Storytime

Just as Marlowe feared, Old Goldnut was a very silly pirate. He chased rainbows (only the yellow part) to find what lay at their ends. He had his men pick mountains of yellow flowers, only to see them wilt in the sun. He covered his ship, the August Leaf, in brass ornaments and made his crew shine them until they glowed. They sailed to far shores, filling their hold with rare nuts and uncommon rocks, all to make the brightest yellow dye any of them had seen. Instead of selling it, which they could have for a fortune, they dyed their sails.

Old Goldnut's crew followed his enthusiasms more for fun and fame than blood and gold. Their adventures netted many useless things that were not gold but could be sold for silver. It was typical for them to pull into a strange port with a hold full of exactly what the townfolk needed, some spice or specialized lumber or bales of the perfect grass for making thatch, and sail away with fists full of coin. It never satisfied the captain's itch, but it kept his crew happy.

Goldnut had a flair for finding ships in trouble. The August Leaf would board the troubled vessel, threaten the crew with a thorough bloodletting, and scour their cargo for gold. Finding only silver and the occasional gemstone, they would proceed to help the desperate crew get underway again. They gave from their own water stores, patched holes in hulls, cut trees for new masts, and patched sails. All for exorbitant fees, of course. After all, they were pirates.

They weren't very dreaded pirates, but they made do. The money was enough to make it worth their while, and everyone who ventured on the Inland Sea knew the August Leaf by her sails. Captain Goldnut gradually exchanged his silver coins for gold, his tiny hoard growing a little at a time, and he was very proud of it.

The stories of the silly pirates kept spinning out of Harrence before and during dinner, through the cleanup, and beyond, keeping the children starry-eyed and gaping, prompting him into new threads with their outlandish questions until, one day, Old Goldnut achieved his dream. The captain tricked a merchant (a slaver, and therefore A Bad Man even by Kashmari standards) out of a chest full of gold. True, hard, shining, gold. A whole chest of it.

"It's very pretty," said Harrence, holding a coin up to the light of a spirit lamp. "You can see why people fall in love with it. But for Old Goldnut, it was the worst thing that could have happened to him. I'll tell you why."

The captain was so in love with his treasure that he never sailed again. He spent his days in his pirate hideout with his arms around the chest, staring at the gold, touching the coins, and ignoring everything else. Some men asked to have a share, as was proper for any pirate. Goldnut exiled them from the crew. Those who remained tried to entice their beloved leader with rumors of far-away mines, news of merchant fleets, or rainbows they had seen. Nothing could move Old Goldnut into new adventures.

"Tomorrow," he would always say. "We'll heave-ho and sail again. Tomorrow." But, tomorrow never seemed to come. His crew left him, one by one at first, and then in groups. The last ones to leave took the August Leaf with them.

"Captain Goldnut's hideout wasn't far from here," Harrence told the children. "When we found him, he was an old ghost haunting a rotted chest, and all the gold was spilled out on the ground. He seemed happy to see us, and told us all about his life. He talked for a long, long time. Then, he said something I'll never forget."

Harrence spoke for Old Goldnut in a hollow voice. "'What I loved became a curse because I would not share it. I was richer when I was chasing rainbows.'

"He asked me to send him on. I said a prayer over him and he departed. Olyon willing, he'll be reborn again, and the gold he hoarded will be used to help people instead of sitting in a cave."

"That's quite enough," said Jaida, standing. "The children are tired. Let's get ready for bed."

While Jaida and Vivian scrubbed, changed, and tucked the little ones into a sleeping pallet, Marlowe took a tour around the area, stalking the night, looking for dangers. Harrence sat with his eyes half-closed, as he often did, with a cabochon of orange gemstone in one hand. To Jaida's eyes, he hadn't done much of anything all day.

"I want to talk to you. Outside." Her voice didn't allow any disagreement, so he got to his feet and followed her. Once they were a little way from the cabin, she turned on him. "I don't want you filling their heads with nonsense. No more stories."

The disciple's open face showed surprise and disappointment. "They're just children's stories. It's good for them, especially now."

"You're putting ideas in their heads! Friendship and chasing rainbows," she scoffed, "and friendly pirates! I don't want Emil signing onto a crew because you told him a story."

