Chapter Three Alder
Chapter Three
Alder
The Osono mountain range had never made Alder feel nervous before.
But that was because he’d known he was going home.
Or as close to a home as the Nomads had.
Caperly was the one settlement that they returned to during winter each year.
It was where those who were too feeble or too young to wander remained.
They were so close to Caperly now that when there was a gust of wind, he could smell the smoke of their campfires on the breeze. It made his palms clammy, despite the cold.
‘I can tell you’re not concentrating,’ Lettle growled.
Alder cracked an eyelid in Lettle’s direction. She did not look impressed.
He sighed. ‘Meditation does not work. It has never worked.’
‘It works for me,’ Farhan said. The fae was sitting cross-legged next to Alder, his eyes closed, his breathing steady.
‘You’re not trying to uncover your memories, Farhan.’ Alder tried not to sound impatient but knew that he hadn’t succeeded when Farhan opened his eyes and frowned.
‘Try again,’ Lettle said, ignoring Farhan completely. ‘Concentrate on your breath, feel the air as it surges through your body and your limbs.’
Alder had never really been sure what Lettle meant when she said that, but they had done this far too many times for him to ask now.
‘Now imagine your mind is a hallway. Walk the corridors until you reach a door. Behind that door is what happened yesterday. Enter and recall what you did.’
The same as the day before, and the day before that: I walked. He would have said the words out loud, but he knew Lettle would spit fire if he did. So, he kept quiet and tried to concentrate.
Lettle eased him through the exercise until he had to strain his memories to recall a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago.
‘Now open the last door.’ Lettle’s voice felt far away now. ‘This door has been locked, but today it is open. It recalls your life fifteen years ago. What do you see?’
‘Noth—’
A pressure tightened around his stomach, like a rope knotted twice. His hands went to his navel but there was nothing there except his furs. Fear tightened its talons around his throat, but it wasn’t fear from the present moment, only an echo of it.
A memory… he marvelled from somewhere outside of himself. An image began to form as though through dappled light.
‘I’m in a cave, and I’m scared…’ Alder said.
Lettle inhaled sharply. ‘What do you see?’
‘I’m holding a letter…but the words, I can’t read them…it’s like the human language. There are obeah around me, they frighten me too. I turn around and run…’
The memory cuts out, as if the sunlight that had shone on it had set.
‘And? What else?’ Lettle probed.
Alder opened his eyes. Lettle was sitting forward on her knees, her expression full of excitement.
‘That was it.’
Disappointment was like a physical blow against Lettle’s brow and she sat back on her heels.
‘But that’s progress,’ Farhan said. He was watching them both, his eyes gleaming. ‘You might remember more tomorrow.’ His hopeful gaze was too painful to meet.
‘Yes, just because this part wasn’t helpful, it doesn’t mean we won’t learn more tomorrow,’ Lettle said, as though assuring herself.
Alder wrapped his arms around himself, the memory chilling him more than the frozen ground. ‘We should go, we’ve wasted half the morning. It’ll be sunset when we get to Caperly now.’
Lettle stood first then offered him a hand up. ‘Farhan’s right, progress is good,’ she said quietly.
He gripped her hand. ‘I suppose.’
But it didn’t feel good. Why had he been so frightened?
For the first time he wondered whether he was better off not remembering anything at all…
—
They walked until Caperly rose up ahead of them. The town had been built into the rockface of the mountain so that only part of it could be seen from the trail.
What Alder could see had his intestines twisting in knots.
Smoke curled up into the sky from large hearths where the Nomads were smoking fish.
The earthy herbs they used reminded Alder of cold winter evenings spent around the fire.
Elders moved through the narrow streets, laden with furs.
Some milled by cave entranceways weaving baskets from hemp, while others simply chatted and exchanged pleasantries in the pale evening sunlight.
‘Could that be Caperly?’ Farhan asked.
Lettle snorted. ‘I would assume so, yes.’
‘That is indeed Caperly,’ Alder said. Lettle looked at him, discerning the fear in his voice.
‘They’ll listen to us, they have to,’ she said, her jaw set in that stubborn way of hers.
Alder wasn’t sure. When he had refuted their ways, he had turned his back on them, abandoned them.
There were few rules among the Nomads, but leaving was death to everything he had been to them.
It was a form of self-preservation and it ensured that the community was always put first. And here he was breaking the most sacred rule of all.
He was coming back.
