Section One

Spider

There’s something in the motions of a spider, moving and weaving, moving and weaving. A grace amongst the complex randomness. Its legs work in tandem and yet hold a glimmer of independence. It can amble slowly and then sling away with garish speed on invisible cords of its own making. All its life practicing the one discipline of moving and weaving. One means the other to the spider, the first is intertwined with the last. A devotee to the temple of that discipline becomes an expert nearly automatically. With no choice. The only choice was to move and weave and to therefore become better. To gain certainty in oneself and one’s craft.

Father

When he had left the house a week earlier, Thom’s father hadn’t seen him standing by the coat rack watching the exit. At eight he’d already learned to stand out of the way when his parents made preparations to leave. The tall, finely dressed man had donned his sword as before he crossed the threshold, setting Thom’s heart racing. Thom practiced with his father’s men in the courtyard every afternoon, and sometimes he managed to sneak away from his nanny to watch his father spar with wooden practice swords. He had never seen him take up the weapon proper. “Edward, you haven’t said when you’ll return. Do you mean to be gone long?” His mother called out from on the landing. “Brigands on the borderland Joan, I have a duty to the King. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more.” His mother left soon after, visiting with wives of the men sent off to battle. To tell what she had heard from her husband. Thom went searching for Lionel in the town. Slipping past the house staff with practiced ease. Lionel had been in his Father’s employ for a few years while Thom was a boy. As children sometimes do, he had latched onto the gruff old fellow despite all protests. Through mimicry and then through applied lessons, Thom had become versed in topics and skills he had no right to have learned. Haggling, craftwork, gambling. All of the lessons of a young nobleman that his parents had him learning, a shadow skill of Lionel’s underscored. That particular morning Thom saw him standing outside of the Hen’s Clutch Inn at the centre of the town. One of the two that fought for the business of the travellers passing from Hyria into Galanry. Falam, the small town owned by Thom’s father and a few other Lords, was the point of the Galanric wedge that drove Hyria from the outerlands. This time Lionel saw him approaching, and waved him over through a cloud of thick pipesmoke. “Sit here boy, watch the procession. Watch how all respond to the call to arms.” Lionel always had a lesson to teach in duty. “Are you going away too Lionel?” Thom asked him. “Not on my life or yours boy,” he smiled a wry grin “You won’t catch me fighting another man’s battles again. When the time comes you’ll understand.” They watched together the people rising from their homes and stations to clasp armour onto themselves and shoe horses. The smoke rising into the air from the many blacksmiths obscured the air. The whinnies and shreiks clamoured the air from the farrier’s yards. Thom watched the town steadily empty over the coming days, with Lionel first and then without when he disappeared. He watched his mother firmly stalk from house to house and help the women left behind with what she could. Doling out silver and softsoaping with the people her husband represented. She spoke to Thom in his bed in the evenings and talked about his father and the bravery he showed. Then one day she too disappeared from the streets Thom walked, retreated into the confines of her rooms, pale and quiet. When she had been taken through to be dressed by her lady one morning Thom snatched an open letter from her table and read that his father had been killed on the sixth day of the campaign. Shot from his horse by longbow, the king would be sending something, words he hadn’t learned to read yet. He sobbed down by the docks, by himself. Fearing to be seen with his emotions. Looking for Lionel where he was sometimes found with vision obscured by tears.