"Fine," he sighed, "if they ask for stories, I'll read them scripture."

"You don't decide what they'll hear," she hissed, "because you're not their father!"

"Olyon, I hope not!" His lips curled in disgust. "How much time did he spend with your precious Donis before he threw the boy away?"

Her hand flew on its own, up and across his cheek with a crack of fleshy palm against his stupid square farmer face. It was like hitting a stone, and it hurt her a lot more than it hurt him. She cradled her sore wrist in her other hand. Failing to hurt him made her even more angry.

"One day," he told her cruelly, "that's all. A single day before he disposed of your son. He did what he did because of stories you people tell yourselves. Is that what you want for Emil? Or Leah? Throwing their children from cliffs to drown in cold seas or get beaten to death on rocks? Because that's what your stories tell them to do. Pardon me for thinking they deserve better."

"What do you know about it? You're not Kashmari." She hated the look of him: sharp haircut and good clothes on a farmer's body, a plodding walk, and heartfelt speeches.

"I know more about it than you do." He turned away from her. "I used myself up today getting you to safety, and I'm going to bed. Please don't wander off and die."

After Harrence had gone into the cabin, Marlow came silently out of the woods, slicing through shadows like slivers of moonlight. "If you ever touch him that way again," she warned in passing, "I'll take your hand. Harrence can make up a story about how you lost it."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They were in the cabin for three more days. Harrence lent Jaida his copy of Chosen (on impossibly thin paper, what a wonder!) to read scripture to her children. Marlowe and Harrence spent their mornings training or patrolling the area. The afternoons were warm enough for children to go outside and explore under the watchful eyes of the adults. They climbed nearby hills with Leah riding on Vivian or Jaida's shoulders and Emil racing ahead. For the most part, the disciple respected her wish not to interact with her children. The exception was when they were all out together because Emil listened well when Harrence explained the dangers to him: where the steep drops lay, what animal signs to look for, and not to eat any plants without first showing them to adults.

On the third day, Jaida woke to find the disciple and his bulwark gone. For half the morning, she worried they had abandoned her in the wilderness with two children and one attendant/spy/masseuse. She hadn't thought to request a map because it never occurred to her to find a way out on her own. They had one small chest of coins, some of which were gold, a small fortune. But, one could not buy anything in the wild. They could starve to death while sitting on a pile of riches, like Old Goldnut. Vivian assured her the Nexus people would return without explaining how she knew. Everyone but her seemed to know things.

Jaida was relieved when the Nexus duo returned with a tree hanging between their shoulders. Tied to the tree was a massive white elk with antlers to rival anything hanging in the Tyrant Ormaz's banquet hall, field dressed, legs tucked up so they wouldn't drag along in the dirt. It should have been too much for only two people to carry, but the disciple and his bulwark managed easily. Marlowe instructed Harrence on how best to construct a fire pit large enough for their catch. While the fire burned down to coals, they processed the choicest monster bone. Marlowe took the longest, thickest bones from the legs and whittled them down to the whitest pearlescent stuff craved by the wealthy. Harrence took the antlers, fawn at the tips fading to black at the root, and cut them into sections by grade.

"What are you doing?" she asked at last.

"It's disciple stuff. Completely beneath you." He examined the large piece in his hands, three kilograms of top-grade monster bone that reflected sunlight strangely, turning the silver-blue light to night-deep blues. When Jaida didn't leave, he answered her. "I'll hilt our weapons with this to make prayers last longer. Whatever's left over will go to Nexus. The white bone is decorative, but it fetches a good price. Appalons and armor are expensive, you know."

He continued working on the other pieces, trimming away unwanted antler with a bronze working knife that slipped between the layers of normal and enchanted bone like stripping bark from a green twig.

Marlow added a pure white length of bone to the pile of finished pieces next to him. "You should tell her."

"It's not my place."

"Then whose place is it? Don't say it's His Holiness's job. He has enough on his hands already. Besides, he doesn't know who she is."

"Let Anisca tell her. She her source."

"Tell me what?" Jaida wasn't sure she wanted to know. It was probably bad news, or Harrence would have told her already. He and Marlowe must have argued about it at length for it to come up like this. Marlowe was pressuring her disciple. Either she was routinely pushy with her superior, or she felt the issue was important.

