TELVIN

The letter Iara had sent back was devastating. I had to read it a few times before I believed the words written out. She wasn’t coming back. She truly didn’t want to marry me. She abandoned me. I felt stranded here, left to rot with the rest of the village. She was the light at the end of my tunnel and now she was gone. I was lost now. Would I be cursed to spend the rest of my days in this gods forsaken village?

Pa had me cleaning up the forge. I had no time to even think through what I just learned. Since we finished what the traveling guild had ordered, we wouldn’t be making anything new for a while. I needed to clean out the soot and scrap metal. Money would be hard to come by again. We would be okay for a few months, but then it would be right back to struggling. Pa would take it out on us. Everything would be back to the way it was before. Except this time I would be alone in it all. There would be no secret trips into the woods to see the pretty witch I had come to love. There would be no one I could confide in anymore. My only comfort was truly gone for good.

Once I was done cleaning up our workstation, I went back inside. It had gotten dark already and I felt the cool bite of fall in the air. This has always been my favorite season. I loved the color change in the leaves and the way the woods smelled when you walked through. The cool days were a pleasant change. I felt none of the usual joy from the different weather though. I bit my tongue as I trudged up the old rickety stairs.

“Where are you going, boy?” Pa yelled at me. He and Ma had been at the table across from each other. They were both eating another watery soup. Gorgon hadn't been back yet from his most recent hunting trip.

I didn’t have the stomach to even eat right now. I ignored Pa and went into my room. It was the only room up the stairs. Our house was tiny compared to any other building in Oaknail. I was grateful for the small space I was afforded though. It was mine and no one else’s. I flopped back onto the straw bed and sighed. It was the only piece of furniture that could fit in the closet like space. The scratchiness of the bed was uncomfortable, but it put me at ease. This was where I knew I was safe.

To my annoyance I heard stomping coming up my stairs. I sat back up and glared at the door. Sure enough it opened to show Pa. He stood in the doorway looking all the more tall with the descending stairs right behind him. “You need to learn manners. Come down and eat what your ma made us.”

“I’m not hungry,” I snapped. I didn’t hide the sharpness in my voice this time. My day was already awful enough, Pa couldn’t have made it worse.

I jumped as Pa grabbed my shoulder. He yanked me up and gritted his teeth. “Don’t talk back to me,” he hissed.

I pulled my shoulder away. “I’m not going to let you push me around,” I yelled at him. I was too tired and worn down to hold myself back.

His eyes lit with rage. His rough hands reached up to strike me. A fist connected with my nose and I fell back. I felt blood run down my face, pain splintering through my skull. I pushed myself back up and reached out to him. I shoved him hard. He stumbled and started to fall back, his arms flailing to scratch at the walls that slipped from him. I felt my heart sink as he tumbled back down the stairs. I tried to reach out to him, but he was already too far away. One stair splintered and his foot broke through it. His leg getting caught made him fall back even more sharply, his head connecting with another stair further down. His skull made a sickening crack as it bounced. He slid the rest of the way down, motionless.

Ma rushed to Pa when he finally settled at the bottom. “Linus?” she cried. Blood started to pool at the back of his head. The puddle grew across the dirt floor at an alarming rate. He didn’t move at all as Ma yelled for him.

I rushed down the stairs. “Pa?” I felt my voice shake. I reached down to him, but a hand shoved me away.

“You’ve done enough!” Ma wailed at me. She pulled Pa into her lap. His blood stained her hands and spread across her skirt front.

“Ma, I-”

“You’ve done enough,” she repeated. Sobs shook her shoulders. “Leave,” she screamed. “Leave now.”

I fell back and kicked myself away. Leave. I felt frozen at first. My mother didn’t want me here. I felt tears sting my eyes as I fumbled back to standing. I rushed out of the house, away from the mess I made. My limbs felt numb and my vision blurred. Ma was right. I did enough. I found myself going to the woods, down by the river. My legs had carried me to the very spot Iara and I walked to almost every day. The memory only served to hurt me more though. It was only a reminder of things that slipped away from me.

