“But – but Mister Ages—”
“I tole you, Mister Ages is a liar, and we’re ne’er safer with him than we is out in those woods.” Dwain climbed up onto the chair cushion. Its seat shivered beneath his footpads. He pushed the window shutter wider open and gestured Regina to get a move on.
But she hesitated. Could it be true? They barely knew Astral. But he saved them both from certain doom – or so she’d thought. But it was Dwain who pulled them from the tavern cellar. It was Dwain who carried her up the Blood Hills…
And, when it came right down to brass tacks, it was Dwain she trusted most of all, out of anyone. What cause did he have to lie to her, to put her in any danger?
Regina swallowed hard. She hopped down off the bed and flattened the wrinkles in her poncho, before rushing towards their escape.
“Oh, wait!” She paused in mid stride and circled back around towards the bed.
“What? Reggie, c’mon!” Dwain frantically waved her forward as he straddled the window frame.
Regina scrambled up the edge of the mattress and plucked her father’s ruined map out from under the safety of her pillow. She held the parchment to her heart for a moment, then stuffed it down the front of her poncho. She rushed back towards the window, and as soon as Dwain saw that she was on her way, he slid outside and vanished beneath the sill.
Regina climbed the chair and started to mount the window frame when a distant, ragged, cough brought her attention back to the ajar bedroom door.
She couldn’t see anything past the waver of candlelight glow, but it sounded like Astral was deep in conversation with himself. Muttering away, the sound of pages turning, a quill tip clinking against inkpot so clear, yet so far away.
Regret panged in her heart. Regret for Astral, for the yearning in Regina’s soul for homeness, for safety and all that the kind old wizard had offered them in return for just a few meagre chores around the Hollow.
It was a strangely adult feeling, considering how much she truly missed Altus, and her parents, and playing in the streets with her friends while the grownups worked and tinkered away outside their shops and homes and shouted hullo and good-day back and forth…
“Reggie, get a move on!”
Regina shook the thoughts away, buried the regret deep, deep, down under her belly. She wiped away a single tear and turned her back on the bedroom door and what may have been.
The Harvest isn’t coming. And never will it come, again.
The night air was cold against her face. Dwain waited for her on the grass directly beneath the window frame, scanning the area to make sure all was good and clear.
Regina swallowed hard. The uneven ground seemed a thousand feet below her. The sheer thought of it reminded her of the nasty fall she took back in the basement of the Scythe and Stone. Fear was tight around her like an iron vice.
“What are you waiting for?” Dwain urged her. “Jump and I’ll catch you.”
“But … but, it’s so far down…”
“I’ll catch you! Come on, then, it’s not that far, just a couple feet, yeah!”
Regina found the strength to swing her legs out over the edge of the window. She clutched the frame with both paws, and jerked her body forward – but hesitated before weightlessness could take her.
“Is … are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked.
“What do you mean is it a good idea? I dropped down and I’m fine. You will be too, I swear it! C’mon now, we’re half way there now, where do you mean to get outside, sneak about between the tables and books like vandal-hearts, hopin’ he’s blind enough to not notice? That’s foolish thinkin’. Now, let’s get a move on, lass! The longer we wait around, hummin’ and hawin’, the shorter our night gets!”
Regina shook her head. “I mean away from here.” The acquisition pounded at the forefront of her throat, tried desperately to push past the edge of her tongue: After all Mister Ages has done for us, is running away like this really the right thing to do? But fear of being wrong, and the deep trust in Dwain’s own intuition as a boy near adulthood, kept her at a loss of how to properly express her concern. “Why … why don’t we just wait until the father sun comes up and—”
“And let the canines see us in full view? Reggie—” Dwain paused, took a deep breath. He nodded and looked her in the eye. “Regina Lepue, I promise on me very heart, nothing bad will e’er happen to ye while we stay astride.”
Regina didn’t budge. A dull ache throbbed in her heart. “…You said that before.”
Evident pain raked across Dwain’s face. He looked away and said nothing.
