“Slay a dragon?” Jarod’s voice broke with panic.
“I speak metaphorically, of course,” Edvard said dismissively. “Perhaps the Treasure Quest may be just the thing for you. You must find some gift of inestimable worth and with it capture your true love’s heart. Come! The evening is deepening quickly. Let us to Farmer Bennis’s homestead, where we shall set in motion the tale of Jarod’s Quest for the Greatest Prize of All!”
Jarod started walking back toward Eventide between the laden Farmer Bennis and the continually chattering Dragon’s Bard, his mind struggling to imagine a treasure of inestimable worth that might be had for the wages of an apprentice bookkeeper and found within the confines of the village he had known since birth. Were there places he had missed where a manageable quest might be undertaken? How would he present such a rare prize to Caprice if he could not say two words together to her?
So filled was Jarod’s head with puzzled thoughts that he did not notice the Bard’s scribe standing at the edge of the cold campfire in the deepening twilight, staring off into the line of trees where the tracks of the book’s thief led.
Feet of Prowess
Feet of Prowess
Wherein Jarod tries to find
a gift for Caprice in the town
but discovers the heart of a poet
in the most unlikely of places.
• Chapter 4 •
The Milliner and the Pixies
Merinda Oakman sat leaning against her ornately carved workbench, staring with weary eyes at the hat on the wooden form in front of her. The wind howled fiercely against the windows that nearly spanned the end of her workroom, sending whirling flashes of white snow in great whirlpools across the panes, illuminated for a moment in the glow of her lamplight before they vanished into the darkness of the alley beyond. She sat perched atop a tall chair, its back carefully and lovingly formed to fit the curve of her own back though at the moment she found no comfort in it.
“A quest hat,” she muttered to herself. “What a notion!”
Merinda gazed up at the storage shelves that rose from floor to ceiling on either side of her workbench. She looked to the ranks of carefully organized ribbons, thread spools, patches, buttons, stays, feathers, dried flowers, bundles of rye straw, leathers, pelts, wools, felt, and bolts of cloth. She searched among them for inspiration in the textures and colors. It was hidden there, she thought, among the bits and pieces of her trade: that special form of this hat that was yet to be discovered. From among the chosen bits and pieces the hat would emerge under her careful and talented hands; all she had to do was pluck them out and put them together. The pieces of her puzzle did not leap into her hands and make themselves evident, no matter how hard she willed it.
It was certainly not a question of having hats, she mused, turning back to the conical felt shape she had placed on the hat form and twisted this way and that without satisfaction. Indeed, the workroom had an overabundance of hats from her more recent labors. What else was she to do while Harv was away?
Her husband, Harvest Oakman, had gone to Butterfield not yet a week ago with his wagon filled with his magnificently crafted tables, chairs, and sideboards. He had a great inventory of pieces he had crafted in the autumn stored under the large shed bordering the yard behind the store. During the winter months he would make the rounds of the local towns, each at its prescribed time, with his large wagon piled with goods and come back with his wagon empty and his purse filled with what he considered a fair price for his craft.
Merinda wrinkled her nose at the thought. She was a short, comfortably round, sparkling woman with large, wide-set eyes and a button nose that everyone mistook as a predisposition to joviality. But the longer she stared at the hat on the form, the deeper her bowed lips settled into a frown.
Harv was better than the price he asked for his carpentry. He was truly a gifted craftsman, in Merinda’s opinion, but he never seemed to value his own work highly enough when it came to the coin of the realm. He thought of himself as a poor country carpenter, and, in the words Merinda found herself swallowing daily, that was why everyone else thought of him that way too. She knew he was better than that, but the prices he settled on for his work would keep them—keep her—in this little shop in the country forever without the recognition that her husband so rightly deserved.
Harv loved her as dearly as she loved him. He had built the shop for her so that she could contribute to their income through her own considerable skills as a milliner. So it was that each winter he would make his trips to the neighboring towns and she would spend her lonely hours in the shop making hat after hat after hat in an ever-increasing inventory of haberdashery that anticipated the Spring Revels and her own high selling season.
Queen Nance herself had ordained the Spring Revels throughout the kingdom as a celebration of the end of winter and the return of the growing season in the country. It was, perhaps, the one time of year when all the highborn folks of the larger cities like Mordale suddenly found the country in vogue. Mordale would become desolate as the wealthy, the powerful, and the fashionable would flee the city walls and inundate the countryside, making great pretense of “getting back to the old and simpler ways.” Playing at farming became the order of the day, and, Merinda reminded herself with every drop of glue and needle stitch, the purchasing and wearing of country hats was a practice led by the Princess Aerthia herself.
It was with this object in mind that Merinda, as late in the fall as she dared, made her annual journey to Mordale. There she would stay at an inn whose reputation was tolerable and whose rates were within her careful budget. She then would spend her preciously counted days not in seeing the great castle there, or the cathedrals, or the tournament lists, but in visiting every hat and clothing shop possible in the city. She would come away with precious few purchases but a wealth of information regarding fashion trends and which designs would be most desired in the spring to come. Then she would make her way back to Eventide, draw up her order for materials from Charon’s Goods, and settle in for a winter filled with furious hat making—dreaming all the while that someday she would be presented at the great castle, be invited to the cathedrals, and be a popular figure in whose company others wished to be seen in the tournament lists.
