“Selga’s got a sort of a problem. He isn’t very tall, and people tend to overlook him. He really wants to be noticed, so he comes by almost every day to tell me about something—anything—that he wants me to pass on to you. All I have to do to make him feel good is to pretend that I think what he just said was terribly important and that I’ll pass it on to you the first chance I get, and assure him that I’ll tell you that he was the one who brought it to my attention.”
“That’s sad,” Veltan sighed.
Omago shrugged. “Everybody’s got problems of some kind, Veltan. It’s nothing to get all weepy about. People come, and then they go. You know that, don’t you?”
“You can be a very cruel person sometimes, Omago.”
“I don’t make the rules, Veltan. All I do is follow them.”
“How’s your father been lately?”
That startled Omago. No matter how hard he tried to conceal things from Veltan, his friend always saw right through him. “He’s not getting any better, I’m afraid,” he replied sadly. “Sometimes he can’t even remember his own name. He keeps asking for mother, though. I don’t think he remembers that she died last year.”
“I’m sorry, Omago,” Veltan said with great sincerity. “I wish there was something I could do to help him.”
“I don’t really think you should, Veltan. I think father’s getting very tired, and if we keep him here, it’ll just make him more sad. Why don’t we just let him go? I think that might be the kindest thing we can do for him.”
The following spring when Omago was working in his orchard, a vibrant woman’s voice came from just behind him. “Why are you doing that?”
Omago, startled, spun around quickly.
“I’m sorry,” the woman apologized. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Why are you picking all those little green apples?” She was quite tall, she had long, dark auburn hair, soft green eyes, and she wore a blue linen dress.
Omago smiled. “Apple trees always seem to get carried away in the spring,” he explained. “They want to have lots and lots of puppies. If I don’t thin out the baby apples in the spring, there won’t be any of them much bigger than acorns when they ripen. I’ve tried to explain that to my trees, but they just won’t listen. It’s awfully hard to get a tree’s attention, particularly in the springtime.”
“You’re Omago, aren’t you?”
“That’s what they call me.”
“You’re quite a bit younger than I thought you’d be. You are the same Omago people come to when they want to let Veltan know what’s happening, aren’t you?”
Omago nodded. “Was there something you wanted me to tell him?”
“Not right now, no. I just wanted to be sure that I’d recognize you in case something came up that I needed to let him know about.”
“You could always go on up to his house and tell him yourself, you know.”
“Maybe, but people tell me that he’d rather hear you tell him these things. How did you get to know him so well?”
“He used to come here to this orchard when the trees were blooming. An orchard in bloom is prettier than any flower garden. This was my father’s orchard back then, and I was only a little boy. Veltan and I used to talk for hours and hours, so I probably know him better than anybody else around here. That’s most likely why the local farmers decided to use me as their messenger boy. You don’t live around here, do you?”
She shook her head. “No. I live quite a ways away. I was very sorry to hear that your father died recently.”
Omago shrugged. “It didn’t really come as a surprise. His health hadn’t been too good for the past several years.”
“You’re busy,” she said, “and I’m just underfoot. It was nice meeting you.” She turned to walk away.
“What’s your name?” he called after her.
“Ara,” she replied back over her shoulder.
For some reason, Omago couldn’t get the strange girl out of his mind. He realized that he didn’t know very much about her. She hadn’t even volunteered to tell him her name until he’d come right out and asked her.
She was obviously several years younger than he was, but her manner of speaking was hardly adolescent. She’d managed to get a great deal of information from him, but she hadn’t given him very much in return.
He tried to just shrug her off, but the memory of their brief conversation kept coming back, and it wasn’t only the conversation. She was far and away the prettiest girl he’d ever met. Her lush auburn hair reminded him of autumn, and the memory of her vibrant voice sang in his ears. He felt an almost desperate need to find out more about her.
It was spring, and there were all kinds of things he should be doing right now, but he just couldn’t keep his mind on his work.
“I can’t seem to think about anything else, Veltan,” he confessed a few days later.
Veltan smiled. “Is she still in the general vicinity?” he asked.
“That’s what people tell me,” Omago replied. “I haven’t seen her myself, but several other farmers have. They all tell me that she’s been asking a lot of questions—most of them about me. You don’t suppose she’ll just turn around and go on back home again, do you? She didn’t even tell me the name of the village where she lives. How in the world am I ever going to find her again?”
“I wouldn’t really worry too much about that, Omago. She isn’t going anywhere.”
“How do you know that for sure?”
Veltan grinned broadly, but he didn’t answer.
“I think it’s time for us to do something about this, Omago,” that vibrant voice said quite firmly.
