“But regardless,” Highview continued. “I admire your quest. Young folk seeking wisdom. I’d be glad to escort you through the Stillwold, if you like. It’s mostly quiet, but there are trolls about.”
“We are well aware,” I said. I told him the story of the day before about our attack, and Vigbond’s band of Dwarves.
“Dwarves, eh?” Highview said. “This far away from their home? These were Gray Mount folk, or Death Crags?”
“Gray Mount.”
“Hmm. Well, I can’t say I like that very much. You’re just passing through, or so you say; but once Dwarves start wandering about, they tend to want to stay. Well, I suppose they wouldn’t find much to mine around here, and certainly no mountain halls to excavate. But you were lucky to run into them, from what you say.”
“We certainly were. This time.”
“Well, why don’t you walk with me, then. If there are any trolls looking for their captured comrade, they won’t bother you if you’re with me. Come.”
Highview turned and walked due north; up, across, down the ridges. His strides were enormous, so he kept getting ahead of us and stopping. Caiside, once again, had the hardest time keeping up, but she persevered. He talked as we walked.
“How many days have you been in the Drearwold?”
“This is our seventh day.”
“That long? It shouldn’t take that long to traverse.”
“We had a rather lengthy detour which we had not planned on. Even before meeting that troll yesterday. We were tied up and abducted.”
“By korreds!” Caiside interjected. I don’t know why she took obvious pleasure in sharing that misstep of ours with strangers.
“Korreds, eh?” Highview said. “The ones who live on the other side of our wold, here?”
“The same,” I said. “And they bound us, and took us to their home cavern.”
“But you escaped?”
“They let us go. We earned our freedom, we could say.”
“And how did you do that?”
“There was a ghost who had been plaguing them, for some time apparently. They kidnapped us because they wanted us to speak to it, and try to find out what it wanted.”
Highview stopped suddenly, at this.
“A ghost?” he repeated. “Here in the Drearwold?”
“That’s right.”
“That blue apparition?”
“Yes! You had seen it too?”
“Several times,” he said. “I’m not ashamed to say, I was not fond of that thing. I found it quite disturbing.”
“Well, I believe it’s gone, now. You shouldn’t see it again.”
“You know,” he said, raising his hand toward me. “I asked it what it wanted. Each time I saw it. That’s often the key to helping these lost beings along on their way. But it wouldn’t answer. It seemed to just look at me each time; size me up; determine if I was one of its kind or not – which should not have taken too long to figure out, I wouldn’t think – and then it would dissipate. You think it is gone now, though?”
“Yes. We managed to speak to it, after the korreds arranged a meeting for us. It turns out it was a man who had fallen, many years ago, while protecting his family as they were pursued. And he wanted to talk to another human. And furthermore, we happened to know his descendants in Enkel Kanindal, so he was reassured. And he left.”
“The korreds set this up for you to do?”
“Yes. That’s why they captured us.”
“Well, that’s a service you have done us all,” Highview said. “And him.”
He turned away from us and resumed walking. “We’re almost there.”
I now realized that the ridges had disappeared, and we had been walking on level ground for some distance.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Flat here,” I said.
“We pulled down those little hills, smoothed them out,” he said. “Do you see the light there? That’s my home.”
Through the trees we saw yellow light, then; as we neared, we saw it was a square of it – a large window. This was the single opening in the side of a very tall A-frame house which had been constructed in a gap between the trees.
“Wife,” Highview called out. “I return. With visitors.”
A tall door opened up next to the window, then, and more yellow light splashed forth. A figure appeared in it, and stepped out. She was as tall as Highview, and walked up beside him.
“These are travelers,” he told her. “Caiside, Freydis, and Flicker. From the south.”
He turned to us, then:
“This is Liatris.”
She looked quite like her husband: head-tiltingly tall, thin, yellowish skin, and a very serious demeanor. She wore linen overalls very much like his, and in fact I might have taken her for a male had I not seen her next to Highview. I had never heard of a female firbolg, and now I realized that might have been because people could not tell them apart.
“I’ve heard that outsiders – I mean, everyone who is not a firbolg – ” Highview said, “sometimes assume there are no female firbolgs.” It was as if he had read my mind. I suppose that I or Freydis or Caiside, or all three of us, may have stared too long at Liatris. “But of course there would shortly be no more firbolgs without women. People often have fantastical ideas about how some of us exist. There are no males without females, in this world.”
“You don’t know what they were thinking, Highview,” Liatris said. Her voice was calm and warm. “Welcome,” she said to us. “So long since we have had friendly travelers.”
Freydis and I thanked her and nodded. But Caiside, for her part, thought it was a good time to blurt:
“Well, do you know about alkonosts, though, Sir Highview? They are females without males.”
I felt a throb in my head. Bringing up alkonosts could obviously be about one anecdote away from revealing our quest.
“Alkonosts,” Highview repeated. “Yes, but those are mythical creatures, aren’t they?”
“No, very real,” Caiside said. “I have seen one myself.”
“Hmm,” he answered. He seemed to be considering whether he believed this or not. I noted, to myself, the irony of a virtually-never-seen firbolg himself assuming that another being must be merely a legend.
“Well,” he resumed, “are you sure they are not just concealing their males?”
“They sounded extremely glad to live without them. It didn’t seem to me like wishful thinking.”
“I wonder how they continue their line, then.”
“They simply lay eggs, and the eggs all hatch females.”
“Well then, maybe egg-laying is the key. How did you meet one of them?”
“Highview,” I interrupted. “We don’t want to keep you or Liatris out in this chill air. I see we won’t fit in your house, so we can set up our camp out here.”
“No, no, we will stay out with you; let us start a fire,” he said. “I’ll bet you have been eschewing them, in your walks through our wold. Well, no more reason for that. Now that you’re at our home. Please sit.”
My appeal to his hospitality was enough to put an end to Caiside’s ramblings, fortunately. He motioned further on in the small clearing where huge logs surrounded a fire pit. He and Liatris then turned back toward the house. Liatris stepped inside, presumably to bring a candle or lantern, while Highview disappeared behind. Caiside, Freydis and I sat down on the logs. Several of them were quite large – firbolg-sized – but a few others were smaller.
“They must have guests sometimes,” I said. “Smaller guests.”
“Or smaller somethings,” Caiside answered.
“I can’t believe how kind they are,” Freydis said. “Are we safe? We’re not being bewitched again, are we?”
“They have nothing to fear,” Caiside said, “and so they leave us be. I’m sure they would behave differently with anyone who might be a threat to them, but there can’t be many creatures in this wold who would be.”
“DO YOUR FOLK,” Highview shouted to us now, from behind the house, “HAVE ANY WOOD-GATHERING SONGS?”
“Wood-gathering,” Freydis repeated, thinking.
“Well, yes,” I called back. “The first one that comes to mind is an old rhyme.”
I sang:
Forest ginger, woodbine
All the sawyers in the pines
Dragging logs away in lines.
“That’s all?” he said. He returned to us, cradling a load of logs in his arms.
“It’s just for children,” I said.
“I see. You know, we have something similar. It goes:”
Chopping down a blackhaw, scaring off a jackdaw.
Wrens from a felled tamarack
will never come back.
Toppling your laurel bays
Frightens off the blue jays.
Chickadees will scatter from the noise of the attack.
But crows: You tamper with their wood
You’ve made an enemy for good.
They’ll bark at you and howl just like a flying wolf pack.
Liatris exited the house now as Highview dumped the armful of logs into the rock ring of the firepit. She indeed carried a lantern and a bundle of twigs.
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Doug McGrady from Warwick, RI, USA, CC BY 2.0