by Will Bly
Efram hung silent, twitching, the silence of imminent death.
“Yess, you have a far journey—fifteen moonss away. And the blood on the sstone travelss ssoutheast. A crysstal cave awaitss, and now you will know where to find it. Be warned, the masster you left iss not yet gone. Your path also runs along the path of another. A test of willss is what it will be. All that’s left is to eat your fate.” The druid shoved his fingers up into Efram’s chest and twisted his hand back and forth. The sickening crack emanated through the forest. “Ah ha! Here.” Efram’s heart pulsed between the rusty ends of his fingernails. The druid extended his offering. “To conssume your desstiny iss to sseal it.”
Chapter 10: Hunting Mushrooms
What a curious creature, this Leofrick. Farah’s sight fell to the ground as she passed under a low-lying branch, then her gaze returned to him. The strange man hunched down and sprang up as he walked, analyzing the ground around him. From time to time, he would stop at random and run his fingers through the dirt, his butt shooting up into the air. Farah thought he looked quite ridiculous. She was sure her companions thought the same. Kay’s scowl and Irulen’s raised eyebrows confirmed as much.
Farah looked back to make sure Merek hadn’t gotten lost. She read a scroll about cloudwalkers like Merek and how they had a habit of wandering off—sometimes for days if you let them.
Merek walks clouds, and Leofrick scours the dirt.
There was a familiarity to Leofrick. Farah recognized Irulen’s independent spirit in the thief. He operated by his own laws well outside of societal confines. She smiled to think that—perhaps just a short while ago—a young Farah in Frostbridge might well have been intrigued by a man like that. But that was a lifetime ago, and she felt a certain caution when dealing with the man.
But not Irulen. I’m still intrigued by him. Why?
The truth is, she now looked beyond Irulen the mystery, Irulen the wizard, Irulen the rebel. That stage had come and gone along its merry way. She now empathized with and consoled Irulen the pitiful, the weak, Irulen the drunk. She had seen Irulen from above and below. Broken. Only now did she begin to behold him on the same level as her. He was no longer Irulen the mage to her, he was Irulen the man, flaws and all. She’d even learned to forgive him for them. She would mend him, and he would lead the way to their destiny.
A sudden pain tore at Farah’s arm. “Ow!”
Irulen grabbed her shoulders. “Stay still!” he barked. Her daydream had caused an entanglement of thorns. Irulen laughed as he worked to free her. “You are more awkward than Quinn.” He laughed again.
Farah felt her cheeks flush. “I—”
“Who’s Quinn?” Leofrick asked from ahead.
“Nevermind that,” Kay snapped. “Are we going to find mushrooms today? Or have we come to admire the trees?”
Leofrick opened his mouth in feigned offense and brought his hand to his chest. He looked like some kind of wrinkly frog with his forehead wrinkles frowning downward.
Farah caught Irulen’s gaze. He smiled and held her wrist as he freed her arm from the barbs. She smiled back. A twinkle of hope lit his pupils, but doubt pulled at his eyebrows. Then she remembered their pact of secrecy. Farah’s face fell to stone. She felt Kay’s gaze, but dared not meet it.
“There! You are free.” Irulen removed the last branch of stickers. He sounded almost melancholic.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I’ll take better care.”
Irulen tightened his lips and nodded, but this time he was quick to look away.
“Time for our new friend to show some worth,” Kay called over to them. “Dinner’s on Leofrick tonight.”
Leofrick puffed up. “And I accept the duty dutifully. Come, come, and we’ll rob the forest of some fine foodstuffs.”
Leofrick had very little in the way of self-control when it came to speaking. He kept no thoughts to himself. He spoke as they walked. He spoke as they sat. He spoke when they rested. He spoke as if it were his job. He spoke as if the world’s end accompanied silence.
“You know, there is a fine line between the lesser and finer things in life. Between distasteful and tasteful, rude and respectful. Between dung and the delicious!”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“I’m saying to look at food. So many things taste good that are one step away from being compost. Mushrooms, for example. I even hear tell of little shelled creatures along the floor of the sea that skitter around gobbling up water dung and dead carcasses all day. But they themselves taste delicious! So I hear. Any of you ever visit the coast?”
