Jak packed his things into a sack, with tears in his eyes. This wasn't the first time he had been banished from a village, but each time came with the weight of all the others. He was unwanted. He was a curse. He was something to hide your children from. Behind him, his sister Alya was doing the same, with suppressed sniffs to hold back her own tears. He pulled the blanket off his bed, and stuffed it into the sack. It wasn't really his, but he didn't care. He added his spare set of clothes, muddy and frayed as they were. He added his money pouch, which contained one lonely coin.
When they stepped outside, half the village was gathered, looking at them with hard stares. Jak looked at the boys he would play with just a few days ago. They avoided his eyes. He looked at Tom the butcher, who had given him the room he lived in. This man didn't look away, but instead met Jak's gaze with a mix of bitterness and hatred on his face. Jak didn't know which reaction was worse. Nobody said anything as the two of them walked to the edge of town, then left without looking back.
The village smith had died today. He'd had a sickness, a hacking cough, that kept growing worse. Eventually the people had pooled money together and hired a traveling mage to come and heal him. To the mage's shock, his power was a tiny fraction of what it normally was. It wasn't enough to save the man. It didn't take the mage long to pinpoint the cause. Jak. Something about the boy suppressed the mage's power almost completely. Then the villagers started to remember all the little things, like the trees losing their bright color since the two orphans had wandered into the village a few months ago. Wild animals had stopped coming near the village, which they supposed was a good thing, but now seemed suspicious. Chickens weren't laying as many eggs. Cows weren't producing as much milk. Old man Winkett had tripped and sprained his ankle, and Lucy's betrothed had called off their engagement. Jak felt the last two were particularly unfair, since Winkett was always finding reasons to complain, and Lucy seemed very capable of ruining her own relationships, but the general picture was clear. Since Jak and Alya had arrived, bad things were happening. It was the same story, and each time the whole world told them that they weren't wanted. Weren't welcome.
They had even tried to live in the forest for a time, just to get away from all the people. But that wasn't how they wanted to spend their whole lives. Jak marched on, wondering what he should feel about all this. Self-pity and anger surrounded him like predators, seeking a way in, but losing himself to those feelings wouldn't give him shelter at night, or food in his hand. He could see the logic behind the villagers. To them, he had killed the smith as surely as if he'd stabbed the man with a knife. He was young, so they didn't want the guilt of killing him. They just wanted him to disappear, to never come back, to stop existing. Jak clenched his fists as the two of them kept walking past a hill, hiding the village from view. He would survive. They wanted him without a home, but he would find a home. They wanted him alone, but he would find companions. As the tears dried on his face, he picked up his pace, adding determination and resolve to his steps.
They walked for hours away from the village, as the sun reached its peak and beat down on them. Eventually Alya spoke. "Jak?"
"Mm?"
"Where should we go this time? There are a couple of villages in the valley we haven't been to, but I'm worried word will spread."
Jak walked on a bit more, thinking about it. "It's getting worse, you know? Whatever I'm doing, it's getting stronger. I don't think this valley is what we need anymore. I think we need to find someone that can help."
They walked a bit more in silence. Jak was 16 years old, while Alya was 14. Previously, they were young enough that leaving the valley seemed impossible. They needed adults, people who could take care of them. Well, that was no longer an option. Jak had learned a lot about hunting—he'd had to, when animals instinctively avoided him. And Alya was small enough to earn pity from the occasional traveler they crossed paths with. Between the two of them, perhaps they could make the long journey. They walked toward the ring of mountains that formed the valley, the only place they had ever known. There was a trail that wound between two mountains and went down to the plains beyond. That night they made camp at the edge of the mountains, just off to the side of the trail. There was a fallen tree to block out the wind, so there they gathered fallen leaves into a pile to make a bed. Other than the blanket, Jak had stolen two things from the butcher just as they left: a small wheel of cheese, and a knife. He broke some branches off the tree and started shaving off tiny slivers of bark into a pile, adding some dried leaves and bigger twigs. Alya got out her flint and started striking it. She'd always been much better than Jak at this. With a few skilled strikes, dozens of sparks leapt out of the flint, and dove right into the pile of tinder, which started to smoke before puffing into a happy little flame. Alya smiled, there was something about fires that seemed so alive and comforting to her.
Jak left her to tend to the flames, and took their water flask down to the nearby stream. As he was dipping them into the water to fill it up, he heard the tiniest rustle of bushes. He looked up and saw a huge wolf, a short distance away, staring at him. This wasn't an ordinary wolf, it was about as tall as Jak himself, and had a white patch of fur on his forehead that seemed to glow slightly in the fading light. Jak's breath caught. A moonwolf. He'd never seen one before, only heard stories. In the last village he'd lived in, there was actually a moonwolf skin in the village hall. It had taken ten men to kill that beast. Two of them had died in the process. And the whole time, the moonwolf had been caught in a trap.
Jak didn't know what to do, so he simply stayed frozen in place, crouching by the river and staring at the wolf. The wolf also didn't move, it just stared back. Seconds passed, then minutes. Jak's legs started to hurt from the crouching. He was worried that he might need to move before he fell over, and he didn't know how the wolf might react. It hadn't moved the whole time, Jak wasn't even sure it blinked. Eventually, after what felt like a lifetime, it huffed, turned around, and left, leaving nothing but some shaking branches in its trace. Jak stayed still for a while longer, before standing up and going back to the fire.