Villager

The boy didn’t even usually stick around for breakfast. Gone before the sun came up, especially as they descended into another winter. Edith’s mother had her doing extra chores out in the barn. She could hear the magpies chattering in the trees outside while she churned butter to trade with the neighbours. Milk pail cutting into her fingers at the handle, the cold air drawing steam up from the fresh bucket. The boy was free from chores until the evenings, cutting wood with her father as the sun went down. When Thom had arrived a few months earlier, her father had said he needn’t chip in until he got a little older. But he already looked ten or more to her, and managed to grow everyday. Already taller and fuller of limb than the Blount boys next door at ten and twelve. Already approaching her height at fourteen. The boy’s mother and father had been of considerable height, her mother had told her, nobles in a town nearby. Her mother still couldn’t talk about them without tears. Especially when speaking of her sister, Thom’s mother. After the news of the father’s death had reached her, she’d written a series of letters to spare Thom the life of a beggar and sent them off. Before retiring to her rooms with wolfsbane and never troubling to rise from her bed again. Edith’s mother seemed to take it harder than the boy had himself. Quietly leaving each morning and sometimes bringing home birds or hares for the pottage. Not at all adding to the responsibilities of the house as his mother feared he would in her letter. With his arrival had come a portion of the fortune his parents had left behind. As well as deeds to land stamped by vassals to the king of Galanry. Her father had already begun putting it to good use, starting his long dreamed project of rebuilding the inn at the centre of the village. Lugging lumber and buying supplies, sometimes with Thom’s help. When they had been shearing the sheep for a final extra time at the end of the summer, she’d been shocked at the ease with which he lifted them for her father to shave. “One last lucky batch before the winter” her Father had said to him. Thom rarely spoke more than four words in a line, nodding with a firmly closed mouth most of the time. “He may be that way for a while,” her mother told her, “he’s got a lot to sort through before he can go about chatting like you or I.” One of the mornings when she went out milking before the sun had come up, the whisper of the tree leaves beginning to tell of their drying. She had brought a small candle with her into the barn to see by and started shivering away at the stool, even rushing around she couldn’t get her second bucket going before it chilled past a workable temperature. She could tell by the side of the bucket’s feel under her fingertips that she would be ages if she didn’t warm it up a little and went to find a handful of shavings and sticks from the woodpile to light a little blaze on the back of a shovel and warm the milk, and hopefully herself nearby it. She couldn’t stand the thought of sitting outside to do it so she swept a clearing in the hay covering the floor and started up a piece of straw to begin it. She sat staring at the little blaze, knowing it would go out soon but hoping it would be enough to warm something up either in her, the milk, or the barn. In order for her to get back to work. The cold air clouded her brain almost. A freezing fog descending through her thoughts. She stared into the little embers and felt them warm her, staring hard at the wiry red strands, eeking out their quick little lives. She willed them to stay a little longer and she managed to delude herself into thinking that they did. Holding them there in place, heaving with her breath. They had to go out soon, but they were staying just a little longer with each breath, the air warming a little more each second. From the corner of her eye she saw more light, and confused it for the orange morning sunbeams for only a second before her panic set in. A second little blaze had erupted from the rising ash of her own. Sparking in the hay. She rose and knocked over her squat stool, rushing to stamp out the unwanted flames. It was easy work on such a small fire, but it set her heart racing to think she might have almost burnt down her father’s barn. The door swung open a foot and brought a cold breeze on top her guilt. She hardly saw him come in, her focus had been taken by the pire her old fire had become, stool and scattered hay now taken into the rising beast. A wall of flame as tall as her dancing angrily in the centre of the room. Thom came past her at speed and dashed the bucket of milk onto the fire and spent a few seconds stamping out the ashes. “Sorry I poured away all that milk” he said as she stood still in her embarrassment. “At least I’ll still have a barn to milk in come morning,” she said, recovering herself a little among the ashes.

Woods

The small storeroom by the kitchen had been half cleared to sleep Thom, a pallet bed amongst the barrels and jars. By autumn he’d come to find less and less use for the space. The meagre possessions he’d taken from his family home locked away in a chest and the rest sold. The small space reminded him too much of hiding spots he’d crept into while growing up, reminded him too much of the home that no longer existed. When he slept in there he would wake early and listen to his cousin Edith stir on the floor above and almost convince himself he was back. His warm, comfortable life still reaching out to him through his memory and his dreams. Camped out one night after his uncle and a few of the village men had taken him hunting he learned the way to shed the painful memory. The crackling fire and the empty echoless air of the night outside contained nothing of his past sleeping indoors and he grew to rely on that tranquil backdrop more and more in order to live. By the time winter came around he had built up a small pack that he took with him out into the grove that surrounded the village to the East each night. A thick cloak, a small bedroll, firemaking tools and a kettle to cook his meals in. Paired with the longhandled axe his Uncle Col had gotten made for him he needed very little else, returning to the village itself to work on the inn and other jobs. He’d found very little interest in the other young men his age, they seemed to lack his interests. They were content with themselves, relaxed and happy to waste days on games or skipping stones or running races. Thom couldn’t fit all of the tasks and learning and practicing he wanted to do into a double length day. Archery and swordplay with Aldus the old village soldier. Building the inn with his Uncle, even reading the old books his aunt Bea had rescued from his parents estate. Family relics he’d not noticed while they stood on shelves, appeared now in a chest on the back of a wagon and littering the floor in his small room away from the elements. Tactics, warfare, politics, medicinal herbs, and local species. His nights sleeping under the stars saw his mind full of a wide world, even if his days saw him tasked with menial errands.
By the time winter came around, Thom’s uncle had all but finished the outside of the new inn. They’d only started it at the end of the summer when Thom arrived, but the excitement of the project and the extra funds from Thom’s estate had quickened the pace. Thom felt like he’d met all the men in the village and near half the women just from joining in for the construction. They all seemed to revere Col, and take his nephew in as a new son of the village. Proud to the gills at how fast he had taken to growing. “Country air,” Aldous had told him, “and bigger stomping grounds. Just like planting something in the ground after it’s been in a pot. Wouldn’t be surprised if you grow taller than this Inn the way you’ve been eating my lad.”

