“Yes. I appreciate it though, Alistar.” Looking around at the limited amount of footprints that had been left behind after the most recent snowfall, she said, “The others haven’t been by?”
Corrie shook his head, getting up to retrieve some frigid wood from the snow-covered pile that Zech had gathered earlier in the week. Without speaking, he took his time extracting as much moisture as he could from each piece, at which point he melted all of the snow atop the fire pit and moved the water elsewhere. Suddenly pale, he nodded toward Alistar, who picked up on the silent que and set the logs aflame with an exertion of his will.
“Do you know when the boys plan on going out for another hunt?”
“It shouldn’t be more than a couple of days,” said Alistar, who noticed a little brass badge that was tied to Helen’s belt with a frayed string. “So you registered, then?”
She nodded, a bright smile on her modestly pretty face. “The buck from before didn’t count towards my contribution points, but if I can complete ten more tasks of that level then I’ll be promoted.”
“How does that work, exactly?”
“Well, each badge has three little slots where steel stars are attached after each promotion. See here? So, after completing ten more assignments, I’ll get a little steel star inlaid into one of these slots, and I’ll be able to take on more difficult tasks.”
“And after you get three stars, your badge changes to another colour?”
“I think so. There are a lot of different types of badges, but they all have the same amount of slots, so I figure that’s how it is. I’ll have to ask Zech about it later.”
“Alistar and I are going to accompany you guys on your next trip.”
“Hmm? That’s great to hear! I’ll feel much better with you two around.” Putting on a thoughtful look, she added, “Maybe we can catch something extra, and roast it here afterwards? Oh, that would be so fun.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Alistar, who rather enjoyed cooking over an open fire. “Maybe we can have Woods do the cooking.”
“I’ll ask him when I get home. He’s gotten a lot better ever since he started working for the Lawsons.”
“You knew about that?”
“All the girls did. He was worried he’d get made fun of, so he asked us to keep it a secret.”
“How long has he been working there?”
“Oh, a couple of months now, I suppose.”
Corrie let out a rare laugh that was more of a snicker than anything else. “Who knew Woods could keep a secret for so long?”
The three of them hung around The Spot for a couple of hours before Corrie and Helen set off for the orphanage, Alistar returning home to retrieve his weapons and some additional food. Today, he resolved to return to the cave to see if the mysterious madman had regained a semblance of sanity.
As had become the usual as of late, neither Caedmon nor Alder were at the manor house, the two likely opting to sleep at the collegia as they continued to pursue their innovative research. Just last week his uncle had come home with a freshly printed book that they had produced with the printing press, the first successful prototype that their experiments had yielded.
On his way toward the manor house’s eastern exit, Alistar ran into Patricia and Little Lauren. The pretty young mother was in the midst of giving the wide-eyed infant a tour of the art hall, pointing at things and slowly sounding out their names in an excessively sweet and doting voice.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Oh, perfect timing, Alistar! Could you hold her for a bit while I go to the privy?”
“Gladly,” he smiled, accepting the infant with careful hands.
“Thank you. I won’t be more than a few minutes!”
As the dark-haired woman ran off with quick steps, Alistar tickled Little Lauren’s rosy nose with a playful finger. Although she wasn’t even a year old, she had grown exponentially over the past several months, now noticeably heavier than she had been in her earlier days. She was such a sweet little thing, always smiling and hardly ever uttering a cry, which supposedly wasn’t normal behavior for the average baby. Sometimes he would seek out Patricia just so he could hold her daughter for a short time, as the innocence that he saw in her eyes reminded him of the simpler things in life, such as the love and happiness one experienced when surrounded by their most precious people.
“Do you like this one?” he said in a silly, high-pitched voice, coming to stand in front of the most ornately framed painting in the hall. “It’s my favourite. You know, your great aunty Laisha painted it long ago.” He tickled her nose a bit more, eliciting a cute, happy laugh from the smiling infant. “Yes she did, oh yes she did…”
He stopped by the art hall to appreciate his mother’s final work at least once a week, a habit he’d formed since his first days on the estate. The sunny, daytime fields of healthy flora seemed to represent the joys that his mother had come to love throughout her short life; gardening, painting, and evidently the arts of healing. These were all embodied in the particularly artistic depiction of the healthy field, contrasted with the dreary, less-detailed image of a dismal night that clearly represented the drastic turn that her life had taken after her sixteenth birthday. It saddened him to think that at the time of creating this work, his mother had felt that nothing but sadness awaited her in the neighbouring kingdom, a darkness that seemed to have dominated her outlook in the last days of her youth.
Thinking of his mother’s tragic story, he was reminded of Lessa’s current predicament, of how she had no choice but to commit herself to a strange man that was far older than she was despite the fact that it was the last thing in the world that she desired. Marriage among nobility wasn’t usually based upon love, but predicated on the prospect of creating political alliances and birthing offspring.
“At least it was Father,” he said quietly, giving the baby a sad smile as he recalled his life in the mines and the times that he had shared with his parents. At the very least, they had truly loved one another, the only silver lining to the terrible fate that had claimed their lives in the years following their forced marriage.
Little Lauren seemed to pick up on his sadness, for her bright smile was quickly replaced by a confused, trembling lip, which prompted him to cheer her up with all sorts of playful noises and loving words. By the time that her mother returned from relieving herself, Little Lauren was in her usual state of perpetual happiness.
“Thank you, Alistar. I can always count on you to look after her.”
“Of course,” he said proudly. “I look at her as a little sister, after all.”
Taking in his appearance with discerning eyes, she said, “Spending the night at Tramon’s again, are you?”
He nodded. “At least that’s the plan. I might come home later on, though.”
Staring at him with unbridled affection, she rested her hands on his shoulders before speaking with the utmost care. “Just be sure not to push yourself too hard. You’re young, Alistar, and young people should enjoy their youth while it lasts. Not everything is about strength and power.”
Her words made him a little disheartened, but only for a moment. He knew in his heart that she was entirely correct, for he sometimes envied the other youths that attended Mr. Herst’s lessons atop the Hanging Hill in how they always seemed to be in high spirits. Eating, playing, and enjoying the company of their friends was all they knew, all of them having a family to return home to. Hardly any of them, he figured, knew how it felt to suffer the pain of a broken bone or the sting of a sprained appendage, let alone what it was like to grow accustomed to such sensations. None, he often thought, were familiar with the pain of watching their loved ones die slow and agonizing deaths, of being forced to relive these sights almost every night in an endless cycle of tormenting dreams.
“I know,” he said, forcing a smile. “Luckily, I like training, so it’s not too much of a problem.”
“If you say so.” She accepted her child with gentle hands, giving him a loving look as he turned to go. “Try not to miss too many meals, if you can. It’s never the same without our little Alistar at the table.”
“Hey, I’m as tall as you now!”
“In my eyes, you’ll always be the same little boy that loved to listen to me sing.”
“I still do, of course. If you promise to sing for everyone at dinner tomorrow, then I’ll definitely be there.”
“It’s a promise, then.”