"Morons," he muttered to himself, shuffling further away from the gathering, making his way back to town. At the back of his neck, he felt the glare of a few still following him with disapproval. What? I can't say that I hate a story? Is that such a crime? he wondered, huffing under his breath. Reaching the edge of town, he paused, pushing the bangs of his shaggy brown hair to the top of his forehead as he shielded his eyes from the sun's beams.
He groaned, letting his hair fall back into its natural place. "Story won't be done for a while." What was he supposed to do until then? He huffed his way back to Ariel, the ramshackle town, where Tristan, Ur, and the rest of the audience called home. They were the only village on a pass leading straight through the Mountains of Partition. Ariel served as the junction town for those on each side of the mountain range, or they used to be if the old timers told the truth. Nowadays, no one visited, thanks to the closest village down the mountain range being over thirty miles away. Not that anyone wished to brave the forest to reach the little town.
Its settlement took place on the historical day where the countries of Tiberius and Domitian, which were once whole, dubbed the Mountains of Partition as their division line and Ariel was the border town. Before that day, a civil war exploded between the two halves, a war that threatened to destroy them both. With the foundations of Ariel as their setting, the leaders of each nation decided that peace was a better alternative than wasting their resources on a stalemate of a war, one that brought only death with no victory in sight, but that was a decision reached after a century of fighting and generations of spilled blood; still, time does not heal all wounds and neither nation was not on the best of terms, even on a good day. Again, that was if the old timers' stories were true.
As far as Tristan knew, there was a time when the border town flourished with caravans passing through every week, when the forest was younger and had a clean pathway. The passage to Ariel was the easier method of crossing the mountains, fraught with treacherous mountains and dangerous gulleys. Plenty of men sought other avenues and never returned. Taking the long detour around the mountains meant going months out of the way what only had to take a week. Hundreds of years before Tristan's lifetime, both nations, and the tiny village, took their permanent residence in the firm embrace of the Hannibal empire, which used the twin rivers of Boyne and Clyde as their main trade routes in the west and east. What they lacked was a connection between the two. This was a function the mountain pass to Ariel performed. That was the town's history, if the tale-tellers' drinks had not dulled their memories to the point of pure fantasy. Either way, none of the former glory remained with Ariel, leaving her a dirty hovel for the vermin of the mountains.
Even if the town's history was a drunkard's dream, no one sought the truth because one thing could be certain. The people of Ariel loved a good story. They would abandon all work, forgetting the woes of their lives, and become absorbed in a tale. One would be inclined to believe that the citizens never grew out of their childhood wonder. Perhaps they could not afford to lose it, or rather refused to let it go. Tristan was not sure.
When he reached Ariel's edge, Tristan huffed at the sorry state of his hometown. It was made of perhaps fifty buildings, each one a pitiful stone shack. That was one thing that their ancestors did right. The rains beat the spirit down. Winter chilled the heart. The heat baked their flesh for the maws of animals. Yet, stone stood since the foundation of the village. It crumbled in places, needing patchwork to avoid rain turning dirt floors to mud, but on the whole, the stone protected Ariel's countless generations.
No house differed much from another. The only distinguishing mark were the carvings over each door. They designated which household dwelled within. Everyone lived in the house of their fathers. Sleeping on the same beds, eating at the same table, sitting in the same chairs, relieving themselves in the same holes that their fathers had. That was a fact, and it would be the same until the end of time. If the town lasted that long.
Tristan walked through the town, spotting the old familiar faces of those that did not partake of the Seanchai's tales. There was old Miss Esther, the owner of Ariel's last bakery. That was a woman who never found time to relax. She came from a family of hard-working people. Their labor never ended until the day they died. It was said that her grandfather, Old Ezra, died kneading bread, falling into it face first. The thought brought a wisp of a smile on Tristan's face. Did they use the bread afterward? he wondered, not wanting to know the answer.
Esther baked her wares in a huge stone furnace, a blaze that never stopped. It would take far too much work to get the fire back to its glory. She kept the windows of her bakery home open to keep from suffocating. Tristan could see her kneading dough for her next batch of loaves. The bread's aroma wafted through the town, making drool run down his chin. Not being able to help himself, Tristan called, "Esther. Throw a roll to a hungry man."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The aging woman wiped her brow, approaching the window with flour covering her arms. She shielded her eyes from the noon sun. "What man?" she answered. "All I see is a ruddy boy wanting a handout. If you think yourself a man, work for your bread."
