by Matt Forbeck
“This isn’t your standard sort of Illager here. He seems smarter than the average ones.” Yumi leaned over and hissed in Archie’s ear. “And if he’s actually smart, he’ll stop squirming around so the iron golem doesn’t accidentally hurt him.”
Archie froze.
A handful of other people appeared behind Salah, all wearing looks of fear mixed with anger. They were upset about being woken up in the middle of the night, and they were ready to run whoever had caused that out of town.
Archie glanced back over his shoulder, slowly enough not to make anyone think he was trying to escape—or so he hoped. The iron golem loomed over him with its unblinking eyes, and Archie realized exactly how much trouble he’d gotten himself into.
Archie slumped to his knees. “I’m sorry,” he said meekly to Yumi. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
The woman knelt down so she could see his face. She wasn’t a big woman, but Archie was an even smaller Illager.
“Get away from that creature, Yumi,” Salah said, gruff and angry still. “The iron golem can take care of it.”
Despite himself, Archie reached up and grabbed Yumi by the arms. “Please, no,” he said, his voice barely above a whimper. “Don’t let it hurt me.”
The woman looked at him, and the fury in her face melted. “You’re not much of a threat to anyone, are you?”
Archie shook his head, slow and sad. Then he closed his eyes, braced himself, and waited for the end.
He supposed it might be better this way. After all, his tribe had kicked him out, and he had nowhere to go. If the undead had caught him, it would surely have been worse.
Yumi stood up, leaving Archie alone on the ground. Although he tried not to, he began to silently weep. Tears leaked from his eyes and ran straight down his face to drip on the ground beneath him.
“Yumi!” Salah said. “Get clear.”
“Shut up, Salah,” Yumi said as she stood up. “This little guy hasn’t done anything wrong here today.”
Archie blinked open his eyes, astonished that he was still unharmed. He wondered how much longer that might go on, but he didn’t dare get his hopes up. Not yet.
“He woke up the entire village!” Salah said, frustrated and spluttering. “He was going to burn the whole place to the ground!”
Yumi snorted at that. “Do you see a torch in his hand?”
Salah hesitated. He peered down at Archie and at the path he’d made from Yumi’s place to where the iron golem had grabbed him. He pointed to a torch burning just outside her door. “Is that not a torch?”
“Nice try,” Yumi said. “That one’s mine.”
Salah frowned. “So he would have taken it and burned down your home!”
Yumi barked an outright laugh this time. “From me?” She pointed down at Archie. “That little thing. How well do you think that would go for him? He practically ran at the sight of me.”
“He’s an Illager!” Salah said. “They’re like mice in a house. Where there’s one, there’s always more!”
Yumi spread her arms wide and gazed out into the night. “They must be hiding awfully well then. Far out of sight. Maybe many miles from here. How clever of them.”
Salah pulled back his hoe and set the end of the handle in the grass. “Well, what are we supposed to do with him then? We can’t just let him go.”
Yumi pursed her lips at the man. “And why not?”
Salah gestured out into the dark at the imaginary horde of Illagers waiting to pounce on and pulverize the village. “Because he’ll bring them all back here to kill us!”
Yumi rolled her eyes so hard that Archie feared she might fall over backward. “Do you think the Illagers don’t already know where to find us?”
“You know they do! They used to come and raid our little village all the time!”
“So our location isn’t exactly a secret then, is it?”
“They could do it again!”
“They’ve barely even tried since the heroes started making regular stops through here,” Yumi said.
Salah let out a dramatic groan. “Do you see any heroes around here now?”
Yumi stared straight at him and shook her head. “Not a one.”
Salah’s face flushed red. “Now, Yumi—”
“Don’t ‘Now, Yumi’ me, Salah. You might be in charge of the village, but you’re not in charge of me.”
He opened his mouth to protest, to say something like “But you’re part of the village.” Before he could actually say any words, though, he thought better of it and clammed his lips up tight.
Satisfied, at least for now, Yumi peered down at Archie again. “Are you going to hurt anyone here?”
Archie shook his head violently.
“Are you going to bring anyone else to hurt us?”
Archie shook his head again.
“What are you going to do if I let you stand up?”
Archie’s mind went blank. He had no idea how to answer that question. He’d been so absolutely convinced the end was here that his brain hadn’t allowed him to think any further ahead than that.
“I—I don’t know.” His voice barely edged above a whisper, but she could hear him just fine.
She put out her hand to him to help him up. “Well,” she said. “Let’s find out.”
Archie stared at her hand for a long moment and then reached up and took it. She hauled him to his feet, and he stood there shaking.
He glanced around to see that a crowd of Villagers had now assembled around him, including a couple more iron golems. At a gesture from Yumi, the one holding Archie by the collar set him free. After a moment’s reflection, Archie realized why.
They were giving him a way out. If he wanted to, he could spin on his heels and flee into the darkness.
