The Girl from the Rune Yard

by Eric Guindon

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Sixagon

  No Place for a Girl

  Toil and Isolation

  Tax Collectors

  We're All Dead Here

  It Means Always Having a Friend

  Prove Yourself Worthy of It

  I Will Find the Bandits

  Monster is Too Mild

  They Will Pay

  I Will Find My Mother

  I Will Free her

  I Will Find Their Leader

  Doing the Right Thing

  Keep Reading

  Connect with the Author

  About the Author

  The Girl

  from the

  Rune Yard

  by Eric Guindon

  Text copyright ©2014 Eric Guindon

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter One:

  The Sixagon

  “What shape is this, Dada?” the little girl asked.

  She was holding up a piece of metal for her father’s examination. Kyria had picked it up because of its unusual shape. She was curious what to call it. She thought it might be something that ended in gon; the little girl knew that many-sided shapes were called polygons and this one had a lot of sides. Six; she had counted.

  She also knew that a five-sided shape was a pentagon. Kyria had learnt that word early because the Rune Yard, where her family lived, was that shape.

  It has to be a gon word of some sort, she decided. Sixagon? It didn’t sound right.

  Her father was busy talking to a customer who was buying a half-ton of metal from the yard and ignored her.

  “I don’t care if it has ten or fifty percent runic content, Jord,” he was saying. “Any runic content makes it mixed. Mixed metal has a price and that’s what you’re going to pay. I’m not going to charge you less because you picked pieces with more runes and that’s that.”

  The girl tugged on her father’s pant leg with her other hand to get his attention.

  “Not now, Kyria,” he dismissed her.

  The girl pouted, unhappy to be ignored. She turned around and went to sit in the garden to have a closer look at the designs on the metal.

  Kyria sat on the grass and put her metal curiosity down in front of her.

  She made sure her own shadow did not block the sun’s light from hitting the pretty whorls and shapes engraved on the plate. The piece was a flat thin sheet with six sides; she thought it was a lot like a piece of paper in a way, used as it was for writing . . . something.

  The problem was that the scribbling on the metal made no sense. Kyria was very proud that she already knew all the letter shapes and many words, but what was etched on the mysterious piece of metal was not any writing she had ever seen.

  She traced the designs with her finger, feeling them tactilely. They weren’t simply painted on; they were engraved and then filled with a different kind of metal. Each symbol on the plate, she noticed, was in fact made of a different material.

  A shadow fell across the plate. Kyria thought it was a cloud passing in front of the sun and gave it no mind, but then she heard her mother’s voice.

  “What is that you’ve got there, my sweetling?” she asked. Kyria looked up to see her mother bending down to examine the plate. The moment she saw it clearly, she recoiled.

  “Where did you find that?” she demanded. When Kyria moved to pick up the piece of metal, her mother pulled her away. “No! Don’t touch it!”

  Kyria didn’t understand why she was being scolded. She started crying.

  “I’m so glad you’re all right, my darling,” her mother told her, patting her back. “You have no idea what you were playing with, do you?”

  Kyria shook her head. “I found it by the gate, Mama. Why is it bad?”

  “You could have summoned a demon, or worse, you might have,” her mother said. This scared Kyria but it also kindled her natural curiosity.

  “Just with scribbles like that?” she asked.

  “Exactly like those,” her mother confirmed.

  Kyria was put to bed even though it was the middle of the afternoon. Her mother told her to rest and recover. Kyria tried to convince her she was fine, but the adult paid her no mind. After her mother closed the door, Kyria sat up in bed and listened through the walls as her mother screamed at her father.

  “I should have known better, I should!” she was yelling. “Your family and this cursed trade will bring ruin upon us! Nothing good can come of dealing in this metal! Your daughter could have died, you know? She could have!”

  Kyria heard her father plead with her mother to calm down.

  “She’s fine, Santha,” he told her. “No harm was done.”

  “Because, for once, we were lucky, yes we were!” Her mother sounded triumphant. “We should abandon this cursed place and find a farm, we should.”

  “What do I know about farming?” her father retorted. “This is my family’s business, has been for generations. We own rights to this place, you know?”

  “Rights?! Who’d want this place? Let those who want the cursed metal come and serve themselves, we should. It’s not right selling this stuff, anyway,” Santha declared.

  “You say that now, but that cursed stuff we’re selling puts food in our bellies, Santha,” Kyria’s father pointed out.

  Kyria had heard this argument before; her parents always fought about the Rune Yard. Her mama didn’t like it one bit but her papa said it was his family’s lot to run it. Kyria didn’t really understand the argument. To her it sounded like Mother wanted them to go somewhere new and strange and Father wanted to stay right where they were. Since she liked the Rune Yard, Kyria wanted to stay there, so she sided with her father. Not that anyone ever asked her opinion. She couldn’t wait to be big so that her parents would have to listen to her.

  As she lay in her bed, waiting for her mother to decide that she was ‘recovered’, Kyria daydreamed of one day owning the sprawling metal junk yard that was the Rune Yard.

  She liked that its fenced-in area formed a pentagon. She found its tall smooth and shining metal walls looming over their little wooden shack of a house comforting.

  If bandits attacked, I’d run into the Rune Yard, she fantasized. I’d be safe in there! Then it dawned on her that the reason she thought there was safety there, was because the bandits wouldn’t dare enter such a dangerous place.

  Make up your mind, silly. Is the Yard safe or dangerous? Everyone else seemed to treat the place as cursed and lethal. She didn’t understand why. To her it was a wonderland full of shiny beams and sheets of metal, and other things she did not have words to describe. Every time the gate was opened, she tried to get a peek at the inside while her father went in with his assistants, and she relished every glimpse.

  If it was so dangerous, how did her family work the Rune Yard? Kyria’s papa and his workers went into the Yard once or twice almost every day and came out unharmed. Was it safe only for some people?

  She fell asleep wondering about the Yard, picturing it in her mind, imagining what it would be like to be able to finally explore it.

  In her dream, she wandered the place she imagined the Rune Yard to be, crawling into places inaccessible to adults, thereby finding something . . . wondrous. She didn’t know what the wondrous thing was because just as she found it in her dream, her mother woke her for supper.

  The thought of this wondrous discovery stayed with Kyria for the rest of the night. Later, when she went to sleep, she hoped the dream would continue and she would learn what it was that she had found, but in the morning, she remembered nothing of her dreams. Disappointed, the girl distracted herself by walking the perimeter of the Rune Yard’s pentagon-shap
ed wall. By lunchtime, Kyria had forgotten all about the dream and was instead looking forward to a new glimpse into the Yard: her father had an order for a half-ton of mixed metal. He was going into the Rune Year after the lunch break, and she couldn’t wait for the gate to be opened.

  Kyria did not have any friends growing up. The closest village — also the closest other habitation — was over an hour’s ride away, not that it mattered. Parents would not want their children playing with the girl from the Rune Yard. Her family’s work made them pariahs, dealt with only when one needed metal, and even then, reluctantly.

  She didn’t mind the lack of kids her own age to play with; her rich collection of books filled this void in her life. The girl never felt lonely with a new book in her lap and her attentive father made sure that she always had plenty.

  When Kyria was ten, she decided she was big enough to become involved in her family’s work. She found her mother in the kitchen, first thing the morning after her tenth birthday.

  “Mama,” she began. “I want to have a meeting tonight.”

  “You do, now, do you?” Her mother was clearly amused by the request.

  “I’ll tell Dada. It’s important,” Kyria affirmed. Her mother nodded and returned to rolling out dough for the pies she was making.

  The little girl went in search of her father next, but she only found one of his assistants: a new man named Noram. Mother was always warning Kyria not to trust the Rune Yard workers

  “Those men, they take this work because they’re not welcome anywhere else, they do,” she would tell Kyria. This just made the little girl sad for the workers; she knew it didn’t feel good not to be wanted, so she always tried to be extra nice to them.

  “Hello Mister Noram,” she said brightly. “I’m looking for Dada. Have you seen him?”

  Noram had a shaved head and all sorts of drawings on his arms. Mother called them tattoos. He also had loads of scars. Kyria thought he might have gotten into a lot of accidents in his old job. He smiled at her, showing how few teeth he still possessed.

  “Well, aren’t you a precious little thing?” He said. “Your father’s in the Yard right now, kitten. He’ll be back by lunch time, I wager. You can wait with me if you wants.” The man patted the space beside him on the bench. Kyria sat down with him.

  “I know a story I could tell,” she proposed. The man smiled even wider. Kyria knew that very few of the men who came to work for her father knew how to read, so they always liked her stories.

  “I read this in a book Dada brought back from his last trip into the village,” she explained. “It’s about the Time Before.” Everyone liked stories about the Time Before. “This rich man, he wanted to know the answer to what happens after you die. He was very sad because his wife had died and he wanted to know if there really was such a thing as a soul. He spent half his fortune on philosophers, asking them to think on this subject and come up with the answer. The philosophers thought and thought, but in the end, they all agreed that they could not know for certain.” The little girl looked up at Noram. “I think he should have gotten his money back.”

  The worker agreed. “Or had them fellows killed,” he suggested. Kyria shook her head.

  “No, that’s too harsh,” she said.

  “If you say so, kitten.”

  The girl continued: “Disappointed, the rich man looked to magic for answers.” Noram’s eyes widened at this mention of the forbidden arts. “He called on all the best rune-smiths, gathering them to work together for him. He set them the task of making an intelligent magical consciousness that could answer the question the mortal philosophers could not. This cost him the other half of his fortune, but in the end the rune-smiths presented the rich man with the thinking rune-mind he had asked for.” Kyria always liked stories with rune-minds in them; she found them fascinating. “The rich man asked the question he’d been craving the answer to for so long. The rune-mind pondered, promising it would have the solution soon every time the rich man asked about its progress. In the end, the rich man died before the rune-mind could give him an answer. The man’s son inherited the rune-mind. He asked the magical creation about the question; he wanted to know whether it had discovered an answer yet. The rune-mind told him that only the dead knew the answer to such a question. The son was angry and asked why it had told his father that it was thinking for so many years. It replied that it had decided the best way to bring the man some peace was to give him hope of the answer.” Kyria turned to Noram, who was still working this out in his own head, “Isn’t that just like a rune-mind?” she asked. When the worker admitted this was the first story he’d heard about such a thing, Kyria could barely contain her excitement: she knew tons of stories about rune-minds! She was about to tell one of her favourites when she heard the gate opening.

