Sci Fi & Fantasy / Tales of an Offbeat Time - part 3
The thin line of rattling caravans with their once-exuberant tent-tops, screaming, yelling, tireless children, busy, busy, worried mothers, uninterested fathers, wizened old men and wizened old women, barking dogs and unhelpful just-adults was tumbling out of the trees into fields copper, gold and yellow.
Mara was somewhere in the middle of it. Red leaves fluttered and flittered around her as she walked beside the caravan, to a crunching and scrunching underfoot. It was a big wooden thing, the faded red hood hoisted over to keep young Cyne warm at Nyesta’s breast. It is growing chill out here. Even at midday.
They had left home eight days before. Morning till dusk, Mara would tread the track if she could, but the days were long and tiresome, her heels had worn hard and her legs ached so much. She scowled.
“Fifanel!” she called, swinging herself up into the caravan and pushing aside the beady strings swaying over the entrance. She stepped in and a drowsy warmth caught her. Nyesta had lit the mettle and it’s smoke was curling around the tent, swirling against the sides and cascading up to the ceiling. She was sat leaning against a heap of blankets, raven-black hair tumbling past her shoulders to her tit in Cyne’s mouth.
“Mara,” she said in a husky voice. “You’d do well to rest your legs, but I can see from that look about your face you don’t mean to. You should stop and rest sometime, girl.”
“I was going to take Blacksocks for a ride to the head of the column. Father is there with Bradden The Ferret, and maybe Haska, too. Haska promised he would take me and Fifanel fishing.”
“When we stop to rest, perhaps.”
“Yes, but he will forget unless I tell him of it now.”
“I don’t want to go fishing,” muttered a dour voice from the darkest, reddest, smokiest corner of the caravan. Fifanel stared out from behind a curtain of unwashed hair, arms crossed, jaw clenched, in a foul mood, as always.
“Oh come on sister, it will be great fun, and we will be well fed tonight. Haaska is a good fisher. I bet we will catch enough to feast the column for a week.” Nyesta chuckled a throaty chuckle at that.
“The bastards can starve t’ the last one,” Fif muttered, ignoring the daggers her step-mother was throwing her way.
“You are the most miserable person I know, Fifanel.” Mara sat and slumped into one of the cushion-dune beds. It was a wretched place to sleep. Granted, it was warm and soft, but her brother and her father snored terribly, like a duet of old saws, and she would always wake in the night. She had buried her head below a small mountain of pillows for the first couple of days, but that just made the sawing rumble so loud you’d think the earth was shaking. By the third she had grown so mad with the sound that she had taken to spending the night walking the shaking line of horses, carts and caravans, or sometimes taking Blacksocks for a ride around the hills and fields. She could look down upon the column from up there. It made her think of a drunken snake, to see it winding through the valleys and vales like that, gathering at each lake and stretching itself thin along every road.
The fields were still gold and brown, but there was a taste of winter on the wind, and the well-bucket they pulled up at the windmill that morning had papery ice filmed on the surface. The nights are cold now, she had thought as she sat atop her Blacksocks, wrapped up warm with a scarf pulled up around her chin, watching the snake wriggle by. A day past, Haska had brought her five pairs of rabbit ears, which Nyesta said she would sow into gloves. Mara wasn’t sure she like the idea of that, but it would be warm…
“Mara!”
Her eyes flickered open to the smoky red caravan roof. “Fifanel, I was on the edge of sleep.”
“The edge of sleep were you, lass?” came a rough voice from behind her. “Do you not know what the night’s for? Night’s for sleeping.”
“Bradden,” she said as he came bounding inside the caravan, wiry and lean.
“I am, I am. How old are you now, lass? Fifteen years, am I right? Fifteen, aye. As good as a woman, now. Ahahaha, nights may not be for sleeping much longer, eh?” He grinned fiendishly at Nyesta, dropped down next to Mara, folded his legs under him and pushed some stray hair back into the thicket on his head. “Mara, girl, did Nyesta ever tell you the story about how I stole Wicked Rowan’s caravan?”
