“I hope that, too,” Basha said as Talan moseyed along. He shook his head, wondering why Old Man was trying to scare him like this, when Talan suddenly halted and shivered under Basha’s hand. He froze as well, wondering what had frightened his horse. Could the gelding have sensed his trepidation, or was it something else that had startled him? One of Doomba’s creatures or minions perhaps?
For a moment, Basha thought back to the gruelmoff. He hadn’t thought about it for years now how Old Man had defeated it…
Early one morning when Basha was eight years old, he and Oaka were out on one of their youthful adventures. Basha bounded ahead across a field while his older brother, Oaka, tried to catch up with him. “Stop, Basha! Slow down!” Oaka cried, gasping as he scrambled over a log and around some thorny bushes. “You don’t know what that thing is! It could be a rabbit for all you know!”
“It’s a gnome, I’m telling you! It’s a gnome!” Basha cried. “It’s a gnome…There, I said it thrice; that makes it right!”
He laughed, but Oaka just rolled his eyes. “Why do I put up with this?” he asked.
“Because you’re my brother. Besides, Uncle Smidge said gnomes probably still exist,” Basha said, continuing as they entered the forest. “I saw it walk on two back legs, and it had a strange head or face on it, but no cap!”
“What does that mean?” Oaka asked as they both slowed down, facing more obstacles like tree roots to trip them up.
“That means the stories are wrong on that account—gnomes don’t wear caps,” Basha said, panting as he stopped. “And it looked kind of like a mole, too, but stronger.”
Basha looked around at the forest surrounding them. Trees cut off the sky with only patches of blue sky and sunlight here and there, streaming down through the canopy. The forest was unparalleled with its variety of shades, mostly browns and greens, but there was gray, white and black as well. Branches stuck down from the canopy. Basha didn’t know why everyone was so afraid of this place. Even the adults were afraid to traverse through Mila Forest. Their distrust led them to believe the whole world outside of Coe Baba was like this—full of shadows and obscurity. He loved the forest, though, and the mysteries it contained; it was the perfect place to hide, and was the last area he’d not really explored around Coe Baba.
“You probably saw a mole,” Oaka muttered as he finally caught up with Basha.
“I didn’t. Where’d it go?”
“I don’t know what you saw, because I never saw it!” Oaka exclaimed, glancing around nervously as Basha stepped forward to look under rocks and at roots, searching for a hole the gnome must have used for its escape.
Having heard all the monster stories, and in turn, shying away from spending time in the forest, Basha thought Oaka was probably afraid.
“Uncle Smidge is wrong,” Oaka said. “He probably lied to you. I can’t believe I actually followed you out here. Now we’re probably lost.”
“We came from that direction,” Basha said, pointing behind Oaka. Perhaps Oaka had not really wanted to catch up with him, but instead had wanted to slow down enough so as not to get involved in whatever crazy scheme Basha had planned for him. Not that Basha had anything planned yet, but the day was early.
“It’s not about that!” Oaka cried. “You need protection from your own idiotic failings,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’m not an idiot,” Basha said, shaking his own head as he continued his search. The gnome did exist; Basha had seen it. Or at least he thought he had. Could he have been mistaken?
“You’re not an idiot per se, but what you do is certainly idiotic. I should have been more careful. I shouldn’t have been so stupid as to follow you out here,” Oaka muttered, stopping as he turned away and looked up into the trees. “Basha, what is that thing?” he asked nervously, pointing up.
Basha followed his gaze and said, “I’ve no idea.” He shuddered.
In the branches of a tree a short distance away, a bird larger than any other bird they’d ever seen before, six feet tall with its wingspan twice that or more, seemed to be sleeping, its head tucked into its chest and its wings folded up into its sides. It had the distinctive qualities of a vulture, with a curved, sharp beak, and a thin, pointed, balding black head rising backward, but its oblong body was too huge to be that of a vulture.
