Eilinland- Through the Wall

by Bailey Davenport

  Rheen felt herself shrink back from him a little. She could tell it irked him for some reason whenever he was reminded of her time away, especially if it might have something to do with the warriors.

  “It was on the way up here,” she said, “just at a little town that we stopped at.”

  She sat rigidly until Jess had set up the board on the table and they started to play. Rove loosened back up, Rheen relaxed, and it ended up being a lot of fun. They substituted some buttons and corks and wadded-up paper for the missing pegs as needed and played two games through; Rheen won the first game and Jess won the second. By the time they were done, it was late and they were all ready to go to sleep.

  Chapter 10

  “I would say we have another whole day of rain at least,” said Aenin. He, Bierno, and Gillio had gathered in the downstairs of the inn for breakfast. They were discouraged when they woke up to see it still raining and even more discouraged at Aenin’s report. “Beyond that we have patchy clouds for a while which won’t give us clear skies until late tomorrow.”

  “Jekka’s probably going to take it poorly when you tell her,” said Bierno.

  “When I tell her?” asked Aenin with a smile. “I expected you would, being that you are the leader of this expedition.”

  “Well, I appoint you to tell her,” said Bierno, also smiling. “Or we just let her figure it out. It’s obviously raining now, and she can guess for herself how long it’s going to last.”

  At that moment, Jekka came into the room. She walked over, grabbed some toast and sausage off of Gillio’s plate, and left to go back to her room without saying anything. Bierno, Aenin, and Gillio all looked at each other in astonishment.

  “She took my sausage,” said Gillio.

  A few moments later, Davick came into the room to join them.

  “Is everything alright?” he asked. “I just passed Jekka in the hallway. She seemed upset.”

  “Yes, she doesn’t do well with being stuck indoors for very long,” said Bierno. “She’ll be fine when the weather changes.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Davick, relaxing. “Well, I’m going to go get a plate. I’ll be right back to join you.”

  “Could you grab some extra sausage while you’re up there?” asked Gillio.

  **********

  Rheen and her friends were equally disappointed to find it still raining in the morning. They started out playing another game or two of Dragonlord. After that, Kenn wanted to keep playing, but Rove wanted to stop. He went off to another part of the room and flipped through some newspapers, then just sat, staring off in the distance, thinking. After one more game, Rheen said she was done for a while and went upstairs to sit near one of the front windows. The windows were set up to display merchandise when the building had been a shop, so there was a nice wide ledge to sit on.

  It was gray and dreary outside, and she watched the water droplets pounding on the street, pouring off of the tattered awning over the door, and running in little streams across the ground.

  “Well, here I am,” she imagined writing in her journal. “I suppose this is where the adventure ends and I go back to my day to day life. It feels so familiar and so different at the same time. A few things about Vree have changed, but that doesn’t bother me so much. I think Rove has changed. There have been a few times he’s seemed agitated with me, but it’s nothing like it used to be. I don’t know how I feel about everything he said yesterday. There was a time I was dying to hear him say something like that – to know that he cared about me like I cared about him – but it’s been so long. I guess it will just take some time for me to settle back in and see if the old feelings are still there. And he never did say if he still feels that way, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

  “But actually none of that matters as much to me as how much has changed in my head. I just see things differently now. I feel more uncomfortable with stealing things now than I ever have. I suppose the guilt has been there in varying amounts ever since I started, but it’s almost unbearable now. I was actually relieved when Aenin took the jackalope and left it for the officers. What else is there to do though? I don’t really fit in anywhere now.”

  She sighed heavily and just stared out of the window.

  “You’re part of our team now, and here, we watch out for each other,” Jekka’s voice echoed in her head.

  “We came to find you because we were concerned and you’re our friend,” said Aenin’s.

  Was it actually possible they had no ulterior motives? Experience told her no, it wasn’t, but she wanted to hope that it was.

  At that moment, Rove walked up the stairs and came over to sit next to her.

  “What’s wrong, doll?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking,” she said. “I wasn’t really getting anywhere though.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  She felt her stomach tighten at the tone of his voice. “It’s good to be back,” she said, “but it’s also kind of strange.”

  “Strange?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “The city’s changed, you’ve changed, I’ve changed, and Jess and Kenn have even changed a little.”

  “You think it’s good change though?”

  She nodded but didn’t look him in the eye. Her answer had the effect she was hoping it would though, and his tone softened a little.

  “Well, I imagine it takes getting used to at any rate,” he said. “I suppose I can give you time for that. I was just worried you weren’t happy here and might be thinking of leaving again.”

  She shook her head and stared forlornly at her hands.

  **********

  A few miles away, Jekka was finishing up her own journaling.

  “That’s it for now,” she wrote. “Now I’m off to go listen to Gillio play the same song over and over again on his stupid instrument and watch the insipid rain pour down the windows for a few more unbearable hours before it’s late enough for me to fall into a blissful sleep and forget this miserable predicament we’re in.”

