“Was that absolutely necessary?” her owl stated inside the pillars of her mind.
“And what should I have done?” Quinn said tirelessly. “He can’t have this thing. It’s too dangerous for someone here.”
“But not dangerous enough for you?” The stone, still within in the owl’s talons, flung to the damp ground, and Quinn hurtled to snatch it.
“Don’t be like that Ara. You and I both know he can’t know what this is. I don't even know what it is yet.”
“You’ve already shown him far too much. He’ll go looking for you, and he won’t stop until he does. There are too many mysteries and not enough explanations.”
“Let him,” Quinn said arrogantly as she tucked her loose hair back behind her ears. “It’s not like he will ever find us. That's one thing we can do well, stay hidden.”
“That’s strictly not the point! Do you remember why we have come to this putrid place?”
“To oversee the hunt.” Quinn rolled her eyes. “But it wasn’t my choice to come here.”
“Nor my own, but we were commanded to attend. The King of Evinar places a great deal of trust on your father to watch over the Archway. And believe me, the mice taste sour here, and the worms are gritty to the point of loathing. I will be joyed to know when we are leaving, but we still have a duty. Tangling up with people will only make our responsibilities much harder. If that boy goes away and tells people what he's seen, we're all as good as finished.”
“I don’t give a damn,” Quinn said under her breath. "He has no friends. He's a loner. No one will believe what he was to say."
“I wonder what your father would say about all this.”
“He won’t know, and you won’t tell him, right?”
“Your actions from here will determine that. You’ve made a grave mistake, and someone needs to set it straight before it's too late.” Ara leaped from her branch, wingspread, and disappeared back into the blackness, leaving Quinn abandoned in the woods.
The stone.
The stellascope revealed nothing it hadn’t already shown earlier. There was no doubt the stone was a magical artifact of some kind, but for what, Quinn could not be sure. The bloody thing always works, she thought to herself, maybe it's becoming defective. “Reveal your secrets,” she commanded, but the object lie still in her hands, unchanged. “Rats.”
Maybe it was a dud after all.
“Raise your arm higher,” Billy said, mimicking a sword's instructor.
Violet and Billy tip-toed in the grass near crackling fire pits, parrying in fun. She did precisely as instructed, a stick in hand, and dueled her instructor. Fifteen minutes in, and they’d accumulated a small audience of women and children.
“That’s it, now swing at my open guard. Perfect!”
Violet’s fragile physic twisted and chopped at Billy’s bulky side, loosening her dark braids to flow in motion. “Am I doing it right?” she asked gently.
“A natural-born,” Billy said with a laugh. “It was like you were born to swing the sword.”
Violet giggled at the idea of being a God-given warrior at birth. Yet, the ordeal was becoming exhausting to entertain. If not for the swarm of attention around them, she may have lost her interest by now. Billy’s charm or not, he was still Woolbury's Champion.
Everything appeared to be working in Billy’s favor. That was until he saw the inflamed eyes of Abbott traveling towards him. He began to worry. Even he wasn’t stupid enough to understand what Violet meant to him— his childhood love. What would Abbott think when he told him everything?
“Hi there, friend,” Abbott said, recovering his wind. "Haven't been having too much fun, I hope."
“Oh, Abbott!” Violet dropped her makeshift sword, and wrapped her arms around his gut, squeezing out any remaining air. “Billy was just educating me on proper sword technique. Who knew he was so knowledgeable on the subject.”
“Yeah, who knew.” Abbott expelled an eye-piercing hit at Billy, who pleaded with his eyes not to reveal him a liar.
“Yeah— we were just talking about how to effectively parry and the use of a crossguard.”
“I’m not here for all that,” Abbott said harshly interrupting. “That arrow you stole earlier, where is it? I need it for something.”
“What?” Billy said as he proceeded to break his oath from earlier in the day. Swear not to lie. Promise me that you wouldn't lie. The truth is more important.
“From earlier. Look, I saw you take it." Abbott reached inside his coat, but Billy quickly defended the advance.
