ROAD TO CORDIA (7 page)

     She was sitting on the grass, putting her shoes back on when T’eem, carrying a barrel over one shoulder, came around the corner. He stopped as soon as he saw her.

     “How’d ya gets out here?”

     She pointed up at the broken attic window. His eyes followed her pointing finger. When he registered the broken window his mouth dropped open, then he grinned. “K’epper gonna be mad enough to blow his eyeballs outta his head.”

     “Don’t tell,” she pleaded.

     He studied her. “K’epper said I coulds have ya once.”

     “Have me?”

     “Ya know,” and he made a gesture with his hands.

     She stared at him wide-eyed.

     Unable to meet her gaze, he looked away.

     “I have to go now.” She hesitated. “T’eem?” Her voice pleaded.

     Still looking away from her, he nodded, hoisted the barrel back onto his shoulder and walked off.

     “Thank you,” she called after him.

     He didn’t look back.

     Now, to get as far away from The No Name Inn and K’epper as possible, and as quickly as possible.  Despite the ache in her hip, and the weird, disconnected feeling in her head, she limped off.

CHAPTER 6

     As she traveled, the moon poured down its purple light, covering the world with beauty. Even the air seemed to smell different, like sweet wine that soaked into her very soul. She was as light as a jinni puffball able to drift on the purple breeze all the way home to safety. Nothing could hurt her. Smiling to herself, Ja'Nil wandered into the nearby trees. She could hear a brook off somewhere, singing in the wilderness. She followed the sound. Around her, small insects played their joyful concert. What a wonderful night.

     “Beautiful purple woods,” she sang to herself as she wandered further and further from the inn and deeper and deeper into the forest. At times, she danced clumsily in a circle, pointing her toes and giving little jumps. “I’m just a pretty puffball in the woods,” she sang. She imagined herself a graceful, curvaceous creature, admired by all the wood-folk. Perhaps when she returned to her village she would make her living as a dancer. And a singer! “Why not,” she sang to no known tune. “Alas and alack, just a poor little dancer am I.” She was reaching for a high note on alas and alack, but it came out more as a screech. Screechy enough to make one of the wood-folk, in this case a large, buck-toothed rabbit, bathed in the last of the magical purple light, leap with fright and bound off. Ja'Nil blinked in surprise and slowly looked around her.

     The moon was setting, the purple deepening into darkness. All around her, dark shadows swayed and moved with the wind that had sprung up. She wrapped her arms around herself and planted her feet more firmly on the ground. Her head was no longer floating as light as a feather, instead it had settled with painful vengeance into a headache. Her stomach roiled. With a gasp, she leaned over and was thoroughly sick. Ugh!

     Still on her knees, she spat and spat trying to clear her mouth of the horrible taste. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move and spun around. Bad move. Empty stomach or no, she gagged again. There was something moving out there! Something with glowing eyes. She staggered to her feet, grabbed up a fallen branch, and turned to face whatever it was. Had she really seen something? She was dizzy again. She staggered away into the forest. The branch that she held was rotted through and it broke into pieces, as it banged against trees. A line of a song that a traveling Player had once sung kept repeating itself in her head. “Something wondrous, this way comes. Something wondrously wicked.”

     Was it just her imagination, or was she really was being followed? Overhead a large shadowy figure glided past. The air, disturbed by its passing, brushed against her skin. She ducked. Behind her, she heard an animal scream as flying death caught it up.

     “It’s just an owl,” she told herself. “Nothing is following you. Get a grip.” That’s what her mother always used to say to her father, get a grip. But her mother always laughed when she said it, and Daddy always winked back at her. Ja'Nil couldn’t find anything laughable about her situation. She plunged further into the forest.

     It wasn’t bravery that finally stopped her flight. She was in the middle of a forest. Purple Moon was down. Every step she took was a step into pure darkness. Trees banged into her, vines caught at her, holes tripped her. For all she knew she was traveling in circles. Maybe she was even returning to the inn! Exhausted, she sank down cross-legged and leaned against the rough bark of a tree to await First Sun’s rise.