  She snapped her book shut, leapt off of her bed, and traipsed her way downstairs to find the others sitting at a table just about to get dinner. She sat down.

  “I have good news,” said Aenin. “I think the rain will stop tomorrow.”

  “Wonderful,” said Jekka blandly. She couldn’t stand being consoled, especially when she was in a bad mood.

  “Rain or no rain, I’m afraid I’m going to have to depart tonight,” said Davick. “I’ve stayed as long as I can, and at least the thunder and lightning have passed. It will be a wet road, but I have business to take care of that simply cannot wait.”

  “We will be sorry to see you go under such undesirable conditions,” said Bierno. “What business could possibly take you out into the night during a rainstorm?”

  “I work under a rather unforgiving boss who will be waiting to hear about progress made on a project I’m doing for him,” said Davick.

  “I understand,” said Bierno. “What is your trade?”

  “I’m helping to manage a business for now,” said Davick. “I was actually trained up as a blacksmith when I was younger though. I did that for a long time.”

  “Gillio started that when he was younger,” said Bierno.

  “It didn’t go well at all,” said Gillio.

  “It’s definitely not for everyone,” said Davick. “I discovered it wasn’t for me after a long time of doing it and moved on to better things. What about you all? Do you practice a trade when you aren’t out travelling?”

  “I have a farm I try to tend to as well as I can,” said Bierno. “My sons are getting older now and have been helping more as they are able.”

  “I work on a farm as well,” said Gillio.

  “I’m a huntress,” said Jekka when Davick turned to her. In truth, she didn’t exactly practice hunting as an occupation. She lived in the wilder forest to the south of the City of Eilin and stayed in her cat form most of the time. She hunted enough for herself and for
the family that took care of her horse, Breakfast, at their farm for her.

  “This is it for me,” said Aenin when Davick turned to him. Stars had a very peaceful and simple lifestyle. Many of his kin didn’t understand why he spent as much time as he did concerning himself with the happenings on earth.

  When they’d finished their meal, Davick went out and retrieved his horse and then rode through the dark, wet evening for many miles. He stabled his horse a few blocks from his home and then walked the remaining distance to the small, brick house where he lived alone. He entered and lit a lamp by the door and then carried it up to the attic. He opened the large window facing the street and then stepped back. A huge, wrinkled sniw flew in and landed in the middle of the floor.

  “Well?” it croaked.

  “Well, you managed to lose her,” said Davick.

  “I didn’t lose her,” said the sniw. “You were supposed to find out where she was going before she left or track her down after she left. My job was to separate her from the southerners, and your job was to not lose her. Now she’s lost and we either need to find her or completely change our plan.”

  “Our plan was perfect,” said Davick, “and it still is. The southerners don’t have any idea of where she is either, and they also don’t have any leads for their ‘mission.’ I gave them some false clues to keep them busy for a while longer and buy us some time.”

  “Maybe a day or two,” muttered the sniw. “That’s not enough time to find her, get her into the mansion, and talk her into betraying the southerners.”

  “We don’t know where she is or what’s going on in her mind now,” said Davick. “She might already be turning against them more each day. She did leave them.”

  “And she could also be getting closer to changing her mind and going back to them,” said the sniw. “You know how the south gets into peoples’ heads.”

  “She seemed far from being a southerner herself,” said Davick. “At any rate, we just need to find her and see what work we have to do after that. Shouldn’t you know where she is?”

  “I told you before: some sniw somewhere does, and if we weren’t doing this whole thing secretly, I could ask around and find out who her old friends are and where they live and it would all go smoothly. But I can’t just go asking around about it, can I? Word would get to our superiors so quickly and they would figure everything out and we’d both die deplorable deaths. If you think dealing with humans is risky, backstabbing, treacherous business, you have no idea what dealing with my kind is like.”

  “Well then I guess you should get back to searching,” said Davick. “Let me know as soon as you see anything, and I’ll join the search whenever this weather clears and I’m not otherwise occupied leading the southerners on a wild jackalope chase.”

  The sniw snarled, but it did as Davick commanded and left the house to continue its search for Rheen.

  **********

  The next morning was still heavily covered in clouds, but the rain had finally stopped. Jekka was up before everyone else and eager to get going. Davick showed up while they were eating their breakfast.

  “Finally we get a break in the weather,” he said, taking a seat at their table.

  “Indeed,” said Bierno. “We were just discussing our plans for today. We’ve decided that Aenin and I will go to the city jail and Jekka and Gillio will go to the fort you told us about. Would you like to accompany one of our groups?”

  “You’re not travelling all together?” asked Davick.

  “We figured we could save time this way,” said Bierno.

  “Oh, I see,” said Davick. “Do you have something else to do when you’ve finished? Is that why you’re in a rush?”

  “No,” said Bierno. “I suppose not. I just thought it would free us up sooner in case something comes of our investigations and we do have something to do.”

  “Say you discover something at either location,” said Davick. “Wouldn’t it be more efficient if you were all there together to respond to any situation immediately? You would cut out the time of having to go get the other group.”

