Hunted

by Paul Eslinger

  “Really?” Trey seemed incredulous. “The rumors I heard when we visited Glendale said people who talk about magic too much seem to disappear.”

  “I’m not talking about it to other people. You? I’ve known you for at least twelve years.”

  “Ah,” Trey said and stuck one finger into the blood-rimmed hole in his shirt in the middle of his chest. He looked down as he ran his finger over his chest inside the hole. “That arrow must have just missed my heart. You pulled it out and healed me. With magic?”

  “Yup, that’s right.”

  Trey held up his hands, looked at them, and then ran both hands down over his chest. “What happened to you?” he asked. “You didn’t used to be able to heal people. You wore a leather sleeve around your finger for over a month because you broke it. Several times you’ve been too sick to go hunting.”

  “I know,” I said with a sigh and gestured at the wolf. “The short answer is Father died and I met Zephyr.”

  “I saw the fresh grave over at your house. Was that your father?” He stopped, licked his lips, and then demanded, “Where’s Ara? Did she die too?”

  “She’s with her Aunt Yedda and Uncle Inigo on their farm on the other side of Glendale.”

  Trey gave me a disbelieving look. “Was that why you were gone so long?”

  “Partly. The trip took longer than we planned because Ara hurt her leg while we were crossing the first ford on the river,” I explained.

  “You’re not telling me everything,” Trey said. “When did you learn to heal people? How? You used magic on her, didn’t you? I didn’t think magic was real, but… something happened and you’re not telling me the whole story.”

  “The king keeps the kingdom free of magic,” I added.

  Trey looked thoughtful. “I’ve heard those words several times while we were visiting down in Glendale, but I never really thought about what they meant. The idea behind the phrase implies magic is possible. Possible, but not welcome. It’s unclean, or evil.”

  I pointed at the grave we had just finished digging and then gestured at the bodies of his parents that we had covered with a large sleeping fur. We still had the hard work of filling the grave and we needed to finish the task while it was still light. “That’s how King Roren keeps the country free from magic,” I said bluntly. “He sends out men, called the King’s Hunters by the few who know about them, and they kill anyone suspected of having magical abilities.”

  Trey didn’t look in the direction I was pointing as he protested, “Why did he come here? Mother and Father couldn’t do magic. Is he after you?”

  My initial idea, based on Zephyr’s prior suggestion that they were dead simply because the Hunter was trying to find a way to get to me, faded as I studied Trey. The difference I had felt earlier was that he felt more alive, in a magical sense, than any time I had magically touched him in the past. The only external thing that had happened since then was his parents were dead, just as my father was dead. Had his parents suppressed his magic in the same way Father had suppressed mine? If so, was that why they lived in this isolated valley?

  Father had said I needed to see and understand what was happening around me, but I was totally confused. I swallowed and looked around. This homestead was small, but it was in much better shape than my old home. “You moved here when you were two years old,” I said to Trey before swinging back to look in his troubled face. “Do you know where you used to live? Before then?”

  “I was just a baby,” Trey protested.

  “No, you were two. I was a six-month-old baby when we moved here,” I responded. “Did your parents ever say where they came from?”

  Trey sighed and his shoulders drooped. “They said we had a few family members in a small mountain town far to the west of here, but I wasn’t supposed to talk about them, especially to you. I heard the town name once, but I can’t remember it. Someone from that town would visit us once a year when we were down in Glendale trading for supplies.”

  Astonished, I remembered what Father had said about where I was born. I blurted out the next question before I stopped to think. “Was that town named Casselton?”

  “Hey, I think that’s right,” Trey replied. “The visitors always brought greetings from a man at the Pig’s Ear, and they asked about your family.”

  “What was his name?” I demanded.

  Trey sighed again. “I heard that name enough times to remember it. It was Demarcus.”

  I gulped and stifled a response. Trey’s family had connections with a man named Demarcus who lived in Casselton and was associated with the tavern named the Pig’s Ear. Demarcus was my grandfather.

  Chapter 2 – Travel Decision

  Confused why Grandfather would talk to Trey’s parents, but not my father, my anger started to grow at the implied slight. For once, I shoved the anger aside because I wanted to think like an adult and we still needed to bury the shrouded bodies lying beside the garden fence. I nodded in their direction and spoke as tears of sympathy for Trey came to my eyes again. “Let’s finish with the grave.”

  Trey followed me like a duckling after its mother as I moved towards the bodies. I stopped and looked down, remembering the long howl Zephyr made when she neared the house. The Hunter had retrieved the arrows from Trey’s parents before he fled, but he left the arrow in Trey’s chest. Why did he run? Why leave the arrow behind?

  Why hadn’t he taken their heads like the Hunter who had attacked the two thugs down by Glendale? Or, more importantly, why did the King’s Hunters take the heads of the people they killed? When a person was dead, they were dead. Mutilating the body didn’t change that fact. A shocking thought moved through my mind. How long did it take for a powerful magician to die? Or, what could a powerful magician do to survive wounds that would kill everyone else?