     Still leaning against the tree, she straightened her legs and turned on her side, slowly slipping down until she was stretched out, full length on the thin grass. Making a mumbling irritated sound, she swept away some pebbles that lay under her cheek. With a sigh, she turned halfway onto her stomach and cradled her head on her hands. She slept.

***

     White Moon rose. It shed its pale light down through the trees onto the clearing in which Ja'Nil slept. Into the clearing walked a great wolf.

     His coloring was silvered, and disguised by the moonlight, but his eyes were a piercing yellow. Carefully, he moved within an arm’s length of the sleeping human and studied her intently. The two cuts she had sustained climbing out of the window were still seeping blood. Involuntarily, he licked his lips. Saliva dripped from his jaws. He moved closer. His paws were bigger than both her hands. He opened his mouth wide and stretched his long body from his rear to his head, closing his mouth with a wolfish grin. His nose almost touched her face. He sniffed her sweat-dried hair, the dusty attic smell on her torn tunic, the dew soaked leather of her worn boots, the child-woman odor of her. Of a sudden, there was the sound of crunching leaves. The wolf whirled, his lips drawing back in a silent snarl. Without another look at the sleeping Ja’Nil, he melted back into the forest.

CHAPTER 7

     Unaware of the wolf, Ja'Nil slept on. She is back on her father’s boat again. 
She finally reaches her little brother, Yonny. He clings to her, sobbing, terrified of the unforgiving waves that break over the rails and bury him under their breath stealing weight. She lifts him into the dingy and ties his harness to an imbedded ring. Between sobs he tries to talk to her, but the storm snatches his words out of his mouth and whirls them away. She shakes her head at him. “I can’t hear you,” she screams. He screams back at her, but this time there is a sudden lull in the roar of the storm and his words are as clear as the village chimes calling people to prayer.

     “Daddy, I want Daddy!” His little face is pinched with cold, his eyes almost rolling with hysteria.

     “Stay here,” Ja’Nil says and turns to make her way back to their father. Before she reaches him, another wave crashes into the boat, throws her against what‘s left of the bridge and smashes her head unto the deck, cracking a rib. Her left arm snaps like a twig. The world spins away.

     Moments pass. She opens her eyes. She lies on the deck: dazed, soaked, cold and disoriented. Her left arm is bent at an impossible angle; blood seeps from a cut on her head. She turns her head slowly and looks over at Yonny. He has slipped out of his harness and is crawling towards her. “No,” she screams. “Stay there, stay in the dingy.” 

* * *

     “You’re dreaming,” said a voice. A real voice.

     She sat up quickly. A man sat cross-legged about five feet away from her. He had built a small campfire and he was busy munching on a roasted gundi bird leg. Before Ja'Nil even had time to be afraid, the smell of roasted bird reached her. Her stomach cramped with hunger.

     “Can I have some of that?” she asked.

     He motioned to a tin plate lying near the fire. Half of a gundi bird lay there with rivulets of rich fat pooling at the bottom of the plate.

     “Thank you,” she said, reaching for the food before he could change his mind.

     “You’re welcome.”

     She ripped off the gundi bird’s third drumstick and tore into it. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted.

     “Would you like something to drink?” He offered her a pear-shaped stone flagon.

     “No thank you,” she said, remembering the drink the cook had given her.

     “It’s just water,” he assured her as he took a swallow from the bottle himself. “I got it from the brook over there.”

     By this time, Ja’Nil had stripped the gundi leg down to the bone and was looking wistfully at the remainder of the bird. “Go on,” said the man, “Help yourself.”

     “If you’re sure,” said Ja'Nil, trying to be polite. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you.”

     “I never let myself be deprived,” he assured her. “Take the rest, I’ve had enough.”

     She ate all three of the thighs and the half breast that was left, and only stopped eating when she was down to the bones. Sated, she sighed and leaned back against the tree. “That was so good.”

     The man smiled at her. He was wearing green leggings and a short tightly fitted tunic that showed off the lines of his body. On his head was a silly looking, elaborately embroidered, plumed hat. His hair was dark red, very thick and perfectly straight. His black skin was so smooth and shiny it seemed to have red highlights. He almost glowed. His ears were round. They stuck out slightly, the only imperfection of his person that Ja'Nil could see. Blue eyes, typical of Sky People gleamed with sly intelligence. He was slightly taller than Ja’Nil. His shoulders were broad, his body thick and solid; a man, full grown, but not old. His clothes were that of a Player but she could see no clan emblem. A backpack rested against a near-by tree. There was no emblem on the pack either.