  “That’s true,” said Bierno.

  “I wouldn’t mind having the chance to see both of the locations, either,” said Gillio. “As long as we’re waiting around for a clue, we mind as well do some sightseeing.”

  “Alright,” said Bierno. “We’ll travel together, then. I think we should go to the city jail first and then over to the fort.”

  They all agreed to the plan and were soon riding through the streets towards the center of the city. The moisture off of the cobblestone was lifting up in billowing clouds and joining the masses already hovering above them. The combination of the humidity and the cold was chilling.

  Soon, two large iron gates loomed up out of the fog. A guard stood in front of the gates and called out when he saw them.

  “What is your business here?” he demanded.

  “We’re looking for a missing child,” answered Bierno. “We wondered if we could come in and look for her.”

  “What is her name?” asked the guard.

  “Keillis Morlan,” said Bierno, giving the name he’d learned from talking to the girl’s parents.

  “She’s not in here,” said the guard.

  “Could we just take a quick look anyway?” Bierno asked.

  “This isn’t some public park I can just let you go tramping around in,” said the guard. “And I have more than one reason to think your girl isn’t in there.”

  “Why is that?” asked Bierno.

  He lowered his voice a little. “I’m not supposed to talk about it because my superiors don’t want there to be a panic in the city, but there’s been a lot of inquiries recently like yours. We used to get someone in here asking about a missing person every once in a while, but there have seemed to be a lot over the past few months. I think there’s something going on.”

  “Do you have any idea where they might be?” asked Bierno.

  “Not a clue.”

  “Do you have information about the other people who came looking for someone?”

  “No. I only vaguely remember what some of them looked like, and I doubt that would help you much.”

  “Well, you’ve been a big help anyway,” said Bierno. “We’ll be on our way now.”

  “What are your thoughts?” asked Davick when they were out of earshot of the guard. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

  “It occurred to me he could be covering something up,” said Bierno, “but it seemed like he was being honest.”

  “Might be worth sneaking in another way, just to be sure,” said Davick.

  “The guard was right,” said Aenin. “Keillis isn’t in there.”

  “The stone on the building was too small and too brown to match the walls in the vision we all had,” explained Jekka. “Unless the stone looks different on the inside than on the outside, that wasn’t the place.”

  “I wouldn’t have noticed that in a hundred loras,” said Gillio. He was referring to the stars’ measurement of time. Since stars lived such a long time, they found it easier to refer to time in larger increments. One loras was equal to one hundred years, so even though Aenin was 2,778 years old, he would say he was 27 loras because he had not yet reached his 28th birthday. It was a common expression for humans to use “a hundred loras” to just mean a very long time.

  “I hadn’t noticed it either,” said Bierno. “Good work, Aenin and Jekka.”

  Davick still seemed reluctant to move on, but Bierno had the final say and was confident in his comrades’ observations. They made their way south and west out of the center of the city and back towards the outskirts.

  The fort was just a few miles west of the road they’d rode in on four days earlier. It was situated on the peak of an outcropping of rock which gave it a wonderful vantage point over its enemies back when it had been in use. A wide open field spread out before it, and a neighborhood had been built up behind it. The warriors and Davick approached the
fort from the neighborhoods behind.

  It would not have been uncommon on a nicer day for them to come across other people enjoying the view and historical significance the fort had to offer, but the dank weather had driven everyone else away.

  They rode through the archway and into the center courtyard. There were towers in each corner and a wall with a boardwalk between them. The riders were able to identify most of the buildings scattered throughout the courtyard as they wove their way through to the far side. There were the kitchens, living quarters, storage, and lastly the stables. They stopped and tied up their horses inside.

  “The stone matches up,” said Bierno looking at the large, gray stone walls. “Gillio and Jekka – go search the north towers and walk through the three buildings on that side. We’ll do the same on this side and then meet back here when we’re finished.”

  They parted ways. Gillio and Jekka retraced their steps back towards the archway they’d come from.

  “He did it again,” said Jekka.

  “Coincidence,” said Gillio.

  “It’s not.”

  “It is.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Jekka.

  “He has probably just noticed the pattern of significant things happening whenever he sends us out on an errand together, and we all want something significant to come of this investigation,” said Gillio.

  “You think you only stir up trouble when we’re together?” asked Jekka. “What about all of the dragon incidents? What about the Konfiera family? That dog in Tusca? The sea monster everyone loves to talk about? Rheen?”

  “You were there when we picked up Rheen,” said Gillio.

  “I was there when we saw her,” said Jekka. “Not when she was told to join us immediately on a weeklong venture over the border.”

  Gillio sighed and forgot about their argument. “That wasn’t such a bad thing. She was fun to have around.”

  “It wasn’t such a bad thing,” Jekka agreed after a moment of silence.

  Gillio looked over at her. “What do you mean? You seemed so opposed to it.”

  “I’m opposed to everything to begin with,” said Jekka. “It gives me a chance to decide whether or not I will continue to be opposed to it. I’ve decided that I am not opposed to Rheen.”