Roland 1.

The young man came to and a trickle of water sputtered out. He was in a thatched wooden hut and lying on a pile of soft blankets. He had been immersed in water for a long time, but now his hair was drying and his clothing was dry. Above him stood a tired-looking avuncular man smoking a pipe.

Was he being held hostage? He needed to get out, now. 

The young man leapt up, eyes wide open. His heart raced and he grabbed at his side for an object but found nothing. He jumped to grab the nearest object in hopes of gaining leverage and –

The man tackled him and tied him to a chair. The young man’s movements were sluggish like he was molasses, anyways, he probably wouldn’t have been able to do much damage with that chair.

“Hello. And don’t try that again. You’ll just hurt yourself. I’m not here to hurt you, I even fished you two out of the Lethe for Lucia’s sake! You don’t remember your name, that’s quite alright, don’t fret. It’s not going to come to ya. You, and your lovely companion,” he gestured to a young woman of a similar age to his right who was also coming to, “fell into the Lethe. Ya know, the river of forgetfulness.”

He offered them both lettuce soups and even offered seconds. Normally, the young man suspected, he would have declined but he felt weak and famished so thin cabbage soup seemed better than no nutrition. The woman didn’t speak much but she did look at the two of them with large curious eyes. She had the Eastern look: slanted eyes, yellow skin, straight black hair, and brown eyes.

The young man didn’t recognize either of them, and this unfamiliarity bred distrust.

“Best if you keep your voices down if I were you two. The Eastern army took over this town. They’re looking for the Third Princess, the second one was just assassinated –”

“Uncle,” said the woman cutting him off with a wave of her hand. She smiled. “Can I call you uncle? That’s what I’ve been taught to call older men that have helped me.” She demurred in her speech. “Where do you get the money for buying tobacco? I hear it’s quite expensive. You have the hands of a tanner, all rough and sinewy, but unless you tan for the Western king, I don’t think you can afford silk lined blankets.”

“I’ve just been very hospitable and people have graciously offered up belongings in thanks. It’s only natural, since they don’t have any attachment to things they can’t remember.” His lips curled upwards.

“Oh there’s more. These are not just silk lined blankets. From the touch, I can tell they’re from silkworms from eastern Yunnan produced in the summer months.” She spoke coyly as her fingers lingered over the fabric. “I can understand everything you’re saying without a hitch, including the colloquials. I must be someone well-educated but also well-traveled to pick that up. There’s no reason why I would be wearing so little. I would have so many layers if I were a rich little mistress.”

“They must have been washed away in the water.” He put his tobacco pipe down.

“But then how is this button still on his shirt?” She pointed at a button at the top of his shirt. It really was dangling on by a mere thread.

“A coincidence. Luck. Honestly, girl, I just saved ya -”

“I could scream. Right now. Get all the guards right here and examine all the… surprises you’ve been hoarding for yourself.” She gestured at an obvious pile of objects concealed under a thin layer of shabby, discolored rags. A glint of metal and fur peaked out.

The man swore at the man and formed a fist with his hand but then thought better of it.

I’d better de-escalate the situation. “Sir, I apologize for my lady companion’s presumption. But, if you are deceiving us and depriving us of our rightful properties, then, let me remind you of the Gods Above who are watching us.”

The man stared at him and his eyebrows twitched slightly upwards. “Kid, were ya a priest-in-training?” He laughed a little. “The audacity,” he said under his breath to himself. “Didn’t you hear – the gods have abandoned us for greener pastures?”

So he’s lost his faith. Then he must be doing it for the coin, I guess.

The man clapped his hands as though he had a thought. “Tell ya what, I feel sorry for you two upstart brats, I’ll even throw in two of my finest cloaks.”

He tossed two threadbare frayed gray cloaks with brown and yellow discolorations in front of the young man.

“Wow! They look like someone went to the privy on them!” The girl exclaimed. “But anyways, I’m calling the guards.”

She screamed shrilly and then cried out,” Help me, help me! This man’s trying to rob me!”

In a moment, a half-dozen voices drew louder and closer. A series of loud thuds came from the door; they were trying to break in. The owner of the hut tried frantically to conceal as much of his illicit goods as possible by cramming them in odd corners.

The girl tapped him on the arm and untied him.

“Sorry about involving you into this,” the girl said. “You need to leave right now. Jump out the window, quietly as possible of course, and go the direction the window faces. There should be less soldiers coming from that direction.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t but you can. But really, do as you like. See if I care.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“Fine,” he said between clenched teeth and jumped down from the window that was just a gap in the wall. He didn’t look back.

He walked straight after landing on his feet. He didn’t take any other way, so how could he know whether this way had less soldiers than another way? He proceeded down this way while keeping close to the sides of buildings, looking around for spare objects (stacks of hay, wood stacks, carts) to hide behind for cover, and listening for the footfall of soldiers.