Marlowe asked, "What does he say?"

"What does who say?" she demanded, and Harrence looked away from her.

"I'll do it," Harrence relented, "but you get to wrestle this thing into the pit on your own." To Jaida he said, "Come on. We shouldn't do this near the children."

Jaida followed him back the way they'd come on the first day, along the game trail to a thickly shaded place among coppiced trees overrun with clotweed. She was nervous, and the thought flitted through her mind that he might like to kill her, take her children, and raise them as he liked. By the time they stopped, she half-expected him to turn on her. Instead, he raised a seat of stone for her and another facing it for himself. He only had to kneel and whisper some words, and furniture grew up out of the ground.

"Sit. I have to think about how to do this."

"You could start at the beginning. Obviously."

"Don't be snotty when someone's trying to do you a favor," he chided her. "Anyway, the beginning is too far back, and you wouldn't care about it: just a bunch of dead children in farming towns you wouldn't bother to look down on.

"No, I'll start with Goldnut. There really was a Captain Goldnut, and we really did find his ghost guarding a treasure. That's my gift as a disciple. I can see people's souls. It might be the rarest gift of all, rarer than seers. I didn't do anything to deserve it or earn it. It just happened.

"Sometimes, ghosts want to leave but can't, and they just need a little help. Other times, they're malevolent and have to be forced to move on. Some are helpful and stick around a while until they're satisfied, and they move to the next life all on their own."

"You know things," Jaida realized, "because the ghosts can go anywhere. They talk to you. Prove it!"

Harrence sighed at her impatience. "Not so fast. When we arrived in Kashmar, I was drawn to a certain overlook, where I learned princes were prone to throwing unwanted heirs into the water. I found some ghosts there, all children, all lost. That happens sometimes, when they aren't sure if they're alive or dead, or how they got to where they are, or where home is."

She sat in that stone chair as the cool day turned cold, listening to Harrence's story over bare branches scraping noisily at each other in the wind. Harrence found Donis, and Donis led him to Jaida. It was Donis who watched over her. Donis warned the disciple when 'bad men' were on the way to kill her, and Donis told him where to find the tunnel's exit. Her lost son kept watch over her, day and night, since the moment she and Harrence first met.

He kept talking. He told her about Enclave's secret orders to kill shifter children before their abilities could show themselves and how Hierarch Noora was probably unaware. Donis was one of them. So many children drowned to appease ancient hate … Jaida lost it for a while and wept into her hands. Donis died for nothing, further proof of Zaid's betrayal.

"He wants you to know he's okay," Harrence said for the third or fourth time. "You're safe now, so he's ready to move on to his next life. If you're willing, I can show him to you before he goes. I can only do it once, and it has to be before he passes on. It'll be your last goodbye. He'd like you to see his animal form."

For a long time, she was crying too hard to be ready. She had to think. What would she say to her dead son? Would it matter what she said? Would it hurt more or less than losing him the first time? Would she regret not seeing him? Did she believe that any of this was real? The questions were all pointless, anyway. She wanted to see him. If she could, then she had to see him.

Their coppice grove was in twilight when she agreed. Harrence took one of his stones in hand and seemed to nod off. The trees around them stopped their endless scratching and held themselves still for a miracle. A cloud of light gathered between them on the ground, like a dream escaped from its sleepy confines, and spun itself into a form, grew brighter, redder, and nearly solid. A small form bounded into existence with playful intensity, pounced right and left, and swished his tufted tail. He had the ears and fangs of a hunter and would have weighed a good twenty kilos if he were made of flesh instead of spirit and light. He pounced twice more, for no reason she could see, then settled himself on his haunches in front of her, attentive.

"Donis!" She fell to the ground on all fours to look at him. There was no warmth from him, no smell, and they couldn't touch. But she knew who he was. The way he sat, and the way he turned his face from her when she got too close, pretending not to like her affection. He didn't look like her son, but he was. Every little movement said he was Donis, no matter what form he wore. There was something that was too … him … to be anybody else.

She talked to him for a long while, until there was nothing left to say. The sky grew dark while they gazed at each other. At last, he began to fade.

Somewhere, a door opened and closed, and Donis wasn't in the world.