“You’ll find that I haven’t, Bradden.”
The ferrety man put on a mask of mock surprise. “Nyesta,” he said slowly. “Why ever would you not? That is one of my finest stories, you’ll find out, young Mara. Wicked Rowan was a witch that used to travel all of the lands north to south and east to west, but she especially loved the world around here. She was always passing through, throwing curses and giving us all bad dreams, but she’d leave just as soon. Rowan’s caravan, now that was something to see - I call it a caravan, but it was pulled by these great leathery bats, not horses or even an ox. Two of them. Massive creatures, they were, huge like you’ve never seen a bat. Now, I was out one day, walking the High Road, and there’s Rowan’s caravan at the side of the road looking all desolate and lonely. ‘Course, I couldn’t resist, so I jumped up, took the reins and gave them a shake to wake the bats up - which were sleeping upside down in this huge tree - and flew this thing all the way to down to Below The Wings. I was gonna sell these bats there, see, ‘cause they have big eagles down there, but no big bats, so they’d most likely give me the good Queen herself for them. Well, that’s what was going through my head at the time.”
He stopped for a moment, lowered his hands from where he’d been waving them around like bat wings, and took a breath.
“Thing is,” he said carefully, one finger pointed accusingly at her nose, “what I didn’t know was that wicked old Wicked Rowan was still in the back of the caravan where she’d been fast asleep the whole time, or passed out. I couldn’t say which, but she smelt awful funny, and you know these odd concoctions that witches make with their radishroot and horsebile and whatnot?” Mara shook her head blankly. “Well, that’s of no matter. What is, is that when the old bitch woke up she came stumbling out all dressed in ragged clothes with fox’s tails and cow’s ears and all sorts hanging off the brim of her hat and little glass flasks on her belt, with a damned antler in her hand, pointing at me like I’d killed a man! Now, what you should know is that Wicked Rowan was a famous witch, and everyone said she’d seen more than a hundred winters, and I reckon they’d be right. I’d seen her a few times before, when she passed round our way, and she hadn’t aged a bit. So, when she came stumbling out from her caravan to where I was sitting at the front, steering her bats, the first thing I noticed was what a woman she was! You wouldn’t think so, with her being so old, but bloody land and sea! I swear she was prettier than a thousand of the finest princesses. Rowan, I said, put that antler down, I’m flying us to see the sun rise over The Winged Throne. Do you not think that will be a fine sight, my love? She just looked at me for a good long time, and I thought to myself that I might be able to land this thing, sell her bats and buy myself an eagle to fly back home on without her even noticing. I shouldn’t have thought that, though, should I, Fif?”
Fif said nothing, and just fixed him with a sullen stare from her smoky corner.
“Bradden--” began Nyesta.
“Shush, shush, Nyesta, young Mara wants the rest of the story. Tell her why I shouldn’t have thought what I was thinking.”
“Because you’re Bradden and you shouldn’t think most of what you do think and don‘t think about most of what you do.”
“She’s right, you know,” he told Mara, eyebrows skyward. “Witches can hear what you’re thinking, and when I’d stopped thinking about how I wanted Rowan in my bed, or at least me in hers, she didn’t like it. Fingers atwitching, she started muttering some strange sounds that made no sense to me, and an otherworldly blackness started creeping into the sides of my sight. You wouldn’t believe how sleepy I felt then.”
“I would. I cannot sleep a night in this caravan with Haska and father snoring like they do.”
