[Meetings 02] - Wanderlust

by Mary Kirchoff; Steve Winter - (ebook by Undead)

  On the day he asked for Hepsiba's hand in marriage, Gaesil had rolled the symbol for Earth—good luck. With no other suitors of any kind and growing older, she accepted at once. They were married that afternoon.

  Within hours of the marriage, Gaesil began to wonder if perhaps he had not somehow misread the Eye, for Hepsiba revealed herself to be homely in both body and spirit: suspicious, selfish, and conceited. But much worse than these, as far as Gaesil was concerned, was her ability to sour any mood, to make any splendid thing seem ugly. He had no illusions about his looks, with his dishwater hair, knobby bones, and big feet, but he had a good heart and a ready smile. She would have seen his virtues, he was certain, if she was capable of appreciating anything besides money.

  Despite his unhappiness, Gaesil felt certain there was some reason fate had thrown him together with Hepsiba. He hoped only that she would let him live long enough to discover what it was.

  And so he spent a lot of time on the road, fixing what needed fixing wherever it needed to be fixed. He traveled along the festival route, and Solace held the first, and possibly the best, festival of the year. He would stay in each town along the way up to a week if business warranted it. Sometimes he was gone for as long as six months at a stretch, especially if the weather was good and the people were friendly, like the chatty little kender who had saved him from the hobgoblins and helped him free his wagon from the ditch. That fellow was the least annoying kender Gaesil had ever met.

  Just after midday, Gaesil reached the turn to Solace at the south end of CrystalmirLake. A snap of the reins guided Bella to the right and the wagon rolled on toward the ancient stone bridge that crossed Solace Stream. Here traffic picked up. Gaesil nodded his head in greeting at the driver of a wagon passing from the other direction.

  Ahead, just stepping onto the bridge, were two travelers on foot. They appeared to be in quite a hurry. Their agitated pace was being set by the shorter of the two, a dwarf with a goodly amount of gray in his hair and a large scowl on his face. The other, with the soft good looks of a young elf, moved more calmly, his longer strides seeming slower and more deliberate. He walked with his face turned toward the dwarf and sounded as if he were trying in vain to calm down his companion. The dwarf's expression remained stony, his gaze locked straight ahead.

  "Here's someone coming from the road through Darken Wood. Perhaps this fellow's seen him and can tell us if we're even headed in the right direction," Gaesil heard the dwarf say before running up to the tinker's wagon. Gaesil tugged on Bella's reins until she stopped.

  "Excuse me," the dwarf called up, "but have you seen a kender on the road this morning?"

  Gaesil looked surprised. "Why, yes, I have. A helpful little fellow—"

  "Ah, ha!" the dwarf interrupted, slamming a fist into his hand in smug satisfaction. His eyes narrowed to slits. "Where did you spot the little gadfly?"

  The young elf stepped before the dwarf. "What my friend means is, were you traveling from the south on the new road or north on

  Haven Road

  ?"

  Gaesil was a bit flustered by the dwarf's animosity. "Why, I left him about two hours ago on

  Southway Road

  , but I doubt it's the same kender you're looking for. The one I met was a cheerful little fellow in blue leggings. His name was Tasslehouse, or Tusslehauf, or some such thing."

  "That's him!" the dwarf shouted, grabbing the elf by the arm and breaking into a run. "Come on, Tanis, time's a-wasting!"

  "Thanks for your help, sir," the elf managed to call back as he was pulled away behind the dwarf.

  "Certainly," Gaesil said from habit, though the two were out of earshot. He shook his shaggy head. What could such a nice kender have done to inspire such anger? Giving Bella's reins another sharp tug, he set off again across the bridge and toward Solace. He dared waste no more time. As it was, he was in a hurry to track down that kender's friend, Flint Fireforge, to return the bracelet and, he hoped, beg or buy some festival booth space from him.

  * * * * *

  "Yeah, I know Flint Fireforge, but you just missed him," the jowly barkeep at the Inn of the Last Home told Gaesil a half-hour later. "He and Tanis tore out of here more than an hour ago." The innkeeper, whose name was Otik, balanced two plates of fried potatoes and sausage on his forearm, having just come through the swinging kitchen door. "Do you mind?" he asked, nodding his head from the plates to the patrons who awaited them.

