“Is he coming?”
Sheb’s question evoked a sharp hiss
from Quor.
“I’m sorry,” the younger boy said.
Reducing his two-handed grip on the
upper branch to one, Quor turned to frown at Sheb. “Be less sorry and more
quiet,” his elder brother whispered. He ain’t never coming if you scare him
off!”
Hanging his head, the younger boy
clutched tighter to the bulbous oilcloth bundle he held.
“Don’t pout,” Quor said with a note
of regret. “I’m just the lookout. You have the best job.”
Sheb looked past his arboreal perch
to the trail far below. The dirt path was remarkably clear for how seldom the
villagers used it.
The younger boy returned his
attention to his brother. Quor had resumed his post, scanning the woods in the
direction of Vale. His sandy hair caught the red-orange light of sunset that
filtered through the canopy. A gust of wind shook the leaves. Though not quite
cold, it already lacked summer’s heat.
Sheb’s focus snapped back to the
present moment when he saw Quor’s body tense. “Someone’s coming,” the elder boy
said.
Well trained in what was required of
him, Sheb braced himself against the tree trunk and held the bundle over the
path. His heart pounded in expectation of a white-robed figure meandering along
the trail.
Minutes passed, and no one appeared.
The bag weighed no more than five pounds, but the effort of suspending it over
empty space started to take its toll on the boy’s arms. The bundle’s contents
shifted as his hands began to shake.
“Hold steady!” Quor hissed.
Something flew up and bit the back
of Sheb’s leg. Abandoning stealth, the younger boy screamed and pitched
forward. He clutched desperately for support as the bag plummeted, painting the
trail in a spatter of rotten blackberries. His grasping hands found Quor’s
shirt. The effort gained only a moment’s reprieve before both boys toppled from
their boughs to land in bushes defiled by fermented pulp.
“Look what you’ve done!” Quor raged
as he struggled to free himself from sticky, pungent shrubbery and his
brother’s gangly limbs.
“I’m sorry,” Sheb wailed. “Something
bit me!”
“The sting of a cast stone is better
than you deserve,” a husky voice declared.
“Who’s there?” Quor asked, his voice
trembling.
“It’s highwaymen,” Sheb yelled.
“They’ll slit our throats and dump us in the brush!”
“You’re already in the brush,” the
stranger said. “Stop squirming unless you want to stay there.”
A heavy, callused hand grabbed
Sheb’s arm and yanked him free of the sticky shrub. A moment later he stood beside
Quor, covered in musky syrup and leaves. Sheb knew the man towering over them
was no highwayman. The children of Vale were warned that troublemakers would be
exiled to the deep dark woods with old Janto. Now here he stood in his ragged
clothes; his stern eyes framed by a wild wreath of hair and beard.
“Do you know the trouble you nearly
caused?” Janto asked at length.
“We was just out berry-picking,”
Sheb lied.
“You should learn to tell ripe fruit
from rotten,” Janto said. “But I know what you were doing here.”
Quor suddenly broke his silence. “Please
don’t make us live in the woods!” he cried. “We’re sorry. Just let us go home!”
Janto raised a shaggy eyebrow at the
elder boy. “I have troubles enough without a pair of delinquents to look
after,” he said, and Sheb’s heart leapt.
“But neither can I let you return
home,” the hermit added.
The brothers exchanged desolate
looks. To their surprise, Janto turned and started down the trail.
“Come,” he barked. “I know a stream
nearby. You can go back to your mother when we’ve improved your smell.”
Almost an hour later, Sheb sat
beside Quor on a mossy stone; the hermit’s musty cloak enveloping both of them.
Their wet clothes hung from low branches nearby. Janto seated himself on the
bed of needles beneath a dying pine. Sheb felt his brother shivering beneath
the cloak, and he noticed that the coming night had lent a slight chill to the
once balmy air.
“Pardon me sir,” the younger boy
said. “It’s nearly dark. Won’t you light a fire?”
Janto brooded, stirring the brown
needles before him with a twig. At last he said, “No fire tonight. Not with the
Journey underway.”
“He came, then?” Quor asked through
chattering teeth. “We was up in that tree since noon and didn’t see nobody.”
