Chapter 5 Faron
FARON
F aron paused at the edge of the forest and the start of the village. Its name was Clovelly, unchanged since the last time Faron had visited it some seventy years ago on the way to his pyre cave.
“Keep close to me, Iris.”
The coyote softly whined. Two men approached, haggard and with callused hands. They lived by the sweat of their brow and the hardness of their spirits. Faron smiled easily at them.
“Hello there,” he said, lifting a hand in greeting. He kept his sword sheathed. Drawing it would only spook them, and they were already wary, given how he towered over them in height. “I was told I could find lodging here for the night?”
“Told by who?” the first asked. He had a red beard that stretched from one ear, tucked underneath his chin, and then stretched back up to the other. There was only caution in his pale blue eyes.
“My brother Sariel.”
“We don’t want no wild dogs among us,” the other man interrupted. His skin was deeply tanned from the sun, and his hair thin blond reeds. He pointed a long, chipped knife at Iris. “Or whatever that enormous bitch is.”
“No offense to your pet, stranger,” the first added with a quick glare at the other. “But the last thing we want is one of our kids bit, or our chickens eaten while we sleep.”
Faron kept his voice calm and his smile pleasant.
“Understandable concerns, but Iris will behave, I promise.” He glanced down at the coyote. “Won’t you, Iris?”
In response, Iris flattened her ears, snorted at him, and then finally sat on her rear and lowered her gaze to the ground. The submissive act, seemingly unprompted, calmed the two men a little.
“Well trained, I’ll admit,” the bearded man said. He offered his hand. “Name’s Willart Fairgrove. This here’s my cousin, Billy. What brings you to Clovelly, stranger?”
“Did I not already say I wished for a warm bed for the night?”
“Lots of beds in lots of places,” Willart said. “But there’s not much to bring a man out here unless you’re born here, or you’re running from things done elsewhere.”
In answer, Faron dipped his hand into the pouch Calluna left for him and withdrew a silver coin.
The evening light flashed off its polished surface as he held it out between two fingers.
Both men’s eyes widened. Faron suspected by their reaction that this was worth far more than a night’s stay in a cramped bedroom.
“I’ve a big heart, and a bigger mouth,” Faron said. “Feed me and provide me a bed, and I’ll talk until your ears ache for silence. Deal?”
“Deal,” Willart said without the slightest hesitation.
He snatched the coin and shoved it into his pocket.
“I pray you don’t expect much, stranger, but I can have my children share a bed for the night so you have one of your own.
” He looked him up and down. “Your feet might hang off the end, though.”
“I promise I have had worse,” Faron said, and laughed. “But please, call me stranger no longer. My name is Faron, and during my brief stay, I would hope you call me friend.”
Perhaps the coin smoothed over matters, but Willart’s family was eager to welcome him.
His timing could not have been better. Supper was prepared and ready, and they gave him a seat at their long, carved wooden table.
The home was a bit dim and stuffy, and an earthy smell hung in the air Faron doubted they could ever get rid of, but the food was delicious.
A flank of deer meat, hunted from the forest. Willart’s oldest son, Bartholomew, had felled it with his bow, a fact the father was greatly proud of.
By the faint blush in Bartholomew’s cheeks, Faron understood this was not the first time such praise had been heaped upon him.
They did not ask Faron where he came from, nor why he was there, both of which he appreciated greatly. Instead he offered a story, one from his past, of his travels westward. He did not mention it had happened more than three hundred years ago.
“Now, you’d think bandits would take one look at me and decide there were easier marks,” he said, addressing the five at the table: Willart, his sunken-eyed but bright-smiling wife, and his three children, two sons and a daughter.
“But these bandits, they weren’t the smartest, and they surrounded me on that bridge, two behind me and two ahead. ”
“What’d you do?” the middle child asked. She was a spirited little thing, with hair as red as her father’s. “Did you fight them?”
