[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.
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