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I collapsed against a tree and let myself cry. I wiped the blood and snot and tears off my face, gasping for air and begging for the gods to give me an answer. What was I doing here? Why did everything in my life fall apart so fast? In the matter of days I lost everything. I didn’t even have the strength to form my thoughts. I only let the pain pour out in loud cries.

“You okay?” someone asked.

I yelled in shock at the small figure standing over me. They wore a dark hood and had daggers on both hips. I could hardly see them. They seemed to evaporate in and out of the night’s darkness until they stepped closer to me. It was as if they were stepping into this realm from another. Their form solidified and I recognized it as a woman.

“You okay?” she repeated. She must have been a dwarf as short as she was. She was tan with a curly mop of rich brown hair on top of her head. Under her right eye she had a black marking that I couldn’t decide was a rune or forgien alphabet letter. I settled on a forgien alphabet letter after considering her words were hinting at an accent. She didn’t say much so I couldn’t be sure.

“Yeah,” I breathed. I wiped my face off again and looked away from her.

“Stand up,” she ordered.

“What?”

“Stand. What’s your name?”

I did as she asked. I practically towered over her twice as tall as she was. “I’m Telvin,” I said through my shaky voice. She definitely had an accent. I wasn’t able to place it, but it was there.

“Telvin?” Her nose wrinkled. “What a silly name.”

I furrowed my brows. I wasn’t in the mood to be insulted. “It’s my name. What’s yours? It’s probably just as ‘silly’,” I snapped at her.

She crossed her arms and started to walk around me. She was like a slinking cat sizing up it’s game. “Charlotte,” she replied slowly. I watched as she made a circle around me and stopped where she had begun.

“What do you want?” I asked. I much preferred to be alone. I couldn’t let myself cry and scream if I was in front of a stranger. A rude stranger at that.

“I was offering help. You don’t seem okay,” she replied.

“I’m perfectly fine,” I hissed at her. I went back to my tree and sat where I had previously. “Please leave me alone.”

She followed me and took a seat on the other side of the tree. She didn’t say anything. She only took out a dagger and started to mess with the blade absentmindedly. I turned to her and frowned.

“What are you doing?”

She looked back at me with a cool look of confusion. “I’m leaving you alone,” she stated as if I were dumb.

“No, you’re bothering me,” I stated in the same tone she had used.

She turned back to her small blade. “No, you are bothering me now.”

I felt my face get hot. “What?”

Charlotte let a laugh escape her lips. “You’re a fool.”

I already knew that, I thought.

I pressed my back into the tree again and let my head fall. My gaze went up towards the stars. I tried to ignore her until she left. But she didn’t. We sat there until my fingers got cold and my back went numb. She didn’t speak that entire time. She hardly even made a noise.

Eventually I turned back to her. She was looking up at the stars just as I was. “What do you want?”

She glanced at me, then back up at the stars. “I knew you weren’t okay,” she said.

I felt my eyes water. Of course I wasn’t okay. This dwarf couldn’t catch a hint.

She interrupted my thoughts though. “Do you want to come with us?”

“Us?” I was so thrown off by this small woman.

“The guild,” she said.

The only guild that would be around here was the one I had made swords for. Was such a small woman really part of that guild? She seemed so tiny, like she couldn’t hurt anyone. How did she fight? She must have seen the doubt on my face too. She sat forward and gave me a stern look. Her dark eyes were as sharp as the blade she had been playing with.

“This is the last offer. Do you want to leave this town and come with us or not?” she asked, an edge in her voice.

I looked away from her again. I took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I guess I have nowhere else to be.”

She stood and reached her hand out to me. When I looked up at her she had a wide smile. “That’s what I like to hear.”

I took her hand and stood. I followed the small dwarf through the woods. The night wind howled as we broke through the trees. The windmill was in view now. Small campfires lit the hillside. That night changed my entire life.