In Which the Living Dead
Not Only Speaks,
but Eats Both Trout
and Chicken
Travel, it seems to me, has always done more for flattening the arches, callusing the feet, and irritating the hemorrhoids than broadening the mind.
WALTER SLOVOTSKY
I eyed the sky over Ehvenor as I broke camp.
Blue sky, puffy clouds, no dragon. Damn.
Hmm, I guess that should be "as we broke camp" except that "we" weren't doing it. I had made breakfastjerky and oatmeal; sticks to the ribs. I had packed the rucksacksfairly, honest; I was putting out the remnants of the fireokay, I was biologically better equipped for that job.
Andy was waiting for me down the path. She had taken a battered leather book out of her rucksack, and opened it. The letters swam in front of my eyes; I'm not built to read magic.
They probably swam in front of hers, even forgetting, for the moment, that she had burned out her magical ability. Tears do that.
She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and put the book away, tying the rucksack tightly shut before she slung it over her shoulder.
"Well," I said, "day's a-wasting." I love it when I talk colorful. "Let's get going."
She set off in a slow walk. At least she wasn't crying now. Her eyes were red, and there were dark baggy circles under them. Her hair looked like a bird's nest, and her mouth was set in a permanent frown.
But at least she wasn't crying.
Big fat, hairy deal.
I scanned the skies, hoping for a pair of leathery wings. This would be a handy time for Ellegon to show up and save some wear and tear on both my bootleather and my tender tootsies. But the sky was just full of blue and clouds and birds, and you can never find a dragon when you need one.
We headed off down the path.
There's any number of things one can do with somebody who is busy withdrawing from the world. You can just be patient and let them retreat into their navel, coming out whenever they please. If they please.
Now, I'm not saying that's a bad plan. It's probably a good way to handle it; maybe even the best way to handle things. But it's not a Walter Slovotsky way to handle things. Sorry.
"Now," I said, babbling over the babbling of the stream, "anybody can get lost in the sense of not knowing where you are. No big deal, as long as you know how to get where you're going. Not knowing how to get where you're going is the dangerous kind of lost."
It was a nice-sized stream, maybe three yards across where we were, its broad banks providing a wide path. During rainy season, the stream probably overflowed the banks, but it wasn't rainy season.
"This is one of the easier orienteering tricks," I said. "Avoid heading across unfamiliar territory for a point-destination: a town, an oasis, whatever. Pointsokay, okay: areasare easy to miss.
"Roads and streams, on the other hand, are long skinny things. You tend to trip over them.
"So you aim for a road that you know leads to your destination, even if that means breaking right or left of whatever you're heading for. Now, I know the road from Heliven to Ollerwellit's a long, wide one, crosses a lot of streams up in the hills, certainly including this one. So, unless there's a good reason not to, we follow this stream until we hit the road. Q.E.D."
She didn't answer.
"I know what you're saying," I said. "You're saying, 'Walter, that's all well and good,' you're saying, 'but you've walked out of Ehvenor before, and so this isn't unfamiliar territory to you.'
"You've got a good point, and that's a fact. But there's a difference between having been through this area before and knowing it well. Now, I do know the route that we took the last time I walked out of Ehvenor, but that was more than ten years ago, and I think they may even remember me in one of the towns we passed through, so perhaps we'd be just as well skipping it."
She looked at me, trying not to glare. That was an improvement. At least she was trying something.
I was tempted to try something; I've been in worse-looking company.
If you ignored the reddened eyes and the slumped shoulders, Andy was still an awfully good-looking woman, in or out of her boots and leathers.
But she still wouldn't talk.
There are things I like less than traveling with somebody who won't start a conversation, who won't answer in other than monosyllables, and who cries herself to sleep each night, honest. But most of those involve things similar to sitting up on the Posts of Punishment.
The stream bent up ahead, and I suspected there'd be some fish feeding under the fallen tree that didn't quite bridge the stream. The morning was getting old, and the food in our pack wasn't getting any more plentiful, so I shrugged out of my rucksack and beckoned to Andy to wait.
She dropped her own rucksack and squatted on the ground, silently obedient.
I would have rather she spoke up and spooked the fish.
I crept out on the log. Sure enough, just under the surface of the rippling water, in a quiet space sheltered by the tree, a trio of largish trout hovered in the shadow, either having a quiet chat about fishy life or eating something.
Not for long.
One of the gifts I got in transition to This Side is my reflexes, and while they've been more important, they've never been a lot more fun than when I lunged, scooping up one of the fish and flinging it high into the air, just like a bear with a salmon, except that I'm much prettier than any bear.
The trout thunked down on the riverbank, flopping madly. Flibitaflibitaflibita.
Nice-sized, the way local speckled trout often get. Maybe three, three and a half pounds.
I'd sort of hoped Andy would take over, but she just watched it, so I pulled the utility knife from my rucksackI don't use my dagger or my throwing knives for this sort of thingthen quickly gutted the fish, rinsing off both the fish and my hands in the stream. Ick.
"Now, the right way to cook trout involves poaching it with vinegar and spices," I said. "Blue trout is one of the greatest meals that ever there was.
"A good second choice is to tie the trout to a green stick and then shove it head deep in nice, hot coals. On the other hand, we don't have nice, hot coals, and I'm not going to spend an hour building up that kind of cookfire."
Keeping up a steady monologue, I gathered some dry wood and built a quick cooking fire on the riverbankif you've got some birch bark handy, which we did, and if you're willing to waste a little gunpowder, which I was, you can start a fire real quick.
I cut the fish down the back and seared the halves on the ends of a pair of green sticks, using a rough stone to grate just a taste of wild onion onto it. It only took a few minutes; all you really have to do with freshwater fish is cook them enough to kill any parasites.
