Chapter Fourteen Beer, Bread, and Cheese #4
He bowed. Low enough to show respect for one who ruled this domain absolutely. “I am Kell Redsong, raised in Essanderon’s Rest by Terandis Redsong.”
Ilondrel nodded for him to continue.
“I was lost when I was a child,” Kell said. “My father saved me the only way he could, by opening a way to the Material Plane and shoving me through it. I’ve tried to come home ever since.”
“You found your way back, then? If not to your home, then to your people.”
“I found them. I had thought about what it would be like to reunite. They live in one of the domains connected to Eightbridge, with the Brewmistress—”
“I remember her,” Ilondrel said. “She made a keg for the regiment that flowed for five hundred years.”
“You lived in Eightbridge before, my lady?” Jubilee asked.
“Not Eightbridge,” Saeldian said, their voice tinged with sudden insight. “Menoriath.”
“Indeed. I was there when it fell.”
She was old, then. Or, better to say, endless.
“Do you know the story of how the Brewmistress came to be the archfey? She’d made a new brew on the Last Day, and she wouldn’t leave until she could move it.
But when she felt Menoriath shaking apart and the shard she brewed on fell, the Brewmistress cried, ‘Oh no, you don’t!
Have a care for the last brew of Menoriath!
’ and she was so fearsome, her broken shard floated light as a feather and touched ground so softly the kettle didn’t spill a drop. ”
“No one told me that story.”
“She won’t hear it repeated,” Ilondrel said. “So you come from the Village That Chooses Its Own, but you needed Hearthaven’s Repose. Why?”
Because it hadn’t solved anything. “I’m afraid that it will happen again.”
“What did happen?”
“The Hungry War.”
“When you were a child,” Ilondrel said. “And with a child’s need to understand why, you thought you were to blame?”
Ilondrel’s insight felt cold as it washed over him. “Yes.”
“But that’s not why you’re here.”
It was…it wasn’t.
“I lost everyone I ever loved or cared about. I have them back. I can’t lose them again.”
“You’re in the right place,” Ilondrel said. “Be welcome.”
The air felt cool and clean, and the rippling water meeting the shore became clearer. Beside him, Saeldian didn’t move.
“I’m Jubilee Righthoof,” Jubilee said. “My parents are adventurers. Retired now. I borrowed my mother’s hat—I don’t know why I said that.”
“It’s an enchantment,” Saeldian said. “It lets you unburden yourself. It’s not bad.”
Jubilee nodded. “All right, then. We have a home, and we have to fight every day to keep the roof over our heads…sometimes literally; it leaks real bad when it rains and—”
Jubilee broke off and glanced at Saeldian, who was staring at something far away.
“I do anything I can do to bring back gold to fix things, but it’s never enough, and I’m so scared I can’t get the money no matter how hard I try.
I’m so afraid about not having enough gold that it gets in the way of me being their family.
I’m afraid that one day, they won’t want me to be their family because of what I’ve done for gold… or will do.”
Saeldian didn’t move, but they looked smaller.
“I feel great loyalty in you, Jubilee Righthoof,” Ilondrel said. “You’ll do anything it takes to help them.”
Jubilee hung her head. “Yeah.”
“You’re in the right place,” Ilondrel said. “Be welcome.”
But Jubilee turned away, looking like she was going to cry. Timtim put his paw on Jubilee’s foot. She bent down and picked him up.
Lorzok cleared his throat. “I am Lorzok the Seeker. I am a druid.”
Ilondrel regarded him with perfect seriousness.
“I was a child when I leaned against a mighty oak and enfolded myself in nature,” Lorzok said.
“I didn’t simply listen to the birds singing or feel the soft moss growing on the bark.
I understood the whole of nature in that moment—all its cycles, its harmonies, its dependence on everything that is part of it.
And I was part of it too. For one perfect hour, I belonged. ”
“A true spiritual awakening,” Ilondrel said. “A call you answered with your heart.”
“Indeed, my lady.” Lorzok nodded in respect for her understanding.
“But the feeling of that moment cemented with a price when I returned to the camp my clan had made. They are great traders. Very wealthy, though they would never leave the road for any kind of palace. I tried to explain to my brother what I had just experienced. He grew angry.”
“You couldn’t have expected that,” Ilondrel said. “I can’t think why he reacted that way.”
“I found out when he took me to my grandfather and the physician to see how much I had drunk of the vials from the boxes that had been in the guarded wagon. They were transporting goods from an alchemist. We knew that. We hadn’t been told exactly what we were delivering.
When everything was said and done, they laughed and forgot about it.
But I could not. I started looking into what our wagons carried, and I learned too much. ”
“And you still grieve them,” Ilondrel said.
“I wanted to feel that oneness again. I could not do it, being part of my clan. I set out on my own to visit great forests, rugged mountains, fierce seas. It has been elusive. Then I thought I would find it in the Feywild. I decided to find out, and the next morning, I encountered Kell Redsong, who would soon become my friend.”
Ilondrel looked from Lorzok to Kell. “When you were children?”
Lorzok laughed. “Oh no! Ten years ago. We have had quite an adventure. And now we’re here.”
“But?”
Lorzok’s nod was wise and sad. “In my dreams, the Feywild was the place where I would know the fullness of the primal magic that I strive to reach as a druid. But I’m afraid that now that I’m here, I will always be a stranger in this place.
The truewild is nature in its most primal form, but it doesn’t feel like home. ”
“Home is rarely a place, Oakchild. Home is other people. But you’re in the right place,” Ilondrel said. “Be welcome.”
Lorzok bowed his head.
Kell wanted to hug Lorzok. Everyone liked him. Everyone. The Brewmistress herself came out to offer him beer. Why couldn’t he see it?
But they weren’t done yet, and everyone waited for the last introduction.
“I’m Saeldian Charmhand,” they said, and stopped.
They didn’t let their gaze dart about. Their breaths didn’t speed or deliberately slow. They let the moment stretch while they considered, until it was thin as a thread, then a cobweb, then a hair.
Then they tilted their head, tilted their smile, and said, “I’m selfish.”
Kell’s forehead went hot as he shut his eyes. To stand there and listen to everyone speak of their pain—to listen to Jubilee’s awful conflict between living up to her family’s expectations and pursuing what Saeldian had steered her into doing—and then just say I’m selfish?
Kell couldn’t say what he thought of that, but when he turned to glare at Saeldian, he froze.
They weren’t crying. They hadn’t shed a tear. But they were holding on to that thread they had stretched to a whisper.
Ilondrel examined them in silence before saying, “You’re in the right place. You and your hearts are welcome. Shelter and rest, all of you.”