Her local trade was dedicated but few in numbers and consisted primarily of the ladies of Cobblestone Street, who came by with more of an object to talk and less to purchase hats. The men of the town found Merinda’s shop such a warren of femininity that they would cross its threshold only under the direst of circumstances—usually at the insistence of a young woman on their arm. Men of the town purchased their hats from the more sensible establishment of Charon’s Goods next door, even though when they ordered their hats from Mordechai Charon they fully knew that he would simply have his wife, Alicia, order them in turn to be made next door by Merinda Oakman.
So it was a mystery that morning, as Merinda was working on a hat in her storefront, that she had spied three odd men and a centaur passing back and forth in front of her shop.
They would pause for a time facing each other in front of the leaded glass panes of the display window and wildly gesture in animated conversation as the snow fell in a great blanket of large flakes about them. The youngest of the men—Jarod Klum, by the looks of him—would stare straight at Merinda through the window and then bolt off in one direction or another, followed closely by the two other men, who were strangers to her, and an enormous creature that could only be Farmer Bennis.
This curious scene was reenacted with slight variation several times before Jarod Klum took a determined stance, set his jaw, and marched determinedly through Merinda’s shop door, his companions at his heels.
Merinda’s storefront was a wonder to behold, for her husband had lovingly carved every pillar, arch, and beam to his wife’s delight. The columns featured reliefs of intertwining ivy runners weaving their way up an otherwise smooth and polished surface. Pixies and fairies could be found carved among the
leaves. These columns rose to a wooden lattice carved from a single piece of wood detailed with intricate reproductions of branches and leaves filled with doves, pheasants, and small dragonettes playing with one another. The lattice curved to form the top of a heart shape over the ornate counter. The bases of each corner of the counter were carved into unhappy trolls—each an individual with a different comical expression—holding up a frieze depicting Eventide from the Blackshore road in breathtaking detail.
Jarod passed it all by with a fixed stare as he marched directly toward Merinda at the counter.
“I would like to order a hat!” Jarod announced in a voice that was entirely too loud and too high-pitched.
Merinda smiled slightly at the unexpected sound and looked from face to face at the four beings suddenly filling her storefront. She succeeded in speaking on her second attempt. “Well, all right then, Master Klum. I’ll be happy to help you with that. What kind of a hat would you like?”
Jarod blinked uncertainly.
“A quest hat!” said the angular man with the pointy beard who was leaning on the counter next to Jarod.
“A . . . what kind of hat?”
“Jarod here is on a quest,” Farmer Bennis said in a warm, soft voice. The centaur was holding his great leather hat by its brim respectfully in front of him with both hands. “He needs a special hat for a special woman.”
“Oh! A lady’s hat, then . . . well, you’ve come to the right place, Master Klum.” Merinda pulled out a small slip of parchment and one of the pencils Harv was always making for her.
“But it can’t be just any hat,” the centaur concluded.
Merinda looked up from her parchment. “Oh?”
Jarod had found a piece of string in his pocket and was winding and unwinding it repeatedly around his finger as he bit at his lower lip.
“Forgive me, my dear Missus Oakman,” the thin man said, removing his own enormous hat with a flourish that almost avoided hitting his writing companion squarely in the face. “I am Edvard—the Dragon’s Bard—the author of this noble—”
Merinda set down her pencil and folded her arms across her chest. “Ah, yes. I have heard of you.”
Edvard beamed. “No doubt you are an avid follower of my tales!”
“No,” Merinda said, her eyes narrowing slightly. “The Widow Merryweather was in here not two days ago with Miss Ariela telling me about you and your dangerous writing companion.” In truth, the Widow Merryweather had given a chilling account of what might have happened to her at the hands of this charming, mystical, and dangerous stranger had he not been apprehended by the Constable Pro Tempore before any mischief could be done. By the time Miss Ariela had added her own embellishments, it was clear that the Widow had narrowly escaped the very worst and most interesting of fates. “And I suppose that fellow scribbling behind you goes by the name of Abel?”
The scribe glanced up in surprise at hearing his name mentioned, which caused him to make an unsightly mark on his page.
“Yes, he does, but that’s not important right now,” Edvard continued, his smile forced into an even brighter countenance.
“That’s all right, Missus Oakman,” Jarod said nervously. “Sorry to have troubled you . . . I think maybe we should just go.”
Both the Dragon’s Bard and the centaur farmer put restraining hands on the youth’s shoulders.
“Courage, lad!” Edvard said to Jarod. “We’ve crossed the threshold into uncharted realms where lesser mortal men fear to tread! That is the very nature of a quest!”
“Perhaps,” Merinda asked, “if you could describe this hat that you wish to order?”
“Well,” Jarod said, obviously gathering up every ounce of courage he hoped to possess, “it’s . . . it has to look like a quest hat.”
