NaNoWriMo 2016, Day 3 (and a bit of 4): Bren's Tale, contd. (980 words)

His head spun as he became aware of noises around him.  People were nearby, and a light that threatened to split his head in two.

Bren lay there, head pounding, listening to the sounds of those around him. Apart from his head, he as not uncomfortable, and it was not difficult to relax and regulate his breathing to avoid detection. There were low murmuring voices near him, still speaking in a language he could not understand, though he listened closely. There was a lilting laughter, and he thought he heard, among the syllables, two names uttered in a strange accent: Alina and Magda.

Bren’s eyes flew open and he sat straight up—unable to suppress a groan as his head protested. He steadied himself—

“You there—what do you have?”

More laughter, but not without caution. He was faced by seven women in garb like the riders, but with the dust of travel removed, and more richly embellished and colorful.  Four of them swung small daggers in his direction. He drew in his breath and said with forced calm, “That—that’s mine.”

His original captor held a book—most precious to him—his own chronicle.  He began it before he left, hoping one day to share it with Alina, and, less he forget his resolve to make amends with Magda (however unlikely) or to confess his sin to Alina, he included his account of the events of the Gathering. Certain long evenings, only the writing kept him from returning—but that he did not want Alina to know.

His original rider made her expression grave—or perhaps a mocking false gravity, he couldn’t be sure—and thrust the book at him. He took it and bowed again, silent, glowering.  Her companions laughed.  Looking at him with a measured stare, she said in deep tones with a strong, hard edge and odd intonation, “You may have it back, Brencis Woorwright.”

His mouth dropped open for a moment, then he snapped it shot again.  She, at least, spoke his language.  From their careful attention, he doubted that the others did—but then, why the laughter?  Unless she was reading his memoir to them…

“Am I permitted to speak?” He was surprised by his own ironic tone, since he was not playing the part of meek captor well at the moment.

“As you wish,” she said, her voice resonant, nodding graciously with, again, that ghost of mockery.

“Where are my things?”

“They are near.”

He glanced around, realizing for the first time that his surroundings had changed from the first room.  She quirked an eyebrow at his amazement, still smiling at his expense.

“Why did you drug me?”

“It was expedient.”

There didn’t seem much he could say to that.

“What do you intend to do with me?” Then, as an afterthought, “And how do you speak my language?”

“There are many of us here, and we speak many languages.  Some of us have a particular aptitude, you might say.  But I think perhaps you underestimate how common your language is.  You have not been from home before?”  Again, Bren felt the vague mockery, but there was something else… curiosity, wistfulness.  He glared.  “As for your other question, you have things that are useful to us.  We require your service. You will travel with us, and you may learn much.  We will keep you fed, and in good health.  In return, you will serve us.”  She turned and beckoned to one of the others, who brought Bren’s pack forth.  She drew out one of Bren’s carvings—a small wood dove.  “This—this is skillful, if rough.  You can learn much if you travel with us, and help us to construct another of our tents, as you see here.  You may be asked to mate, as well, before you leave.”

Bren straightened, and his eyes grew wide.  “I certainly shall not.” 

The rider shrugged.  “We shall see.”  She returned Bren’s pack to her companion and beckoned forward another, who produced three of Bren’s pouches.  “As for these… They are rare and precious to us. We cannot find them readily.  Where did you come by them?”

“They are from my village.  We gather them.”

Her eyebrow raised.  “And you were allowed to take them?”

“I gathered them. And yes.”

“I see.  So you are not simply a carver. If we went to a place where these grew, could you find them for us?”

“In theory, yes. If I were forced.”

“I see. Well no, I do not see. Perhaps you feel threatened. You are a captive. But your captivity will not be unpleasant.  And we will release you. Perhaps you will reconsider. We will keep these”—Bren moved in protest—“at least for now.”  He relaxed only slightly, which still meant that almost every muscle was tensed to fight or flee.

“And my other things?”

“Will be returned in time.  Perhaps sooner than later.”  She shrugged again, a gesture that Bren found maddening for the insult it offered. “Are you hungry?”

Bren quickly reviewed his body.  His head still spun, reminding him that eating posed its own risks.  “Not particularly.”

She smiled.  “You will eat.  And you will be fine.  You are complicit enough.  And you will not escape.”

“Is this your way of saying that I will not be drugged?”

She inclined her head.  “We would prefer your trust.  And to trust you.  You can find these, after all”—she gestured to the mushrooms—“and we would not want you to betray us in that matter.”

He smiled grimly, aware that once again, his worth was measured by mushrooms, and his ability to distinguish medicine from poison.

“We will send someone in to wait on you. And then, we will move.  We have not reached our destination for the day. Farewell.”

She turned and left, she and her companions disappearing through the fabric folds.