Omago dropped his hoe and spun around. “Where have you been, Ara?” he demanded. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Yes, I know. Neither one of us is going to get anything done until we settle this. My name is Ara, I’m sixteen years old, and I want you.”
Omago almost choked. “Is everybody in your village this blunt, Ara?” he asked her.
“Probably not,” she replied, “but I hate to waste time. Are you interested?”
“I can’t really think about anything else,” he confessed.
“Good. Is there anything we have to go through before I come to live with you?”
“I’m not really sure. I’ve never been very curious about this sort of thing before.”
“That’s nice,” she said with a sly little smile. “Let’s go talk with Veltan. If there’s supposed to be a ceremony of some kind, let’s get it out of the way. I’ll need some time to prepare supper for you.”
And so it was that Omago and Ara were wed that spring, and Omago’s life wasn’t ever the same after that. He never actually found out very much about her, but as the seasons passed that became less and less relevant. The wonderful smells coming from her kitchen seemed to put his curiosity to sleep, but they definitely woke up his appetite.
2
It was on a blustery spring night about ten years after the joining of Omago and Ara when Veltan came to the door. It seemed to Omago that his friend was almost in a state of panic. “I need help,” he said desperately.
“What’s the problem?” Omago asked.
“This is,” Veltan replied, holding out a fur-wrapped bundle. “My big brother came by and foisted this off on me, and I haven’t the faintest idea of what I’m supposed to do about it.” He turned back a corner of the robe to reveal a very small infant. “I think he’s going to need food, and I don’t know the first thing about that.”
Ara firmly took the baby away from the distraught god and cuddled it to her. “I’ll take care of him, Veltan,” she told him.
“He doesn’t seem to have any teeth, Ara,” Veltan said. “How can he eat without teeth?”
“I’ll take care of him,” she said again. “There are several women nearby who are nursing. I’m sure I can persuade them to feed your little boy.”
“Nursing?” Veltan asked curiously. “What’s nursing?”
&nb
sp; “Oh, dear,” Ara said, rolling her eyes upward. “Just go back home, Veltan. I’ll see to everything.”
“Are they always this small?” Veltan asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one at this stage before.”
“Just go home, dear Veltan. Everything will be just fine.”
“I feel like such an idiot,” Veltan confessed. “My brother knocked on my door, told me that this little boy would be one of the Dreamers, and then he left without saying very much more. I’ve never really paid much attention to infants, so I don’t know the first thing about them. He will grow some teeth before very much longer, won’t he?”
“He’ll be just fine, Veltan. Go home—now.” Ara imperiously pointed at the door.
Omago didn’t get too much sleep for the next month or so. Babies tend to be very noisy, he discovered, and Veltan seemed to be underfoot every time Omago turned around. It occurred to him that it was probably time to add a room to his cottage—or maybe two or three. He began mixing clay and straw to make the sun-dried bricks that were customary here in Veltan’s Domain. He realized that he was going to have to extend the roof, but that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. He had fairly extensive wheat-fields to the west and south of his orchard, so he’d have plenty of straw for thatching after harvest-time.
Veltan conferred with Ara, and between them they decided that “Yaltar” might be an appropriate name for the young Dreamer. Omago wasn’t really sure just exactly where the term “Dreamer” had originated, but he had too many other things on his mind just then to sit around brooding about it.
Yaltar began toddling about Omago’s cottage when he was not even a year old, but he didn’t talk yet. It took Ara quite some time to explain this to Veltan. “Learning how to speak is probably the most important thing a baby does during his first few years,” she told him.
“I thought it was just there,” Veltan protested. “Are you saying that every baby in the world has to learn how to talk?”
“I’ve never heard of one who was born talking,” Ara replied.
“Birds seem to know how to peep and chirp without much help.”
“The language of people is a little more complicated, dear Veltan,” Ara reminded him. “I don’t think people could explain very much with peeps and chirps, do you?”
“Well—” Veltan seemed to be having a lot of problems with his little boy. “I don’t know why Dahlaine had to hand Yaltar to me before the boy could even function.”
“Look upon it as a learning experience, Veltan. You’ll under-stand people much better after you’ve raised Yaltar from early childhood.” Ara smiled slyly. “Won’t that be fun?” she asked him.
“I’m not having all that much fun right now.”
“That’ll probably come later, dear Veltan. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.”
When Yaltar was about three years old, Veltan began to take him up the hill to his stone house for several hours each day, but he still depended upon Ara to keep him clean and prepare the little boy’s meals.
“Is it really necessary for him to eat so often?” Veltan asked Omago’s wife one evening.
“You eat light, don’t you?” Ara asked him.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say ‘eat,’ Ara,” Veltan replied.