//TODO: Continue this section;

Dreams

Around the time of the first snows, his nightmares began to arrive, or perhaps the first Edith noticed. Thom had to begin sleeping in the house once the weather turned particularly bad. She could hear him mumbling and speaking in his sleep through the thin floor planks. It made her conscious of how much he might have been hearing of her at first, but then gave way to fears for him. His groans turned frightful, something like deep agony. Plaintive sounds filled the house and kept her own sleep away. Plenty of times she heard him wake, clumsy with his new size, bumping doors and furniture out of his way as he stole into the night. Her mother tried to shy her away from getting involved but she felt indebted to him since he’d saved the barn and had been angling for a way to give back since.
One one of the nights he started getting bad, she crept downstairs in preparation, heating water in the low coals of the evening’s dying fire, preparing one of her father’s pots - the ones he took with him to work on the inn. When the boy sidled through the little door frame she thought somebody had broken in, he loomed so large in shadow. Never small, he’d now taken on the shape of a man. She had to follow after him out into the cold night after missing her chance frozen in place. The tea in the little pot sloshed its weight side to side and the clay cups clicked against the wood of their tote. “Thom” she said softly into the frosted landscape, trees looming ink black against the indigo night. He stopped but didn’t turn “You ok?” he asked her. “I…” she hesitated “I made us some tea, I don’t know how you like to take it.” Her cheeks were burning, mostly from the cold air but a little from the interaction. He seemed to smile as he turned, the moonlight making his light eyes visible for a moment. “It’s a little late for tea,T is it not?” He asked her. “I sometimes hear you” she said, surprising herself, “When you have trouble sleeping.” He looked up into the sky, at the stars, and then turned away and started a slow walk up to the tree edge, tramping a dark trail in the dew. Edith called out as she began to follow “Thom, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ask about it. I don’t need you to talk about it. I just…” she could barely keep up with his long strides. Her breath catching the moonlight in big puffs. “I just didn’t want you to think you had to go through everything alone.” She knew what she was sayin was likely fruitless. Her father had taught her the frustrating way that men closed down their minds to the world when things got hard. Not willing to open out to encouragement and assistance from others. “I’m fine” he said over his shouler as he stalked away. “Really I don’t need any tea.”
As they both made it to the top of the mound that started the descent down into the village, he turned back and held up his hands. “I’ve grown to enjoy watching the village in peace and quiet when I…” it was his turn to hesitate now, “When I feel the need. I don’t think chattering away all that silence will likely help.” She almost laughed at him now, so tactful in asking her to butt out. She knew the ways her father chose to push people away but this one was a new tact. “I can sit quietly, and i’ve never heard a cup of tea make a peep.”
So they sat, the both of them, a few windows glinting of the fires within. Warming squat houses. The night’s cast a deep blue flushed with rich grey clouds. They could see the silhouettes of the buildings that made up the hamlet. The now finished roof of the inn set away from the rest up by the main road. Edith spoke to crush the silence “How… how do you feel Thom?” The words came out with difficulty. She didn’t really know him well, however much she wanted to. He took a long time in replying but she was glad he did. “Something like… I’m asleep and I can’t remember how to wake up. Like I’m living some other life and if I do the right things I’ll end up back in my own.” It was warming at first to hear him speak of himself. As he so rarely did. But when the cold soak of his words set it it made her very sad. It made her miss her parents, sound asleep in the house a small walk away. She was struggling for something else to say when Thom pointed over to the village. A dancing lantern coming over the false horizon of the road’s enclosing hedgerows had caught his eye. He stood to get a better look while Edith tried placing it amongst the houses. “It’s stopped near the inn. I hope they’re not expecting a room.”

Traveler

Come morning the noise from the town square had brought Thom and Edith and her father over to the inn, several people living nearby had taken it upon themselves to interrogate the newcomer and ask them to state their intentions. The wagon driver had apparently brooked all requests for information and the owner of the carriage had not come out at all. Some kind of noble looking for the owner of the inn, according to the surrounding locals. Col made his way to the front of the small gathering and turned to face the group before getting to the new arrivals “Look, everyone’s got work to do I’m sure. Allow me to welcome these fine people and give them room to introduce themselves to you all individually. No one needs to be facing a jury on their first day out here.” There wasn’t a mayor of the village as such but if there was, it likely would have fallen to Thom’s uncle Col. As the gawkers dispersed, Thom could see Edith observing her father proudly. The inn was near completion, the tallest building around. Although quite simple in design, the structure looked impressive. The thatching had begun to grey out a little and all of the walls had stood the test of a few rains. The internals still had a ways to go. A few rooms had small beds in them, but there was no furniture made yet for cooking or eating. And yet the owner and driver of the carraige wanted to hire rooms, Thom found out. Col asked him to round up as much of the finished items they’d ordered for the inn as possible while he showed the first customers to their sparse rooms.
Thom’s short journey took him to the potter and the weaver only, the carpenter James hadn’t been in. The potter had fired, glazed and painted a small batch, a few plates and cups. The weaver, Maud had completed three blankets only, her daughter Grace knitting a fourth.

// note: from here they see the wagon entering town in the early hours of the morning… woman expecting a fully fledged inn. Col