“Ahahaha, you may be right about that, lass,” he said, ruffling her hair. “But this was different. This was witch’s magic. I didn’t know what she was doing, until I felt myself falling over the edge of the caravan, where I could see the ground a mile below me, or maybe three miles. It was when I saw the fields and farms stretched out there that I figured what was happening, and I threw my hands up and grabbed on to the legs of one of the giant bats, which sent it so mad, you couldn’t begin to imagine it. It started flapping like something wild, the whole caravan was rocking, and when I thought it was about to flip over, the bat broke free with me still holding it’s legs and we both flew off into the night. Last thing I saw of Wicked Rowan, she was falling through the sky along with her caravan and the other bat, trying so desperately to fly upwards. I was left clinging to these bat-legs, wondering how much a single bat would fetch. Maybe it’d only be some lord’s daughter and not the Queen herself, but I can live with a lord’s daughter. I did once! Nyesta’ll tell you all about that, though. With that in my mind, I steered this thing to Rydwaith. Rydwaith’s the city the Queen lives in Below The Wings, you know that, don’t you?”
“Where she sits the Winged Throne, yes.”
“Aye, they’re into their wings and their birds down there, but you’ll find that out for yourself when we get there, like I did. I flew myself above the castle and was going to steer my bat down into this massive courtyard that was underneath me when three bloody eagles came from nowhere and started pecking and clawing at my bat and the men on their backs were yelling all sorts of thing and swinging their swords around like madmen. There might have been seven, actually, but it was hard to see with all the feathers and wings flying around me, like I was in the middle of some strange storm or something. Last thing I saw was the courtyard, but it was a bit closer than before.”
He frowned. “A fall like that hurts, I can tell you that much. What I’ll also tell you is how I got back home, but that’s a better story for another time, Mara girl. Isn’t that so, Nyesta?”
“That would be the one with the sheep?”
“That’s the one, old girl! Ahaha, don’t give me that look and the stern mouth, it looks bad on you.”
Nyesta’s scowl softened. “What is it you came for, Bradden? Surely not just to faun over me?”
“Whoa there, Mara’ll be twice the woman you are before long,” he turned to the girl, who held a woefully abashed look on her face, and unleashed a roaring laugh. “Take my word, lass, I’ve known a few woman, and you’ll be as fine as any of them once you finish all that growing or whatever it is you children do nowadays.”
Mara flicked a glance at Nyesta, her cheeks becoming rosy.
“Ahahahaha, don’t worry on it, lass. What I really came for was to tell you that your father wants to see you. We’re getting near to the Chelchellen, and it’s a fine sight, everyone knows.” Bradden stood and offered her a hand. “Let’s get your Blacksocks harnessed up, shall we?”
She took his hand and stepped outside, back into the chill afternoon sun. Haska says the Chelchellen is home to kelpies and women made of water and creatures that could look like a fish or a bear or a man as they pleased, she mused as she pulled the straps tight around Blacksocks’ belly. He said he would take me there one day, before I am grown, and show me the waterways and the forests on each bank, and he would take me fishing and gathering so we could make a fire to cook what we caught. There are places where you can swim, too, where the currents are not so strong and the creatures not so ferocious or cunning and the you can speak with the wind and dance with the moon and sing with the sun over the hills and along the mountaintops and through the fields. She sighed, and a terrible melancholiness welled up inside her, cold as winter winds, sweet as summer wines, something like the smell of fallen leaves; an unplaced, unprompted sorrow, as if she had lost something. But what have I lost? she asked herself. What have I lost?
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Not to be mean but i didn’t get anything from reading this and it is not a sci fi- I don’t know what it is….
but your grammar is better than most people on here so I give you credit for your professionalism. But you are not perfect and you made simple mistakes that some people mite not notice.
Here goes:
“The bastards can starve t’ the last one,” I didn’t understood this part- the (t’) threw me off.
’ she sat atop her Blacksocks,’ I don’t know what a blacksocks is but i’m curtain it is something British, but my point is it is not to have a cap b.
‘ourse, I couldn’t resist, so I jumped up, took the reins and gave them a shake to wake the bats up
hat I didn’t know was that wicked old Wicked Rowan,’ you should have added a period before ‘I’ and put all the commas in like you did.
But not to sound rude but I didn’t really see the purpose of you telling me about bats and other creatures like that. But hey, to each is own. Best of luck.
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