by Rachel Gay
“But they never...You were...” Terra stared at Kota, his expressive face wavering between disbelief and curiosity. “You’re keeping it as a pet?”
“What, Voi? No, no, he just likes milk,” Kota said. He looked back at the window, noting that it was still dark outside with only the barest hints of a dawn coming. “Did you want something?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess it is early.” He grinned and said, “Habit, I guess. I doubt the mayor would be willing to see me just yet, huh?’
Kota shook his head and stared as the hunter pulled out a seat and sat down.
“Well, while I’ve got you here, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Terra asked, motioning toward the seat opposite him.
Kota looked at the seat and thought of many, many things he would rather do instead. He settled for saying, “I should get started on breakfast. What would you like?”
“I would like some information.” Terra pointed at the seat again. “Like I said, it’s early. We’ve got time before you need to worry about your eggs and bacon.”
Kota sighed and sat down. He crossed his arms on the table in front of him and gave the hunter a blank, expressionless stare.
“You’re not from around here, right?”
Kota shook his head. The mayor’s letter probably said as much.
“But you’ve been here for a while,” Terra said, confirming that thought. “What can you tell me about this Geld guy?”
“The mayor?” Kota said, not hiding his surprise. When Terra nodded, he shrugged and said, “He’s short? I don’t really know the man that well. Erin could probably tell you more.”
Terra leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table between them. “Why is he getting a Judge’s help on taking care of this wolf? By the sound of it, no one in town is even looking for the thing!”
Kota shrugged again. “The townspeople believe it is hiding in the forest. They do not go there if they can help it, even before the wolf arrived.”
“What? They have to go into the woods at some point though, for lumber and game and that sort of thing, don’t they?”
“Never that far in,” Kota said. The hunter stared at him with such disbelief that he added, “From what I understand, they go in groups, never alone. They think that this place is too close to the trees for comfort. You saw how worried the patrol was last night when they realized the time.”
“What are they afraid of?” Terra asked, but it sounded more like a rhetorical question. “From the sound of it, the cannishift and this wolf are the most excitement they’ve had in decades. At least in other villages, they’re afraid of the world outside because they know what’s waiting outside their walls. This place is right in the heart of the empire!”
Kota said nothing to this.
Terra drummed his fingers on the table while he thought and then said, “I guess I can ask the man himself later, as well as anyone else who will talk to me. I’m guessing this place isn’t big on strangers?”
“They tend to stare a lot,” Kota said. “You’re not going after the wolf today?”
“I like to know the lay of the land,” Terra said. He traced a circle on the table with his finger as he said, “The wolf hasn’t been seen in weeks, according to what those boys said last night. If it’s anything like the other reports, it may have already moved on.”
Kota tried not to look too hopeful at this suggestion. “You mean you might have to tell the mayor that it’s gone?”
“Or laying low,” Terra said. “Even a normal animal knows that seasons change. It has to stay near some kind of food source to survive the winter, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe it went to the coast like everyone else,” Kota said, but without much conviction. Making sure the hunter found no sign of the wolf was as simple as staying out of the sunlight, but Terra could easily convince the mayor to allow him to stay through the whole winter as a precaution. The longer he stayed, the harder it would be to prevent him from noticing anything. Even one good look at the mark on Kota’s face would be too much.
He made an excuse about breakfast and left Terra sitting at the table, watching the sun rise over the forest in the distance. The only light in the kitchen came from the one he turned on himself before lighting the stove and retrieving the food from the cabinets and fridge. He started everything on autopilot and stood there with his hands braced on the counter while an overloaded pan sizzled on the stove.
Erin found him that way when she came out of her room, after he had made enough to satisfy the first wave of guests that would soon be up.
“Kota?” she said, disturbed by the utterly blank expression on his face. Having seen him like this before did not make it any better, not even when he blinked and whatever thoughts were on his mind at times like this disappeared for the moment.
“Oh, good morning.”
“Morning,” she said. At her suggestion, Kota went upstairs, but as she put out the food she wondered if sleep would help. Erin actually found herself wishing that Miles was still here, if only because it helped to have someone else around that she could talk to about Kota.
“Something wrong?” Terra asked when he noticed that her mind seemed to be elsewhere by the way she nearly dumped a plate of scrambled eggs in his lap.
“Sorry,” she said, but made no move to answer his question. He was the last person she could talk to.
So it did not help when he smiled and said, “It’s Kota, right?”
She stammered and said, “N-no, I just... He just has a lot on his mind, and I’m worried about him is all.”
That sounded like an innocent enough answer, and Terra nodded as if he understood. “It’s hard being in a strange place, I should know. Shy, isn’t he?”
“Er, yeah,” Erin said, figuring that was one way to describe the young man.
Terra nodded. “I used to be the same way.”
Erin had a hard time imagining that. Judging by last night, the hunter thrived in groups, and there seemed to be no connection between him and the way that Kota had a hard time fitting in even in a group that consisted entirely of himself.
