Thirty-One: The Rain

  Something did follow us as we made our way east, back toward our intended path: Dark clouds. The Drearwold was not so gloomy, here, as we had already noticed from the tower, so the difference in the sky was easier to see. I’m not sure a gathering storm would have registered with us, back where we had been waylaid by the korreds; but here, it was obvious and ominous.

  “I don’t believe we’ll be able to outrun this,” Caiside said.

  We moved ahead through the trees. As Ko-Rethal had said, there was a shadow of a path there, now very overgrown. We would think we had lost it for some distance, but then find it again.

  Drops began falling, which turned into light rain, which then turned steady, and then hard, and then driving, and then pounding; and, finally, absolute rivers of water poured from the sky. At first we had stayed comfortable enough in our wool cloaks, but even they became wet through. Here on this side of the Drearwold there were not the odd ridges which were so regular back where we had been waylaid. We tried to stay on higher patches of ground, but soon our boots were also soaked.

  Eventually we decided to wait out the hard rain and string up our tarp between trees on a slight rise of ground. The three of us huddled there; me on the right, Freydis in the middle, Caiside to her left.

  “What day is this?” I asked. “Of our journey?”

  “The twelfth,” Freydis answered.

  “I’m afraid we’ll be sleeping out here in this. If I can tell the oncoming night darkness from the cloud darkness.”

  “I still prefer this to a snowed-in Wastemoor mountain pass,” Caiside said.

  “What a stretch of twelve days this has been,” I said. “The free kobolds. And their jump rope. Korreds. Those underwater caverns, the Spelepike. What a sight that was. Caiside, have you ever seen anything like that?”

  “I have not.”

  “And now we’ve paddled them. And it’s not so far from Enkel Kanindal – just a few days’ hike – but completely unknown to us. You know, maybe Ko-Rethal was right. I mean when he was shocked that we were willing to leave without that map, and give up on the hoard. Maybe that’s a lack of ambition. On my part. Maybe I should have been clamoring for my knife all along. Maybe I should have been out seeing all this, when I was younger. It’s not so far away.”

  “I doubt Uncle Landon and Aunt Becca would have allowed you to just wander up here,” Freydis said.

  “I suppose not. But since I’ve been of age, I’ve just been – working, and sitting in that inadequate house of mine. I am grateful to be able to earn a living as a musician, don’t get me wrong. Along with my father. It’s dependable income. I’m lucky that I’ve learned the slide trumpet capably enough that – well, capably enough that people will pay me to play. And I’m lucky that my family is established in this work, so that everyone knows who we are. I see how hard some other people have it, like the river bargers when there’s no traffic, or all our farmers when the rains fail. Or you, Freydis, and Uncle Danzig, that one year when the sickness killed off so many of your sheep. Being a musician is more dependable. It’s comfortable.

  “But maybe it’s too comfortable. I’m relieved to have the work, but I don’t want to end up my father’s age having done nothing else in my life. I feel like that could happen to me. I know there’s value in having steady work for one’s whole life.

  “And I have it in the back of my mind that of course I won’t do that; I won’t just stay in town my entire life. I’ll strike out and do something different at some point. But how? What would it be? Maybe I should be as eager for change as Ko-Rethal was to try to spear those boggarts. Or as willing as you have been, Caiside, to journey to all the places you have.”

  “One of which put me in prison,” she said.

  “True. But you’re out.”

  I sang:

  It’s the tyranny of a trade learned young.

  Endless epic songs I’ve sung –

  not about me (and not about you),

  but about strange heroes; foes they slew.

  I know their stories. It’s ironic:

  it’s thanks to me that they’re iconic.

  Heroines’ deeds would be unknown

  If not for my trained baritone.

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  Speeches rendered long ago;

  magic daggers all aglow;

  other people’s treks, far-flung;

  arrows shot and slashes swung –

  won’t be shared unless they’re sung.

  It’s the tyranny of a trade learned young.

  “Heroines’ deeds, you sing of,” Caiside said.

  “Yes. Heroes, too. But always someone else.”

  The three of us sat silent under the tarp, listening to the hammering of the rain.

  “One thing, Flicker,” Caiside said. “You know – most trades do start young.”

