Chapter Three #3
They had built the wooden table themselves that sat off to one side, near the fire, and cut the wood for the stools, and they ate at that table every day together, yawning over breakfast and wolfing down lunch and laughing over supper as the sun got low.
Mo had a rocker he’d built himself with a yew that had fallen near the creek on their property, and Juniper had a wider wooden bench built for two that was piled high with soft woven blankets and pillows he’d made with goosedown from their own flock.
Once, Bill Bronson had insinuated that working with wool and needles was work only fit for “fine-fingered prissy little businesspeople,” in his words, so Juniper had insinuated he would leave all of his needles in a certain orifice belonging to Bill, and then they’d gotten in a truly memorable fight.
“Juniper?” Mo nudged softly, his elbow bumping Juniper’s.
I don’t want to go. That was what almost fell right out of Juniper’s stupid mouth.
Who was going to care for Pip the cow and all the sheep? Who would make sure the chickens and ducks were back in their coop before nightfall? Big Ripper, the small hound they’d adopted a few years back, was getting on in age, too. And Mumford.
“Right,” Mo said. He held out a plate of warm food, heaped high with eggs and mouthwateringly thick sausages.
“Abernathy is keeping Big Ripper at his place, and the chickens and ducks, too. He’ll be by for Mumford, later.
I assumed you would need to say goodbye.
And he’ll stop by to care for Pip and the sheep, and keep the milk and eggs as payment. ”
“And what would they do to us?” Juniper asked. “If the constable brought us to the capital city? What would the punishment be?”
Would they be thrown into a jail the way Juniper’s own father often had been, before one last stay in a capital prison had sent him home with pneumonia?
“Ah,” Mo said. “Well, they don’t take kindly to it, see.”
“Mo.”
“Unalivement,” Mo said.
“Unalive— Mo?” Juniper nearly dropped his plate on the floor. “Did you think that saying it that way would make it less awful? We’re going to be beheaded if we don’t find this dragon?”
“Well, only if we give up and come home, or never show up at all,” Mo said. “Really not so bad.”
Juniper set down his plate on the nearby table and folded his arms over his chest. Then he cursed, for several minutes, at a whole slew of people, from the gods to the king to Bill Bronson. Especially Bill Bronson. And whomever he’d mistaken for Bill in his rage the night before.
And himself, most of all.
“On the bright side,” Mo said, when Juniper had finished, or at least stopped to take a breath. “If we win, we’ll have a whole purse full of coins.”
Juniper cursed again, this time including winter, the woods, and Elaine and her bruggane sister, just for good measure.
“Nothing for it, then,” Juniper said finally.
It was what he had said many times in his life, and it had gotten him through all manner of unpleasantness: When his father had sold off their head of oxen to pay for his drinking and gambling habits?
Nothing for it but for Juniper to work off the debts to local farmers and win them back.
When the prices had gone up at the bakery, and Juniper could no longer afford to fill his small frame with food?
Nothing for it but for Juniper to get a job, at eleven winters old, getting up before dawn to make bread.
Somehow, it made it harder today, when life had been cozier and brighter for years now. Returning to a state of suffering and hardship felt that much more like a slap to the face.
Even if, in every way that mattered, it was a slap from Juniper’s own hand. He had taken the bait. He had launched over Bill like a goat clearing a fence. He had fought a man for the crime of telling him to get a room in a leering tone.
So Juniper sat down on his stool and ate his eggs and stopped cursing anyone but himself.
When they set off on foot—Mo explaining that their horse would not be able to handle the roughness of the terrain and carry them and their packs, which included sleeping rolls for each of them—Juniper did consider walking into the creek for a while.
“What sort of things do you think we’ll see?” he asked, trying to put on a brave face as they set off down the road together. “Perhaps some of those night-black deer the bruggane are always talking about?”
The bruggane, of course, always talked about them with a sort of hunger that didn’t sit quite right with Juniper. But Juniper thought the deer would be beautiful to see, the sort of sight that took a person several minutes to truly take in.
“Ah, probably,” Mo said. “I hear they’re up farther in the mountains, and they come out at dawn to drink.”
“And the sea wolves?” Juniper asked. Wolves could be very fine and dandy to see, so long as they were far away. Across a river, maybe.
“Plenty of those farther north,” Mo said, a shadow crossing his face. “Used to be more, though. The king sent a few bands to rid the coast near the capital city about a decade ago, and now there aren’t as many as there were. It’s a real shame.”