  "Oh, not at all," Gaesil said. He sat down absently on a stool to wait for the innkeeper's return, while he pondered Otik's comment. Tanis . . . where had he heard that name before?

  "Now, you were asking?" Otik said, returning, his arms free. He wiped his hands on his dingy white apron and moved behind the bar.

  "Flint Fireforge. You said he'd left. Will I find him at the festival?"

  Otik chuckled. "You might, but I doubt it. He and Tanis were hot on the trail of a kender. He'd stolen a very important bracelet from Flint."

  Gaesil's eyes went as wide and round as two steel pieces and his mouth fell open. He remembered the dwarf and the elf on the bridge! That's where he'd heard of Tanis. But the dwarf had never been called by name. How could he have known? The kender hadn't mentioned that the dwarf would have a friend with him, an elf at that.

  "Something wrong?" the barkeep asked him, noting the tinker's startled expression.

  Gaesil put his knobby hand into the pocket of his breeches and his fingers closed around the bracelet. "I have—" But the tinker stopped short. He was about to give the bracelet to the innkeeper to return to Flint the next time the dwarf visited the inn, but he was having second thoughts. "You say Flint left town and won't be running his booth at the festival?"

  "Not until he finds that kender. And the festival will only last another couple of days."

  "I see." Gaesil was already mulling the situation. With the dwarf out of town and unable to sell his wares anyway, his booth would be vacant. Gaesil could borrow it and no one would be put out, though there might be trouble if the dwarf caught up to the kender, returned before the festival ended, and found a stranger using his business space. Judging from what Gaesil had seen, Flint Fireforge didn't seem the affable kind.

  On the other hand, Gaesil could claim he was waiting at the booth to return the bracelet to its rightful owner, the dwarf. If he conducted a little business to pay his expenses while waiting, no one could hold that against him. If the festival closed up before the dwarf returned, why, then, Gaesil could hand the bracelet over to the innkeeper and skedaddle. It wasn't dishonest, he reasoned, just good business.

  "I'm a little busy, friend. Is there anything else I can do for you?" Otik's mild voice interrupted Gaesil's thoughts.

  "I'm sorry," the tinker said, bouncing back to the present. He scratched ruefully at his mud-caked skin. "Actually, I could use a bath before I head over to the festival grounds. Do you have a bathtub on the premises?"

  * * * * *

  A pink and scrubbed Gaesil emerged from the inn an hour later and wound his way down the bridgewalk to the ground, his hair freshly washed, his road clothing in his hand newly clean and ready to hang to dry. He had put on his best tunic and trousers—not too plain, so as to make customers think him a novice at his trade, and not too fancy, so as to make them think him too high-priced. He had removed the dwarf's bracelet from his breeches before washing them and placed it in the pocket of his clean trousers for safekeeping.

  The tinker hiked the short distance to the stables, where he had left Bella and his wagon in the care of a young hand, a well-fed, red-haired boy of thirteen. Paying one steel piece for Bella's food and grooming, he clambered onto the seat of his wagon and leaned back through the small front opening to hang his clothing inside. A quick glance told him nothing was missing—the lad had done a good job.

  Turning back, he pulled the kender's map of the festival grounds from a box under the seat. He knew from previous years that the fair was held on the west edge of town, within sight of Cry
stalmirLake. He was currently on the northeast side of Solace. There was no direct route to the festival, so he set Bella's head back down the road to the south, turning right to pass the town square's north side. The road narrowed and turned into a quagmire.

  He heard the festival before he saw it, sprawled across the land to the west dipping down behind the cover of the vallenwoods. Fairs, no matter the season, were always noisy, bawdy events, mucky swamps in spring and fall, choking clouds of dust in summer. And of course, in snowy regions like Abanasinia, they were seldom held during winter.