“All right, let’s say ‘absorb,’ then. The sun’s up there in the sky for a good part of every day, so you’re soaking up light for much, much longer than Yaltar spends eating, aren’t you?”
“I guess I hadn’t really thought of it that way,” Veltan admitted.
“You might want to consider cutting down on that, dear Veltan. If you keep absorbing light for so much of every day, you’ll start to get fat, and I don’t think the people of your Domain would like that very much. Nobody would take a fat god very seriously, you know.”
Veltan frowned slightly, and he absently ran his hand across his abdomen.
“I’m just teasing, dear Veltan,” Ara told him with a fond sort of smile. “If you start getting a bit portly, just stay out of direct sunlight for a little while.” She glanced at Yaltar, who was vigorously concentrating on his supper. “Has he had any dreams yet?” she asked very quietly.
“Not that he’s mentioned,” Veltan said. Then he gave Ara a startled look. “How did you know about that?”
“The old stories are still out there, dear Veltan, and old men are very fond of telling old stories. The old men of my village could go on and on about the Dreamers for hours on end. If their stories came anywhere close to what’s really happening, Yaltar should start dreaming before much longer, and that’ll be a sure sign that there’s trouble in the wind. You might want to have a talk with your big brother about that. When Yaltar does start having those significant dreams, I don’t think you should make a big fuss about it. Don’t alarm the boy. If you frighten him, he might have trouble sleeping, and if he doesn’t sleep, he won’t dream. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
“Not even a little bit,” Veltan agreed. “You’re very, very good at this sort of thing, aren’t you?”
“It’s a gift,” she replied. And then she laughed for no reason that Omago could see.
As the seasons progressed, Yaltar spent more and more of his time with Veltan in the house on the hill, and Ara took to carrying the little boy’s meals up the hill to Veltan’s house.
“You miss him, don’t you, Ara?” Omago asked her.
“Sort of. He’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing, though, so I won’t interfere. What would you like for supper this evening, Omago?”
“Anything you want to cook, dear,” Omago replied. “Surprise me.” He grinned at her.
“Very funny, Omago,” she said tartly.
It was not long after Yaltar’s sixth birthday when Veltan stopped by one morning to tell Omago and Ara that he’d be gone for several weeks on a matter of some importance.
“Go ahead, Veltan,” Omago said. “We’ll take care of Yaltar while you’re gone.”
“I knew that I could depend on you two,” Veltan said. And then he left rather hurriedly.
Ara frowned, but she didn’t say anything.
Nanton was a tall, bearded shepherd who had a large flock that grazed in the meadow above the Falls of Vash. Nanton seldom came down to the farmlands, since the voracious appetite of his sheep made the local farmers very nervous.
“They’re asking a lot of questions that don’t seem to have anything to do with what they’re supposed to be interested in, Omago,” Nanton reported in his quiet voice. “They claim to be traders from Aracia’s Domain, but as far as I could see, they didn’t have anything with them for trades.”
“Why would traders be wandering around up in the hills?” Omago asked with a puzzled frown.
“Exactly. The only people up there are shepherds like me, and we certainly don’t need any of those trinkets the traders from the East keep trying to foist off on silly farmers and their wives. There’s something else too.”
“Oh?”
“They don’t really look like real people. They’re very short, and they all wear grey clothes—with hoods that cover most of their faces—and they mumble.”
“Mumble?”
“They don’t speak clearly, and they all seem to have some kind of lisp.”
“Peculiar. You said that they were asking questions. What sort of questions?”
“They wanted to know how many people live in the vicinity of the Falls of Vash. I didn’t really think that was any of their business, so I lied to them.”
“Nanton!” Omago exclaimed.
“Grow up, Omago,” Nanton said. “I was catching a strong smell of ‘unfriendly,’ so I gave them something to worry about. I told them that there were thousands of us wandering around in those hills, and that we are all armed. I was going to give them a quick demonstration with my sling, but I decided to keep it out of sight. If my nose was right about ‘unfriendly,’ the less they know about us, the better.”
“You could be right, I suppose. Did t
hey ask you any other questions?”
“None that made very much sense. For some reason, they seemed to think that our Veltan and his sister Zelana hated each other, and that there was a perpetual war going on between her people and us. The answer I gave them was just about as vague as I could make it. I told them that over the years I’ve killed dozens of enemies. Of course, I sort of glossed over the fact that the enemies I’ve killed were wolves, not people, so I think they swallowed it whole. Is Veltan going to be gone for much longer?”
“I don’t know for certain, Nanton. He wasn’t too specific when he left.” Omago frowned. “Where’s your flock right now?”
The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers Page 5