     As Ja'Nil watched, he took off his hat and began combing his long hair. “My name’s O’Keeven,” he said. “What’s yours?”

     “Ja'Nil.”

     “Fisherfolk?”

     She nodded.

     “You’re a long way from home.” He had finished combing his hair. Now he fastened it behind his head with a gold colored tie that mingled with the dark red of his hair and added to his fantastical appearance.

     “You’re a Player, aren’t you?”

     “Of course.” And as if to prove his identity, he placed his hands on the earth, and from a sitting position did a handstand. His legs stayed crossed even when he lifted his left hand off the ground. His hat tumbled off. He slowly straightened his legs and did a back bend, landing on his feet, facing her. He reached for his fallen hat and bowed a perfect and very theatrical bow with his hand held over his heart.

     “That’s wonderful.”

     He grinned. “Of course. I am a master Player, skilled in all things theatrical. I sing.” He raised his voice, wiggled his eyebrows, and sang, “My Lady Ja'Nil, all things pretty and bright.” His voice was not that good, but he delivered the words in such a combination of conviction and humor that Ja'Nil both blushed and laughed.

     “I also dance,” he said, and proceeded to demonstrate. He waltzed over the rough thin grass with an imaginary woman, his acting, and his movements so graceful that Ja'Nil felt she was actually watching a man and woman in love with each other, dancing the night away.

     Ja'Nil was enraptured. “That’s beautiful.”

     “I was imaging dancing with you,” he said.

     She smiled sadly. “I’m too clumsy to dance like that.”

     “Who told you that?”

     “Well…” she shrugged. “Everybody.”

     “They must have been jealous of you. Just looking at you, I can tell you’re a graceful woman.”

     Heat flared in her face, she lowered her eyes and smiled. He had called her a “woman” …“a graceful woman.”

     Still, she didn’t know him and it was time to get going. She put her right hand down on the ground, preparatory to standing, and glanced down. “What’s that?”

     “Wolf print,” answered O’Keeven.

     “Wolf print? It’s bigger than my hand.”

     “It was a pretty big wolf.”

     “You saw it?” she asked.

     “I chased it away.”

     “From me?”

     “It was standing closer to you than I am,” said O’Keeven.

     Ja'Nil, who was half standing, sat down again. “It was going to kill me?”

     O’Keeven shrugged. “Looked pretty hungry to me. Very thin.”

     “Thank you,” she said, her voice was fervent with sincerity.

     He smiled his charming smile. “Rescuing beautiful women is one of my many talents.”

     Ja'Nil kept staring at the wolf print. There was no denying it was from a wolf. She had seen their prints before, outside the village…way outside. Wolves didn’t hang around human settlements.  She had never seen a print as big as this one.

     O’Keeven asked her something, but Ja'Nil was too mesmerized by the wolf print to hear him.

     “Ja'Nil,” O’Keeven said again.

     “Huh?” She looked up. “Sorry, what did you say?”

     “Why are you out here in the woods all alone?”

     Ja'Nil decided not to mention the innkeeper, the pirates, or Aunt M’eer. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust O’Keeven. After all, he had driven off a hungry wild animal, watched over her all night while she slept, and even shared his food with her. So naturally he could be trusted. Still, the world outside her village was turning out to be a very dangerous place filled with unpleasant people. Maybe, just maybe, she should be a little careful in what she told people about herself. “I’m on my way home,” she said.

     He raised an eyebrow, but when she did not elaborate, he nodded to himself as if she had confirmed something he suspected. “The quickest way to the coast is back that way,” he said, pointing. “Past K’epper’s inn,” he added. She looked at him sharply, but his face was filled with gentle sympathy. “I would stay away from K’epper if I were you.”

     “I’m a little turned around,” she admitted.

     “Would you like me to show you a road that leads near the Fisherfolk villages, but bypasses K’epper’s inn?”