“Ah, don’t worry, all he needs is to get out a little,” Terra said. “I’ll see if I can’t get him to open up when I’m not dealing with this wolf business. Sound good?”
Erin honestly had no idea how to answer that.
Entry 50: Go Fish
Within an hour or two Erin had the Last Inn to herself, as all of the guests left to either continue on their way or, like Terra, go into town. She roamed around for a while, but what little there was to do did not take long. Practice made changing the sheets on the newly emptied rooms easy enough, and she told herself the laundry could wait another day, or until Kota got around to doing it. If today was like the past couple of days, she knew not to expect anyone to come to the inn until late in the afternoon.
They still had enough food to last a few days, and even then she had made arrangements with the butcher, baker, and Mr. Farmer about regular deliveries for the usual stuff as long as the current traffic kept up, so there wasn’t an excuse to go out.
Eventually, when she could no other reason not to, Erin pulled Sollis’s journal out of the desk and settled into a chair at the same table where Kota and Terra had their earlier chat. There, in the morning sunlight, she turned the crackling pages over and began to read.
At least, she tried to read. Just like every other time she picked up the journal, she found herself skimming and skipping over entire pages in increasing frustration. Not once, not once did the old man mention exactly what it was he had been searching for, just oblique references to “it,” and even an occasional “he” or “him.”
Sollis had been looking for something for somebody, but he obviously did not think he would need to explain it to himself or never thought anyone else would be reading his journal.
He’s getting depressed again, Erin read, and thought of Kota. She remembered reading the line before, and wondered if that was why she made the jump to t
hinking the writing could possibly have anything to do with his curse.
She read on: Searched forest. Walkers would not help. Even the little ones refused to get involved now. Mer checked river, no luck.
Erin blinked and read the passage again, several times, as an idea slowly began to form. She could not ask Sollis what he had been searching for, but he had told someone else. Several someones, by the look of it.
She jumped up and ran up the stairs before she could second guess herself. Skidding to a stop outside of room 1D, she banged on the door until Kota opened it.
He had clearly run to the door, and his eyes were wide open with the alertness of someone who had went straight from sleeping to waking with no in between steps. In his hurry, he had even forgotten to cover his mark.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Erin said, realizing a little too late that she may have made the wrong impression. When he sagged against the doorframe she quickly added, “What do you know about mer?”
“The water people?” Kota hid a yawn behind his hand and ran a hand over his face to keep himself awake now that the adrenaline was fading. “Not much, why?”
“Mr. Sollis mentioned one in his journal, and I was curious,” Erin replied. “Water people, you mean like the river in town?”
“All bodies of water are one to them, but yes, they prefer running water or the sea,” Kota said, his words slurring together a little. “Couldn’t this have waited?”
“Sorry,” Erin said. “Last question, how do you find them?”
He took so long to answer that Erin wondered if he had fallen asleep slumped against the doorframe, but eventually he said, “The witch would toss a handful of chel shells into the water to summon one.”
“Chel shells?”
Kota rubbed his eyes and said, “Please, can’t this wait?”
“Oh, right, sorry,” Erin said. “Go ahead and go back to sleep. I’ll–”
Kota nodded and shut the door, not quite in her face. Erin fidgeted and opened Sollis’s journal again right there in the hallway, this time looking for a particular passage. It took a while, but she finally found the mention of chel shells. One of the guests had paid for their stay in the shells, and in what she thought of as a flash of brilliance, she knew just where to find them.
Around the corner of the hall she went, and up the stairs to the attic door. It opened with a loud creak that she hoped did not wake Kota back up, revealing a room even more dark and cluttered than she remembered. Her flash of brilliance had not included going back for a candle and matches.
She stepped into the dark with her arms thrown out to keep from running into anything. After a few fumbles she found what she was looking for near the door, and retreated to the hallway with a decorated box that upon opening proved to still be full of seashells.
Erin picked up one of the tiny shells and examined it, but she had about as much experience with normal seashells as with chel shells. She did know one way to find out which she had though.
She left a note on the desk just in case, but she figured she could get to the river and back hours before anyone else showed up. Her bike put up its usual protest as she steered it out of the yard and rode north, past the outskirts of town and as close to the wastes as she dared to go alone before veering off the road and down the bank to the river, where thick reeds grew and the hill behind her would shelter her from the sight of anyone passing by on the road.
Taking the box out of the basket, Erin stepped through the clinging mud, which squelched underfoot and threatened to not let go of her shoes. It helped that there was no one around, she thought to herself as she opened the box and took a handful of shells. Feeling more than a little foolish, she tossed the shells out over the water.
They glinted and danced in the water, but before the current had a chance to take them away the shells began to swirl, as if caught in a spiral. They spun around and around until they clustered together in the center of the small whirlpool, and then bobbed underwater as suddenly as if someone had reached out and grabbed them.
