Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  After a couple moons, when every house had a roof and every telf an occupation, Hardt took aside old Dab, the chef and Tavich. The hatchling, inspired by the drabness of the buildings had experimented by himself until he found a way to make paints which would adhere to the buildings without dragon breath. In his exploration, he’d found a variety of unusual plants which he’d brought to Hardt for identification. In Dab’s house, the bulk of which he’d converted into a kitchen of vast proportions including an archway opening directly out to a pit suitable for full-community feasts, Hardt pulled out some of these unusual plants and berries. He set them on a counter along with some other small items he’d created or found and rubbing his hands together he set out to show the two how to concoct no less than seven different festival specialties.

  Some experimentation had to be done as it had been over six and a half decades since Kiersta had shown him the closely guarded secrets of midnight candy making but in the end, the three were more than satisfied with the array of treats before them and more than hungover. Precisely three suns later, the first festival of Pacereborn was begun.

  A full moon hung low over the distant trees on the opposite side of the sky from the also fully bright, though smaller second moon, Aeschent. Hardt sat on one of the smooth chairs some clever dTelfur had carved out of the burnt tree stumps around the edge of the village staring up at the small circle of light. dTella was cuddled in his lap, sound asleep after a hard day of games and good food. Several more youngsters, including Tavich were nodding on the blanket spread out at his feet. He’d been calling the lander tales Vyck always called to the children at Stray’s festivals. The fact that most of his audience had slipped away into their own dream-told stories failed to silence him in the middle of his favorite tale.

  “Then the moon,” he continued, glancing down at the lightly snoring girl in his arms, “bonded with the brave star and invited him to share her sky. So each night the bondstar hikes out before his love to clear the path so she may bring her light to all the creatures of the land and lakes and every time one of them goes dark, the other shares their light. Back and forth each night they make love, trading their light.”

  “That was beautifully told.” A quiet, unfamiliar tenor startled Hardt from the seat. “But I always wondered what happens when neither needs light, like tonight?”

  There were no dTelfur who stood as tall as Hardt and this stranger was standing a full head taller, though that head was very nearly clean of hair. He had a large travelling pack slung over one shoulder and was wearing a vest covered with pockets.

  “On bright nights, they watch while we make love.”

  Tinkling laughter. A blond-haired young woman sporting another immense backsac stepped out of the shadows to stand beside the unfamiliar man. “And on nights when both are dark?”

  “Well then the sparks between all lovers leap into the sky to light them. Which means that on dark nights…”

  “On dark nights, we should all make love.” The woman’s eyes sparkled, flirting with Hardt. “For the moon’s sake.”

  “And her bondstar.” The lander man added, dropping his sac to the ground with a thud and possessively wrapping his arms about the laughing creature.

  Hardt reached a hand out and both strangers put a hand beneath his in greeting.

  “I’m Hardt.”

  “Hello. I’m Javi and this jealous man is Dance.”

  “Dance?” Hardt raised his eyebrows.

  Dance released his bond and lifted the sac from her back, sighing. “Yes. I was born during a festival. It’s a complicated tale.”

  “Then you must wait and call it for more than just myself, if you are staying?”

  The two looked at each other quickly and then spoke at once.

  “If there is room…”

  “We heard there were…”

  Dance laughed and bowed to Javi when they both stopped talking in favor of the other and she began again.

  “If there is room for us, we would love to stay for a while. We come from two different countryshales we never much liked and we’re trying to find a home of our own.”

  Dance took up the narrative as Hardt laid dTella on the blanket with the other children. “Faite, the old hermit mage that wanders this area told us that Pace was being rebuilt. We thought we’d come by and see if you need a healer and a piper.”

  “I build instruments as well as I play them and I can put my hand to more useful craftswork as well.”

  Hardt interrupted her, “As you can hear, we need more skilled musicians and if you can teach the children, I know one or two who have shown some talent.” He was about to tell them that they had no healer, but a lander healer might not be useful for all the dTelfur’s needs so instead he said, “and there is a cellar by the old healer’s cabin, or where it used to be that has a storeroom filled with supplies that mean nothing to us.”

  “What he’s not saying well,” Tareay’s confidently accented voice slipped into the conversation from behind Hardt, “is that we repaired many of the houses we didn’t need in hopes that others would find their way to settle with us in Pacereborn,” She accented the new name, “ so you are very welcome.” Stepping past Hardt, holding a hand out in proper lander greeting to the strangers, she added “I’m Tareay.”

  “What an unusual name. I’m Javi.”

  “It was a kind of toast to my grandmother, Ray, who had been desperately wanting a granddaughter. My father took me up from my mother’s teat and held me up to the family saying ‘To Ray.’ It stuck.”

  They all laughed politely until Tareay, a little heady from her first conversation with real landers and uncertain about her lie, barreled on, grabbing Dance’s bag from the ground and leading them into the shale proper.

  “Well come on in and join the festival. We’ll dump these in one of the empty houses for now and then get you some of this fabulous drink Hardt invented.”

  “Thank you, Tareay. I’m Dance, by the way. Don’t ask.”