The coast? I haven’t even seen anything beyond these damnable roads. “I couldn’t even imagine a sea.”
“Oh? That’s a shame. Think of the sea as an incredibly vast tundra of ice and frost. And then melt it all. Now drop great big things in the middle of all that and cause splashes and waves as if you sat in a bath. That’s the sea.”
The notion seemed somehow ungraspable to Farah. She figured Kay would have seen the open water at some point and so asked, “Kay, is that what the sea is truly like?”
Kay shrugged. “I suppose.”
Leofrick appeared unable to restrain himself for long. He jumped back in the conversation, speaking a bit more quickly as if making up for lost time. “I am fairly wide-traveled, and I must say that seafood is the most delicious sustenance in all the world. Naturally flavored with the sea’s salt. Some of the creatures, like crabs, have shells guarding tender, sweet meat on the inside. Cracking them open and extracting the fleshy insides takes a lot of work, to be sure. But the payoff is worth it. Taste over quantity—something lost in the North, albeit by necessity, I suppose. Ah, here we are!”
Leofrick’s pace quickened as he picked his way through the forest. Farah didn’t see what he aimed for and for a brief moment thought he might be testing them. Perhaps he was seeing how far they’d let him go before calling him out on it. Truth be told, if it were Farah he ran from, he’d be a free man. But Kay moved through the woods with the grace of a mountain lion, and Irulen plodded along not all that far behind.
Merek ran alongside Farah, more out of duty than necessity. She caught up to others only some thirty paces away, but her heart thudded heavily against her chest. For all the walking they did, she felt out of shape. “Was that really necessary?”
“Oh, no, but I try to exercise the old heart while in the woods. Not a bad idea, do you think?”
Farah didn’t answer.
Leofrick moved around an area near a felled tree surrounded by healthy trees. “You want to make sure the mushrooms aren’t rotten or old or have any bites in them.”
He poked about a patch of mushrooms near the decaying tree. “Now, you see this mushroom here with the domed shape and white underskirt? This is likely poisonous. Even more likely to be poisonous if it shows spotted colors. There’s another one that looks something like this except with a creamier, off-white color that browns with age.”
He stomped the mushrooms in question. “I make a habit of destroying the bad mushrooms I come by, so that I don’t pick them by accident later.”
He moved along the decaying tree and hooted, “Ha! Now here, this is good eating.” He dug into the dirt with his hands. “These round, fluffy puffballs. No stem to ‘em. Just pure food. There’s another shroom like it, except it’s brown and looks like a small ruffled chicken.”
Working his way from the decaying tree to the upright trees around him, Leofrick examined all the nearby trunks. He leaned around one particular ash and hooted again. “Ha! This is the best find. Come around here.”
Farah and the others obeyed.
Leofrick beamed next to a batch of mushrooms packed tightly along the tree trunk. He indicated with his finger. “These clumps of mushrooms on the trees, they’re called oyster mushrooms, but as some of you have never seen an oyster I will call them mushroom hordes. They are all stacked up like they are defending the tree. They do for food quite nicely.”
Kay
leaned in near him and began pulling the mushrooms off and tossing them into a sack. “Just remember you are eating first. No matter what’s cooked. Going to start by shoving a fistful of these down your throat.”
Leofrick’s smile waned ever so slightly. “I’d be happy to stand by my work, pretty woman. Ha! Look at this one.” He inched past a snarling Kay to another patch of mushrooms. “This place is just blessed! Simply blessed with mushrooms. These fellows here, with their wiry stems and droopy heads—” He grabbed and popped a few in his mouth. “These are magic. Pure magic. They’ll make you feel good...” He popped a few more in. “...and see things. Some seers use them, I hear.” He pushed some more into a satchel and tossed them to Irulen. “Care to indulge?”
Irulen shrugged. “Maybe later. I’m trying to clean myself up a bit.” He pocketed the satchel.