Aside from one close call involving a half-asleep guard, he didn’t receive any troubles. When he finally got to the outskirts of the village, he climbed up a leafless oak tree, got over the wall, and jumped back down –

Spraining his ankle.

Silently, he cursed to himself as he felt his heartbeat increase and his face grow hotter. This was just a little injury, nothing he couldn’t shake off after a few days. And then?

It’d be good to know who he was. He could start there.

But first, he hurried off into the cover of the dense forest in the midst of fall. Nearby, he could hear the rush of swift waters, so he followed its sounds. He took care not to trip on anymore rocks or fallen stumps, lest he aggravate his ankle. The forest was alive with the sound of bird calls and the crisp snap of animals underfoot. As he walked through the forest with care, the young man took a mental inventory of what he knew.

He was a young man. He could glean more if he found a source of water to glance at his own face.

He was literate in multiple languages – he had passed a sign for a tavern written in both the primary languages of Albion and Cathay that said “The Dragon and the Lion”. (The spoken language of Cathay was much harder for him to understand.) The literate comprised mostly of the nobles, the stewards who guided them, and the monks – at least in Albion. His hands, too, were not rough-hewn but smooth except for calluses on his right middle finger. Probably from writing.

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He had been raised in Albion, or at least it felt like home. His hands were not quite pale but not quite dark either and the Albionian tongue felt most familiar.

Seeing as his head was not shaved, he was probably not a monk. Of course, there wasn’t a certainty because there were some sects that didn’t require a shaved head. But anyways, probably not a monk.

So, he was probably a young nobleman.

He finally reached the source of water – a gentle, bubbling wide clear stream. In the distance, he saw a series of snow-capped mountain ranges cut across the land. He gazed at his face.

The image was not perfectly clear; a family of fishes swished to and fro and kicked up silt from the bottom and the lighting under the canopy of trees wasn’t good. He had shoulder-length brown wavy hair, but looking closely, he saw that his roots were red. His eyes were… brown? Hazel? It was hard to say. He was stocky, short, clean-shaven, and his features were bland being neither too sharp nor too soft. In short, he had the sort of appearance that would get him lost in a crowd.

But the red hair.

The red hair signified that he had the blood of the Wanderers, a people of traveling singers, musicians, and dancers. They were short, had red hair, were rather stocky, and were said to be very, very hairy. And on a second glance, people would presume that he was a Wanderer from his stocky build.

They weren’t well-liked, having been blamed for everything under the sun ranging from the mysterious kneeling over of herds of cows to the literal disappearance of the gods (old and new) above.

So he should continue to hide his hair, maybe find another jar of that brown hair dye, unless he wanted to find his end on a dangling noose.

His stomach growled, breaking him out of his thoughts. He waded over to the stream that teemed with fishes until he was up to his knee in water. He stilled his movement, breathed in and out, and held out his hands like they were two scoops. At the corner of his eyes, he gazed upon a large trout languidly sunbathing under a beam of sunlight.

In one swift motion, he plunged his arms in under where the fish should have been – but it had darted away.

All right, first try. I’ll do it again. 

During the next few hours, he tried to catch so many fishes that he lost count. He tried coming in at different angles, different locations, mimicking the movement of a worm with his finger, but nothing worked. It seemed to depend on luck? He only caught three of them, and one of them practically swam into his hands. It might’ve been injured and disoriented, and so, not suitable for eating.

Discouraged, he crawled back onto the banks and started up a fire. Or at least, he tried to. He tried to rub the sticks together, that was the general gist of it, wasn’t it?, but the wood didn’t catch fire. He tried the wood of an aspen tree, then a cedar, then another one he couldn’t identify.

He looked up and glanced upon the sun’s progress. Judging from its movement, it was halfway between Nones and Vespers. So many hours of effort, and all he had were three live fishes that he had collected in a small pool of water. If he couldn’t cook them, they would surely rot within the day.

Maybe he could risk nibbling on some of this raw fish? But he had no knife with which to kill the fish first – and he didn’t want to eat a live animal.

“Here, catch!” ­

A flopping fish arced across the sky, slapped him a few times on his fish with its tail, and dropped onto the ground.

He cried out in a (little) pain and reflexively touched his face. The fish didn’t leave abrasions from the slapping at least.

From his left came a long, staccato laugh. The girl was back.

“I thought you’d have better reflexes than that. Guess not.” She paused. “Did you miss me?”

“Miss you, how? I hardly know you – I don’t know your name.” He gingerly picked up the fish and placed it in the pool with the others. “Hell, I don’t even know my own name.”

“Ha, I’d drink to that, but I’m afraid I haven’t got any.” She showed her hands and they were empty, but who knew if she concealed any weapons inside her clothing? “Why did you make this pool of water for the fishes? They’re going to end up in your belly anyways.”

“So, what, you’d just have them flop around on the ground until they die? How painful, how cruel.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe they don’t feel anything.”

