Chapter Twelve The Village That Chooses Its Own
Chapter Twelve
The Village That Chooses Its Own
Where Saeldian Prefers to Remain Tangled
Timtim stayed snuggled up in Kell’s lap when Verandil whistled a little tune to the badgers and the wagon lurched back into motion.
He petted Timtim’s soft fur and scratched behind the almiraj’s ears, watching the forest at the end of the road grow so tall, he had to hook his toes under the footrest and lean back to see their tops.
“That’s it? People can just travel through it?”
“No.” Verandil laughed. “Most people will travel through a pretty bit of forest. The way to the village is only there for those who can see it.”
“So it’s good we found you in Eightbridge,” Lorzok said, distracted by the chatter of all the orange butterflies that had gathered to land on his arms and shoulders. “We wouldn’t have found it on our own.”
“Kell could have found it.” Verandil’s tone was confident. “You know the story, don’t you? About how he can find people?”
“Verandil.”
But Verandil ignored him, letting the badgers trot along. “When Kell was little, he dreamed of waking up lost. Everyone gone, him all alone. He was hardly more than a baby. Essanderon gave him the trick so he wouldn’t be afraid.”
“He didn’t just touch my forehead and that was it,” Kell said. “He trained me. The whole village did. He would send me with a bundle to take to Shuahn, but she wouldn’t be at her pond. I had to find her.”
Verandil laughed. “He put Kell to work every day. You couldn’t hide from him. He’d find you.”
“Hard to get up to trouble, when a little kid could pop up any moment and ask what you were doing,” Jubilee observed.
“You don’t even know!” Verandil swayed backward as he pressed the back of his hand to his brow. “You could just have a glimmer of an idea that was shenanigans-adjacent, and there he was.”
Kell laughed. “A proper little pest, wasn’t I?”
“Ha! Co-conspirator, more like. And a guardrail. If it was mischief I couldn’t do with you, then maybe it wasn’t wise. I was a lot older than him back then,” Verandil explained. “Still a child, mind, but older.”
Verandil’s cheery face drew sober when he remembered why Kell had caught up to then surpassed him in age.
Kell leaned closer to Verandil. “Hey. It’s a good thing Dad heeded my dreams. A lot of dads would have thought it just a nightmare, not a warning.”
“But it happened to you,” Verandil said. “You did wake up all alone.”
“I’m not alone now.”
“And you never will be again.” Verandil twisted to hug Kell around the shoulders. “You’re home.”
Kell squeezed Verandil tight, then turned to watch as the air changed and they passed from Honeymeadow to the Village That Chooses Its Own.
They passed between trees taller than Waterdeep’s towers, their canopies far overhead.
Beneath them, the scent of fallen cedar and fir needles and their gentle returning back to the ground.
Ferns and ivy flourished in the bones of an ancient cedar, and a clump of waxy white stems that grew out of leaf litter rose to nodding, bell-shaped flowers.
Kell tried to see the birds that sang—he recognized the rapid cheer-cheer of a songbird’s gossip call, as Lorzok called them.
He twisted around. “What are they saying?”
Lorzok, looking up into the branches, smiled. “Strangers! New friend strangers! Come see!”
He trilled, and small brown birds landed on the wagon’s side.
“Leave the sacks alone,” Lorzok said. “They’re for the Brewmistress.”
A particularly interested warbler backed off, bobbing his head.
“I’d better not let the Brewmistress know that the birds mind you, friend Lorzok,” Verandil said with a laugh. “She’ll get you to hold regular meetings. Here we are.”
The badgers slowed their pace and rolled to a stop, and Kell found himself in a forest that was a village.
Paths wide enough for the wagon to travel wound among the trunks of impossibly large trees with homes growing out of and around them.
Lights sparkled above them, bright enough to chase away the shade of a platform pitched high overhead.
Kell watched as a curving wooden platform rose slowly to meet the village’s rooftop.
“That’s Dad’s house,” Verandil said, gesturing toward a house with a wide porch and a gentle ramp that led to the path. “He’ll be—”
But a voice called out, “Verandil, what kept you?”
Dad.
“I found something interesting, Dad,” Verandil called back. “Come down and see him for yourself.”
“ ‘See him for yourself’? That’s a funny way to put it.”
Kell braced himself as the platform moved. He knew to expect the wheeled chair, but as the fairy who raised him was lowered into sight, Kell’s heart sighed in pain.
Cream-colored suede sheaths covered his legs, rising over his knees, but one leg ended just above the ankle, and the other below the knee.