  Noram jumped up and ran to the Yard’s entrance, looking terribly worried. He had expected the party to be gone until lunch and it wasn’t nearly time for lunch yet! She went to wait with Noram in front of the opening gate, but the workman turned to her, humourless.

  “Go back to your mother, kitten,” he ordered her firmly. “Now!”

  He scared her when he yelled like that. She ran back inside, but not to her mother. She went upstairs to the storage room, since it had a window overlooking the entrance. By the time she peeked out, the gate was open and the workers were coming out of the Yard.

  Kyria didn’t like what she saw on the men’s pale faces. They were too serious, their expressions too somber. There were usually eight men who worked for her father at any given time. Kyria saw five of them emerge from the Rune Yard to join Noram outside the gate. They all looked back through the open gate, where Kyria’s father and one other man worked to drag an improvised stretcher out. The man on the stretcher looked like he’d been attacked by bandits: he had cuts all over his body, deep ones. It took Kyria a moment to realize that the man was dead.

  She never bothered to ask her parents that night if she could start working in the Rune Yard. She knew the answer would be no.

  Chapter Two:

  No Place for a Girl

  When Kyria turned sixteen, her impatience got the better of her.

  “Surely I’m old enough to work in the Yard now, Papa,” she said at supper, not one week after her birthday. Her parents shared a look; her father raised his eyebrows at his wife, but she shook her head.

  “Come on!” Kyria was exasperated. “Stop debating things between just the two of you. I should be involved in this decision!” The look between Kyria’s parents continued for a second longer, ending only when her mother nodded.

  “If you have to know, sweetling, you’re not going to be working in the Yard at all. Not ever, you’re not,” her mother told Kyria with finality.

  “What!?” Kyria looked to her father for support. He could not meet her gaze.

  “The Yard is no place for a girl, Kyria,” he said, almost too low to be heard.

  “I can’t just sit here all day reading books for the rest of my life!” The girl exclaimed. “I’ll inherit this place from you someday, Papa. I should know the work!” Kyria could not believe her own parents hadn’t thought of this.

  Her mother shook her head. “If you inherit this cursed place, you would do best to sell it, if anyone will give you money for it. But you’re right, you won’t just sit here reading books. You’ve proved to me that you have no interest in home-making, perhaps it’s time you learnt a trade?”

  Kyria’s eyes bulged at the suggestion.

  “Get a trade?! Who will have me? Where am I to get an apprenticeship from, Mother?”

  “Your uncle, my brother, Edvar, is where!” Her mother responded. Kyria had never even met the man. Her surprise was obvious. “I have kept in touch with Edvar by mail. He would welcome you as his apprentice.”

  “What does Uncle Edvar even do?” Kyria asked. She knew her mother’s family hailed from Groandel, the nearest city of any size to the Rune Yard. Still, it was many days of riding away. She’d n
ever known what that side of her family did, but she could not imagine it being as interesting as the Rune Yard.

  “Edvar is a painter,” her mother said. This surprised Kyria. An artist? In her family?

  “Really? I could learn to paint from him? Become an artist?” she asked.

  “Oh, sweetling, I’m sorry, I am. I’ve confused you. He paints walls, houses, and the like.” Her mother patted Kyria’s knee condescendingly as she crushed her sudden hopes. “Edvar is interested in your knowledge of letters. He thinks you could help him expand into signage. That’s taking off over in Groandel, you know. Seems all the young folk there know how to read these days.”

  If I don’t fight against this, I’ll be shipped off to some far away city to spend the rest of my days painting signs for my uncle, Kyria despaired. The thought of the city had its attraction, but the idea of so many people in such a small space scared her too. The girl had seen the nearby village and found even that too crowded and busy. She liked the isolation of the Yard and the quiet tempo of the days there. She liked her parents. Moving away to Groandel would mean saying goodbye to them, for years, if not forever. She didn’t want to go.

  She decided then that she would not go, no matter what her parents decided for her. She declared this to them.

  Her mother laughed, her father frowned.

  “Come on, Kyria, don’t be difficult. This will be good for everyone,” the girl’s mother asserted.

  “If she doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t have to,” said Kyria’s father quietly but resolutely.

  The smile on Kyria’s mother’s face froze in mid laugh. She recovered smoothly.

  “Why don’t you think about it for a time, Kyria, why don’t you? We’ll talk about it in a while and see if you’ve changed your mind.” The girl saw the look her parents exchanged. It wasn’t Kyria her mother expected to sway, she realized, it was her father.

  That night, Kyria dreamt of the Rune Yard. She was back to being a little girl and found the wondrous thing again. This time her dream-self understood what it was she had found, but that knowledge was gone in the morning.