Chapter 1 #2
March's accent thickened, vowels lilting like he was back home across the sea. “You didn’t say that when we first met.”
“Pah,” said Mere. Her spine curved over again, and she sank into the small frail form of her old age. “I was a babe then too.” The green flowery cushions hugged her little frame. She seemed so tiny then.
March stroked the back of her hand. “You’ve many years left to live.
” Having kept an adame like March, Mere would enjoy several decades more of living, if she was careful and cared for.
“You’ll love it out there, in your new home, I think.
Fresh air. None of the noise of Abblesbet.
This is no place for a human at your age.
One hundred years old is a feat for your kin.
” He looked out onto the city again, at the street car that raced down the hill, sparkling with ancient elven magic to keep it running without a conductor, at the many well-frocked couples walking down the brick lane, hand-in-hand for warmth and affection.
Meredith’s thin white brows wrinkled in concern. “A hundred years? Am I so old?”
March smiled, and it warmed his chest this time. “You turn one hundred one next month, my darling. It will be our sixtieth anniversary, you know. You first came to me on your fortieth birthday.”
She exhaled. “Goodness.” She looked at where their hands were met and flashed a grin. “Yes, I think the countryside will suit me well at this age. Are you sure you cannot come?”
“You already asked,” he reminded her. “The fee to retire me from Sutaire is beyond your reach. And what’s more—” He chuckled and looked across the room to an old portly human man with an ample bald spot and an even more ample frown worn behind a thick white mustache.
The man stood, arms crossed, near the second doorway at the far side of the room, as close to the exit as he could get.
“Your husband doesn’t favor my company, I fear. ”
Mere followed his gaze to her husband and she said, “Goddess be. He’s gotten fat.”
March didn’t smile as he squeezed her hand yet again.
“He loves you, and you both will live in peace out of the city. I was assured he’d satisfy your every need.
” Because he did care what happened to her.
She was one of his first patrons. He'd seen her through sickness, success.
They'd been intimate, too, at one time—before she decided she didn't need such a service from him.
"I'll miss you, of course. But I'm happy for you, Mere.
" His smile was tight; subtle, not willing to tap the well of emotion threatening to spill within.
She shook her head once, like something scratched upon the surface of her brain, and when she opened her milk-glass eyes again, she gazed in silence at March.
Several moments passed, and gentle music began to play from a recorder in another room, before she asked, “Do you act as stone because you look like you’re carved from one, March? ”
March stood out of the settee, and helped Meredith do the same.
Her husband approached, rolling his jaw in a poor attempt to mask his frustration.
Frustration he levied at March, at his wife's failing mind, at the journey he was going to embark upon.
He'd always seemed the surly sort. “Ready, Mere?”
She tugged at March’s arm once and he leaned in close enough for her to place a dry, sweet-smelling kiss against his cheek. “Thank you, March. Take care of yourself, please.”
Her husband made a noise between a groan and a sigh and reached out to remove her hand from March. “Give him the coin.”
Mere’s shaking hand fished into the front pocket of the apron-skirt she had tied in a bow at her waist. She pulled free a single token—a half-sun, half-bird wing carved on one side, and the number one carved on the other.
March took it, bowing his head, and in turn, placed a small crystal vial in her hand.
Her fingers closed around it and she exhaled, visibly comforted by the weight of it in her palm.
March faced Mere’s husband as he said, “Have her drink it before you board the carriage; it’ll ease the ride for her.”
“I know what to do, elf,” said her husband. He then paused, puffed his chest, and said, “Sorry. I’ve been stressed. I appreciate your help.” And then, for the first time in sixty years, he offered his hand for March to shake.
March smiled at it. Instead of taking his hand, March instead offered a fist. “We elves tap the back of our hands like this.” He knocked the back of their hands together once. “It’s how we say hello and goodbye.”
“Goodbye, then.”
March watched them shuffle down the corridor, to the sweeping double door at the front of Sutaire, and out of his life forever more. Distantly, someone shouted for him. Yes, yes. Time for another night like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.
Hawk was forty-four years old, and he was drunk.
He watched the coins bounce around the barkeeper’s hand, golden and sparkly in the tavern’s floating candlelight.
The gold looked so pretty like this, against his pale human hand.
This stranger had such a big palm, such long fingers, and they were adorned with rings, rings, rings. Including a wedding band.