NaNoWriMo 2016, Day 2: Bren's Tale, contd. (1243 words)

Fifteen days out from the village, the caravan was within an approachable distance.  It began to loom before him, a blur of movement and shimmering color against the sands. For the first time, it occurred to him to be worried, but by this time, they had seen him.  First one, then another, then three of the riders on the outskirts of the tented wagons gave a shout, then erupted into a high-pitched yelling that was song-like in its intensity.  Had he intended harm—he, a solitary traveler—he would almost certainly have reconsidered; as it was, he resisted the impulse to turn and run, since there was nowhere to run, and to flee would likely signal guilt, and cost him his life.  These thoughts ran through his head as he steadied his legs and proceeded, clutching his whittling knife from instinct rather from a real sense that it would protect him—it would not.  The nearest horseman pulled up several yards ahead and stopped.  He seemed to be a kind of scout—the slow caravan would take a bit longer to approach, giving him time to dispatch the stranger if harm or trouble were meant.  He called out a single syllable that Bren did not understand, pointed, then laid his tall stick—perhaps a standard rather than a weapon—on his lap and held up his hand.  No doubt, Bren thought, the others had arrows aimed at his heard.  He forced his hand to relax, the whittling knife falling back into his pocket.  Then he withdrew his hands—not too slowly, not so fast as to case alarm—and held them in front of him, palms facing up, signaling his peaceful intent.  The rider nodded, whistled to his left and right, and dismounted.

To say that Bren froze would perhaps be accurate, though he did so out of apprehension rather than panic, or so he tried to tell himself.  He saw the staff—whether weapon, he could not tell—change hands, passed to a rider on a tawny colored horse, and a second rider dismounted, coming to the side of the first.  The first looked Bren in the eye, and he saw a fierce sparkle under their thick brows.  He heard several rapid syllables, accompanied by a gesture that seemed designed to call forth something from him, but he merely stood, bewildered.  The first rider nodded to the second, who spoke to Bren from deep in the throat, but he shook his head. He knew only a little of a language that was not his own; he learned it from some boys who had come to stay in the village when he was young.  Now those few words and phrases circled his head as he wondered whether he should try to form them into sentences.  They resembled the first rider’s speech more closely, but none of those syllables held meaning for him.  The riders looked at one another, and first one and then the other gave a sharp nod, as if deciding something.  The first pulled from a pocket a colored scarf, and the other did likewise. They seized his wrists with a firm grip, but not a rough one, and tied his wrists together in front of him.  Then, holding his elbows on either side, they marched him forward, the staff-bearing rider falling behind.  By this time, Bren realized, the caravan had halted fully, spreading around him like its own colorful city.

Vaguely, Bren wondered whether he might be able to escape. The scarves were not tight, and his captors were slight and held him loosely.  But he didn’t consider it seriously.  He was on their territory—at any rate, their territory had engulfed him—and he needed food.  He had supplies to barter.  When they bound him—symbolically, he thought, because yes, he could escape—they did not bother to remove his large pack or the bags strung about him.  Time enough to seize them when they reached their destination, he supposed.

The caravan apparently traveled in the same configuration that it settled in, Bren surmised from the determination with which his captors led him through the mobile tents.  He began to see eyes and limbs poking through doors, but he was urged ahead every time he cocked his head to one side, so he did not see complete people, only shapes and shadows and parts—and not so many, even of these.  From what he could see, the tents were mostly rounded on the bottom, the bottoms themselves made from either wood or metal.  They stood about waist-high off the ground. Bright pinks, oranges, and reds hung loose but not limp from the shapes.  Though the outer layers fluttered in the breezes, there did seem to be some foundational fabrics secured inside the base.  Alina would have been intrigued.  Bren had never seen such light fabrics, or such rich dyes.  Here and there, a horse and rider were stationed. 

There was a darker tent toward the back—through the eight or so that surrounded him.  This seemed to be the one to which they were leading him.  At the base of it, they paused, and a short ladder was folded from the inside down.  This close, Bren could see the wheels at the base, and the carvings and inscribed characters on the base.  It was good workmanship, and a jealous admiration crept behind his eyes.  He stiffened his movements a bit.  Misunderstanding, his guards adjusted their pressure.  They shoved him up into the tent.  When he stumbled forward, however, they caught him.  He nodded and relaxed.  After all, pride and jealousy were equally useless to him at the moment.

The inside of the tent was larger than it at first appeared.  It was, like the exterior, black, though there were other colors, still mostly dark, on the floor, the draperies, and some cushions.  The first rider gestured for him to sit.  He shrugged and did so.  Then, they left.

Bren had lowered himself onto an elbow when he felt rather than saw a rustling of the tent opening.  The first rider had returned, bearing food.  Bren sat up abruptly and for a moment, stared.  She—yes, she—had removed the swath of fabric from her neck, face and hair.  Her eyes were keen and dark, unyielding but not unkind. Bren nodded with respect and gratitude.  The tray she carried had a base—sort of an inverted cone—on the bottom, and acted like a table when but down near him.  She untied his wrists and nodded to the food.  “Thank you,” he said.  Her eyes widened, then she nodded briefly, and withdrew to the door.

The food consisted of a bread spread with a nutty paste and some dried fruit—traveler’s fare—and also a refreshing broth, clear and warm but not hot, salty but refreshing.  Bren ate gratefully, feeling—for the moment—more fortunate than not.  He sipped from a clear bowl a sweet drink that put him in mind of cider. 