That would have been the easy answer for everyone involved. Archie would disappear into the night, supposedly returning to wherever he’d come from, and the Villagers could all go back to sleep, safe and warm in their beds. In the morning, he’d be nothing but a memory to them, something they’d grumble or crack jokes about over breakfast—and forget soon enough.
Archie shuddered as he stared into the darkness. When he turned back toward the Villagers, he saw everyone there gazing at him, waiting expectantly. Some glared at him with hatred in their eyes. Others watched him in wonder, not sure what to expect from him.
Yumi, though, wore a wry smile on her face. She held a hand out to him, low but open, her palm up.
He reached for it. “I have nowhere else to go,” he told her. “Can I please stay?”
“Forget it!” Salah thundered loud enough to make Archie cringe. “I forbid it!”
Yumi drew Archie next to her and put an arm around his shoulders as she turned to face Salah and the rest of the Villagers alongside him. “I’m welcoming this little fellow into my home. He can stay in my spare room.”
Salah opened his mouth to protest, but Yumi shut him down with a withering glare. With that, she guided Archie back toward her front door. As she reached her home, she turned the little Illager around to face the crowd again.
Some of the people there—including Salah—gaped at her in stunned silence. Others chuckled at the way she’d defied Salah’s will. A couple children who had crept out of their beds to see what was happening gawked at Archie in curious delight. They’d probably never seen an Illager before, especially not this close, and the sight of him amazed them.
“I realize some of you may not be happy about my decision here,” Yumi said. “That’s your problem, not mine.”
“Now listen here,” Salah started.
Yumi cut him off, clearly not caring about anything he might have to say. “This little fellow—” She glanced down at the Illager. “What’s your name?”
Surprised to be addressed, he cleared hi
s throat before he answered. “Archie.”
She tried the name out for herself. “Archie.” Seeming to approve how it felt on her tongue, she picked up where she’d left off.
“Archie here is my guest. As such, I expect you all to treat him with the same respect you give to Salah’s cousins when they visit.”
A few of the people laughed at that. Apparently Salah’s extended family had a bit of a reputation in the village.
She looked back down at Archie and gave him a little shake. “And just like with Salah’s cousins, I expect you to behave. That means respecting the people here and their property. Can you do that?”
Archie couldn’t believe how well she was treating him—especially compared to being defeated or, at the very least, run out of town—and he found himself eager to agree to do anything she wanted. “Of course I can!”
She gave him a firm nod of appreciation and then gazed back out at the others. “And if he can’t manage that, we’ll treat them exactly like we did Salah’s cousins. Sound fair?”
The people in the crowd all murmured in rough agreement. Salah himself flushed a bit in embarrassment, and when Yumi stared directly at him, he shook his head at her. “When this all goes wrong—and it will—this is on your head,” he told her. “It’s not a question of if that little monster will cause a disaster here. It’s only a question of when.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Yumi whispered to Archie out of the side of her mouth. “He’s professionally wrong about everything.”
She raised her voice again to speak to the crowd. “Now that that’s settled, I suggest the rest of you go back home and get some sleep. That’s what I plan to do myself.”
She turned around and escorted Archie into her home and shut the door behind her. Once inside, she placed her back against the door and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. This placed her just below Archie’s eye level.
Yumi took a moment to rub her face with her hands before she regarded Archie again. “You’re one lucky beast,” she told him.
“Thank you,” he said, feeling truly grateful to her. “I really didn’t have anywhere else to go. If you’d sent me back into the woods…”
“You’d probably have been finished off by morning,” she finished for him. “Of course, that’s exactly what Salah and maybe half the town was hoping for.”
Archie nodded. He couldn’t blame any of them for that. He knew that Illagers sometimes tried to raid villages. It didn’t seem to succeed all that often—just when the Villagers grew careless about protecting their homes—but he could see how that would make the Villagers hate his people.
“I’m not too fond of other Illagers myself,” Archie said.
Yumi marveled at him for a moment. “What in the world did you do to get them to kick you out?”
Archie’s shoulders slumped. The last thing he wanted to do was relive all that, even for someone who’d taken such a huge risk on him.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said as she pushed herself to her feet. “That story can wait for another day.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Despite the Villagers’ initial reservations about him, Archie managed to find a way to fit in well in relatively little time. The morning after he arrived, Yumi sat him down and listened to the tale of how he’d been banished from his tribe. Later that day, she took him around and introduced him to everyone in the village, one home at a time.
In the naked light of day, Archie must have seemed much less threatening to the Villagers. Yumi had found an old set of clothes to dress him in. They were simple but serviceable for Villager clothing, or so she told him. Even so, they were nicer than just about anything he’d ever worn as part of his Illager tribe.
Most of the Villagers Archie met seemed kind and happy now. Even ones who’d scowled at him last night. A few of them actually said “Welcome to our village,” to him.
The only real exception was Salah. He refused to speak to Archie at all. Instead, he tried to pretend the Illager wasn’t there as he growled at Yumi. “That thing you dressed up like a doll is vermin,” he told her. “It doesn’t belong here, and every minute you keep it here, you put the entire village in danger.”