“But you were seen,” the hermit
said. “A blind man could have. I met the sojourner and set him on a safer
path.”
“You turned him away?” Quor groaned.
“Why’d you let us spend all day up that damned tree?”
Janto’s silence made the stone seem
raucous. After a moment he said, “Nothing must hinder the Journey. If I’ve
taught you nothing else today, I pray that seed alone takes root.”
Sheb leaned closer, causing Quor to jockey
for his share of the cloak. “We wasn’t gonna hurt Jemai,” he said. “We just
wanted a bit of fun with him.”
The hermit’s deep brown eyes fixed
themselves on the boy so suddenly that Sheb nearly toppled from his seat. Pain
and loss were graven on that weathered face, along with a kind of fervor
bordering on fear. Then, just as suddenly, he looked away.
“Neither of you knew the time before
the Journey,” Janto said. “That is a blessing. It was not a time of pleasant
memory. Years before you swelled your mother’s belly, a handful of us gathered
in the Vale. We came from all the corners of the world looking for rest and
relief. What we found was hunger and hardship.
The hermit paused. Taking up his
stick again, he resumed scratching in the pine-scented dirt. “I had a younger
brother not much more than your age,” he told Quor. “God never game him the
natural fear of foolishness that helps most folks survive. He got tired of
being hungry and set out east: the first to leave of us who’d come.
Sheb felt Quor shifting beside him.
Now both of them sat on the rock’s edge.
“The old folks figured he’d come
home when he got tired. There was talk of a search when the first day passed,
but no one ever went. Finally folk just stopped talking of him—even our
mother.”
“Did he ever come back?” asked Sheb.
The shame of his sudden intrusion warmed his face.
“Aye,” Janto said. “It was me who
found him. I shared the others’ fear of the outside, but it was my brother
who’d gone missing. So I took to walking the woods; never going much farther
than we’re sitting right now.
“One day at sundown I rounded a bend
and there he was: stumbling out of the bush near the fork in the stream. I
waded right across to him and was about to embrace him till I saw what had
become of his face.”
The storyteller paused. Sheb held
back the question on his lips, but just barely.
“What happened to him?” Quor asked
instead.
Janto was a moment longer answering.
“I almost thought it a trick of the failing light,” the hermit said, pressing
the twig into the ground point first. “But I got close enough to make no
mistake, and the sight banished all doubt that what folk said about the Great Fire
was true. My brother was burnt: not by the sun or even by open flame. There
wasn’t a mark on him besides the palm print branded into his face.”
Quor’s eyes widened. “Demons,” he
whispered.
“Perhaps,” Janto said. “But demons
in stories have claws or hooves. I never heard of one with hands dainty as a
young maid’s.”
Sheb’s breath caught in his throat.
The night’s chill returned in force.
“I don’t know how he made it back,”
the hermit went on. “The burn had already festered. One of his eyes was a
weeping boil, and the other was nearly sealed shut. He was starved and exposed,
but somehow he’d found his way. I helped him back to the Vale where he died in
the night.”
This time Sheb needed no help
keeping silent. There were no words.
“The next spring was the first time
there was more green than grey,” Janto said. “The Journey’s been made every
year since, and it’s never left us wanting.”
“I’m sorry for your brother,” said
Quor.
The
hermit grinned, perhaps with pride. “Horth was the first to seek the Fire
beyond the mountains. He’s still the only one who’s come back. If it teaches
you why we send one soul each year to ransom many, and why we light no fires at
summer’s end; then his tale’s worth the telling.”
Sheb didn’t remember falling asleep
when he awoke next to Quor early the next morning. The hermit was gone; leaving
his cloak and the boys’ dried and folded clothing.
The walk back to Vale passed in
silence. Emotions warred inside his heart: pity for old Janto, gratitude for
the blessings gained by his long-dead brother, and shame for nearly desecrating
his rite.
One question kept nagging him,
though.
“Quor,” he finally asked, “why do
they send simpletons like Jemai if the Journey’s so important?”
“It’s an honor, Sheb,” the elder boy
said at last. “The only one his kind can hope to get.”
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