Hawk’s vision spun. He shut his eyes for a moment, and when he reopened them, the rest of the bar came into swaying focus, all dark-paneled wood and mix-matched curtains.
Two other drunkards—horn-bearers, with big black ram horns holding their hair away from their gray, aged faces—chatted idly at a two-top.
They’d not given Hawk a single glance when he entered an hour or two ago.
Hawk sighed, sinking back against his creaky, lopsided barstool. The barkeep snapped his lovely fingers and said, “Hey. I'm talking to you.”
“What?”
“Is this it? That's all the gold you have?”
Hawk tried to look up from the shiny, oily wooden bartop, but his head was so heavy. The astringent scent of liquor burned his nose, and he moaned. “Yes. I'm drunk, I think.”
“Then you can consider your mission accomplished. Get out.”`
The barkeep’s tone and volume were enough to make Hawk sit up again.
He tried to find those coins, simply to gaze upon them and that handsome hand, but they were already tucked safely away into the barkeep’s belt.
“Wait,” said Hawk, reaching towards him.
“Wait, I shouldn’t’ve… I need those. That was the last of my gold. ”
“I beg your pardon? Kid, you’re lucky I’m not calling a copper to take you out of here. You didn’t have enough to cover the ale you’ve already had.”
Hawk’s mouth was dry, and his words were sticky as he said, “Not a kid. I’m forty. Four.”
The barkeep glanced him up and down and shrugged. “Sorry. You elves always look young.” The barkeep was, by Hawk’s guess, half his age. He used that lovely hand to point to the door. “Now, get. Seriously. I don’t want to make a guard manhandle you out of here.” He paused. “Elfhandle.”
“But I’ve got no coin to buy lodgings now.”
The barkeeper had big soft brown human eyes, and he squeezed them shut, as if staving off a headache. “Can’t you go home?”
“No,” said Hawk. “I can’t go there.”
“Sure you can—” the barkeep started, but Hawk shook his head.
“I can’t. I can’t ever go back there. Because it’s his house now.” He swallowed, and the swaying image of the barkeep steadied. “I’m…” He hiccupped. “divorced.”
And he watched it happen: the subtle shifting of the barkeep’s expression from frustrated to pitying to…
something Hawk could not identify through the drink and his own heavy heart.
A few seconds ticked by, and those drunks at the back of the bar distantly laughed at some private joke.
The barkeep began to speak again, but his voice lost its edge, and he leaned towards Hawk.
“Alright. Look. There’s a bathhouse nearby.
You can stay there for a penny; that’s all it costs for elven folk. ”
“I’ve not got a penny.”
“I’ll lend you a penny,” he whispered, looking about as if someone would see him cave to his charitable impulse. And, to emphasize the point, he said, “Probably shouldn’t’ve used all your funds to get wasted.”
“I know, but the cold wind—” Hawk stumbled over his words. He sighed, despondent, before he tried again. “It’s a bad portent, isn’t it? That I arrive in Abblesbet to start fresh and there’s cold winter winds to greet me?”
“It’s not so bad here,” said the barkeep, producing a penny from his stash. He placed it on the countertop in front of Hawk. “At least the people are nice.”
Hawk closed a hand over the coin. “Thank you. I will repay you.”
“Well. We’ll see about that,” said the barkeep.
“I will. I’ll figure something out.”
“Oh yeah? What’s your plan?”
Hawk said, “I thought maybe I could garden.”
“Garden?” The barkeep tilted his head, considering Hawk silently for a beat, and asked, “You didn’t come to Abblesbet to work as an adame?”
Hawk squeezed the penny within his palm so tightly that it dug into his skin. “Elys be. No.”
“Then why here?”
Hawk was too drunk to read into the implication. He said, “It was the most affordable train ticket.”
The barkeep laughed as he started puttering behind the bar again. While Hawk began to sway, he placed a cup of water on the bartop and said, “Drink this before you go.”
Hawk obeyed, sipping from the cup, and the barkeep disappeared from before him.
Some time passed; he finished his glass of water and now needed to pee.
As he rose out of his seat, the barkeep returned, and at his side: a copper.
A city guard. Hawk jolted. “But you said you didn’t want to call the guard on me. ”
The cop, a middle-aged human woman with wheat-colored hair, raised one hand to signal peace. “Worry not. I’m simply here to take you to the bathhouse.”