Farah smiled at Irulen’s self-control.
Leofrick tossed a mushroom up into the trees. It bounce off Max’s beak. The raven cried “rawrk,” voicing his discontent.
“Ravens don’t eat mushrooms,” Irulen said.
Leofrick put together another satchel of the magic shrooms and offered them to Kay. “How about you, beautiful? Would you like to imbibe? There’s no reason we can’t keep humorous company, don’t you think? A little group spirit?”
Kay growled and walked off.
Leofrick called after her. “If you have any questions just yell!”
She gestured something over her shoulder Farah couldn’t quite see. Most likely something obscene. Farah nodded to herself and began observing the surrounding area for mushrooms.
“I’ll look for new patches while you harvest this area,” Leofrick declared, chest puffed out in confidence. “Make sure not to eat anything until I have a look!” He marched off.
“Don’t try leaving!” Irulen called. “You might run for a living, but we chase for a living. And we make a good living.”
“Of course, of course. My word is my bond, good sir. I’ll see through the contract until I pay you off with my hidden loot.”
“He speaks so proper and detailed,” Farah said.
“Yes, like a snake merchant.” Irulen looked on after him.
“What does that mean? A merchant selling snakes or a merchant who is like a snake?”
“Both, what’s it matter?”
He looks angry. Over what? “Are you okay?”
“Yes… No. Don’t worry about it.”
Farah reminded herself not to press. Still, she remained convinced something was wrong. Something that went beyond Irulen’s mistrust of their new companion. She couldn’t get the image of Irulen torturing Gronkle to death out of her mind. What he did to the eyes… He’d never made for a pinnacle of happiness, but he came back different the night he ended Lynette and faced Ithial. She knew something inside Irulen tore him up. The details were scarce, his feelings even more elusive. He still had his highs, but his lows were lower. And then they shared relations. Maybe a mistake, maybe not. She wondered if the experience had lifted him up for better or worse. Did she lift his spirits out of the doldrums? Or just lift him higher so that he might fall further.
Merek followed along as Irulen picked his way through the mushrooms. He often plucked the wrong ones.
“Wait!” she called. “Irulen.”
He stood and questioned her in silence, his hands full of mushrooms.
She walked to him and opened his clasped hands. “Silly, silly,” she said as she sorted through the toadstools in his palms. “These ones here are poisonous, silly man.”
“Ah, oops, my mistake.”
“I asked before—but are you okay? Something seems off. You can tell me, you know.”
“I know... I can tell you anything.”
“Then tell me. What’s wrong?”
He stashed the remaining mushrooms in a satchel and sat on a nearby log, hands resting on his legs. He sighed. “There’s something I have to do. A place to visit.”
“Oh?”
“I… I have to go home. Now.”
“Now? Where is home? This seems rather sudden.”
“It is sudden. I wasn’t going to go. But I should. I will. My home isn’t that far out of the way of the next town. You will arrive there the day after tomorrow. If you all spend the night, I could be back by noon the day after that.”
“Well, don’t leave yet. Let’s stock you up with some mushrooms first.”
“But—”
“No buts. Another hour won’t throw your timeline. Stay, at least, until we fill you up with a good batch of shrooms.”
“Fine. An hour tops. Then I go, and you all meet me after. I’ll leave Max with you in case you need to reach me.”
She scanned around to make sure they weren’t being watched and crouched in front of him. “Suits me.” She placed her hands on his, his eyes raised to hers. Something is lost in those eyes.
“Just come back to us, okay? Come back to me. Do what you have to do. Go to your family. Heal yourself.”
He smiled the wistful smile that so often tugged at her compassion. “I will. I need to tie some loose ends. Sort some things.” His hand raised to her cheek. “Then I’ll be back. I… I have to come back to you. I just have to, don’t I? You are the one who talks about destiny and fate and how our fates are entwined.”
She nodded. “Our fates are entwined no matter how fast or far either of us run.” She looked around before stealing a kiss from him. She smiled in her coy way. “Now let us prepare for your trip.”