He was soon finished, but not satisfied.  His stomach gurgled in the most alarming manner, and he felt a cramp.  Groaning, he doubled over, and as the feeling passed, he became dizzy.  Poison!  The word flooded his mind, and he groped toward his pack, a scant foot away.  One of the mushrooms, he knew, would cure most poisons, but the edges of his sight were fuzzy, and he groped as if through tunnel before all went black. 

NaNoWriMo 2016, Day 1: Bren's Tale (902 words +, edited)

Loosely beginning where this post left off.  Loosely.

[How he leaves his forest home to seek his fortune, practice the craft of building, and become a man, travels with a caravan, joins an army but is not allowed to fight, and sails on a merchant vessel, whittling odds and ends and mostly peddling dried mushrooms as currency.]

Bren did not turn to look back as he wound his way through the brush.  As soon as he turned away from her, he regretted leaving Alina with an ache in the pit of his stomach.  How she pleaded with him, even as she would not beg—for his sake as well as for hers.  And how it pained him to refuse her farewell gift, the one that would have made him her husband in truth.  But he would not have been able to leave her then, though she said at the last that she would want him to go and find his purpose, and return to her—to her, and to any child that might be theirs.  But he would not.  Could not bear such a union, and then part.  And if she understood, she still wept bitterly and silently, turned away from him.  But she kissed him in the morning.

As he walked, his mind turned often to Alina, but it turned also to Magda.  He had wronged her, he knew—though he didn’t mean to do so.  But the wench would not let him apologize.  During the three weeks, amid preparations, protestations, and finally, the farewells, he sought her out whenever he was near to where she might be, but she was never there, or, in brief moments when he did find her, would not see him alone.  If she was afraid of him, that was a deep regret to Bren.  If she felt shame or anger, she did not grant him the intimacy of those feelings, who had seized intimacy unaware.  When he was able to see her, in the company of her mother, her sister, or his grandmother, she was unaccountably meek, perhaps even downcast.  Although he asked, she was not in the small gathering that bade him farewell; her mother said that she was not well the previous evening, and she asked to be allowed to remain in bed.

He thought of these regrets in between his thoughts of Alina, but every now and then, unbidden, a scent of lavender crept into his nostrils and he seemed to taste vanilla—and he stopped for a moment, shook his head, and walked on.

For three days he traveled east, resting three times during the day, seeing few animals or birds and fewer travelers, those silent and well wrapped against the sun and dust.  He carried a large pack, and several smaller bags, but did not fear for his safety, for his wares were mundane enough:  mushrooms. Although it pained him to do so—for his own sake as well as for the community he left behind—the currency on which he had to depend was the same that he was trying to escape.  These were provided by his grandmother, who alone could grant another the right to take them at all—much less to take them out of the village.  He did not dare protest, although he was not certain how the village would replenish the store without him.  In this gesture, along with generosity and the desire to honor him, Bren detected a ruse:  his grandmother set him a test, to see whether he could, when faced with the deprivation they would suffer without him, leave after all.  But if he could leave Alina, he could leave them all behind.

In addition to his mushrooms, he had his traveling cloak, a change of clothes, both provided by Alina, and food for about two weeks, mostly consisting of dried meats and fruits, with some biscuits and honey cakes.  He had two skins of water that he refilled when chance brought him to a small stream.  In two weeks, he expected to begin to find the Settlement, if he kept a steady pace and nothing turned him off the road or offered significant delay.  The sun baked the clay and a hot wind brushed sand and the dry husks of migrating plants past Bren, and occasionally over him, but other than one dust storm, there was nothing unpredictable.

At night he settled against a rock if he could find one, a tree or brush if he was very fortunate.  Otherwise, he simply faded into the shadows away from the road.  Night travelers were even less frequent, but more likely to be traveling at night for concealment, which was a warning.  He ate his solitary supper without a fire, this night adding a piece of hard cheese, another night a honey cake, watching the last traces of pink and orange leave the sky.  He bowed and touched his forehead, lips, and heart, and thought of Alina—and yes, of Magda, of his grandmother, and their mother, and the home of his stubborn heart.  Before spreading his cloak upon the hard ground, he stood, and taking a vial from his pack, shook it lightly over the ground at his feet: that home should ever be near you, he chanted, as the dried dust of leaves and dirt scattered at his feet.  Then he could sleep, clutching the token—one half of a clothier token—that was his reminder to return home.  Alina kept the other half.

By the start of the second week, the travelers became more numerous, if not significantly friendlier.  They hurried down the path away from Bren, sometimes branching off in one of the other directions—to his left or right, though watching your fellow travelers is, he knows, not done. Watching leads to suspicion; suspicion gets you killed before you can follow a traveler to his camp, kill him, or rape his sheep.  There is a code that you must follow, and Bren has been granted these secrets, shared by the rare traveler to the village.

While day 12 did not seem to bring him nearer to settlements, he spied a small colorful cloud in the distance, moving toward him with the rapidity of a well-articulated mirage.  The second day of its approach left Bren thankful that here, at least, he will have the chance to barter for food—his own supply seemed meager for days, and he has been rationing further as it seemed unlikely that he would discover a bustling farm in the next day or two.