His shoulders were wide and strong, and his hands rested on the hoops of dark walnut that he could use to propel the light, agile chair that curved perfectly to his small size.
One set of long iridescent wings spread outward, but the wings on his right side were missing.
He squinted at the wagon as the platform sank. “See him? I see more than one ‘him.’ Good day, friends. What brings you to—”
He went silent and stared at Kell as the platform came to a stop. His eyes narrowed until he squeezed them shut and took a deep stuttering breath. His left wings shot up and fluttered, but he had to wait for the platform to carry him.
“Kell.”
“Dad.”
Terandis pressed his lips together, then grabbed the hoops of his steering wheels and shot out of the platform, using every ounce of his strength to wheel down the ramp as fast as he could. Too fast for the curve coming up, Kell reckoned with growing horror.
But Terandis Redsong flexed, making the chair jump instead of topple. He kept his front wheels up as he sailed through the air, landing on his left wheel, pivoting on it to aim at Kell as he sped forward, perfectly in control.
He braked with enough room for Kell to fall to his knees and wrap his arms around him. “Dad.”
Terandis was half his size, but he was strong enough to pull Kell close. “You found me.”
“I found you,” Kell tried to say, but it got lost.
Terandis held him tight through it all until Kell could probably talk again, but he didn’t want to let go.
There was music coming from up on that platform, and the hum of a small crowd having a good time. The door of Terandis’s cheerful yellow house opened, and a man who looked like a moving willow stepped out.
Kell popped his head up. “Filandior?”
“Kell?” Filandior leapt off the porch to run to him. “Kell!”
And so Kell was obliged to begin the hugging and tears again, but he didn’t mind at all.
Saeldian looked away when it was plain that Kell’s father wasn’t going to spill after that stunt with his chair, for the sake of giving Kell a little privacy for his reunion.
But when a dryad came running out and started the whole reunion scene over again, Saeldian wished that they could do something other than wait.
Jubilee and Lorzok stood by, beaming—Jubilee had shed a few tears, which Kell’s satyr brother had been honored to wipe away with a handkerchief.
Timtim raced up and down the pathways, zooming twenty paces away before abruptly leaping into the air to twist and run back, just for the joy of it.
Back here, and probably forgotten, Saeldian watched.
They hadn’t said a word while Verandil finally told Kell what had become of Terandis, who had raised Kell as his own son.
He’d sent Kell to the Material Plane and turned back to fight at his archfey’s side against an attack in the Hungry War.
But Essanderon had fallen, and his power over his domain with him.
The survivors fled, carrying a gravely wounded Terandis away.
And that was love, wasn’t it? Terandis loved Kell, so he risked himself to save his human son’s life and sent Kell to Faer?n.
Terandis had hoped they would win the battle so he could go back and bring Kell home.
But it didn’t turn out that way. No one would ever give so much for Saeldian. Why would anyone?
The forest blurred. Saeldian forced it to stop. There wasn’t anything to cry about, but they were in a rotten mood, and it was right of them to hang back. But when was all this crying and hugging going to be done?
They glanced around at the house-trees, the flickering fairy lights overhead, and the busy brewhouse that smelled of yeast and slow-grown magic.
Was anybody going to unload that wagon? How did you unhitch badgers?
Was there anywhere obvious they could go to rest?
Saeldian spied a bench sitting by a boulder with a top flat enough to rest a drink on and moved toward it.
The door to the brewhouse opened, and the smell of the magic Saeldian had forgotten to notice rushed out with the witch who emerged from it.
She was green—her skin, her hair, the growing leaf-rot smell of her magic.
She stared at Saeldian and sniffed, lifting her head to catch the notes of the illusion that covered them, then lowered her head.
Not a witch. A hag. Kell’s family lived in a hag’s domain, and her magic was old, like the trees that stretched taller than the fallen spire that Eightbridge clustered around, growing taller, rooting deeper.
She held a big clay bottle and a cup that matched, but Saeldian couldn’t help feeling that stare, passing through them like a slender pin.
And then the hag moved toward them, gliding along the path. “You are not one of the fey, but your magic is.”
Saeldian’s tongue wouldn’t move. They nodded.
The hag tilted her head and examined Saeldian again, pausing for a long moment on the spot where their amulet rested. “You’re tangled in enough bargains to knit a scarf, child. How’d that happen?”
Saeldian shrugged and fought to find something those tangles would let them say. “We’re here to return something that had been stolen. We don’t know how to find the domain. It’s called Hearthaven’s Repose. Do you know it?”