“…Is it true? What you said?” Regina asked him. “That you left to gather food, and hit your head on rocks? Like you said during breakfast?”
Dwain looked back into Regina’s eyes and held a sturdy gaze. His lips trembled hesitation, as though he were trying to work the words out in his brain for himself.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I made a promise to ye and I intend to keep it.”
Still, she hesitated.
Dwain closed his eyes, sighed.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left ye behind like that. It was a droppings thing t’do, and … and…” He shook his head. “No more excuses. I won’t leave ye again.”
“You promise?” Regina asked.
“Under any circumstance, no matter where we are, what happens, good or bad, I promise ye a vow – a bond, unbroken,” Dwain stated, firmly. “The two of us, yeah, wherever we go, we’ll be forever at the hip.”
“Promise?” Regina urged him.
“I promise, cross me heart and hope ter croak,” Dwain said, “Now let’s get ye down and out of this prison-hole, yeah?”
Regina nodded and pushed off the frame. Dwain caught her in an instant. They shared a brief smile. Regina nuzzled her nose into his cheek before he set her down.
“C’mon,” Dwain said, gently.
He led her by the paw over to the hooded stall, where Phalanx’s wild brays carried over the Hollow. Just as Dwain had predicted, thunder rumbled overhead. A distant flash of lightning clawed across the purple skies at blustery hilltop pine trees far beyond the Hollow’s borders.
“We’re taking Phalanx?” Regina asked.
“How else is we ter make it ter Keeto?” Dwain found Phalanx’s saddle and a bridle neglected in a heap overtop a nearby wooden barrel. “The mud will swallow us up if we try ter make it bare footpad.”
“He can understand us, you know,” Regina said.
“He can understand carrots on strings, is what he can understand.”
“No, it’s true. I saw it! Phalanx is smarter than any donkey. Maybe if we ask nicely, he’ll take us.”
Dwain regarded her with a flat stare.
“It’s true!” she pressed. “Let me talk to him. He likes me!”
Dwain sighed with a shake of his head, and shrugged. “I’ll give ye a boost, then, yeah. Flies n’ honey, n’ all that…”
With some effort, Regina climbed up onto Dwain’s shoulders. He was just tall enough that she could peek up through the bars in Phalanx’s stable door, with the edge of the frame aligned with her chin.
Phalanx’s face appeared amidst the darkness between the stable door’s bars. He brayed out at Regina, and flashed her perfectly-set mule teeth, black gums all gunked up with grass and oats.
“Hullo!” Regina exclaimed in as best a whisper she could muster. “Remember me? We met on the culvert in the woods yesterday!”
Phalanx Andromedon considered Regina with narrowed eyes, chewing slow and silent on whatever remnants of oats and grass he had on his tongue. Without warning, he snorted hot air into her face.
The stench of donkey breath was almost more nauseating than anything Regina had ever endured. She fought back the urge to gag, and shook sense back into her head. She cleared her throat. “Phalanx, can you take us to Keeto Town? We need to get there, but … but we don’t really know the way, like you do.”
Phalanx snorted, shook his ea
rs again, this time with a look of total disapproval at her. He then dove shoulders-deep into that night’s supper bucket.
“Please,” Regina begged.
Phalanx let out a haughty bray. His neck craned back up to level gazes with Regina, shaking his head a definitive No. Just then, the hooded stall quaked under another boom of thunder that sent the mule screeching back into the safety of the bucket.
“Please, Phalanx,” Regina begged him. “You are the only one who can help us now.”
“This ain’t no good,” said Dwain. He lowered her to the grass. “The only way he’ll move is if we goad him enough. Reggie, go to the garden and get some carrots, yeah?”
Regina sighed, nodded.
Dwain found Astral’s oil lantern neglected on the ground by the barrel of oats. He patted down his pockets for a book of matches and struck one alight. He brought a dim glow to the lantern and passed it off to Regina. “Here, take this, yeah.”
“I’ll be back.” she retreated into the night, letting Dwain step forward to equip Phalanx with the saddle and bridle. Their nasty jeers to each other carried over the wind as she crossed the property under the bobbling aid of the oil lantern.