Basha was sure the bird was, if not a monster, at least dangerous, and he wanted to get as far away from it as possible before it awoke. He reached out to hold Oaka back. When Oaka looked at him, Basha jerked his head, signaling retreat. He put his finger to his lips telling his brother to be quiet. Basha took a step backward, and a twig snapped beneath his foot. Both he and Oaka went deathly still as the bird awoke. It turned around and glared down at them with black, beady eyes. The bird spread its wings wide and screeched so loudly the tree leaves trembled.
Basha was dazed by its sheer size. He felt like a tiny mouse about to be snatched up and eaten.
“Run!” Oaka cried, pulling Basha toward the field beyond the forest.
The two boys fled. Basha heard something rush out from the bushes behind him and turned his head to see Old Man—tall in demeanor yet stooped with age—facing the bird with a whip shaped from the tendrils of a willow tree. Basha stumbled to a stop and watched as the whip’s tendrils whirled up into the air to snap at the bird, again and again.
“Basha, go!” Old Man yelped at the boy as the bird shielded itself from the blows. “Basha!” The bird screeched and launched itself at Old Man.
Basha screamed as Oaka grabbed his hand and pulled, but he fought his brother’s hold on him as Old Man wrapped his arms about the bird and wrestled it to the ground. Finally, Oaka dragged Basha out of the forest and into the field, and they raced for town. Never had he imagined Old Man able to fight such a bird. He wasn’t strong and was too passive. Basha feared Old Man was probably dead!
He cried, his steps slowing down, until finally they were forced to halt at the edge of town. Both boys were exhausted as they scrunched up underneath the overhanging roof of a building in an alleyway. They hoped they could hide there for a while until they were able to run again.
“Oaka, did you see that?” Basha asked, panting heavily as he looked at his brother. They stole glances toward the forest, anticipating pursuit.
“I rather wish I hadn’t,” Oaka said, “Oh, Tau, we could have been killed! That bird was no ordinary bird; it was a monster, like a gruelmoff.”
“A gruelmoff? Do you suppose it was?” Basha asked, even more nervous now than he was before. But he was also excited.
A gruelmoff was supposed to be one of the evil creatures that had fallen under the sway of Doomba, although it had been centuries since anyone had ever seen one of these creatures near Coe Baba. He’d never read or heard a description of the gruelmoff as being vulture-like, but it made sense to him now that he thought about it. Such a gruesome creature had to be vulture-like.
He and Oaka had seen a gruelmoff and survived. He couldn’t believe it. It was something out of the legends Old Man was always telling them! Old Man…Basha blanched, remembering what he’d just seen. “We’ve got to go back!” he cried.
“Go back? For what?” Oaka said. “Are you insane?”
“Old Man!”
“Old…What?” Oaka shook his head. “He wasn’t there!”
“Are you insane?” Basha exclaimed. “You saw him!” He was astonished that his brother was so willing to lie like this, would deny what he’d just seen.
Oaka kept shaking his head. “I never saw him…it was a blur. I was too busy running, and then I had to go back for you.”
“Why are you lying?” Basha shouted.
“Shut up! Lying? Are you insane? The least you can do is thank me for saving your life,” Oaka insisted.
“Thank you. Now can we go back?”
“No!” Oaka cried, glancing toward the forest. “I don’t think it’s after us. There’s been no sign of it since…Basha, let’s just forget about it.”
&n
bsp; “Forget about it?” Basha cried. “But what if it comes after us?”
“I’d much rather forget about it than dream about it!” Oaka yelled at him. He shuddered, already dreading what he’d see tonight when he went to sleep.
“May you have nightmares!” Basha muttered. “You deserve them! We can’t forget about Old Man. We never should have left him alone out there.”
He was tempted to succumb to Oaka’s offer to just forget about the whole thing, but he worried about Old Man facing that thing alone. Basha couldn’t believe this. Old Man never ventured out unless it was nighttime, and then only to recite his stories to the children. He wondered what Old Man had been doing out there.
“What can we do to help him anyway?” Oaka asked.
