1
Zer watched the wriggling green worm at his feet. He had stopped in the middle of the chalky path he’d been walking along for some time now to scrutinize the creature. He stood alone in the road, other than the viridian bug, and peered with great focus at it, his hands on his knees, as it twisted about. It had been six days since another wanderer had shared the path, coming down the opposite direction. Zer had seen the expanding dark dot on the horizon from miles away, contrasting against the whitish sediment paving the footpath, and cast up a secret prayer to his favorite planet. When the other man did at last pass by him, his gaze was fixed dead ahead – wordless and hurried. But Zer was now no more than another day’s travel from the next village; he’d have a moment to recollect his wits, share meals with strangers, commit any local tales of note to memory. The caterpillar snatched its own tail in its jaws and squeezed. Some orange fluid pooled around and within the circle.
Unusual.
By the time Zer crossed into the village’s walled perimeter, the moon had come out. He discerned its phase, along with the tinged hue – seemingly due to a wildfire Zer could smell burning from somewhere within thirty miles of the village – was conjoined to his entomological observation from earlier in the day. The scant folk in the town square huddled in the corners with despondent expressions, hushed. No one wanted to talk to him. Annoyed, he explored the town. He stepped along for a while through the narrow alleys and then, when confronted with a fork, chose by means of the growing intuition crawling up the back of his neck. He turned left, and heard a woman’s voice, just barely eked out, through an open window.
“We have to get out of here. Your cousin broke the Order, and that thing is going to come back again. You know our neighbors are looking for someone to blame.”
Zer halted, and tucked himself into a shadow and listened.
A man replied, “Everyone already knows who to blame. But Jeird is dead, and no one has the right to hold us to account for his transgression.”
The man’s voice was deeply worn. Zer noted how he had lingered while speaking his cousin’s name.
“But it’s still coming back, Throle! He’s gone, but we are still suffering his mistake. No one cares that you didn’t do anything. Maybe it’s the whole family that it wants. That’s what people are saying.”
“I know what the others are saying. Vai, they’re desperate. No one really knows the Order, especially not the untrained. I know you understand this. It’s just rumors and grasping at straws. They just want to be safe.”
“Then maybe we owe it to them to leave.”
There was a pause. Zer’s heart pumped quicker, waiting from the shadowy corner across the alley. Wracked with curiosity, and thinking of the caterpillar and the smoke in the air. I’m going to be here for a while, I think.
At last, the man’s low voice growled, sad and heavy, “I think I can fix it. Just give me a little more time.”
Vai sighed, “I don’t know how much more of this the town can take, love. Do you understand – I’m not just afraid of that snake.”
“There’s no pitchforks or torches yet, love.”
Zer held still for another moment, then slinked off down the alley again, each step as silent as cat’s paws, and doing rapid calculations with the planets and stars, arcing around in his mind.
He saw warm light coming from the end of the long stretch of cobbled alleyway he had been following, and figured he was looping back around toward the public square. He still had no clue what the name of this place was, and decided to try again to make first contact as he waltzed out into the torchlight; no one answered any of his queries, not about the village’s name, where he could find lodging, or even where he could get a warm meal. Each townsperson just glowered at him before he finally shrugged and tried the next dejected villager, with no success. He showed shopkeepers several of the different currencies jingling in the leather bag tucked under his long coat, and made an effort at a handful of languages besides the dialect common in the region, that he’d heard the couple speaking through the window – still, his stomach continued to grumble, and the nighttime air began to cut through his dark coat.
I wonder if these people are this standoffish even when there isn’t some kind of monster lurking around. He noticed several times, as he approached this person or that, that many of them had reached for a charm of some sort around their neck – the habit seemed to connote fear, or surprise. They clearly weren’t accustomed to strangers. Zer began coming up to people, hand outstretched and smile beaming, just to get another chance to spot the necklaces in more detail before they scowled and walked away. Eventually he got a few good angles and adequate lighting, and realized that the charm was the same on each villager: a rough circular loop, hewn out of a dark green stone material.
The townsfolk began shuffling off en masse, skulking down the various alleyways and footpaths that exited from the square, and back into their dimly lit homes, quickly closing their doors behind them. Zer heard the clicking and thudding of locks come reverberating down the arterial roads and into the lonely town square where he stood, thoroughly overcome with an odd mixture of piqued curiosity, mild annoyance, and aching hunger.