  “Don’t ask what?” Tareay raised her arms sideways in a casual dTelfur greeting to Dance, but only Hardt noticed.

  He gently restrained her with a hand on her arm as she began to lead the strangers away. “Go on ahead, just follow the drums. I need Tareay to help me gather the infants.”

  “How am I doing?” She was breathless with excitement.

  “Well, it’s ‘breast’ not ‘teat’ for humans and landers don’t tend to wave their wings at each other. Otherwise you’re doing great. Slow down and breathe. Don’t get too excited.”

  “This is terror, not excitement, Hardt. What if they figure us out?”

  “One thing at a time. First give everyone, including them, time to decide if they’ll fit in your community.

  “They seem nice.”

  “Yes they do.”

  “I hope we like each other.”

  “Time will tell.”

  Time told fairly quickly in the case of Dance and Javi. Only a few hours after their arrival in PaceReborn, the dTelfur struggling to keep the music going with their meager instruments and abilities dragged Javi bodily to the stage and abandoned her there. The first song she played on a long double-reed pipe which Hardt couldn’t name was a jig which had every brave soul on the dance floor gyrating with formless abandon. Dance set his name to action and coerced an agile old flight instructor onto the floor with him where he taught her the actual steps of the jig.

  The older telfs screamed for slow music when the raucous applause that followed the close of the first song died down. Javi screamed right back at them, mocking their laziness, but her fingers tapped a haunting beat on the small drum she pulled into her lap. It had a distant, hollow tone which changed pitch as her hands moved skillfully around it. When she opened her mouth and sang a long, clear, mournful note, every telf in the converted nursery/dancesquare found a seat and held their breath.

  It was a short song, but for long moments after the last notes faded away into the distant trees, the dTelfur sat s
taring in silence at the lander girl. More than one ex-rider hid their face in their hands or on their neighbor’s shoulder. She had sung of fear, of attack, of guilt, and of forgiveness. The story was of a young man on his first hunt, when he brought down a beautiful yirghael, a kind of winged coney, which had nested near his cottage since he was a little boy. It was a plain story which moved mainly the few hunters of the crowd until the last verse, the young man’s final lament, made clear what the song had really been about.

  “I miss the days before the fire.

  My eyes were clear. My heart was true.

  But our crossing vows burnt on that pyre,

  and I long for the days when dragons flew.”

  Javi sat quietly on the platform, the drum silent in her lap, waiting for the recrimination she expected to come from these strangers. She had written the song the very hour word came to her village of the massacre at Burntbos plaine. This now nearly a full frseason later was the first she’d sung it for any but Dance and she sat and waited for the heirs of Pace to tear her to pieces.

  But they didn’t.

  They didn’t breath while she was singing, didn’t move when she was done. She looked to Dance, sitting off to a side, watching the crowd warily when he was suddenly accosted by the woman who had led them into the village.

  “We’re new settlers here. We’re not the Pace that set the place on fire.” She was passionate but Dance had no response and she stood and turned to face the rest of the silent settlers. “We’re landers.” She shouted. “And we follow the crossing covenant…”

  She was interrupted by the tall, old man they’d first met. “The vows.”

  “Yes, them. We won’t,” Here she seemed to falter trying to remember, “shed blood until….”

  A short man, introduced earlier as Gyari stood in the middle of the crowd and took up her quoted vow with confidence. “until we are hoarse from talking.”

  A supporting cry ran through the crowd and a young boy stood on his bench and yelled to the old man, Hardt, “Do the vows say we should listen too?”

  “No, they don’t, Tavich.”

  Another woman bowled over the old man’s response, shouting from the back of the crowd. “But we will. We’ll listen more than talk.”

  “Yes!” Many voices shouted with Tavich, including Dance’s.

  The cry came from nowhere and was echoed by every voice until the musicians’ platform trembled with the reverberations. “So we’ll be ready, when the dragons fly again!”

  Javi stood with the rest as Dance ran up to join her on the stage, barely able to whisper, “I think we’ve finally found a home” before they were mobbed by their new neighbors’ welcoming fervor.

  Four

  ∞

  The summer was good to Pacere as the shale came to be called. Several of the children did show a great deal of promise and the instruments Javi taught them to make were fashioned from branches cut from the healing trees, as were all the repairing wood, so that no living tree was ever cut down. Those children who had less aptitude for music still learned the landers’ songs with fervor, reveling in taking the tales home at night to their “parents.” In this way the dTelfur learned more about landers than Hardt was able to tell them. Dance quickly adjusted to the settlers’ extreme modesty and wariness to medicine by teaching them how to care for themselves and offering his services primarily as an advisor.

  New landers appeared in the shale from time to time and some stayed. One such would-be settler established Tareay as Lord of the shale when he was caught stealing food from Dab’s kitchen by Javi. Javi confronted the man immediately and he struck her so hard, her nose bled. Holding the bottom of her shirt to her face, she’d gone directly to Tareay and Hardt’s cabin and pounded on the door until they woke up. She demanded they both return with her to Dab’s house and that Tareay measure the spills and offer a bloodprice. The thief, however, had kicked the dirt around the blood and so hidden the evidence. But Dab, who had witnessed the incident, led the growing crowd to the man’s chosen cottage where Tareay, after Hardt denied her any advice, had the thief gather his things and escorted him to the edge of the wild grasses which marked the border of the shale.