  Gaesil consulted the kender's map, locating the "X" that marked the dwarf's stall. Instead of taking the direct route, down the main, mired thoroughfare on which the fairgoers walked, he traced a path to the back of the stalls with his index finger, calloused from years of sharpening dull knives to razor points and other exciting tinker tasks. The wagons and carts of countless merchants had dug trenches in the newly thawed thatch, but the going was still easier.

  The tinker located the dwarf's booth without trouble and reined in his wagon as close as possible. A simple, drab curtain hung at the back and sides of the stall, beyond which was a small, grass-covered square with three crude chairs, a clean pile of hay covered by a coarse blanket, an empty ale flask, and a short series of empty shelves. The dwarf probably used them to store additional merchandise, but had taken his wares home for safekeeping at night, Gaesil decided. Beyond another curtain was the actual front of the booth, three simple planks on sawhorses, open to the skies. They were set lower than Gaesil would have liked, but he certainly wouldn't feel comfortable rearranging the booth without permission. A narrow entrance at the front allowed customers to walk inside among the wares. Hay was sprinkled on the ground to allay the mud.

  Crude but usable, the tinker concluded. Unhitching Bella from her harness, he gathered up his tools and carted them into the stall in three or four trips. On his last he fetched his sign, "Honing, Soldering, Repairs on Anything," then stood on a chair to hang the sign from the front curtain.

  He was bending over to move the chair when he felt something drop from his pocket. In the hay at his feet was the copper bracelet. Gaesil stooped to retrieve it, thinking to place it in the box under the seat of his wagon, but the wagon was unguarded behind the stall. A safer place still, he reasoned, was his own wrist. He slid the cool piece of orange metal over his hand and settled it on his bony joint.

  Before long, fairgoers were aware of his presence. A number bemoaned that they were without their broken and mendable items, but many promised to return with their dull knives, leaking pots, and a host of other minor travesties, locals fetching from their homes and other merchants from their wagons. Soon, Gaesil had as much work as he could manage. The thick needle and coarse thread fairly flew in his hands as he cobbled old, worn leather to new. Blades big and small gleamed in the sunlight after quick, expert passes over Gaesil's whetstone. He mended three leaking wooden buckets, added straw to one spartan broom, and sold out of nearly half of his forty-bottle supply of pine oil soap in just three hours.

  He was oiling his whetstone for the next wave of knife sharpenings when the greasy jar slipped from his hands, splashing globules of smelly, dark tallow up into his face and over his hands. Snatching up a clean rag, he mopped up the mess as best he could without water and soap. Seeing several drops on the bracelet, he wiped them off on his trousers and pushed the bracelet up under the gathered cuff of his tunic.

  It was late afternoon, several hours before the festival would shut down for the night. Gaesil sat on a chair and propped his chin up on his palm, watching the crowds drift by the stall. Out of the corner of his eye he became aware of the hooded figure of a young woman standing across the main thoroughfare to the right, watching him. Realizing she'd been spotted, the woman cut through the flow of traffic and approached the stall.

  Large eyes the color of the sea regarded Gaesil from beneath a generous silk scarf, wrapped so intricately about her head that only her pale, almost milk-colored, unlined face was exposed. The merest wisp of silver-white hair escaped at her right temple. Drawn with a string at the neck, her finely woven cloak flowed from shoulders to ankles in a soft indigo cloud.

  "Excuse me for staring," she began, her low voice as soothing as waves lapping at the shore, "but isn't this Flint Fireforge's stall?"

  Gaesil stopped his own scrutiny. "Yes, it was—I mean, is, but Flint was, um, called out of town unexpectedly."

  The woman looked very concerned. "Out of town? For how long?"

  Gaesil looked embarrassed. "Well, I don't know. He could be back today, or perhaps not for some time . . ." In truth, the tinker had no idea how soon, if ever, the dwarf would catch up to the kender.

  "Not for some time?" The woman's eyes darkened angrily. "But he was supposed to meet me here." She looked near to panicking.

  "Are you a friend of his? Maybe I can help you," Gaesil offered kindly, feeling pity for her obvious distress.

  The unusual-looking woman turned aside and brushed dust from her pale face with a gloved hand. "No, I'm not. And I don't think you can help . . . No one can, except Master Fireforge. I'll come back later." Before Gaesil could respond, the woman turned and disappeared into the throng of people before the stall.