"I will be a man this winter," he retorted with a forced grin.
"Years do not make a man," she spat. "Work. That is all that matters. Everything else is just for show." She turned away from the window, ending the conversation. Esther was a difficult woman, but she was hardest on her "worthless husband, Mot." Her words. Years ago, he ran the mill, making her flour. That ended when his arm was caught between the millstones, crushing every bone and maiming him for life. He retired to work in the bakery, but to her, he was in the way. Many thought it was Prospero's mercy when he passed away.
A rusted guffaw made Tristan turn away from the window. Sitting on a rock, known as the Wingless Bird's Perch, was the oldest man in Ariel, Hermes. A native of the town, but claimed to travel the world in his youth. He had far-fetched tales of his own that made him worthy of the title of Seanchai. No one believed his tales, claiming that he never left the village. Hermes never gave in, swearing on all the gods he could name that every story he told was true. Dejected, he wandered the streets, being a general nuisance to anyone nearby.
"You don't work, you don't eat," he mocked.
"Doddering old man," Tristan hissed under his breath, walking away. His feet carried him in no particular direction, but it made no difference. There was nowhere to go. He passed by the village well, called the Blessing of Prospero. Everyone got their water there. Since the foundation of the town, it had not once run dry. Without it, Ariel would have died a long time ago.
Reaching the other side of the village, he looked onto the fields, ripe with wheat. The men referred to them as Prospero's Bounty. It was here that he, and most men, worked. They distributed the wheat through the town, giving plenty to Esther. In exchange, she made bread for the hard workers. Prospero's Bounty provided them with animals found living in the fields. With the bread and meat, the town managed to survive.
In time, Tristan found himself in the town's square. With a sigh, he murmured, "Everything leads back to the Tree of Prosperity." High over his head stood the great tree, casting its shade over all that sought shelter from the sun's cruel light. On the branches, he could see the faint semblance of apple blossoms. Legend said it was planted at the town's foundation. This was the true life source of the village. No matter how bleak each day was, the people of Ariel knew that they could endure as long as the tree stood tall. Despite his differing thoughts on almost everything else, Tristan could not help being one of them.
Standing beneath the tree's shade, he found himself thinking back on better years. As a child, he climbed them more times than he could count. A smile played at his lips as he remembered how safe he felt during those days. Not once had he even considered that he would fall, even though he was higher up than the tallest house. The branches nestled into the palms of his hands and groves of his feet. A child could not be safer in his mother's arms.
Resting at the foot of the tree, nestled between roots, a stone statue of a man stood with a stern grin on his face. He was born from a black lump of rock in an era that time forgot, darker than the skin of any man Tristan met. It stood as tall as any man if not taller with the stone slab beneath it, elevating it above the ground, but one would not notice with the overgrown grass covering the base. The sunken holes that represented his eyes stared out on the world, watching with this mixture of pleasure, but wariness. He may once have intimidated those that passed him, but time had worn on him.
The edges of his face were round and dull, where they were sharp and striking at one point. His right hand rested on a sword, while the other held a spear in place, stabbing the butt into the stone base, but the dull spearhead looked as if it would fall off one day. Dark robes, once majestic and now brittle to the point of breaking, lay carved over his body, hiding any nakedness. Lydia, all Ariel had for a teacher, told him once that most statues displayed the deities naked. A fact that made the boy's eyebrows raise and nose scrunch up. "It is to display them as the perfect version of mankind," she explained.
Though the lad didn't understand everything she taught, he knew one thing: it was odd that this statue would show the man clothed. Why would any artist do something so different from the others, if naked statues were normal? Would that person find it as gross as a child Tristan did? Not likely.
At the base of the statue, hidden by the grass, was a name. It was the only part of the statue that was lost to time, the years eroding the lettering, but Tristan did not need a name. No one in Ariel did. "Prospero," he mused to himself. "The protector of Ariel." He scowled at the statue, wondering why anyone would want to believe that nonsense.
Lost in his thoughts, he did not hear someone coming up behind him. Snapping out of his thoughts, he whirled around to see a young woman standing nearby. At once, his breath flew from his lungs while his heart tried to jump out of his chest. Deep brown eyes, impossible to ignore, gazed into his. Dark hair swayed in front of her breasts. A dirty brown, homespun dress clung to her body. A bucket of water spilled, but he paid no attention to it. All he could see was her. Opal. If gods did exist, Tristan wished they could make her love him.