“Fight?” Faron asked. “Oh, I fought them, and bare-knuckled to boot. But before I did, I asked each of them if they knew how to swim. The ones who could, I tossed off the side of the bridge.”
“And the ones who couldn’t?” Willart asked.
Faron flashed him a grin.
“Broken wrists are another way to take a man out of a fight, though I suspect both those thieves wished they’d learned to swim instead.”
Laughter all around, though Willart’s was forced. Caution would be the norm for him. Faron was bigger and stronger than anyone in the village, and he carried sharpened steel. Faron didn’t blame him, nor did he mind.
“So are you a mercenary?” Bartholomew asked. The eagerness in the question raised Faron’s eyebrows.
“Do you hope that I am?” he asked in return.
“Ignore him,” Willart said. “The boy’s been hearing tales of the Bastard Princess of Doremy and it’s got his head full of foolish ideas.”
“It’s not foolish,” Bartholomew insisted. He leaned toward Faron, his green eyes alight with fables. “War’s coming to Argylle. Isabelle’s going to unite all the west, and when she does—”
“Nothing will change,” the father interrupted. “Nothing ever does, not for people like us. You’d be throwing your life away for someone who wouldn’t notice if you were dying at her feet. Isabelle might talk grand, but she’s a princess, and no speeches are going to change that.”
Bartholomew slumped in his chair, his face reddening from both embarrassment and anger.
“Nothing changes because we don’t make them change,” he muttered.
“Be silent,” Willart said, harsh enough that the other members of the family flinched. Faron sensed an old argument here, one a long ways away from being resolved. “Go get your pa. It’s his turn to eat.”
The oldest son excused himself from the table and vanished through one of the curtained doorways. Faron’s curiosity must have been evident, for the father leaned his elbows on the table and lowered his voice as he explained.
“My father is… not well. He gets confused sometimes, but even if he shouts or calls us by the wrong names, he means well. There’s no menace in him, just the trials of age. Please, take no offense at his behavior.”
Faron’s smile softened. “You need not apologize for the ailments of others,” he said, glad to have the awkwardness of the argument behind them. “What is his name?”
“He’ll answer to Horace,” Willart said, and there was no hiding the pain in his voice. “When he remembers it.”
Bartholomew returned holding an older man’s hand. He walked gingerly, with far too much care for someone barely into his sixties, by Faron’s estimate.
“Something smells divine,” Horace said. “Did Rosie cook again?”
“Barb cooked tonight like every night,” Willart said, gesturing to an open seat near the crackling hearth that provided the bulk of the light since the sun set.
“We don’t know who Rosie is,” the middle child whispered beside Faron. The explanation was not necessary, but the girl couldn’t know that. To Faron’s eyes, blessed with radiance, Horace’s soul was a twisted, bleeding wound.
“Well, tell Rosie she shouldn’t be so lazy,” Horace said, sitting before his prepared plate. He paused and grew visibly angry. “She… Barb, you didn’t… Where is Rosie? Is she hiding? She should be helping you.”
Barb patted his hand, not answering, just trying to soothe him.
“Your dinner’s getting cold,” she said. Horace muttered something, grabbed his fork, and began to eat, all the while mumbling incoherently.
“Can’t say the same for my empty plate,” Faron said, gesturing for emphasis. “Have you any more hidden in that pot over by the fireplace? A big man like me needs to eat if he wants to keep his size.”
“For what you paid for your lodging?” Willart said, standing from the table. “We have more than enough to give you seconds.”
Faron waited until the deep of night to leave his room. His every step was measured so the floorboards would not betray him. Most people assumed he was slow and clumsy given his size, but he could move with silence to rival even Calluna when he tried.
His room was at the farthest end of the short hall. Directly across from it was Horace’s room, and after testing the door, he found it unlocked. Good. Quiet as a thief, he slipped inside and shut the door behind him.
To his surprise, Horace was awake. The older man sat on the edge of his bed, naked from the waist up. The curtain to his window was pulled back. Moonlight shone across his face as he bathed within it.