“We’ve got to warn the others of what we’ve seen,” Basha said, turning around to face the forest again. “It’s not much, but it’s the least we can do. I just hope Old Man’s okay, facing that gruelmoff alone.”
“He’s Old Man—of course he’s okay!” Oaka said. “He’s tough, although I still don’t think he was there. Where are we?” Oaka asked, looking around.
Basha had not seen Old Man’s face, but he knew it was him from his long, stringy hair flowing down his back and sides like silvery-gray moss. Old Man did seem to be as hard and leathery as the bark his skin resembled. Perhaps…no, Oaka was wrong; Old Man was weak, too weak to face a gruelmoff by himself.
With such similar building materials and styles that varied little over time, it was hard to tell which part of town you were in, especially if you had just come in from the forest without any sense of direction. The only differences between certain parts of town were how close you were to the main street, the only street in town wide enough for three carts to be driven alongside each other. Shutters painted different colors and the signs that hung over storefronts were sometimes all that differentiated some of the downtown buildings.
“We’re by the blacksmith shop,” Basha said, spotting the anvil sign. “Near the town square…,” he said hesitatingly as he realized why Oaka had asked. “You can’t be serious, not after what we’ve just been through!”
“Ah, yes, near the town square,” Oaka said, smiling before he cleared his throat. “I suppose we’ll just have to join in, won’t we?”
“Do we have to?” Basha asked beseechingly, wishing that he could just avoid it.
“Yes, of course, for the dignity of manhood!” Oaka cried before he added, “Besides, I’d much rather get splattered with turnip juice-laced mud balls than let the girls get hold of the square, and it will help us forget what just happened.”
Oaka walked away from Basha as Basha glanced back, hoping Old Man might emerge, safe and sound, from the forest. But when there was no sign of movement, he followed after Oaka, disappointed that he didn’t get the chance to help Old Man.
* * * *
Basha had forgotten all about the gruelmoff after what happened with Jawen calling him a balnor and his running off into the forest. Old Man had survived to tell the story. Nothing had ever harmed him, and nothing ever would.
“Basha? Are you all right?” Old Man asked, staring at him now with concern.
Basha shook his head. “Sorry, I was thinking about something else,” he said, troubled by his memories as he started to wonder if they were true or something he’d made up in his own mind. The gruelmoff—how had Old Man warded it off?
“Do you know how Coe Baba came to be?” Old Man asked.
“Not really,” Basha said, not wanting to be distracted from his line of thought.
“Coe Baba was once Coe Bahealfisaba,” Old Man said. “Coe Bahealfisaba is quite a mouthful to say, you know, so it was shortened after a while, especially when the Corricans came.”
“Please, Old Man, I don’t know if I want to hear all of this right now,” Basha said.
“When are you going to hear it from me again?” Old Man asked. “When are you going to hear me speak again, after you leave?”
“Fine, please continue,” Basha said.
“Coe Bahealfisaba was first established before the rise of Arria, by farmers, groups of men and women who for some reason, decided to abandon their hunting-and-gathering lifestyle for a more sedentary lifestyle. Perhaps they considered the benefits of farming to outweigh the gains of hunting. In any case, they abandoned most of their wandering ways—except for some knowledge of forest lore and the need to hunt with bow and arrow or spear—for cultivating the land, planting seeds, and waiting for them to grow before harvesting the crop.”
Basha looked around at the fields they were passing. “So this is how towns were made—civilization?”
“Civilization is a difficult word to define,” Old Man said. “Civilization could form from other different sources. Towns were made in a variety of ways and for different purposes, but yes, this is a common one.”
“Old Man, were you here in those ancient days?” Basha asked jokingly.
“I was, and I wasn’t. ‘Coe’ meant city, cave, cove, and castle in the Old Language, a sheltered place where men could live safely. This developed because coves along rivers, lakes, and oceans were often utilized for settlements. These places could be more easily defended, and promoted a shipping trade between towns.”
“Is that true of Coe Baba?” Basha asked.