“Look, I dunno what you’re going on about,” Billy said, brushing off the accusation. "But I didn't take anything."
“You made a promise,” Abbott gritted his teeth. “Are we not meant to keep those anymore?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about but—”
“Oh, come off it you pig-witted oaf. I saw you stick the arrow in your trousers." He couldn’t withstand another lie, especially from the person he called a friend. “If you give it to me, you can return to charming her with no hard feelings.”
“Why are you being so rude?” Violet asked, stepping between the two. They were at each other's necks like hungry wolves. The friendship was fracturing and both knew it. “That’s no way to ask for something. You don't just accuse someone and demand they do what you say.”
“Look, I don’t care how I appear. I need that arrow now! If he’s not going to admit it aloud, then he will make himself look worse in the end. Liars always look stupid in the end. You know that.”
“I’ve told you, I don’t have—” But before Billy could conclude his thought, Abbott lunged on top of him and withdrew the stolen object from his waistband. “And you didn’t have it?” Abbott drove off again, disappearing down the stone.
“How simply rude of him! And you, what was that he ran away with?” Violet's tone shifted from its innocent flutter into one with vigor.
“It— it was just a souvenir—”
“A stolen souvenir— you liar!” Violet removed the dust from her hands and left Billy lying on the floor with nothing but his shattered pride.
“Violet, Violet come back, I can explain. We could show it to our children one day. It would be quite a funny story, wouldn’t it? Violet!”
7
The arrow vibrated in his palm. An intriguing device. Abbott grinned from ear to ear. Just earlier in the day, he would have dismissed its existence entirely, but here he was. A madman no less to think, to believe in such things as an arrow enchanted by magic.
Three evenly spaced wiry feathers made up the arrow’s fletching. When he ran his finger over them, they dug into his flesh, leaving a trail of dead skin. They were stiff and coarse, unlike the soft magpie feathers circling the skies of Woolbury, and they reeked of oil.
In order to prevent raising further suspicion, Abbott determined he was better off alone. If anyone else saw what the arrows did, they would only slow him down. Time was not his to manage, and his father was getting worse. Death loomed on the horizon.
Abbott assumed the other strangers he'd not recognized as natives, understood magic just in the same way as Quinn. They had entered the village together, and what’s not to say their origins weren't the same? I can't trust anyone, was what ran through his head. Not Billy. Not Quinn. And certainly not another stranger.
The stables of Blackwoods held most of the villagers now. He'd head to the opposite side of Woolbury, closer to his home. There was a thicket there he knew like the back of his hand. His father took him there a lot as a child. It harbored his last memories of his mother. In what felt like a past life, the Bradbury’s used to visit the thicket to feel the wind ruffle through the trees and the animals wonder unfazed. If there was one part of Abbott’s mother that his father always reminded him of, it was her generosity and kindness towards others. A golden trait, he would say.
Time and time again, she would bring broken birds home, in her little hatbox, and mend their hurt wings. He believed t
hat because of his mother’s acts, the birds chanted to each other. The Bradbury house rang to the high heavens with chirps. It became somewhat of a gathering place for birds even to this day after her death.
He walked to the fence owned by the neighboring property and swung his head low beneath the crossbeams to wiggle his body across. It was not as natural for him as it used to be. Managing the Bradbury affairs alone had strengthened the cords in his muscle and caused him to gain weight. The changes in his body were irritating and painful. His father often reminded him how long they'd continue, and Abbott rolled his eyes in annoyance. Getting older was becoming a burden.
Once he was clear from eye-sight, Abbott did not hesitate a moment to ask the question that plagued his mind. “Locate Quinn’s caravan,” he asked, holding the bolt near his mouth. An exhaust cloud fanned through the air. “Find it, wherever it is, and take me to it.”
A current of blue energy ran the length of the shaft, and before a moment passed, it sliced off into the sky with Abbott clutched around it. The wind fluttered through his blond hair, and he managed to swallow a bug or two. The journey took every bit of endurance in his grip to hold on. At first, he didn’t think he could. The ground was invisible to his eyes. If he let go now, he would die. That much he did know.