Lettle suddenly tore her gaze away from the town and turned quickly on her heel.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
She frowned at the trail behind them. ‘I thought I saw something in the corner of my eye.’
Shera sniffed at the air.
‘Nothing except birds and an obeah in the distance,’ Farhan confirmed.
That didn’t surprise Alder; they’d seen many obeah on their journey east. The beasts were drawn to him.
Though Lettle turned away again, she still looked unsettled. ‘We should go,’ she said.
But when he told his body to move, to take a step off the path and into the village, his feet would not stir.
Lettle must have noticed him in conflict with his limbs, as she looped her arm in his and dragged him forward.
‘Staying still is not staying alive,’ she said, pulling him along. This elicited a smile from him. She always seemed to know what he needed.
It had been a hard journey, made harder by the impending doom he felt as they drew closer to Caperly, and further away from Golan. But Lettle had been a balm to his malaise. He used to think she was too prickly a person to like, but beneath the rough exterior was a vulnerability that was endearing.
She was quick-witted and clever, far cleverer than he could ever imagine being. She picked up instructions with ease, learning more on the trail than most elders knew after half a century as a Nomad.
‘Thank you for coming with me,’ he said as she pulled him along. She paused and looked back at him.
‘The truth is everyone’s burden; I’m not going to let you carry it alone.’
The truth. That scared him too. Lettle could sense it and didn’t let him linger, squeezing his hand as they set off again towards Caperly.
The elders on the periphery of the town spotted him first. They were taking turns to lean in and whittle a large wooden bowl.
Scrash, scrash, scrash.
Each chisel chipped away at the bark. Their tools stopped mid-air as he and Lettle approached.
They knew who Alder was immediately. He’d been Wayfarer of the Nomads, not quite a leader, but someone who communed with the land to guide their path and was respected for it.
‘Poppy, Geni,’ Alder greeted them. ‘Would you be able to direct me to Dart?’ But after the initial shock of seeing him, their gazes skittered away as though he was not there. There was a long silence.
‘Hello?’ Lettle said, waving a hand towards them to get their attention.
‘They won’t acknowledge you either, Lettle. You have arrived with me, so you are no one to them.’
Lettle stood up a little taller–which admittedly wasn’t very tall. ‘We’ll see.’
She marched through the streets, weaving between people and shouting, ‘Dart! Has anyone seen Dart?’
Some people would start to respond before another would stop them and point Alder’s way. His cheeks flamed with humiliation as Lettle’s bellowing drew in a crowd.
‘She is very loud,’ Farhan commented. Alder jumped, forgetting, as he often did, that the fae was with them.
‘Yes, she is.’
Farhan looked around. ‘Where do they sleep? I see no houses.’
‘Within the mountain,’ Alder said.
‘Fascinating.’ It was the most effusive Alder had ever heard Farhan be. His obeah lowered herself to the ground by their feet and began to clean her paws.
They didn’t have to wait long before Dart pushed through the gathering throng of Nomads.
He was a heavy-set man and though his heft lent to his presence, it was his self-assurance that distinguished him from the crowd.
He had an air of quiet confidence that hardened his soft features.
This was a man who had been to war. But he was also a man who had turned his back on violence and all its forms. His green eyes were kind, his lips, that were topped with a greying moustache, were pinched as he caught sight of Alder behind Lettle. She noticed and rounded on him.
‘Are you Dart?’
But Dart did not reply.
‘That’s not very polite,’ Farhan said, as though commenting on the weather.
Dart began to turn around but Alder called out. ‘Wait, Dart, this is important. I wouldn’t have come back if it wasn’t.’
But still the large man turned away. Alder pushed through the crowd and the Nomads undulated away from him as though he were diseased. It gave him a straight path to his old friend.
‘Dart, please, wait!’
Lettle fell into step behind Alder and together they followed Dart into the mountain.
The small pathways were lit up with gas lamps, illuminating the village built into the rock.
Hexagonal doors marked rooms and bedsits, making the expanse of Caperly look like a beehive.
The setting sun’s rays could only be seen through small pockets of rock, but where it shone, alpine flowers grew through the stone, scenting the air with fresh pollen.
A stream fed by a glacier flowed between the cobbled pathways, each river crossed by a small wooden bridge.
Lettle gasped, ‘This is incredible.’
But Alder didn’t respond, he was too distracted trying to catch up. ‘Dart, wait!’