Astral’s vegetable garden was at the far end of the Hollow, tucked away in the corner opposite the cabin. She could just barely see that the path ahead led straight between the wishing well and the porch. As she hedged closer, Regina spotted the bedroom window at the side of the house, its shutter still wide open and pitch darkness seeping from within. She half expected to see Astral there, looking out at them in disbelief, but there was only the image in her imagination, nothing else.
Dwain swore something indecipherable. Regina turned her attention back towards the path, and veered away from the cabin, nervous of passing by the front window where Astral’s study was. Candlelight flickered within.
As she came near to vegetable garden, the night tricked her gaze upon a dark mass within the crops. The light off of the lantern then caught against piercing wide eyes semi-hidden amongst breezy cornstalks. Menacing razor-teeth jutted forward into a frozen snarl and leapt out at Regina.
It was a canine.
The lantern fell from her grasp, shattered against the ground, and extinguished. Her screams of terror echoed over the whole of the Hollow.
Dwain started towards Regina as soon as she scrambled back towards the safety of the hooded stall. “Reggie, what in the blazin’ whiskers—” Her yips of fright alerted Phalanx, the natural coward, who began to whine and kick at the walls that now confined him.
“It’s a canine!” she sobbed. “Th – there’s a canine in the garden!”
This surprised Dwain. His eyes then hardened. He grabbed a pitchfork about twice his size off its hooks, nearby. “Point the way.”
“No!” Regina shrieked. “No, you mustn’t! Dwain, please, we have to escape! We have to warn—” A sudden force grabbed Regina from behind. She screamed bloody murder at the top of her lungs. “No! No! No don’t eat me! Nooo!!!”
“Child, what has gotten into you?!” It was Astral. “Oh, bother. Are you trying to get to Keeto Town? For heaven’s sake, the both of you are incorrigible. Dwain Spikeclaw, what are you doing with my pitchfork?”
“Mister Ages!” Regina cried out with relief. She clung tight around his portly belly.
“Reggie saw a canine in the garden,” said Dwain. “I’m off to kill it, yeah.”
“What nonsense is this?! Dwain – Dwain, you will do – oof! – no such thing!”
Astral attempted to wrangle the screeching skunk that now frantically clawed up his robes in search of refuge, with little success. Her terror brought such wild strength, and stench, that she nearly knocked the both of them right to the ground.
“By the breath of the goddess, settle yourself!” Astral snagged Regina by the scruff of the neck. “No one is going to get killed – unless, my dear, you wish to have our heads bashed in beneath Phalanx’s stomping hoofs if he escapes! Now, what has gotten into you?”
Regina wrenched herself around in Astral’s grasp, sobbing and screaming at the top of her lungs. “Please, we must escape from here, or else it will kill us!”
“Oh, bother. I’ve told you both a thousand times, no canines live in these woods, nor ever have. Come, child, show me what you saw. Dwain, stay here and mind Phalanx.”
“No! Please, Mister Ages, no! It will get us! Don’t you see it? Why don’t you see it?!” But Astral paid no mind save for a firm clutch upon Regina’s arm, and a hoof against his snout, while he hobbled out across the property, dragging her along.
“Oi!” Dwain shouted. “Ye take yer damn hoofs offa her!”
Astral turned his body just enough for Regina to see that Dwain stormed towards them with the pitchfork pointed for Astral.
“Enough,” Astral said, and in the din of the night Regina watched the old porcine sweep a great robed arm at Dwain that seemingly smacked him to the ground despite the gap of air between them.
“Dwain!” Regina shrieked.
With a firm hold still around Regina’s arm, Astral tossed the pitchfork away from Dwain and dragged the little hedgehog, now hissing and swearing with pain, to his footpads, pinching his ear between a firm hoof. “Come along now, the both of you. For heaven’s sakes. You’re both being ridiculous.”
