by CC Hogan
last night and today, girl, and I am pretty sure of two things.”
“What is that?” Yona asked quietly.
“Firstly, I am not sure any of you would be here without you, girl. Even with this old man over here.” He thumbed over at Beak. “And the other thing I learned is that you have absolutely nothing to be sorry about. Try saying it less, even if sorry you feel.” He flashed a little grin, jumped to his feet and walked over to check on the calliston.
Phoran, Beak and Yona sat in silence for a few moments, their thoughts on their pasts and their uncertain future. Beak took a stick and started marking out a map in the sand. He looked at it and sighed.
“Eighty,” he said.
“What?” Yona asked.
“I was twenty-five when bandits killed my wife and my son and burnt my farm to the ground. I have been on the road for more than fifty years.” Yona stared at him with her mouth open. He didn’t look more than forty or fifty years old. He stabbed his stick into his map, leaving it stuck in the ground. “That’s where we are going. I know where it is.” He stood and walked off on his own through the woods.
The Hills
The calliston was trotting through the gentle countryside at a crisp pace. It had taken Yona every ounce of persuasion she had to keep the calliston by the village for one more day, but she had no choice. Overnight one of the older women had become ill, despite food and water, and Golla had ordered them to wait. Now, according to a map Beak had made up, borrowing some paper from the ever-helpful people of the village of Markon Vale, they were heading to the Kerron Hills. If they had guessed right, and the calliston, from some distant memory, was trying to find his way home, then two more days after that and they would arrive at the old, long-abandoned place where once had been a calliston village. What happened then was anyone’s guess.
They had spoken long and hard about it the previous day as Yona had become increasingly worried that she was somehow dragging them unwillingly across the continent of Bind. She had had to stop herself saying sorry countless times and had silently cursed Gorr for pointing it out. But, despite her worries, none had wanted to remain at the village or take any other path. It was Phoran that explained the reason to her as they had ridden the calliston around the village, heading south.
“It’s partly the three children,” he had said. “They have recovered faster than the rest of us and have been running around making sure we are alright. They have bound everyone together. You think they are looking for a village? Well, they have already found one. It might not have a place to build yet, but it exists and it is sitting on the back of your calliston.”
Her calliston. Golla had taken her aside.
“He is connecting to you and you to him, Yona. I don’t know how, and I know a lot of things, but he is. You be careful of that girl. I reckon that beast won’t let go of you now. You have got a responsibility to him.”
She knew the big landlady was right and she had no intention of letting him down. Or any of them.
“He is bouncing more than before!” Beva was sitting on the calliston’s neck between Yona’s legs.
“I think he is in a rush.”
“Does he have a name?” the girl asked.
“I don’t know, Beva,” Yona said with a chuckle. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“I heard Beak talking, saying when the calliston was young he would have had parents and they could all talk. I bet he had a name.”
Yona sighed. Beva had big ears, she had noticed. In the last day she had also become even more cuddly, to both her and Phoran, and last night she had woken up with a bad nightmare. With getting fed and feeling physically better, the girl was beginning to miss her mother much more, and the tragedy of her death in that cold, dark room was raising its head. “We could give him a name. Have you got one?”
“No. I don’t think I should name him.”
“Why not?”
“He is old,” the girl said, stroking the beasts neck with her hand. He rumbled in pleasure. “I am only little. He needs a proper name, not a silly name.”
Yona doubted the girl quite realised what an incredibly grown up thing that was to say. “Alright. Then an old friend needs an old name, something proper.” Yona thought for a few minutes. Most people she knew could neither read nor write, and their use of words was simple and straightforward. But she had been taught to read when very young, and her adopted mother had even taught her some of the older Adelan words that she had learned as a child. “Eldola.”
“What?” Beva asked.
“Eldola. That is what I will name him. Eld is the older form of the word old and Ghola is a very, very old word for friend. So, Eldola; old friend.”
“I like that,” Beva said. “He is a friend, isn’t he?”