  I set those thoughts aside as I looked down. Trey didn’t even come up to the top of my shoulder and he was so thin he looked like a puff of wind would blow him away. We had to carry the bodies fifty paces to the open grave and Trey was small enough he wouldn’t be much help. I stooped and pulled aside the sleeping fur, being careful to avert my eyes from the blood. I stepped close to the woman’s head and gestured at the slack body. My voice was hoarse but understandable, “Let’s start with your mother.”

  With Trey’s help, I picked up his mother’s body. She was heavier than I expected. Only then did I remember Zephyr’s lesson the previous day where she had helped me learn to make my pack float magically along behind me like a small cloud in the sky. I drew a deep breath, reached for the external magic, and made the wish that she would move like my pack. The body grew lighter and she seemed no heavier than Ara’s small doll as Trey helped me carry her to her final resting place.

  We stood beside the open grave for long moments looking at her body stretched out on the cold, hard dirt. I looked away and wiped my nose before tugging on Trey’s arm. “I’ll help you with… Let’s go…”

  Trey’s father was much heavier than my father had been, and moving his body without using magic would be difficult. Once again, I used magic and we made it to the grave the body without stopping to rest. I spread the sleeping fur over the side-by-side bodies as Trey stood there silently with tears running down his cheeks. I picked up the two shovels and held one out towards him. They were dull and not very useful for digging, but would work fine for scooping loose dirt back into the hole.

  Trey took the shovel in trembling fingers but stood motionless. I placed one hand on his shoulder and said, “They were good people and wonderful parents.”

  Trey nodded and sniffed.

  “They shouldn’t have died,” I said. That much was true, at least for his mother, because she had been nice the times we met. I hastily modified my thinking to include his father. Although gruff, he had never treated me poorly and Trey liked him. I spoke without thinking about the implication, “If possible, I will avenge the
ir deaths.”

  I bent over and used the shovel as a scoop to push loose dirt into the grave. Trey soon joined in the effort. We worked without talking, and that gave me time to think. Trey’s father had disliked my father, and the bad feelings had been mutual. Why? What had caused the ill feelings? I wasn’t aware of any event that would have started their animosity.

  Father had explained his two magical gifts to me and one of them was the ability to suppress magical abilities in others. Had he been suppressing the development of magical abilities in Trey? Had Trey’s parents known that? If so, it might have been a cause of their discord. But, if so, why hadn’t Trey’s parents simply moved away?

  My thoughts flashed back to Trey’s revelation that Grandfather sent people to inquire about my family at least once per year. So, Grandfather knew where I lived, but he had never visited. Not once, and that made me wonder why. Father had told me a few things about my extended family the day before he died, but he had obviously taken a lot of explanations to his grave. There were more plots and stories in my family and our place in the world than I ever imagined.

  Father apparently tried for years to do something magical that was beyond his abilities. The misuse of magic drained his vitality and he had died, a withered old man, before reaching his thirty-fifth year. What had been so important that he continued trying, even though it led inexorably to his grave? He said it was to protect me against the King’s Hunters, but now I wondered if that was only part of the story.

  Why had he waited until he was dying to tell me about magic? His protection seemed incomplete, almost the opposite of what he said he wanted. He could have at least left me a set of instructions, or something.

  Without Zephyr’s help in learning to use the magic flowing through the hills around us, I couldn’t have healed Trey and done the other things to help. Without that external source of magic, I might soon look like my father if I persisted in using magic. There was so much magical power available around us that it frightened me at times and I understood why others would also be frightened. The indiscriminate killing of anyone who might be able to use magic sickened me. I would find a way to make it stop.

  “Reuben, stop daydreaming help me move the big rocks,” Trey said, his thin voice breaking into my whirling thoughts. Only then did I realize I was still scraping the ground with the shovel after we had moved all of the loose dirt.

  It didn’t take long for us to stack the stones on top of the grave. The hard work had pushed back the grief, but now I felt empty and drained, wishing there had been something I could have done to help his parents. I needed something else to do to keep from crying and looked at my hands, noting new red spots rather than broken blisters. An idea formed as I beckoned for Trey to come closer. “Let me look at your hands,” I said.

  He obligingly held them out. They looked worse than mine, so I once again reached for the healing magic. Moments later, his hands were smooth and unblemished. The magic flashed on through his body and settled in his lungs. I had assumed grief had caused his shortness of breath as we worked, but something was wrong with his lungs. Without knowing how I did it, I watched the magic heal his lungs. When it finished there, I spent a moment longer and also restored the sore muscles we had both developed. Satisfied, I almost let the magic go and then used it to wash the accumulated sweat and dirt from our bodies. The dirt passed through our clothes and settled down beside our legs like little puffs of dust.

  Trey looked around as if he were sleep-walking. “What now?” he asked in a monotone voice.

  “You can always travel with me,” I said. “That is, if you want to.”

  “Travel?” he asked with a puzzled look. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not totally sure,” I admitted. “But you aren’t safe staying here.”

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  I pointed at the fresh grave. “The man who did this will come back. If not him, there will be another one. The King has several Hunters.”

  Trey shook his head violently. “No, no. He doesn’t have any reason to come back, especially if you aren’t here.”