“The farmers must be better off, though,” Juniper said, matching his stride to Mo’s as best as he could as they took the winding road, which was just packed dirt out here, through mist-covered wheat fields toward the village.
Mo hmm’d, which meant it was too much to get into. “I miss them,” he said.
He said it simply, as if he were missing an old friend.
Juniper’s steps slowed as they crossed the old wooden bridge over the creek that marked a departure from the wheat fields into the forest that surrounded their village. “How do we know where to begin?” he asked Mo.
“We’ll cut through town first,” Mo told him. “And then I suspect we’ll take the path north of town and travel until we reach Pointe Gan Filleadh. Once we’re closer to the dragon sightings, I’d hoped you could use your tracking skills.”
Pointe Gan Filleadh—the locals just called it Filleadh, but Mo was precise in his words always, even when something was implied.
It was one thing Juniper loved about Mo: He said what he meant, and he meant what he said.
There was no guessing where Juniper stood, or wondering if he’d made someone angry and not known it.
Mo was steady and solid, firm ground where almost everyone else had been fast-shifting sand.
Except, of course, when he left.
“And after Filleadh?” Juniper asked, worrying at the edge of his cloak with his thumb and forefinger. Some of the threads were starting to unravel. Juniper found he could relate. “Probably a hot meal and a bed in the inn?”
“Sure,” Mo said as they crested the hill and the town came into view. “And then we’ll see. We’ll ask some of the locals what they’ve seen, if they’ve seen anything. We’ll determine which way we should take into the mountains, and off we go.”
Off we go.
As if leaving their farm was fun, and grand, and exciting.
Juniper liked sleeping in his own bed and pooping in his own outhouse, thank you very much. Was he going to have to shit in the woods?
“I know a bit about sleeping outdoors,” Mo said. “I’ll teach you how to build a fire outdoors, and keep our things dry, and set up shelter every night. I’m experienced.”
Experienced seemed like a stretch.
And they were definitely going to have to shit in the woods.
Mo’s grandmam had taught him a few things, of course.
She had been…a bit of a legend, really. She didn’t sell spells—and often fussed at those who did—but her sunflowers grew a head taller than they had any right to, her chamomile patch never seemed to be anything but green and flowering, even in winter, and she spoke the old language and the old language only.
She muttered and sang the old words into soups that could cure any ill health.
Or ill mood, which Juniper’d had in excess as a teen.
Most important, every full moon, she spent a night in the forest. Sometimes, Mo would go with her.
He never talked about it much, but he came back grinning and confident and very happy. After his grandmam passed, Mo dutifully went into the woods at each full moon with a little bundle of chamomile or sunflowers and a bowl of soup.
He wasn’t the way she had been, but Juniper reckoned he probably just missed her, and a bit of soup and chamomile and moonlight could help with that.
Juniper sighed deeply, but he turned to Mo, shifting his pack on his shoulders.
His shoulders already felt sore from the strain of the heavy pack.
He never minded when farmwork (or a brawl) left him sore and tired, but he was not strong enough or fit enough for proper adventures, and he’d always known that.
Why anyone would want to spend the nice quiet days after harvest wandering around in the forest was beyond Juniper.
He personally loved sinking deep into pillows he’d made himself, reading his scrolls slowly while the fire crackled and Mo sat right beside him, his thigh touching Juniper’s.
Still, they were in it now. Nothing for it but to go onward, until a dragon or the Samhain festival that marked the end of autumn, whichever came first. Though why they had chosen Samhain, which was nearly two moons away, Juniper could not bring himself to understand.
Surely quests shouldn’t take that long.
“You ready?” he asked Mo softly.
Mo nodded, and then clapped his hand on Juniper’s shoulder, the calloused pads of his fingertips just brushing Juniper’s neck after he drew back again. “You?”
His eyes searched Juniper’s.
Juniper looked away from Mo’s piercing brown eyes, down toward the map in his hand.
He was familiar with most of it—their home village of Tús, the river that led through the forest toward Filleadh, which was the last town before the wilderness and the mountains and beyond that, the sea.
There were red X’s drawn at several locations, including Filleadh, marking places the dragon had apparently attacked.
He shrugged, just once.
He hadn’t been less ready since the first time he kissed a girl, a part-bruggane, part-fairy girl with the largest hands he’d ever seen, when he was thirteen winters old. But that was between Juniper O’Reilly and his anxiety sweats, and Morn didn’t need to know.
“Off we go?” Mo asked gently.
Juniper squared his shoulders. “Off we go,” he said. “Off we fucking go.”