As the stamina in his fingers continued to dwindle, Abbott stretched with his other hand to offer some relief. The arrow was too fast. He prayed to the Lord that it’d all be over soon.
When the sharp end wedged deep into the side of an oak tree, he could finally feel the ground beneath his feet again. The experience was disorientating. There was an initial urge to vomit. Hold it together, hold it together, he thought leaning up against the oak tree with one arm. He’d read about flight in books, but this was real life. Flight was brutal.
"Where am I?” he said, looking around him. There was a curtain of fog that fell over the land, concealing it's known identity. Behind him, there was a barn. This was the Cuffel’s land. He knew at once by the whitely painted crest on the wooden entrance. How had Quinn’s caravan manage to get inside the Cuffel’s barn? Rory Cuffel was a tightly wound fellow who had an enormous disliking for the hunt. He'd never let things go unrecognized without sturring about to find what was going on. And he would have in no right mind consented to such an arrangement.
The barn doors creaked open on their ancient iron hinges, sending a nervous tingling through Abbott. He saw common items you’d expect in a barn: feed, hay, livestock, and farming tools, but no sign of the caravan.
One by one, he poked his crooked-bridged nose into the stalls. The first was ladened with a muddy bath and a couple of sleeping hogs. The second contained a milking cow fast asleep against the stall wall. But the third, which raised Abbott’s suspicions immediately, had a single ghostly- charred brown barn owl. It was the owl who stole the stone from his hands, Quinn's pet.
He unlatched the gate and quietly entered. The owl was in slumber, at least that’s what Abbott alleged by the absence of its enormous oval eyes, which rolled freely inside the owl's skull.
There was a bit of feeding hay mounded in the corner, along with a bucket of grain, but nothing else. It appeared to be as empty as it looked, but a thick drafty smell meandered through Abbott’s nostrils. His suspicions began to hold some weight. The draft was sweet like cooking sausages and carried a hint of something else, perhaps black tea.
“More magic,” Abbott whispered, trying not to alarm the guard in the corner. “I wonder…”
A pile of grey paste littered the floor. It was thick enough to be grasped but reeked putrid. I hope this isn’t what I think, as Abbott looked at the owl. If the caravan is here, but invisible to my eyes, maybe this paste can reveal it. The paste was unpleasantly warm in his hands.
"Yuck," he said, the vomiting feeling from earlier returning to him. When he flung the mud, it splattered a few meters in front of his face. Abbott took a step forward, slowly watching the guard. Underneath the grey paste, he could barely make out the sight of yellow painted wood. The caravan was invisible! “Genius,” he said under his breath.
Abbott collected more mud in his hands and tossed it where he remembered the door was. Sure enough, a glass-blown handle with a small slit for a key revealed itself— shining like a diamond in the rough. The ruse was over. The entire caravan was now naked to the eye.
Built with mismatched wood scraps and what looked like pub signage, the caravan was painted in an unpleasant yellow like the color of your aunt's pea soup. Four iron crafted wheels were dented and beaten after what looked like thousands of kilometers of travel. It had traveled places a lot further than Woolbury, Abbott was sure of it. It was his best guess how this was still holding together. Magic was the only explanation, that or the bird droppings draped down wooden sides.
Abbott reached for the silver knob protruding from the yellow door and turned it without a hitch. “Thank goodness,” he said, worried that he’d need a key. He stepped inside with not an ounce of fear.
“Another,” Quinn said, banging her mug against the wooden bar top in the Three-Legged Hare.
The Three-Legged Hare was the only pub in Woolbury, and it prided itself on the fact. Their ale was a cherished family secret. The founding family had owned the pub for many centuries, seven to be exact. Some even believed it was the first thing to be built when people settled in Woolbury. Evidence pointed truth to the theory, a keystone brick inside the pub with the roman numeral one chisel inside it, placed beneath the pub's only doorway.
