening the boy to keep silent. But the gesture had the opposite effect than what he’d intended.
The boy nodded, shifting his eyes back to the kneeling masked one’s outstretched hand, and took it, allowing himself to be raised to his feet.
“I will show you where it happened. It is not far from here.”
The boy stood, steadying himself on shaky and brusied legs.
The smaller leader drew her reins, about to turn her horse away, but the boy spoke up.
“Are you who they say you are?”
The leader paused, turning the horse back towards the boy, addressing him in a quick response.
“And who do they say I am?” the oddly calm and softer voice queried.
“The Storm Hawk,” the boy stood up just a little straighter, raising his chest to seem more bolder than he had been. “The one who flys in a turns the storms away from towns like ours.”
The lead rider only gave the boy a slight nod, before turning her horse again and riding away towards the tree line.
The Xarmnian glowered, but it was clearly a pretense of bravado. He knew the title, and the tales of the riders who followed the one called “Storm Hawk”. If this was who these interlopers where, that now took him captive, he was in very real danger indeed.