“Yes, a good friend.” They sat quietly and Beva leant back and snuggled into Yona’s arms.
The four tall, strong and dark-skinned warriors stood before them with bows pulled. Yona and her villagers, because that is now how they called themselves, had been walking next to Eldola the calliston. He had slowed down and seemed confused as if he didn’t know where he was going. They had lost the trail a while back and even Beak wasn’t sure of the way. Then the warriors had walked silently out of the trees before them and the calliston had stopped, frozen in his tracks. Now they stood staring at each other in silence. Yona stepped forward as Phoran hissed a warning. He was a very tall man and yet these warriors were nearly a head taller still, and their bows had to be eight feet in length.
“Pharsil-Hin,” Beak murmured. “Nomads. They defend their own, but they are never bandits. She will be safe, Phoran.”
Yona took a nervous breath and walked to the tallest of the men and stood right up to his bow. “Please,” she said. “We are lost.” He studied at her with his head on one side. They were all looking better since they had left Markon Vale, but they were still thin and their clothes ragged.
“You are slaves,” he said simply.
“We were.”
“You escaped?”
“Yes. With the calliston several days ago.”
“You have weapons?”
“No. Just a couple of knives and a broken axe.”
The tall nomad lowered his bow. “I am Han-so-Terena. We will feed you and arm you.” The four nomads turned and walked down the trail and then headed up into the hills. Beak walked up next to Yona.
“Do you always make friends so quickly?” he asked.
“She does,” Phoran said with a smile. “Except with the fish. They swim away if they see her and she is banned from the boats.”
Yona glared at him, returned to Eldola and gently encouraged him to follow them up into the hills. The calliston seemed pleased to be walking with purpose again and padded alongside the young woman, emitting a low, soft rumble. Beva trotted up on the other side of his head.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“They are nomads,” Beak told her.
“I have never heard of them,” Yona said, frowning again. “I think they are alright, though.”
“I am not frightened,” the girl said positively.
“You aren’t?” Yona peeked around the large head of the calliston at the diminutive Beva.
“I saw how Eldola attacked those deer a few days ago. Now he has a name he is our family. I know he will protect me.” The small girl leant her head on the face of the calliston as they walked, and he rumbled softly. Yona shook her head. Beva may be having terrible nights at the moment, plagued by nightmares, but when the sun shone, she was a little beacon of hope for them all.
The nomads had been in the hills for two months, they said, and their village was well organised. They had built large, round, hide covered homes and small pens where goats were being kept for milking, while others were grazing free around the hillside. Yona thought there must be about sixty nomads here; a small group of families with some elders and even a couple of babes
-in-arms. Eldola took a long drink from the stream that ran through the middle of the temporary village and then settled down, eyeing a pen of goats with interest.
“He is hungry,” Han-so-Terena said. “We shall roast him a goat.”
“He hasn’t eaten much,” Yona told him. “We were fed by some people at a village north of here, but he didn’t eat.”
“They eat like dragons,” the warrior said. “We will give him plenty.”
“You are so kind. I don’t understand,” Yona said, leaving the calliston to dream about his dinner. “You don’t know who we are.”
“You are slaves. Many of our kin have been captured and are enslaved in Wessen in the mines. One day we will free them. For now, we will feed you, for you are their kindred. Where are you headed?”
“The Kelaine hills, we think.” Yona smiled a little in embarrassment. “It is becoming a complicated story, but we are more following Eldola than he following us.”
“Eldola? I am pleased he has a name. I have heard of dummerholes, but I did not know any existed still. It is good that he has a name and such a good one. We will tell the Draig yr Anialr of him, and tell them he has a name. Come, I will introduce you to my mate and you can tell us your complicated story and we will tell you some of ours.”
The Pharsil-Hin opened all their homes to Yona’s people, and each stayed in one of the hide houses under a blanket that night. Beva slept cuddled tightly next to Yona, and for the first time had a trouble free night. In the morning,