“Having a touch of fun, are you?” barked the character seated to her left.
“Fun? Wouldn’t call this fun,” Quinn replied, taking another swig from her refilled mug.
“Ah, nonsense, gulping down ale is always fun.” He winked his eye and inched his barstool closer. “Especially when Remus is involved.”
Quinn motioned fast to her feet to avoid the man’s advancement, “Pig,” she said, draining the contains and throwing the empty at his ugly face. “Oink! Oink!”
Quinn paid the bartender a few coins and withering her way towards the exit. She was fully aware of the knife-like eyes digging into the back of her head, but she didn't care. That is no way to talk to anyone. The man needs manner or no less, an educational opportunity for proper etiquette.
“They’re all that way,” a soft voice said. She was leaning against the outside of the pub while pulling the petals off a red rose. “Fortunately, I just cleared my hands of a liar.” It was Violet, who hardly knew what it meant to be lied to. It was more in her character to use the scenario as an excuse to rid herself of the burden of a lackluster man. Billy’s fifteen minutes of fame had lapsed. Instead, she was scouting around for her next victim. Perhaps a man from the sword ring. “I’m Violet by the way.”
“I didn't ask for your name," Quinn said. Hearing the words leave her tongue, made her realize how harsh she was being. Quinn sighed. "And I, madam, am Quinn.” She curtseyed and belched, clapping her hand to her mouth. "Excuse me."
Violet took a large step backward, and her cheeks curled in revulsion. “Where are you from?” she asked, not certain whether she should be honored or disgusted by this newly met acquaintance. She was so unladylike.
“Not here, that’s for sure,” Quinn said. She kicked a rock on the pathway, and it broke through the pane of a window. Quinn had forgotten about what was in her pocket. She felt the weight inside it. The stone. It felt heavy like it was sinking into the depths of a loch. “You know of a pathetic boy named Abbott?”
“Bradbury?” Violet said, throwing the rose from her hand. “Yeah, he’s— odd.”
“In what ways?” asked Quinn.
“He’s a caretaker to his sick father,” Violet replied blandly as her eyes looked up at a passing gentleman. She smiled haphazardously to invite him to talk, but he took no notice and kept walking.
“That makes him odd?” Quinn asked, rubbing her thumb over the stone sitting in her cloak pocket. “I would say that’s noble? Wouldn't you?”
The idea of nicking a stone seemed to fill Quinn with a hint of remorse, especially after hearing about his oddness.
“Oi!” the man from the bar, Remus called. He was followed by his companion. “What do you say we have that drink after all? You can invite your friend. I've got him with me and he likes to have company join along.” Like a shadow, their bone structures stood tall with posture poised. They looked hungry like animals waiting to strike a kill.
Violet immediately moved behind Quinn as if she were a shield. She cowered in fear.
Quinn groaned, “Must we really do this?” She had already begun tucking the loose pieces of her hair behind her ears with one hand while with the other, she reached for the dagger sheathed under her cloak. Nippy, she named it, for its habit of nipping into peoples' skins. “And if we refuse?” The blade slowly slid out to reveal a metal that had been polished and sharpened countlessly with skill. She did so in a way to not alarm the perpetrators.
Terror swirled around their iris, like evil liquefied. “Persuasions can always be made necessary.” Their grins were unrelenting and vicious. “We have certain needs that need for filling.”
Quinn laughed, her senses heightened. The ale was to thank for that— an unusual characteristic she gained. There was no doubt these men weren't going to take no for an answer. They had no stakes in this world, and they did not fear any consequence their actions may lead. Quinn could see it spelled across their faces. They were from her world.
With a swift gesture of her arm, Quinn revealed her short dagger and held it before her nose. “I’ll give you an extra breathing hole if you step any closer,” she threatened. Violet quailed behind her preciously. “What’re waiting for? I’ll take you both on at the same time! You afraid to lose to a girl?”
The Shadow of Our Stars: The Tales of Evinar Page 5