A bell tolled. Zer swiveled his head up and around toward the sound, located the source – a tallish tower jutting up some meters above the thick wooden wall that enclosed the town. Zer had noted the wall as unlikely upon his entry, noodling through the small crowds drifting in and out from the town. He hadn’t seen a single act of violence throughout his trek in this country that could warrant such steep defenses. The bell rang out again, eerily bright and unpleasant, and Zer saw the man who rang it hurry out from his post and down a ladder, then disappear into a nearby building. He heard another lock click shut.
Zer wiggled his nose and furrowed his brow – the smell of smoke was growing stronger. He coughed in his hand and scanned around the barren town square, squinting his eyes into shut windows, eventually cast his gaze up to the sky, the pinpoint stars glittering on darkened firmament. Not a lot to work with here, he thought nervously to himself. He put his hand in the leather satchel and fumbled around for something.
“I saw you spying on my aunt and uncle, stranger.” A girl’s voice piped from behind him. Zer rotated on one heel and faced his accuser – a wiry kid, no more than twelve years old, leering at him. Her frown was severe. However, Zer could see excitement in her brown eyes.
Zer replied, his voice unwaveringly flat and quick and slightly nasal, “Tell me what your father did that got himself killed and everyone here so upset.”
Instantly, the child’s eyes matched the harshness of her mouth. Her left arm twitched upward slightly, then hesitated, before coming back down. Zer saw the green loop, strung across a silver chain, sitting over her heart. With a rigid imitation of adult authority, a hand on each hip, a wide and upright stance, she spoke at Zer again.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You think eavesdropping on some people for five minutes is enough to know anything about us? I think you’d better leave before I tell my uncle about you. You might have a better chance against the dragon.”
“What does that green stone you’re wearing mean?”
“What?”
Zer kept up, “And what is ‘the Order’? Do you people practice a different religion than the neighboring towns?”
The girl had shifted from curiosity to anger to simple frustration, and started to give it back to Zer, “You know what, how’d you like it if I started asking you a bunch of rude, stupid prying questions? You don’t even know my name and you’d like me to tell you about my dead dad?”
“What’s your name, then?”
The child was practically steaming, almost visibly reddening even under the dying torch light of the empty town square.
She responded, “Why are you dressed like that?”
Zer frowned now, “Like what?”
“Like that!” she gestured up and down at him. Zer looked down at himself and then back at her, still frowning, and shrugged, “You don’t like black?”
“Black trousers, black boots, black coat. And that weird pointy black hat. You look melancholic. If you wore normal clothes, maybe people would want to talk to you.”
“This hat is fashionable where I come from…”
“And where is that, exactly? Please do tell me, so I can make sure to never go near there once in my whole life, or else I might die from laughter, or just pure disgust!”
She waited for a reply, smiling smugly at her successful verbal assault. In a flash, however, Zer was behind her. Just the speed, nearly instantaneous, sent a shiver of animal fear down her spine. I’ve never seen anything move that fast.
Zer removed his hand from under his coat, and in it was a single white feather. He raised it skyward at the very same moment that a gust of flame, curling and sloshing through the air like a liquid poured out from above, came crashing down toward the town square and Zer and the girl. The fiery ooze plummeted at them until, reaching the point of Zer’s outstretched and feathered hand, it simply vanished into a haze of acrid smoke.
Zer let go of the girl and spoke, “Please, just take me to your uncle?”
His high pitched voice cut through her shock, and she looked up at the stranger, unsure what she would see – if the same awkward man and his weird hat would still be there, and not something more… threatening. He met her eyes and grimaced. She saw him wobbling, bending over. She asked him, confused, “Are – you alright?”
He looked up at her and smiled weakly, “I’m really hungry.”
She nodded and began walking hurriedly toward the alley Zer had emerged from, back to the window and its whispers. She noticed him toss something to the cobbled ground before getting upright and following after her; she looked down at it briefly. A burnt crisp of wispy blackened feathers, still smoking slightly. She continued on, and Zer followed after her wordlessly.