He dragged the children kicking and screaming across the pitch darkness of the rainy property. The nearer they drew towards the crop garden, the more Regina saw before them a world of flame-licked rooftops, glazed and empty eyes – the smell of blood – and the burning of the Harvest. Her papa lying in the mud, covered with a windblown canvas sheet – Westley Horne, begging for help beneath the crushing weight of his dying grandpapa. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to—”
“Regina Lepue! Open your foolish eyes at once!” Astral boomed.
Her eyes shot wide open.
There were cornstalks. There were turnips and bean sprouts. There was the canine, crouched low to the rain-absorbed soil on all fours. It did not move. It did not even look their way. It instead remained a waiting hunter, ready to pounce upon the staked tomatoes before it.
Dwain broke free from Astral’s grip to have a look for himself. He sighed and shook his head at her. “Reggie, look…”
Regina hiccupped through fresh tears as she gazed dumbfounded upon a monster sewn together with cassowary hide and held aloft with dowel and string to ward off unwanted scavengers and thieves. Its black pelt was greasy from rainfall, wooden footclaws old and gray and stained with dirt, glass eyes and aluminum teeth gleamed against the light of the moon.
“A crop guardian,” she said. “It – it’s a crop guardian…”
“Is that what they’re called in your village?” said Astral in a now gentler tone. “Go ahead and inspect closer.”
Regina shook her head. “I – I don’t … I don’t want to.” She kept a steady eye upon the false creature for a long, long, time. She found her tail and caressed the fur in slow, methodical strokes. Dwain’s scent was strong, then, and she felt his arms around her little body.
New words from Astral’s lips caught her ears, made them twitch against each syllable. “I swore when we met that no harm would come to either of you under my care. Regina. Dwain. I promise this on my life.”
Regina looked up at him through falling tears, but Astral’s eyes were hidden in darkness beneath the wide brim of his crookedly-pointed hat. She felt Dwain’s cheek against the top of her head. She held her friend close, and fought back the fearful, embarrassed, tremors that rippled through her limbs as she started to cry.
“It’s okay, yeah,” Dwain whispered to her. “It’s all okay, then, yeah…”
Astral drew the children into an embrace that was warm, and gentle, that protected them from the icy wet of the rainstorm that boomed and crackled, overhead.
“You have shown great strength in coming so far all on your own,” he said. “But now is the time for you both to rest. Grieve your losses
, so that you may find greater strength. Nothing else is expected of you.”
10. Battle for Bridge Town
As the days went on, Regina and Dwain struggled to rediscover what it meant to live in normalcy. Though their bodies took the time to mend and heal from the atrocities they’d experienced – it was internal anguish that proved to be the most devastating wound to mend. Astral knew that without careful attention, any provocation could bring infection – deep-rooted infection, that if left unchecked, would lead to the destruction of all innocence.
Astral peered out into the Hollow through the window over the sink, taking a deep drink of orange pekoe from his favourite tin cup. Across the way, he found the children working away together in the vegetable garden, cutting free and bundling together whatever crops they could muster. They had been at it all morning.
With new mouths to feed, Astral was sure to run low on supplies. The day to travel for Keeto Town had come. He prayed the pests and blight had left enough produce to barter with. He prayed to have made the right choice.
Canines devastated Altus Village.
Astral shook the thought away. That’s what the children had told him, and that’s what he had seen through their memories. But it was impossible. The writing was in the dirt! Galheist, in its unification since the Falling, didn’t offer refuge to anyone who once associated under the Empire, let alone dared to figuratively consume their neighbours. Canines simply did not exist here.
But what of this “Alexia the Sage” legend? An idea so well-concocted that wheda who once unified against all canines now swore to kill each other because of the canines.
Incarnate of Mother Azna or not, the Zuut had seemed to naively unwind careful centuries of hard work and stringent border regulation. It seemed as though civil war between the alliance who worshipped the Zuut, and the retainers of tradition who worshipped Alexia the Sage, was tearing everything back apart. By the claws of canine bandits or not, Altus Village was but a casualty in the name of unnecessary war and bloodshed.
The Book of Wind: Page 7