“A quest hat,” Merinda coaxed, picking up her pencil once more. “And just what does a quest hat look like?”
“It has to look like the greatest prize in the world!”
“Greatest prize in the world,” Merinda repeated as she scribbled on the parchment scrap. “What shape would the greatest prize have? Loaf? Conical? Pie?”
“Well . . . it needs to be perfect.”
Merinda was feeling her frustration mount. The one time men came into her shop and her husband had just left town. Who could possibly translate for her now? She decided to try herself. “Wide? Narrow? Short? Tall? Feathered? Wrap? Train? Brim?”
“Those all sound fine . . .”
“Pelt? Felt? Straw? Wool? Cloth?” Merinda continued, hoping that something she said would make sense to the boy. “Knit? Bonnet? Cap?”
“Anything . . . so long as it’s perfect.”
Jarod had answered her with such an expression of earnest desire that a single laugh escaped Merinda Oakman’s tightly drawn lips before she could stifle it. “Of course, Master Klum,” Merinda nodded. “A perfect hat.”
“A perfect quest hat,” Edvard added.
Merinda paused, drew a line through her last note, and added, “One perfect quest hat.”
Merinda hopped down off her chair in frustration. She had negotiated a price for the quest hat that was nearly double her usual rate—“no one wants a cheap quest hat”—which should have pleased her. Now, however, in the night, with the wind howling outside her window, and faced with the prospect of having to create the perfect quest hat for a woman whose identity Jarod refused to divulge, she was beginning to feel she may have gotten the worst part of the deal.
She gazed again out the window at the raging storm without. Harv was supposed to have come home sometime in these last two days, and now she was worried. She hated to be away from her dear husband for any period of time; it was not like him to be late. No doubt the storm was delaying his return to her. She offered a short, heartfelt prayer to Plania, the god of travelers, that Harv would have the good sense to wait out the storm and not try to foolishly push through its dangerous fury.
Something beyond the glass, in the swirling eddies of blowing snow, caught her eye. She was not sure she had seen it at first, but—there it was again, a streak of bright light falling outside her window. She considered for a moment that it might be a trick of her flaring lamp reflected in the glass, so she turned and, with a quick puff, extinguished the flame.
The workroom fell into instant darkness, and it took Merinda a moment for her eyes to get accustomed to it. The alley beyond slowly emerged in the window, lit with a faint blue light that she could not recall seeing before. She leaned closer to the window, trying to see the source of the strange, dim light.
A third brilliant streak fell almost against the glass. Merinda leaped backward with a yelp, pushing over her chair. As her breath came quickly, three more streaks of light plunged downward beyond the glass in the alley, and then a cascade of light falling like a sudden, driving rain filled the glass for a moment. She heard the soft impacts in the snow piled up in the alley, dull thuds that came at her through the shop wall.
Just as suddenly, the falling lights stopped and a deep winter silence filled the workroom.
Merinda reached for her lamp, consciously steadying her hand as she took it from the workbench. She held still for a moment, holding the unlit lamp, and listened.
No sound at all.
She drew in a deep breath.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
The milliner blinked, uncertain as to what to do.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
It was the door—the back door to her kitchen off the alley.
Someone was banging at her door.
Merinda turned from the workbench, wishing fervently that she had not quenched the lamp. The glow from the alley window had brightened and she could make out the stairs at the far end of her workspace, one set leading up to the rooms where she and Harv lived above the shop and the other set leading down to the storeroom in the cellar space beneath. The right-hand door led to the storefront, but the door to the left would take her into the kitchen and closer to the banging on the door.<
br />
She could make out the bright, cheerful outline of the door that led into the kitchen, illuminated by the hearth fire still burning there. Merinda knew that she needed to light the lamp and that the hearth was now the most ready means of doing so.
“It’s your kitchen, Merinda,” she muttered to herself; then she took another deep breath and pushed through the door.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“I’m coming!” Merinda shouted as she pushed a stalk of dried goldenrod into the fire and relit her lamp. The kitchen hearth was burning low in the evening. Merinda had intended to bank it before going to bed but was now glad she had not. The flame sprang to life on the lamp’s wick, illuminating the cheerful kitchen and making it feel comfortably familiar. The long, beautiful table in the center of the room and the carefully built, oversized hearth dominated the space. The three windows set in the wall across from the hearth normally afforded a view of Harv’s work yard and sheds—now completely obscured by the night and its storm. Her china cabinet stood next to the alley door with all of her best plates—such few as she had managed to collect—carefully cleaned and stacked. Her kitchen was her joy, the place where she and Harv filled most of their evenings together.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“Just a moment!” Merinda glanced around the room, wondering what kind of company she would be entertaining on a night like this. She frowned at the far corner of the room. With her husband away, Merinda liked to keep busy, and she had spent part of the day cleaning out a few pieces of trash from the cellar. She had not gotten as far as taking it all to the yard, however, and it remained an unsightly stack in the corner. She decided that there was no help for it now—whoever was in need at her door would have to put up with her house as it stood.
Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide Page 5