Forest Mage

Clove had had a couple of days’ rest and some grazing. The days were getting cold and the nights even colder. It was stupid to linger here. The sooner I reached my journey’s end at Gettys, the sooner I would know what awaited me there. There was a danger to waiting too long. If the commander there didn’t accept me for enlistment, I’d probably have to winter there, and then ride out in spring to try my luck at other citadels and forts. There was no guarantee that any regiment would have me. My thoughts spiraled into darker speculation. If no regiment would have me, what then? What if I had to face being a soldier son who could not be a soldier, a noble’s son who had been disowned? A brother who had not kept his word to send for his sister? A fat man who begged shelter and food of strangers? A man who looked at a woman with interest, only to have her turn away in disgust?

I didn’t much like any of my possible new identities. I made an abrupt decision. I would leave at first light tomorrow.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BUEL HITCH

I stayed with Amzil nearly a month. I think that almost every night I made a resolution to leave in the morning. But every morning brought some small task that I thought I could do before I left. And somehow each of those tasks led to others. It was always the task of the day that I stayed for; I never allowed myself to think how pleasant it was to have the company of this woman, how enjoyable I found it to be the one who could provide. My father had rubbed my nose in my failures for so long that even I was astonished at how much I could do for this orphaned and destitute family. It felt good.

It began with keeping my promise to show her how to snare rabbits. I convinced myself that I had to stay an extra day to be sure that the snares were working and that she knew how to reset them. I spent the afternoon of that day cutting more wood and mending the roof of the shed that Clove had been using as a stable. Midway through that task, the man who had turned me away from his door only a few days before came to ask if he could barter with us for a few days of Clove’s labor. The man had devised a sort of plow and hoped that with the use of Clove’s strength, he could plow a much larger garden area for the next spring. I pointed out to him that it was the wrong season for plowing. He retorted that he was not stupid, but that breaking the soil now might make it easier for him to plant a larger area next spring.

Fabricating a harness for Clove proved to be the trickiest part of the project. Yet by evening’s end, and with a lot of sweat, Merkus and I had managed to break the sod on a quarter-acre of land. It was rocky soil, threaded through with old roots. A good part of our toil went to chopping side roots so that Clove could jerk old stumps free of the earth. Merkus traded us a sack of potatoes and half a day of his labor the next day.

So I had little choice but to decide to stay for another day. Our evening repast seemed very rich, for in a surge of optimism, Amzil had used the meat from two rabbits and five whole potatoes to make the meal. We had caught a total of three rabbits, so I showed her how to hang the extra meat in the chimney to smoke it and preserve it. The three rabbitskins joined the first one to dry.

The extra food seemed to give the children more energy. They were not as willing to go to bed that night, so we sat up for some time by the fire. Amzil surprised me by telling the children several stories to pass the time. Then, after she had settled them into bed, we sat up a short time longer talking about what projects were most crucial for the coming winter.

When Merkus arrived the next morning to work off his debt, he and I tightened the roof and door of Amzil’s house before moving on to make the roof of the shed sound. Long before noon, I had earned his grudging respect. Over the next few days, Clove’s great strength made short work of tugging down several ramshackle structures so that we could reduce them to usable timbers. Once I had stockpiled the lumber that I thought I could use for Amzil’s dwelling and the adjacent shed, I put Merkus in our debt once more by using Clove to haul a number of heavy timbers down to where he wished to use them.

All this activity roused the curiosity of the other scattered dwellers. The old man and his nagging wife came to the door of their hut to watch Clove pass. I discovered there was one other family in the otherwise deserted town, a man and a woman of middle years with two half-grown children and a baby. They watched us from afar, but did not speak to us that day.

Amzil and I checked the snares together that evening. We had only caught one rabbit, but she still seemed very pleased with it. Under my guidance, she moved the snares to fresh locations on some of the many rabbit trails throughout the stump field.

“If the game becomes scarce here, then you can always set snares along the river, especially in the wintertime.” I told her. “Watch for the paths where animals go to water. Set them there.”