by Wil Ogden
CHAPTER SIX: ADVICE FOUND
Her home was just as she remembered it. She considered simply stepping into the cottage, but having been gone half a century, she decided to knock.
Her mother answered and grabbed Sheillene into a hug without saying a word. “Welcome home,” her mother said. The words were muffled into Sheillene's shoulder.
“I’m not sure I’m staying long enough to call it home again,” Sheillene said. “I’m just looking for something familiar for a short while.” In fifty years she’d only once stayed in one place for longer than a week, and that hadn’t been entirely by her choice.
“I’ve heard tales of you, daughter.” Her mother pulled her by the sleeve into the cottage and sat her at the table by the hearth. Sitting across from Sheillene, her mother asked, “Is it true that you’ve been following Taren Mason around?”
“Not anymore,” Sheillene said. “I ran into him in Everton and he recognized me and took me under his wing and taught me the ways of the Hunter’s Guild.”
“I’d hoped never to hear that name again,” Sheillene’s mother said. “When you were young, I know he was a friend of the family, but he was not a good man. I told him to leave before Aemelia was born. I told him to never come this way again.”
Sheillene agreed with her mother. Taren was not a good man. It was his actions that made Sheillene need to come home and find a new start. She didn’t know if she wanted to remain in the Hunter’s Guild. She could make her way with her lute as a bard, but there were parts of being a Hunter that she loved. When Taren Mason had killed a pregnant woman for coin, it had given her something about the Guild to hate.
Then Sheillene realized her mother had mentioned her sister. She was too young to realize the meaning when Taren had disappeared when Sheillene had been a young Abvi. “Taren is Aemelia’s father?” she asked.
Sheillene’s mother’s expression faded as she turned to the fire and nodded. “I’m lonely sometimes. I’m all alone out here a league and a half from the village. My standards are not where they were during my first millennia of life. Your father didn’t stay long enough to tell me his name and he was a better man than Taren. Taren was a liar and always looking for easy money and I guess I was just his kind of desperate. I let him stay for a few years. I liked that he taught you how to use a bow. Honestly he was friendly and nice most of the time.”
“He’d seemed nice to me most of the time, too,” Sheillene agreed.
“But on two occasions he collected a bounty in Whisperwillow and it was not pleasant to watch,” her mother said. “I didn’t mind when it was just me and I know he was safe for you to be around, but I didn’t like him enough to want him to stay forever.”
Sheillene understood. “You sent him away before he could know that he was a father. You didn’t want him bound to you in any permanent way.”
The door opened and Aemelia walked in. She stopped in the doorway to brush the dirt from her bare feet. At almost ninety, Aemelia was almost an adult, but when she looked up and saw Sheillene, she squealed like an infant and jumped over and gave her a tight hug. “Hi, Shelly!”
Sheillene winced subtly. She didn’t use that name with anyone else.
“So, tell me about all the great adventures you’ve had beyond our little village,” Aemelia said and released Shelly from the embrace. “Momma says she hears you are getting yourself into trouble. She said that when she saw you again she’d likely put you over her knee.” She turned to her mother, “Momma, did you spank her yet? I don’t think I want to be here when you do.”
Her mother sighed. “I’m not spanking anyone, Aemelia. Sheillene’s troubles are their own lessons.”
With a hint of disappointment in her eyes, Aemelia shrugged and said, “So, Shelly, if you didn’t come home to be spanked, why did you come?”
Sheillene replied, “I can’t just come home to see my mother and sister?”
“You’ve been away over forty years,” Aemelia said. “Momma was wondering if you’d ever return to visit at all. So something had to break in your life to make you change your habits and actually come home.”
“I guess you aren’t a kid anymore, Elia.” Sheillene set her lute and her bow on the table. “I’m good enough with either of these to make a good life for myself. I love them both but both have aspects that I don’t like.
“I could live as a Hunter and collect bounties and travel around the many Kingdoms of the land, but there are people in the Hunter’s Guild who give it a bad reputation and the Guild itself may deserve the reputation because it condones such behaviors. It keeps my skills up with my bow and I can probably still win any archery tournament I choose to enter.
“I’m very talented with my lute and spent years under the tutelage of a Master Bard. I can sway and move an audience to any mood. It’s actually much harder work, but the hours are shorter and there is a lot of travel, though the pay is not as good.”
“What is a Hunter?” Aemelia asked. “Everyone hunts for meat now and then; can you really make a living at it?”
Her mother answered before Sheillene could. “Hunters are people who track animals and people for money. They bring them back to someone who pays for them. Animals are usually brought back dead. People are usually brought back alive. But there are exceptions to both.”
Sheillene didn’t like the assessment. It was both true and fair, so she nodded.
“You kill people?” Aemelia’s voice was shrill and she took a step away from Sheillene.
Again, Sheillene nodded. “I have, but I don’t like to. That’s the biggest aspect that makes the life of a Hunter unappealing. I used to believe that innocent people didn’t get themselves into the kind of trouble where someone would want them dead. But, as it turns out, that’s not true. In the Guild, anyone can register a bounty and leave anonymous payment at any Guild Hall. Killing just has a minimum price.”
“You have to kill people?” Aemelia asked, her voice shook and her eyes were wide open.
“No, Sis,” Sheillene said. “I even met with Temistar herself to confirm that I don’t have to even be in the Guild to claim myself as her follower. But I do like the money for the bounties that don’t involve killing. There is not a requirement to take any type of bounty. I just have to pay dues when I claim any bounty, but those dues are the same as the Guild premium.”
Aemelia looked confused. “Did you say you spoke with a goddess?”
“We all talk to the gods,” her mother said. “But, I get the distinct impression from Sheillene that the goddess spoke back to her.”
“I found her for the same reason I came home. I wanted to know which direction to follow,” Sheillene said. “A part of me was hoping she’d forsake me and force me out of the life of a Hunter and into the life of a bard. She just told me I could do whatever I chose.”
“Why do you have to choose?” Aemelia asked. “You mentioned travel in both professions as something positive. So, travel. Let your Hunting choose your directions and let your music choose where you stay at night. It doesn’t seem like the two professions are opposed in any way. Why can’t you do both?”
Sheillene stared at her sister, stunned. She’d never considered both as an option. She’d just seen her life as a choice, but not only did the two lifestyles not interfere with each other, there were potential ways they could complement each other.
She grabbed her bow and lute and hopped up from the table and over to her sister. “Aemelia, I love you.”
Sheillene was headed for the door, eager to start her new life without excluding a life she loved, when her mother yelled, “Stop!”
Sheillene turned and looked back. Her mother stood from the table and pointed at the door. “You don’t even think of leaving until you’ve had at least one home cooked dinner.”
Sheepishly, Sheillene walked back and put her lute and bow back on the table. “I suppose I could stay for a night, or maybe a week, or two.” Her new life would be there for her.