A bit of salt from the saltwell in my pack, and, voila: fish on a stick. Lunch for two.
"What are you going to have?" I asked.
She didn't rise to the bait, and I wasn't irritated enough to let her go hungry, so I handed her one of the sticks and then quickly wolfed down my own.
Not bad. Not bad at all. Fresh trout, no more than fifteen minutes from the stream, is a dish fit for a king.
Or even for Walter Slovotsky.
I washed my hands in the stream and then scooped some water onto the fire. "Let's go."
The first days were like that. Andy slept when told to, ate what I put in front of her.
To my surprise, she stood her turn at watch and stayed awake and alert while she did, but that was about all.
The nights were cold, and I wouldn't have minded not sleeping alone. But it didn't seem like the right time to bring up the subject, not even of sleeping. I'm a sensitive guy, eh?
So, instead, I kept up the constant monologue as we walked. I swear, I began to run out of subjects; by the third day, I'd covered damn everything I knew (well, almost everything. Some things Woman Isn't Meant to Know). About how to set up a staff in a castle. About how to keep in practice with a bow. About why you keep flintlocks loaded, and how poor old Tennetty always scared the shit out of me.
We hit the Heliven-Ollerwell road late on the second day, and left the stream and trout dinners behind.
Just as we were breaking camp the next morning and I was launching into today's monologuea reconsideration of the Nickel Defense and its suitability for college footballAndy looked up at me and frowned.
"Walter, shut up," she said.
"Well, well, well. It lives." I hefted my rucksack to my back and we started to work our way back toward the road through the forest.
She should have snorted, but she just looked at me deadpan. "Your sympathy is underwhelming. You don't know what I had to give up."
"Better than sex, so I'm told."
The corner of her mouth may have turned up a millimeter. "Depends on with whom."
"Was that an offer?"
"No."
Sometimes no doesn't mean no, but when it's accompanied by a weak shake of the head, lips pursed just so, that's exactly what it means. Which is okay. I can take no.
On the other hand, I was heading home to my wife, to make things work. It would have been nice to have one last dalliance. On the other hand . . . I've run out of hands.
Just as well.
We walked along, not talking. I can take silence, although you'll never get that in the forest. There's almost always the far-off cry of a bird, the chittering of insects, and if nothing else, a whisper of wind through the trees. Not silent at all. Not even quiet, not really; it's only the tallest trees that are quiet.
"What now?" she asked. Or maybe said.
I hadn't taken this route before, but I had passed through Ollerwell once or twice. "Ollerwell's just a few miles ahead, just across the river, and down aways. We can buy some fresh food. I don't think we'll be able to get more troutthey tend to fish it out around Ollerwellbut maybe some eel, or some of that bass you find in the lakes up this way. Not beefI mean, they might have some, but the locals don't eat a lot of beef, and we'd smell of it for days. We could splurge on a chicken, if"
"Shh." She waved it away, tiredly. "I mean, what do I do now? After we get back."
I shrugged. "Whatever you want, Andy. Except magic, so I'm told."
For the thousandth time, she took the battered leather volume out of her pack and opened it.
The letters blurred in front of my eyes, and apparently in front of hers, too.
They would have, even if she hadn't been crying.
Sometimes I call it right: a farmer at the edge of town had a fire going, and a fat capon turning over a spit, sending delicious flavors wafting off into the breeze. We could probably have made a better deal in town, but the crackling of crisp skin over the coals made me part with a Holtun-Bieme copper half-mark with Karl's face on it, which bought me a huge chunk of breast (no comments, please), and Andy an oversized thigh, each served on a fist-sized loaf of fresh brown bread hot from the oven.
I didn't wait for it to cool, and ended up burning my tongue. It was worth it.
I'd like to report that Andy wolfed hers down with hunger and gusto, but she just ate as we walked through the village, past a couple dingy rows of wattle-and-daub houses and onto the northern road.
Another couple of days and we'd be at Buttertop.
"How about you?" she asked.
At first I didn't answer. It took me a moment to realize that she'd picked up our conversation of hours ago where we had left it off. I hate it when she does that.
"Me?" I shrugged. "I think I'd better take it easy for awhile. Spend some time with the kids, and with Kirah. You?"
She sighed. "I might go back into teaching. English, basic math, the usual. Even if some of the Home youngsters do it better than I could. I don't know."
Maybe, just maybe, if I gave Kirah enough patience and attention, maybe that would do it. Life's like a fight, sometimes; there's times when you have to commit yourself, to lunge full, all stops out, not worrying about what happens if it doesn't work. See, you don't just put something of yourself in what you touch, but you put it in who you touch. After close to twenty years together, Kirah was part of me, and I wasn't going to cut that out, any more than I'd throw away my left arm.
Ellegon found us that night.
I was a bit nervous about camping on the ground close to a road broad enough to be navigable by stars and faerie lights, so we had moved well off the road, onto a wooded rise, and slung our hammocks high in a giant old oak tree while it was still light enough to see.
Actually, I'd done the slinging, and it had only been one hammock. Climbing was hard enough on Andy, but I picked her branches to make getting in easy for her. It had been some trouble, but we'd gotten her settled in and pretending to be asleep, while I climbed farther up the tree and seated myself in a crotch between two old limbs, too lazy, or maybe too tired to mess with it all. I just whipped one end of a piece of rope around the tree, and knotted it in front of my chest, so that if I leaned forward instead of back I wouldn't fall out and break my neck.
I let the day slip away. What was that old dwarven even-chant? Something about
That was, of course, the moment that flame would have to flare loud and bright over the treetops, accompanied by the rustle of leathery wings.
*Wake up, folks. Your ride's here. If you hurry, we can be in Holtun-Bieme in the morning.*