“Oh, hello there,” he said, noticing Faron.
“Shh,” Faron said, holding his finger to his lips. When he spoke, he kept his voice as a whisper. “Might I stay with you a moment, good sir?”
Horace shrugged in answer. He seemed uninterested in Faron’s arrival, and much more focused on the moon. The midnight light seemed to give him comfort. In that, Faron felt a kinship.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he said, lowering to his knees before the bed. “To be buried in so many memories. All of them yours, and yet, some distant, unfamiliar.”
Horace slowly turned his gaze. His body stiffened. He leaned away, suddenly frightened.
“Your eyes…” he whispered.
The stars of radiance shone brightly within them, for Faron must see to do his work. He put his hands on Horace’s shoulders.
“Remain still,” he whispered, “and hold faith in me.”
There were many things Faron had learned during his centuries on Kaus, and one was the nature of a soul.
Upon a human’s death, their souls ascended heavenward, all their collected memories and emotions bundled together in a gleaming white orb so similar to the stars…
but then they returned. They plummeted, unseen by all except the ever-living touched with radiance.
The souls plunged into the bodies of the newly born, to experience life once more.
Their faces would be new, their voices different, and their past forgotten.
Life after life, reborn, cyclical. It was precious, in a way, but sometimes the threads began to fray as human bodies aged and withered.
Poor Horace was seeing his past lives. He was awash in memories, real memories, but not from this lifetime.
Rosie was likely long dead, and perhaps had been for centuries.
Faron’s hand gently stroked Horace’s cheek. Radiance flowed through him, coursing into the older man’s veins. It soothed the frayed strands. It eased away the cracks. It set right the memories, so that only this life would remain true within his mind.
Tears flowed down Horace’s face. His lower lip quivered. When he spoke, it was a broken, confused whisper.
“I… I’m here. I don’t… It’s clear. Everything. It’s clear. It’s all clear.”
Faron opened his arms, and Horace collapsed against him, silently weeping into Faron’s shirt. Faron shushed him as he gently stroked the man’s hair.
“Weep if you must, then sleep well,” he said. “You have a family that loves you, and a life yet to live. Be present among them. That is my gift to you.”
Horace went limp in his grasp, and he slumped back into his bed. Faron closed the window curtain, then left the room in darkness. When he shut the door, the sound of weeping pierced through it into the hall.
The stars were still bright when Faron and Iris exited the Fairgrove home and walked the well-trod dirt path winding through the scattered buildings of Clovelly.
“Forgive our need for haste,” he told the coyote as they left the village behind them. “But at least you had a taste of human hospitality. What did you think of it?”
Iris glanced at him, yawned, and then trotted a few steps ahead.
“Fine, fine,” Faron said, and he laughed in the dim light. “Next time, I promise we will at least sleep until the dawn.”
Faron glanced over his shoulder, just barely able to see Willart’s home.
The family would soon wake to start their chores, rebuild the hearth fire, and prepare water to boil.
When Horace joined them and talked, they would realize the change that had come over him.
As much as Faron wished to see that glorious moment, it was not worth the risk.
Better to vanish in the morning hours. Better to be a wondrous stranger who changed their lives forever and then was never seen again.
The morning chill frosted Faron’s breath as he walked. Perhaps he should have let Horace be. Sariel would come looking for Faron in Clovelly, and not find him.
Faron closed his eyes, imagined the morning the family would soon have, and then shook his head.
No. It was worth it. It always was. Sariel would just have to do a bit of tracking on his own. His brother had found him immediately upon his return from his decades-long slumber. He could find him again after a day or two of lazy travel along the dirt roads of the west.
“Hey, wait up, Iris,” Faron said, clapping his hands and breaking into a jog. The coyote was up ahead, sniffing and sprinting about a nearby field. In search of breakfast, if he was to guess.
“Don’t leave me behind. I’m hungry, too!”