The whirlpool stopped at the same moment and the river continued on as normal as ever. Only a shadow under the water at Erin’s feet marked any difference, and as she watched it shifted and took on the face of a person staring out at her with the reflection of light on the water for eyes.
“Why do you call me, child?”
Entry 51: Water and Shadow
Erin hastily took a step back from the water, or tried to do so, but her shoes had formed a bond with the mud. If she wasn’t careful, she would be going back to the inn in her socks.
The shadow in the water moved at the same time, at the same place where her own reflection should have been.
“I... Are you a mer?” she asked, stalling for time. She hadn’t thought this far ahead, mostly because she really didn’t think the shells would work.
“Do not waste my time, child.” This time the voice sounded impatient, but Erin could not tell if it was male or female. “How came you by those shells?”
“A mer gave them to Mr. Sollis, and since I, uh, the Last Inn is, um...”
“Do stop that,” the mer said with a sigh that sounded like water rippling. The river stirred around the shadow and a head emerged from the water. Around a solemn round face floated fine hair that was not so much blonde as entirely colorless. The mer’s eyes above water appeared gray and just as devoid of color as its skin and lips. “You say you are Sollis’s heir? The Smith’s daughter?”
Erin flushed at the chuckle that accompanied those words. “How do you know who I am?”
“You played often by the river as a child, did you not? But you have never called for my kind before. What has happened?”
Erin bit her lip and tried to tell herself this just meant less to explain, but she suspected it would be a long time before she went swimming in the river again. She cleared her throat and said, “I was wondering if Mr. Sollis ever came to you or one of the other mer looking for something?”
“That?” The mer’s tone changed, sounding more human than river now. “He came to us, yes, but it is beyond our reach. We told him, only human hands may hold it.”
“Hold what?” Erin asked.
“You do not know?” The mer shifted uneasily in the water, but that may have been due to the wind picking up. “It is the key to breaking the chain.”
“What chain?” Erin shuddered and crossed her arms. It was getting colder now that she thought about it, and she was starting to wish this mer would give her a straight answer. “He wrote about somebody in the journal, too. This key thing, was it to help them?”
“The chain is a curse, powerful and deep. I can not say anymore; human hands must break what human hands have wrought.”
“Did you come up with that just now or have you been sitting on that piece of wisdom for a while?” Erin pouted, but already that bit about the curse had her mind turning. “Can’t you tell me anything about how to find it?”
The mer smiled. “Always a cheeky child. Why do I need to tell you what you already know?”
“But I don’t–”
“I must go,” the mer said with a shudder. The once colorless face now seemed to be taking on a blue tone. “It is too cold!”
Without even a single goodbye, the mer dove back under the water and the shadow disappeared. Erin stared down into the river and considered throwing some more chel shells in, but she figured the mer wouldn’t tell her anything else, if it even bothered to return.
Instead, she climbed back up the hill with more than one slip in the clinging mud and put the box back in the basket of her bike. On the ride back to the inn, Erin kept breaking out into a smile at the thought of the look on Kota’s face when she told him what she had been up to while he’d been sleeping.
Behind the inn, Erin parked her bike in the usual spot and used the water pump to wash the mud off of her shoes. She was so focused on trying to get the slimy stuff off that she did not notice there was so
meone else in the yard until Terra spoke.
“Hiking through mud?”
“Uh, sort of,” Erin said, after recovering from the shock. “I just...you know, taking a ride, getting some fresh air while the inn’s quiet.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t stand being cooped up in that place all the time,” Terra said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the inn. He frowned and added, “But you’re not scared of the wolf?”
“Well...” Erin nearly panicked, but managed to give him a small smile and say, “It’s the middle of the day, isn’t it? And it’s not like I went into the forest or something.”
“Yeah, about that,” Terra started, but he was cut off by a scream coming from the direction of the treeline.
Terra and Erin both ran around the building, the hunter outpacing her with his long strides, in time to see a horse race out from underneath the trees, kicking up spurts of stones and dirt beneath its hooves as its rider urged it on.
Rider and horse cleared half the distance between the woods and the inn before several dark shapes emerged from among the brush.
“What are those things?” Erin asked.
Terra narrowed his eyes and apparently could see more of the low bodies speeding across the ground than her because he said, “Get inside, now!”
The rider pulled her horse to a stop outside of the inn and looked over her shoulder. Seeing the creatures following behind, her face paled and she gasped out, “Iron!”
“I know,” Terra snapped as he strung his bow and selected an arrow from his quiver. “Erin, is there any iron in the inn?”
“Iron?”
“A horseshoe, a nail, anything!” Terra cast a glance at the horse beside him but shook his head.
“No, I– Wait, hold on a minute,” she said and ran inside the inn.
Behind her, Terra said, “We don’t have a minute,” and yelled something at the rider. When Erin returned from her room, the rider, a young woman so wrapped up in a cloak that only her face was visible, came running in and started to bar the door.
She wanted to ask her what the dark, shadowy shapes that were zigzagging their way up the road were, but there was no time. Erin ran past the rider and out into the yard.