  In the morning, Tareay gathered the oldest members of the community, Hardt agreeing to come along only as an observer, and established an official council of elders, declining Javi’s assumption of her lordship. The elders however, a mix of faux and real landers, appointed her Lord until such time as they were able to choose amongst themselves a primary Elder. She accepted the responsibility grudgingly, feeling very much out of her depth.

  By the dying season, Pacere had become a new home to as many landers as dTelfur and nearly all the cottages were occupied. By some magic, considering their late planting and lack of expertise as farmers, the fall harvest was greater than expected and despite the population growth, quickly the problem arose of where to store all the food, which Tareay declared against all lander tradition to belong to the entire community equally. Surprisingly, this declaration inspired a sense of responsibility in the real landers of the community. Instead of bartering for their food, they would have every right to it now and they felt a need to earn that right. Their solution was to gather everyone not already involved in the farming and build a multi-room silo for the storage of all the harvest.

  It was this project and the long, stormy dead season that followed, more than any other event which cemented a bond between the original settlers and their new neighbors. The festival celebrating the silo and the successful harvest, which had been delayed by the violent onset of winter, welcomed spring with joyful abandon. A community had been forged and any mistakes made by the feigning landers were chalked up to the unusual nature of the shale.

  So it was that in the early moons of spring, when all available hands had gone off to make light work of the planting, Hardt announced to Tareay that it was time for him to return to the dTelfur village. She was unsurprised when he delayed her departure for the fields and asked her to walk with him instead around the village.

  Her pace quickened at his words and she turned her face from him. “It’s a long journey, you shouldn’t go alone.”

  “It’s five days.”

  “Ha! You’re four hundred something sheddings old. You won’t make it in five suns.”

  “Eighty-something.” He glanced about automatically for real landers and lowered his voice. “I’m barely an adolescent.”

  “Let me send someone with you.”

  Her voice was distant and resigned to Hardt’s ear and he watched her quietly as she bent to pick some weeds from between the stones of the rainy-day walkway. It was several moments before he struggled to a seat on the stones and spoke.

  “You won’t come yourself?”

  “You made me Lord, Hardt. I don’t have time.” Still she wouldn’t look at him and so he reached out a very old, very shaky hand and turned her face towards him.

  “That’s not why.”

  Her eyes turned quickly up and caught his. They were sad, but not overcome. “I won’t belabor this goodbye. If you’re going, go and go today.”

  “Help me up. I want to visit the nursery.”

  She helped him stand and he let her hold him more than he really needed her to. When they began walking again, he kept her hand in his. The sun was hanging low in the eastern sky. He shut his eyes, tilting his face to the warmth as he walked with his young lover through the streets of the rebuilt shale.

  “One morning a long time ago, I told you that you were afraid you would have to watch me age and die.”

  “You were right.”

  Hardt looked away towards the sound of the river as they passed by the blacksmith’s forge, recently rekindled by the displaced son of a lander smithy. He spoke with a false air of nonchalance. “Is that why we were never more than we were?”

  “No, youngster.” Tareay replied with a deep sigh. She’d been expecting the question for decades. “We were never more than lovers because you
were in love with Sophie. She was your bond and your spirit has died a bit every day since she went on.” Hardt did not respond. Tareay continued, voicing the goodbye she had been practicing ever since she decided to leave the dTelfur village. “I have watched you age, Hardt, and have decided that I do not want to know when you are gone. Tell Mobious to send me no word. For me you will be immortal.”

  “But I’ll die when you do.”

  “Ah,” She laughed, “but the whole world is only in my mind. When I go, so does it all.”

  “What a comfort that I’m dying first.”

  Their quiet laughter carried them to the door of the winter nursery and finally she turned to look at him and kiss him.

  “Tell the villagers we’re doing well and would welcome any of them.”

  She would have turned then and left him, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “There is one favor I ask of you.”

  “What is it?”

  “When you speak to Deg, tell him,” he faltered, thinking of the thousand things he’d never gotten to tell the old dragon, “tell him, I hope he had a nice nap.”

  Tareay nodded, kissed him again, and walked away to the fields, never to see him again.

  Five

  ∞

  Hardt did not detour by Sophie’s bower, but he did take his time travelling back to the village. Tareay had been right about his age slowing him down. But also he dreaded to see the condition Mobious would be in after another year of failing to wake the dTur. Still, he did not delay too long. He spent one day and one night at the river, swimming and reminiscing in the late shadow of the dTur. Then he picked his way once again over his friends and down into the heavy grief of the village.

  The sun rising behind him revealed the village clearing covered in deep grass and weeds. Where there should be a clear delineation between the trees and the village, bushes and saplings had taken root. At the foot of the dTur, Mobious’ lean-to was ragged and rotting, struggling noisily against the light wind. The boy inside, when Hardt found him beneath blankets and parchment and rolls of painted cloth, looked nearly as well cared for. His ribs showed through the tattered vest of cloth which remained of his shirt.