  I shrugged. “I never said they didn’t.”

  “Well,” she said. “I know you may fear dying as an old musician in Enkel Kanindal, without having sought out any further quests beyond this one here. But be careful what adventures you ask for.”

  And now she began to sing:

  I’ve seen glaciers, and the night aurora;

  murderous beasts and poison flora.

  Journeyed to realms where there are no roads,

  and crossed through swamps with man-sized toads.

  “Really?” Freydis asked. But Caiside pressed on:

  I’ve had to learn a few words in a dozen different languages;

  I’ve had to meet a stranger while an older friendship languishes.

  I’ve grown inured to winter in a frosty mountain ice town,

  and suddenly been sunburned after having to come back down.

  I’ve ridden out in camel trains in arid desolations,

  and dodged besiegers’ arrow shots behind pocked crenelations.

  I’ve risked my skin in open boats in wavescapes dark and stormy,

  but looking back on all of it, I wonder what’s there for me.

  I have no hoard that’s set aside like this one there for Slade.

  I can’t call in a sinecure from any friend I’ve made.

  For far too long I lived just seeking out the next adventure.

  But honestly, as a heroine, I’d be only a backbencher.

  I just took pride in playing parts in any grand endeavor;

  was glad to be the crony who was fearless, or was clever.

  I’d lurk in quiet taverns and would hope for invitations,

  but now I think I should have had some other motivations.

  And so I’ve many stories to beguile you, my young friends,

  but I might have been quite better off pursuing other ends.

  *

  The rain continued to descend. Night fell, and it kept up. We curled up as tightly as we could, to try to get all of ourselves under the tarp, but for my part I never quite managed it. I tried to sleep with either my feet protruding and staying soaked, or my back. At one point I had myself sheltered except just the very top of my head, under the hood of my cloak; this actually seemed tolerable for a time, but I was wound so tightly that I had to adjust, and then my legs got soaked again . Meanwhile Freydis and Caiside were wriggling about, too, off and on all night. It was a poor rest.

  In the morning the sky lightened a bit but, incredibly, the torrents continued. We kept our positions under the tarp and assumed the violent showers would end, but they did not.

  “Is something trying to prevent our journey?” Freydis asked. “Someone? This is the strongest rain I’ve ever seen.”

  “I don’t believe the Mage of Wastemoor even in her own capital could cause a storm like this,” Caiside said. “And I think the only beings we’ve truly annoyed have been those boggarts. Who are harmless.”

  “Well, there was the dryad,” I said.

  “Ah, true. I don’t think she could conjure rain, though. We just need to skirt her property on the way back down. If we see her, she’ll start out with an apology, you know.”

  “Apologize? Her, to us? I did burn her house down.”

  “Yes, but she would start off her revenge by charming us. Acknowledging our understandable alarm and fear at the time, that sort of thing. And then she would proceed from there.

  “It seems a long time ago, now, doesn’t it,” she added. “A long-gone and much drier time.”

  Hours passed. The rain slammed down into puddles, onto dancing leaves, and into the growing mire all around us.

  “How much more can I take of this,” Freydis said. “I might wish to be back in that haunted top floor of the tower. At least it was dry. When will this end?”

  “Daphne’s loaf,” I said. I had remembered it, all of a sudden, the one she had wrapped carefully – which was a very fortunate precaution, I saw now – and given to me near our orchard as we left town.

  I retrieved it from my bag. It was dry, wrapped in an oilcloth. And it was still fine to eat; she had made it hard and dense, with dried apple slices.

  The three of us devoured it. And the rain, rather than an endless nightmare, now felt like something that would end soon.

  And it did. Not then, and not that night; but as dawn broke, the downpour stopped. The Drearwold was still drear, and the ground was either sodden or standing water as far as we could see, but the sky was clear and an occasional patch of sunlight would actually make it to the ground. The weather no longer seemed like it was trying to harm us. We walked some distance and came to an area that couldn’t be called a clearing but yet was less dense than the rest of the woods. We draped our wet cloaks and bags and belongings around branches and shrubs and actually slept, better than we had the last two nights. In the early afternoon we continued onward. Our goods were still wet but at least we were cheered by the break.

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  Carole Raddato from Frankfurt, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons