6 | Earth and Wildness

Days are short this time of year. Within a few hours, evening will begin to fall to a long, cold night.

Eli straightens some of the damage done to his little home—not as terribly much as he was expecting, considering the monster, most of it done to the upper level—tends to the short gash in his wrist as best he can with the clean bandages he did indeed have stashed beneath his bed, and orders the children to stay inside.

Sickle in hand, he returns to the mill room and inspects what parts of the cat’s shoulder stick out from under the stone. There’s no budging it, but food is scarce, and if Eli can harvest some meat, he will try. The mountain goat won’t last long. Poking at the beast’s leg with the tip of his sickle, earth and stone and rotted plant falls to the floor. His stomach turns. He’s seen other creatures melding into the earth and wildness of the mutated plants, but this is much more violent, much more progressed than anything he’s seen.

With sudden suspicion, he returns to his house.

“If you did not walk and your father sent you through the air as we used to, how did that monster stalk you here?”

Thistle is sitting beside the fire, glaring at him the moment Eli opens the door. Klia jumps, her hands playing with the dried mushrooms hanging in the tiny kitchen. She scrambles back to her brother’s side like a frightened mouse.

“It didn’t,” Thistle says, folding his arms.

“I have been here since before you were born, and not a single time has something half so large dragged itself out of the depths of the forest to attack. You wish me to believe the moment you two show up, that creature appearing is coincidence?”

“It’s not our fault—”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault, I’m saying that it showed up the moment you did, it was hunting you and only came after me when I got in the way, and you are quite obviously not telling me what you know. I would appreciate a better explanation.”

Thistle only stares at him, not quite as hateful in favor of nervous.

Trying to recall Abner’s moods at this age, Eli tries a smaller approach, “Is the magic worse?”

Thistle's eyes flicker down. “You believe our father is causing all this.”

His tone is accusatory. Eli doesn’t much care. “I am far past caring what your father’s involvement was in this. He was one of many who sought to grow their power by changing the magic, it is not all on him. As I said, that’s long past. No changing it now. I’m trying to figure what’s happening now, and why he’s sent my two grandchildren here with a monster stalking them. That is what will help us, boy.”

Thistle has the decency to look away. Eli takes a long breath. He is unused to speaking in such large batches, particularly to someone who has no wish to hear what he has to say.

“Is the magic broken?” he repeats.

“It has always been.”

Eli manages not to be exasperated. “Is it worse now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Thistle glances at him with hard eyes. “You.”

Eli observes his grandson, nearly daring him to break the harsh cold of his stare. To his credit, the boy does not back down on his claim. Momentarily, Eli glances at Klia, thinking finally she’ll speak to either of them, add something to the conversation. No such luck. Eli is struck with only the stubborn-headed boy as his source of information.

Finally, he prompts, “Me?”

Thistle scrapes a piece of charcoal from the edges of the weak flames and picks at it with his cracked fingernail.

When he doesn’t respond, Eli says, “No, by all means, speak something cryptic without any follow-up, I’m certain that will assist in making things clearer.”

Thistle's scowl deepens. “You didn’t help with their experiment with the Order, did you?”

“No,” Eli hedges, still unclear why his lack of action so long ago results in the magic worsening now.

“You were the highest-ranked warrior, and you could’ve stabilized the magic, but you were too above all such things.”

Ah. Eli sees what blame the boy has scraped together. Eli did not involve himself in the mutation of the magic when Abner and the others first dabbled in its experimentation—Thistle believes if Eli had, it would’ve been enough to tip it out of this edge of chaos.

What foolishness.

Stolen novel; please report.

Did Abner tell him such?

Does Abner believe such?

“I warned your father and the others that playing so roughly with this magic we have with so little understanding of could result in terrible, unforeseen things. I did not wish to involve myself in it. I was high-ranked, you are correct, but I was a Warrior. I had physical fight attributes. Nothing I could’ve lent to their cause would have stabilized any of this.”

Thistle's jaw feathers, but he doesn’t appear to be listening. It matters little—the kid does not need to believe him or think well of him to answer his questions. Absently, Eli rubs at the skin around his arm, avoiding the wound but attempting to soothe the ache he has nothing with which to numb.

“Even if you were correct, that hardly explains why it seems to be worse all of a sudden. Why is it worsening?”

“I don’t know,” Thistle snaps, flicking the charcoal across the room.

With a sigh, Eli steps outside to take more firewood from alongside the wall. He doubts Abner would raise such a nasty boy, this must be reserved for Eli and Eli alone. He seems kind enough to his sister. If the kid has come to the conclusion that Eli is the enemy, that he somehow hurt his father, and that this broken magic is Eli’s doing for his stubbornness, he supposes such hatred is justified.

Eli never raised a hand to Abner in his life—at least outside of teaching him fighting—but Order help him if he doesn’t smack the man when next he sees him.

He supposes it is easier for Abner to blame him than it is to shoulder the guilt himself. He misses his mother, Eli is certain.

As if Eli doesn’t miss her as well.

Rubbing his scarred ear, Eli grabs enough firewood to keep them warm through the night and stacks it inside the door. Moving to the kitchen, he pushes aside the little menagerie of animals he’s carved from dead wood and takes down some of the dried mushrooms Klia was inspecting, getting to work on making enough food for the three of them. These round little green fungi are the only things growing up here in abundance, and they have developed a rather pitiful defense mechanism with the mutated magic, nothing preventing Eli from harvesting them as a food source.

They’ll snake out a little vine with a pointed tip, but they’re too slow to be of danger unless one doesn’t know what they’re stepping in. It’s an easy enough process to snip off the pointers and pull them from the forests around the monastery. Dried and hung as they are, they’re of no danger, and taste fine enough.

He adds a good deal of them to the simmering soup and goat meat.

It has been too long since Eli visited the nearest village, and supplies were dwindling there as it was. He is out of other provisions such as rice or flour—each winter which does not kill him upon this mountaintop is always a bit of a shock. Eli is still alive and relatively sane, and these are two things he never expected to be after these many years.

With his back to the children, he strains to hear if the two of them are attempting to speak to one another with little success. It is dead silent save the crack of the fire, Eli’s cutting of mushrooms, and the whistle of the outside wind.

Eli did not receive the answers he was searching for. Not when he’s certain still in his bones that the cat was stalking the children rather than him. It is after them for a reason. Eli doesn’t know the reason and is convinced the boy does but doesn’t know how to wring the information from him. If he is harsh and frightening, he knows not if it will work, and he may not be a gentle man, but he is not cruel. Eventually, he will figure out a way to pull the words from one of them. Food and sleep may do it with much more than Eli becoming terribly upset.

Instead, he considers the mocking poems the Order sent him as he shoos the kids aside and sets a pot over the flames to heat.

In the past, he was given by his magic a way to inspect the strengths and weaknesses of others, enemies or friends, human or otherwise. He was a warrior of the highest class, with gifts of faster healing, enchanted strengths, and quickened reflexes. He could cast no spells but did not need them. Others could, and they fought alongside him.

Now, he has the skills to fight, the memory in his muscles for such things as well as the talent, but none of the skills or extra magics that put him above those without magic. As far as he is aware, this is how it is for everyone now.

Abner and many others of the high court sought to strengthen their magic and broke it in the process. It is angry with them, and only grows angrier, so it appears.

Eli is given such gibberish as he was provided in the scuffle with the wildcat and the goat, sometimes edging into helpful but only very little.

For the scant hope something may have changed after the fight, Eli claps his hands, but only scowls at the same unhelpful message and wishes it away. Klia cocks her head at him from behind her brother’s arm. Eli raises an eyebrow, trying to remember what a kind, welcoming expression feels like—it’s been ages since he had to comfort another or has been comforted himself.

“How old are you, dear?” he asks in what he hopes is a gentle tone, less gruff than his normal voice. Abner used to tell him he sounds cruel even when he was trying to give a compliment. He said it when he was a young man, old enough to not be moody but not old enough to begin thinking every flaw of Eli’s made him who he is—he’d spoken the words with a grin, but they’ve always stuck in the back of Eli’s mind like sap.

“Leave her alone,” Thistle says, eyeballing the heating mushroom soup.

“I am quite allowed to speak to my granddaughter, I believe,” Eli says flippantly, and winks at Klia. Her lip twitches as if she may smile, but still returns to burying her face into Thistle's shoulder.

Well. It’s progress. Certainly, he may be able to endear himself to the little girl more than to her stubborn brother. Still, he hasn’t heard her make a single noise other than to cry, and wonders if she can speak at all.

“Who is your mother?” Eli asks, thinking perhaps this is an easier question.

Thistle only glares from the corner of his eye and stares at the opposite wall.

Evidently not.

He wonders what the boy’s plan is since he hates Eli so deeply—he is obviously willing to stay the night in his home, likely much more frightened by the encounter with the cat than he’ll admit. Will he try to run away in the dead of the night? Eli doubts it. Still, he shall have to keep an eye on the children until he is certain they are not foolish enough to go wandering about in the dark.

Taking a last small patrol outside, Eli pauses on the edge of the cliffside. Forest and fog stretch as far as his eyes can see in any direction, bright in the oranges of the falling sun. This world is misty and thick, the magic almost constantly attempting to block out the light. In many, many places between here and where Abner resides, it has succeeded in doing so.

He wonders how different it must be when he must finally leave this place. These children cannot remain here with no answers about their father, at least not with what little information Thistle has provided.

Eventually, Eli will need to venture into the world he once knew, now so desperately ruined. His heart beats too fast, and his eyes sting. Death will likely find him soon, once he is off this mountaintop. It has been a companion all his life, and he is not accepting of it but knows there is little use in denying its existence. As he considered earlier, Eli is quite surprised to have lived so long as he has.

I will see my son again before my time is done.

Night is falling, and Eli returns to the shelter of the monastery.