Yumi scoffed at him and gestured at Archie. “Look at him. Does he look like a threat to you?”
Salah pointedly didn’t take his eyes off Yumi’s face. “That’s an Illager, not a Villager. Only Villagers belong in the village. It’s in the name.”
With that, he slammed the door of his house in Yumi’s face. She narrowed her eyes at it for a moment, as if she was considering kicking it down. Instead, she turned and escorted Archie away.
“Don’t worry about him,” she said as they headed back to her place. “He’ll come around eventually.”
“What if he doesn’t?” Archie couldn’t help but worry that the man would do anything in his power to get rid of him.
“Then it’ll make him miserable—not you—but there’s nothing you can do about that.”
Over the next couple of weeks, Archie did his best to make himself useful. He accompanied Yumi out of her house whenever she went out, mostly because he didn’t want to be left there alone. Anytime she asked him to do something, he jumped to comply. He wanted nothing more than to please her and to—as Yumi often commented with a gentle smile—earn his keep.
Archie wasn’t always good at doing what he was asked, but he put every bit of effort into it that he could muster. Terrified that Yumi’s mercy toward him could expire any moment, he made up his mind that he wasn’t going to give her any excuse to let the rest of the people kick him out of the village. At least, not if he could help it.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Archie actually felt more useful than he ever had at any other point in his life, and even appreciated. While the people of the village didn’t completely trust him—yet, he told himself—they treated him better than almost all of his fellow Illagers ever had.
Where the Illagers valued cunning, viciousness, and might, the Villagers placed importance on harmony, teamwork, and community instead. There hadn’t been a place for Archie among the Illagers, but the Villagers seemed to be willing to make room for him—as long as he could prove himself worthy of that space. He set himself to doing exactly that.
He got to know the people in the village: their names, their occupations, the things they cared about, and the people they loved. That included Xu (the baker), Wendy (the farmer), Farouk (the tailor), Chandra (the smith), Zuri (the shepherd), Nanuq (a cowhand), and Liam (the cook), as well as many more.
At first, many of them were reluctant to share things with him, but he was so insistent about being allowed to help out that they eventually relented on that front, if only to shut him up. During the time he spent with them after that, they would while away moments by chatting with him, answering his questions, and telling him stories about their land and their lives in it.
In his early days in the village, Archie wasn’t really trying to make friends. His life as an Illager hadn’t prepared him to do anything but assume the worst of anyone, so he was only trying to see how he could make himself useful to the Villagers so they wouldn’t hurt him or kick him out. Back at the Illager mansion, Archie—and apparently all of the other Illagers—had long ago decided he wasn’t much use to anyone, so he’d just spent his time trying to avoid everyone else. In the village, though, that just wasn’t possible.
First, Archie stuck out. Even in Villager clothes, he didn’t look anything like them. His gray skin gave him away.
Second, the Villagers had a well-earned distrust of Illagers, so they always kept at least one eye on him no matter where he was. He didn’t have any chance to blend in.
Third, and maybe most important, Archie discovered that he liked the attention. As an outsider, he was an oddity, sure, but not in the way he’d been with the Illagers. Once the Vil
lagers got over their initial wariness of him, they showed actual curiosity about him, his Illager culture, and how he fit into it.
Salah, for example, took to asking Archie all sorts of questions about Illager life. Archie knew that he was only—at least at first—trying to pick apart his story so that he could out the Illager as some sort of spy. As they conversed, usually with Yumi at Archie’s side to ensure he felt safe to speak, Salah’s questions became less probing and more philosophical. He wanted to know not just if the Illagers would attack the village but why.
Many of the things the Villagers learned about the Illager way of life earned Archie their pity—or that was how he saw it at first. It took him a long time to realize it wasn’t the kind of pity an Illager would show him: condescending and scathing, filled with disgust. Instead, it came from a place of real sympathy and understanding based in compassion.
As the Villagers began to care about Archie as a person, he began to see them not as foolishly benevolent souls from whom he could beg shelter and protection but as folks who might someday come to care for him and maybe even trust him.
Every evening, Yumi brought Archie back to her place, fed him a hot and delicious dinner, and let him sleep in a warm and comfortable bed in her spare room. She called it hospitality, something he’d never experienced before as an Illager. Back at the mansion, people had what they could take from others—which meant Archie rarely had much of anything—and if they had any extra, they hoarded it rather than sharing it. The idea that Yumi would give things to Archie freely, and that he could accept them without compunction disturbed him at first.
It took him a long while to get used to it. To let it feel like home.
In their off hours, Archie and Yumi would chat endlessly about their different experiences with the world and their places in it. Over time, they opened up to each other, and Archie realized that he was no longer trying to help out in the village simply to prove his worth. He’d come to care about the place and the Villagers who lived in it—especially Yumi, who’d showed him so much kindness.