He laughed bitterly. “I resent that, that notion that just because I’m a man the whole world has to revolve around me and how I perceive the world and what I think. And you – saying that because it’s a fish, that it might not feel anything, can’t you push that further and say, ‘oh, well, maybe nothing’s real except my own mind’?”

It was a little strange how she could get him to speak so freely, like they had known each other for a long time. Maybe it was the way she spoke, so carefree and without deliberation. It felt like he wouldn’t be judged.

She kneeled beside him and examined his attempts at starting a fire. “You must have been a rich young master or a monk to have had so much time to dwell on such ideas.” She got up and started collecting rocks, twigs, and dried up grass. “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m back?”

He sighed at her childishness. “Why are you back?”

She launched into a long explanation full of events that were almost certainly embellishments as she made a fire, caught more fish (that she placed in the pool after much persuasion), killed them (with a blow to the head), and roasted them with a fire.

She was apparently detained by the Eastern Army and brought before a local provincial officer for identification. They didn’t know she was, so they retained her for transportation to a more internal city. The man that fished them out of the Lethe was fined a great sum and given a stern warning. All of his “belongings” were confiscated.

But then she heard two guards whispering to themselves that all of the unidentified detained women from towns bordering the Lethe were to be brought in and beheaded.

This seemed ridiculous to him, because surely, two guards would know better than to blab openly about killing prisoners in front of said prisoners, right? Surely, they valued their own lives?

“So, I ran away, because, well, I like having my head attached to the rest of my body. And I found you, because I figured, if I’m going to wander across Albion, why not follow someone from there who’s in the same boat?” She bit into the fish and didn’t bother rummaging through the flesh for bones.

“How’d you find me?” His body was tense. So many things about her story didn’t add up. How did she escape? How did she find him? Who was she? He knew that it was rarer for the Cathayians to learn other tongues; they were rather insular. And she spoke so fluently, without the trace of any accent. How?

“I followed your scent.”

“What?”

“I’m not human. I’m a huli jing or what you would call a fox spirit.”

He gazed at her and considered her face. Had it changed from earlier today? Somehow, she seemed smaller, more ordinary, broader in the arms. Better for breaking out of a detention cell.

“You don’t believe me? Here,” she said, waving her hand over her face.

He looked back at his own face staring at him and leapt back in alarm. His heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

“Oh, I scared you. Let me change back.” She waved her hand over again and changed back to the face of a girl.

After he calmed down, he asked,”Why would you tell me this?”

“Just because. Maybe. Hm… Let’s just say I had a whim that you’d be a fun traveling companion.”

“Who said I would travel with you?”

“Well, you don’t know who you are, so I reckon you’d look around for clues on your identity. That sounds fun. I’m fun, so I’m in.”

He sighed again. It seemed to be a nervous tic of his. “What you seem to be is a whole lot of trouble.”

“Alright!” He got up, kneeled on one knee before him, and slapped her knee. “I can protect you. I swear that I can fight well. In fact, I swear on my mother’s grave –”

“If you’re a fox spirit, your mother might not even have one.”

She contemplated for a moment. “Hm, you’re right! I swear on my own life, that I’ll protect your life before my own, until I know who you are.”

“’Until I know who you are’? Shouldn’t it be unless you should perish?”

“Well, considering that Albion and Cathay are on fairly terrible terms with each other, I’d say there’s a non-negligible chance that the two of us are sworn enemies or something hopelessly tragic like that.”

She practically swooned at the idea.

“I suppose… that’s a fair point.”

“So you agree then? And if we’re not enemies, then I’ll definitely protect you afterwards. But if we are enemies, I wouldn’t run if I were you. I remember your scent and I can track you for miles around.” She smiled at him, and he noticed that she had two pronounced shiny, sharp canines.

“Perhaps,” he said, in a tone denoting what he thought sounded agreeable. “What will we call each other?”

“Hm… what about Roland and Thalia? It’s my favorite Western song, so what do you think?” She looked at him for approval.

“Don’t they both die in the end in that one?”

“Well, in some versions, they live happily ever after. And in some, they, like you said, die. And in still others, one of them lives and the other one dies. So, when some traveling minstrel starts playing it, you don’t know if it’ll be happy or sad,” she said in a voice that grew smaller and smaller. “It’s a gamble like that. So what do you say, ‘Roland’?”

He had half a mind to refuse her, but it was a proper name. It might’ve even been his real name; it was common enough. “I consent, ‘Thalia’.”

Without missing a beat, she pressed further. “So, are we going to pretend to be a married couple or siblings or a lady and her bodyguard – no, we can’t, you’re too small for anyone to believe that.”

“A married couple would be most wise.”

Roland reasoned that was the wisest, because no one would believe that they were related – until he remembered that fox spirits were famous for shape shifting.

“Oh really?” She said, brimming with amusement. And then she prattled on and on as the sun dipped under the horizon and they started making camp out of grass and the clothing on their back.

So this was how Roland ended up wandering across the Western lands in search of his identity with a fox spirit who may or may not be his worst enemy.