Old Man scoffed and then shook his head. “Not exactly. Bahealfisaba in those early days was more vulnerable to attacks from raiders because it was such a big, fat, juicy target full of food, people who could be easily enslaved, and valuable property. Bahealfisaba tried to defend itself, but these attacks weren’t thwarted until the town received help from some unannounced visitors.”
“Who?”
“They washed up onshore and trekked through the forest, almost a jungle in those days, before reaching the town. They—”
“The Knights of Arria!” Basha exclaimed.
“The visitors defended the town after receiving help from the townspeople. Coe Bahealfisaba made quite an impression on them, on what this land could be, or would become. Coe Bahealfisaba, for the most part, lost contact with these strangers as they moved on, south and east, but Coe Bahealfisaba remained acquainted with several of them for many years.”
“Wow,” Basha said. He was amazed Old Man was telling him all of this in such a casual manner, as if the story were really true. Basha had never heard any of this before, and he was slightly taken aback, thinking that if it were true, then Coe Baba was far more important than he’d ever realized. “So this is where the Knights of Arria landed?”
“Might be, might not be; I don’t know for certain, as I wasn’t among them,” Old Man said. “But I do know Coe Baba is a powerful place, more powerful than you can realize, as Coe Baba was once the seat of an ancient throne, even before the Knights came here. All of this, all of the lands of Salarria, was divided up into small kingdoms, chiefdoms, and tribes before the Knights inadvertently united all of the lands into the nation-states that exist today. A hundred thousand kingdoms have been born and died on this continent throughout the centuries. The Coes were cities and states of their own before they became a part of countries, and even now they retain some of their individual qualities, as they are so far apart from one another and can’t change the nature of their surroundings and what has been imprinted upon them.”
“So cities are individuals?” Basha asked, a little glad now that the town council, the baron specifically, had chosen Old Man to accompany him.
“Children understand this; children know the differences between Coe Anji and Coe Dobila, Coe Wana and Coe Baba, and so on,” Old Man said. “You might learn this if you have to travel far on your journey to find Tau’s Cup.”
Soon, Basha and Old Man left the main road, which changed from gravel to dirt outside the town proper, just as it turned toward the southeast. They passed the graveyard; the fenced-in area was small, but surrounding the cemetery were several acres of rock monoliths. They stood up on their own, menhirs facing one anothe
r, or they were piled up in structures. Henges circled round stone rows, with dolmens placed upon opposite ends. Faces were carved into the rocks.
People avoided this place as much as possible, as they feared the unknown by instinct. Basha, however, had learned to appreciate the stones. He came here at least once a year; it seemed to him some kind of meaning could be found in the stones.
Soon after he learned the truth about his birth mother, he’d visited Kala’s grave for the first time…
“Hello, M…Kala.” He squatted down in front of the gravestone, which had only Kala’s name engraved upon it, and held onto a flower. “I don’t really know what to say. I suppose I should thank you for bringing me into this world.” He gulped and continued. “I’m sorry for whatever pain I might have caused you in leaving it. I know you loved me, and I want to thank you for everything that you did for me. For giving me life, for coming here to have me, so I could be raised in a safe place and I love you for being my mother.” Basha kissed the flower and laid it on top of the grave. “Thank you, and I’m so sorry I never got to hug you,” he said before leaving.
He came back, year after year, and said pretty much the same thing to Kala, adding a few details as he spoke about his life, all the while staring at the menhirs in the distance. Now he wondered if he’d ever get to visit her grave again.
Chapter 13
Parting Words
“Give us eyes so that we may see the beginning of
New things in this tired world, and let us see the
Return of our old ways. Let the darkness be lifted
From our eyes, and let the light shine through.”
—Chant of the Worshippers of the Oracle of Mila
Creak, creak, warbled the rusty hinges of the sign of the Smiling Stallion Inn as it wobbled back and forth in the wind rustling through town. It was early afternoon, and inside the inn, several people were gathered around tables and at the bar, mostly relatives of Geda and Habala, waiting for news of Basha.
The Smiling Stallion Inn Page 17