  Gaesil stood, shaking his head sadly. Something about the exotic-looking woman touched his heart.

  Something also touched his wrist. For no apparent reason, Gaesil felt the bracelet growing warm on his wrist. He also felt dizzy, for no apparent reason. Then his stomach felt upset, and then he felt positively ill. But the feeling passed within moments.

  Much to his astonishment, Gaesil realized that he was looking at his wagon, even though it was behind him, on the far side of a curtain, and his eyes were closed! He had no idea what was happening, but he noticed that a piece of merchandise was missing from his wagon—an oxen yoke that he kept lashed beneath the box was gone.

  When Gaesil opened his eyes, the wagon had vanished. Once again he was seated in a borrowed booth at Solace's festival.

  Of course, Gaesil immediately began wondering what had caused his strange manifestation. He was just curious enough to thrust his head through the curtain and check the wagon. Sure enough, there was the yoke, right where it was kept. So what had the vision meant? Was someone going to steal it from the wagon?

  This oxen yoke was a particular sore spot to Gaesil. Hepsiba had bought it from a neighbor who was critically short on cash during hard times a year ago last fall. She'd paid almost nothing for it, telling Gaesil that he could resell it for much more. But resale was not Gaesil's business and he resented both the meddling in his work and the way she had taken advantage of a neighbor. Still, the yoke was dutifully hauled from show to show and put on display, only to be lashed beneath the wagon again when the show ended.

  Now he had clearly seen the wagon with no oxen yoke, and that was the only thing outstanding about it. He decided that this had to mean one of two things: either he would sell it here—which he doubted—or someone intended to steal it here—which he doubted even more. In either case, he decided he should bring the yoke into the booth, both for display and protection.

  It took him only a few moments to move the ugly thing into the booth. Just as he propped it against the corner barrel, a customer approached. The man was obviously a farmer, judging from his calloused hands and rough clothing. He eyed the yoke carefully and expertly, then spat and asked, "How much?"

  The question caught Gaesil badly off guard. Since he never really expected anyone to buy the yoke, he had never considered how much it might be worth. He decided to try the age-old dodge: "Make me an offer."

  The farmer examined the yoke again, handled it, turned it over, then spat again. "I'll give you one steel and three copper."

  The tinker had sworn long ago to take the first offer he received on the yoke, just to be rid of it. He was about to say, "Sold!" when a different thought struck him. He noticed how warm the bracelet had grown on his wrist.
/>   He pulled the Eye from his pocket and tossed it onto the sawhorse table: Earth. Good luck!

  Feeling cocky, Gaesil decided to haggle. "Two steel, one copper," he countered. The farmer considered that, weighed the coin pouch in his hand thoughtfully, then said, "Got to get at the planting. I'll go as high as one steel, eight copper."

  "Sold!" Gaesil announced. Grinning like he hadn't in years, he cheerfully passed the yoke over the counter and accepted the man's money. No sooner was the farmer gone than Gaesil disappeared behind the curtain to examine the bracelet more carefully.

  Was it lucky, he wondered? That could have been a coincidence, or just normal luck. Nothing could prove the unlikely transaction had been influenced by the bracelet. As these thoughts raced through Gaesil's mind, they were suddenly pushed aside by a keen awareness of customers turning away from his booth.

  He pushed the curtain aside and stepped out front. Three ladies, each carrying a basket full of knives, broken needles, and cracked hinges, and wearing three sad faces, were about to leave the front counter. On spotting Gaesil, their faces brightened. In minutes, Gaesil had enough work from those three to fill his afternoon.

  Two more times that day, the tinker picked up business by acting on hunches. Watching the last of the crowd leaving the festival at day's end, Gaesil marveled at the weight of the coins in the pouch at his waist. He had never had such a good business day, ever. And though he could not explain it, he was certain he owed it all to the dwarf's lucky bracelet. What a powerful talisman it must be; it could make any man rich! It would be a shame to return it to the dwarf, but Gaesil was an honest man, and give it back he would. He only hoped the dwarf did not return until after the fair ended.