  To some extent, I understood how Trey felt from the deaths, although I had known Father’s death was imminent before he died. I spoke softly as I considered how to get Trey to make a decision. “You don’t want to come with me? We’ve hunted together a lot of times.”

  “It’s not that,” he replied. His brow wrinkled and he slowly sank down to a sitting position. “I like being with you, but I’m confused. This is my home.”

  I sat beside him and held out one hand, palm up. “You saw me heal our hands using magic,” I began.

  He nodded and then looked away. His voice was faint, “Yes, yes. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I replied, “but I wasn’t asking for thanks. The man who killed your parents is looking for people who can use magic. Anyone. He will kill them.”

  “Oh,” Trey said and the look in his eyes brightened. “That’s why you are going to travel away from here. You can use magic, so you’re escaping.”

  “Right,” I said gently. “And that is also why you should travel. You can do magic, too. You don’t realize it yet, but you can. That makes you a target for them. An easy one.”

  He drew back and stared at me, “No I can’t. Not like you.”

  I shook my head. “No, not like me, maybe. But you can do magic and a week ago I didn’t know I could. Every person who can use magic has different abilities. You may grow up to be a stronger user than me. Or different.”

  “How many have you known?” Trey blurted. “Magical people, that is?”

  I held up my hand and started counting on my fingers. “Father, me and Zephyr. That’s three.” I shifted and pointed down the valley. “I think the dragon that just flew over here can also do magic. That makes four.”

  “That’s not very many,” Trey protested and then shook his head. “I didn’t know any before today.”

  “There’s another one,” I added and pointed at him with a stiff forefinger. “You.”

  His voice squeaked, “Me? No. I already told you I can’t use magic.”

  “You heard me thinking to myself and talking to Zephyr. Mind talking only works if both individuals can use magic. You’re one of us.”

  “I can’t use magic,” he protested again, looking as if he were going to break down crying.

  There was one way to convince him, but it depended in part on his abilities. I pressed my lips together and spoke using the new magical approach. “We need to carry food while we travel. Did you finish eating the turkey you shot a week ago?”

  “We dried half of it,” Trey said and then his eyes opened impossibly wide. He sounded strangled, “How did you say that?”

  “More importantly,” I replied, “is the question of how you heard me when I didn’t speak. You used magic to hear something that wasn’t said aloud.”

  He gave a long sigh, his shoulders sagged and his voice was so faint I could hardly hear him. “Okay. I don’t understand what is happening, but I’ll travel with you. I don’t want to stay here alone.”

  “Good,” I grunted. “You have visited Glendale, although we have never gone there at the same time. Do you own a travel pack?”

  “We—I—have three,” he said.

  “Let’s go pick out one and fill it,” I said, rising to my feet. “I left my pack over by my old house when I ran over here to help. I want to get it before dark.”

  Trey raised his head and looked at the tree-covered ridges lining the canyon. “We’ll have to hurry to make it that far before dark. Why before dark?”

  “The King’s Hunters. We will hurry,” I agreed with a nod. “Take what you think you need, but we can come back by your house and get anything you’ve forgotten before we head down the river to Glendale.”

  For a few moments, Trey sat motionless and then he ran his hands t
hrough his hair and rose to his feet. “I’ll go get my stuff.”

  “I’ll help,” I offered.

  He jerked his thumb along the trail leading uphill along the canyon bottom. “I dropped my bow and arrows after that man… Can you look for them?”

  I looked in the direction he was pointing. “Of course. I’ll join you at the house after I find them.”

  I gulped when I realized the dark brown dots on the trail were blood—Trey’s blood. I followed them to the bow and arrows. I gathered them up and took a moment to search for danger with my mind seeking out living things nearby. I was learning to ignore mindless crickets, beetles, small birds, and the like. I heard them, but filtered them out as noise, while honing in on those that were larger and possibly dangerous.

  Nothing nearby seemed dangerous, so I headed back to the house. The door was open when I arrived carrying the bow and arrows. I stepped inside and looked around. It was three times the size of our house and the cooking area had more utensils, including a metal stove. The wood floor was solid and reasonably smooth but it wasn’t polished like the floor in Aunt Yedda’s and Uncle Inigo’s house.

  Trey stood there, holding a pack in his hands, looking around with a puzzled expression. He glanced in my direction. “I’m sorry, but this happened so quickly I can’t think. What do I take?”

  I ticked items off on my fingers. “A cup, bowl, plate, fork and spoon, and a small pot and spoon for cooking. Dried meat and fruit and oats or barley. Bring your best knife, a hatchet, and the tools needed for making arrows. Add a change of clothes and a big sleeping fur.”

  “Oh.” Trey seemed lost for a few moments, and then began reaching for eating utensils. He started to put them in the pack and then got a change of clothing to make padding between the pan and bowl. Moments later, he moved over to the table and picked up a small bottle of ink and two quill pens.

  “What do you want with them?” I asked.

  Trey’s eyes flashed and his voice sounded strained. “I like to draw and Mother taught me how to write. They will remind me of her.”