Chapter 11: On the Blight Side
Irulen stepped briskly as if trying to outwalk the urge for a potion he didn’t have. He knew the withdrawal was near completion and counted himself lucky that his symptoms hadn’t been worse. He’d heard of many who vomited and soiled themselves while withdrawing from potions, sometimes to the point of death. He needed this trip to clear his head. And he knew returning to the village of his youth would prove difficult. The extent of it all, however, didn’t hit him until he came across his first familiar face near the outskirts of the community.
A sleepy farm covered in nothing but dirt and dead grass ran down a hill and splashed against the road. A small patch of fresh vegetation, recently emerged from a long winter, formed a line between farm and path.
An old mutt—scruffy and brown—snuffled around. Irulen strained to remember the old girl’s name while she dug her nose into piles of leaf fodder lining the side of the road likely in search of the next meal.
He opened his mouth to call to the dog, then closed it.
R, definitely an R name.
“Roofus!”
The dog ignored him.
“Rory!”
Still nothing.
Was it a B name? No, definitely an R. I got it! “Rany!”
The dog stopped her work and cocked her head at him.
“Rany!”
The mutt came running with her tongue hanging out of a wide grin. Irulen’s excitement rose to meet the dog's, and he squatted down to receive Rany into his arms. The dog obliged, throwing herself into Irulen’s welcoming embrace. The impact took Irulen off guard and cost him his balance. Irulen ignored the ground as it sent a wave of pain through his tailbone. Hard licks of the dog’s rough tongue assaulted his chin, but the greeting was more than pleasant.
Irulen always had a soft spot for dogs, and not in a small part because of their ability to live in the moment. It isn’t that they forget the past—they certainly remember those who hurt them—but they have a special ability to forgive, and their hearts never become incapable of love. A dog’s heart may harden, surely, and it may require a great deal of effort to regain trust once lost, but there is always an avenue into a dog’s heart just waiting to be found.
Thunk! The slamming of a door interrupted their reunion as a figure barreled down the hill from a small house above.
Humans, on the other hand, have a distinct ability to make monsters of each other.
He didn’t have time to dwell on the intricac
ies of human malice, however, since the figure closed the distance between them within seconds. Irulen stood, patted himself off, and pet Rany on the head while he waited. He recognized the person walking toward him. The upcoming assault would be unpleasant.
The farm’s owner, Old Lady Ballywick, had a distinguishing walk. Somehow, she waddled like a duck while her legs reached out in front of her like tendrils, pulling her across the ground like some sort of sea creature. Her frame was equally distinct, as if all her weight gathered around her midriff while the rest of her body remained twig-like and somehow starved for nutrition. Irulen had heard many times, in many taverns, that there was a type of creature that looked somewhat human and somewhat amphibious, and that this creature took pleasure in spiriting away unsuspecting folk. Like Ballywick but with a greyish hue to their skin.
The sharpness of Ballywick’s voice cut through the sky “You! Who do you think you are? Coming back here after what you’ve done! Abominable boy!” She took in a breath.
Irulen shrank in the face of the onslaught. “I apologize—”
Ballywick hocked at some unseen blockage in the pit of her throat. Irulen pictured an unhealthy alley cat he’d known in Northforge. There was also a black bear one time… Time seemed to slow down as she erupted. Her head, which was tilted down, arched upward as she opened her mouth. Irulen did not appreciate the projected trajectory of what came next.
“Haarrcch pootah!” A brown morsel encased in a gelatinous sack lobbed through the air followed by an arching string of saliva. Irulen’s instincts kicked in as he dodged to the side. He knew it would be virtually impossible to clear the entirety of the lady’s emission, but he hoped to dodge the main wad of it.
He again picked himself up and dusted himself off. He raised his arms and pleaded, “Please, please no more of that.”
“And why not?” she asked. “Should I just let you walk on past me then? Go back to town and tear things up? Your parents have only recently shed the stain of you, and now you want to ruin that? You petulant, evil thing.”