Secrets of the Tally

by Halie Fewkes

  “Why, so you can travel there by yourself?” The old man chuckled. “Come with us. We’re leaving for the Dragona in a matter of hours, and we’ve got extra room on the cart.”

  Though I was desperate, his offer made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t accept more charity, not when I already owed them for hiding me. I was not helpless. “I really appreciate the offer, but I’m sure I can find a way there.” I threw in a casual shrug to hide my distress and added, “Accepting help when you can help yourself is the surest sign of a thief.” The saying came to mind easily, like something said a thousand times before.

  “Well that’s cow dung,” he said, waving a hand as though to clear the smelly air. “Nobody travels alone. There are Escalis in the woods.”

  That word stopped my heart mid-beat. It represented the vile creatures that had shed so much blood earlier in the day, and I immediately found myself searching for a diplomatic way to accept their company on the trip after all.

  “I’ll tell you what, I have a whole basin full of dishes that need to be washed before we can leave,” the old man said. “You look like you have a good pair of arms on you. Are you a good throw? A good catch?”

  “I... what? I don’t know,” I replied. This was the perfect solution, but it still set me on edge. I didn’t know why. I could help for a few hours, and they could get me back to the Dragona. I needed to say yes. “I’m sure I can learn quickly though.”

  “Excellent! Come over here, and we’ll show you how to do it. And by the way, you can call me Osty.”

  The old man, Osty, turned to lead the way, and I put a hand on Leaf’s shoulder before he took off to join the kids’ next game.

  “Listen,” I said, crouching down. “You can’t tell anybody what we were talking about. Got it?”

  “I wasn’t going to,” he said, already astonished that I might doubt his loyalty. “Because we’re friends, right? You’ll be one of the only people I know when we get to the Dragona.”

  “Sounds good to me. You’ll be the only friend I have too.”

  The old man turned back to me and exclaimed, “Allie! Quit slacking!” Leaf smiled before running off, and I almost smiled back as I dodged between two cooks on my way to the old wash basin.

  “The Travelling Baking Show only has one rule you’ll need to follow — throw everything,” said the old man. “When the cooks need something washed, they’ll toss it to you. You can throw the clean dishes to Corliss and she’ll dry them.” I broke my gaze away from the basin as he flung a cup at the curly-haired Corliss, who wasn’t even facing us. She caught it behind her head and tossed it onto the stack next to her station, never looking up from the vegetables she chopped.

  “Bravo!” old man Osty said. “So you think you’re ready?”

  “Yes,” I said, unable to fake enthusiasm when I felt so empty. Stacks of breakable dishes lay submerged in the murky water, but I could only really focus on the settling ripples above them. An echo of my identity rested upon the water’s surface, reflecting brown eyes set into the angular face I couldn’t recognize. Seventeen years old, perhaps? I tilted my head a bit to the side to see my smooth skin in a different light, then snatched one of the ceramic dishes uncomfortably and attacked it with a scrub brush, distorting the reflection.

  Burning anger flared up in my chest as I assaulted the old bowl. How could this have happened? I had the overwhelming sense that I should be doing something important right now, not scrubbing dishes. But I had no idea what, and being so helpless, so useless, made my insides churn. What if my memories were permanently missing?

  The ceramic bowl shattered against the side of the washbasin. Oh no. I glanced quickly around to make sure nobody had noticed, waited ten seconds, then slipped away to discard the bowl’s remnants beneath a prickly bush. Returning with nobody the wiser, I picked up a new cup to clean. I scrubbed this one a little more carefully and began to rehash the past hour of my life, trying to reach further back in time and remember more.

  I had already run out of details to recall concerning the attack in the woods, and I only had a few other scraps of myself to cling to while investigating every corner of my mind. Liz, West, and the Dragona were the only leads I could explore, but their names remained faceless and the Dragona remained an unimaginable building. I mindlessly tossed and caught dishes from the singing and dancing crew, far too preoccupied to take part in the comradery or poke fun at Osty like the rest of the bakers. Time slipped by surprisingly fast as I toiled with my thoughts, scrubbing at ceramic and wood until my hands wrinkled from the water and the crowd began thinning.

  “What happened out in the forest?” asked Corliss, the only member of the crew who looked to be my age. The other cooks began to tear down the operation, and although I didn’t really care about the dishes, the fact remained that I hadn’t finished them.

  Knowing that I owed her an explanation after she had helped me, I shrugged and gave her the same short version I had given Leaf. I left the predators, the Escalis, out of my retelling because a lump rose in my throat when I tried to think about them, but I truthfully recalled the rest of it. At the end of my story, Corliss squinted incredulously and answered with a flat, “Uh-huh.”

  “I know,” I sighed, tossing three wooden spoons to her. “I’m having a hard time believing it myself.” She dried each one thoughtfully on a towel and set them on the table beside her as I clenched my teeth and gathered my thoughts. “All I know right now is that I need to get to the Dragona.”

  “We caught you at a good time then. We’re getting excited to head up there and sell to tomorrow’s Eclipsival crowds.”

  “What is Eclipsival?” I asked as I neared the bottom of the wash basin.

  She peered at me, as though amused. “The Dragona has been preparing for this for the past six months, Allie. Don’t you think you’re taking this memory thing a little far, claiming you can’t remember the biggest celebration on the continent?”

  “I’m not lying about this,” I snapped, throwing a heavy cutting board to her with more force than necessary. I knew I needed to calm down, but my frustration would dissolve me into a blubbering fool if I didn’t keep a strong front.

  She caught it easily as a short balding man approached our tent, looking at me as though memorizing my every feature.

  “You look like the girl the mages are searching for,” he said. I should have been scared sick by the thought of being turned in, but with so many crises already torturing me, I just felt incredibly annoyed.

  “I hope you’re not talking about my daughter,” Osty intervened on my behalf. Osty’s wispy white hair made him far too old to be my father, but I appreciated the thought.

  The nosy skeptic didn’t believe it either and repeated, “Your daughter? What’s her name then?”

  “I don’t believe that’s any business of yours, and you don’t have any business being here. We’re closing up.”

  I picked up one side of my wash basin and shot Corliss a look that said help me. She promptly grabbed the opposite handhold, and we lugged the heavy bucket to the trees to dump it.

  “I might have to run,” I told her as dish water cascaded into the grass. I was equally willing to fight the guy, but that was a dead-end option.

  “Just wait first. Old Osty is better with words than you would believe.”

  We returned to the tent where nearly ten people had slowed their pace to watch the argument. Leaf watched with the most intensity, as though learning all he could from the interaction.

  Every time the short man tried to speak, Osty cut him off. It was almost comical, and I realized Osty’s goal — to make the bystanders laugh rather than take this man seriously.

  Shorty was trying to say, “She has blonde hair, exactly the length—”

  “And she’s the only one!” Osty interrupted, drawing his voice out to sound elderly. “No other girls with blonde hair even walked by today.”

  “The mages also said she was wearing calf-lacing sandals—”

 
“Will you stop looking at my daughter’s legs already? We’re just trying to wrap up an honest day’s work out here.”

  “Quit talking over me!” the flustered man exclaimed.

  Instead of talking over him, Osty called to the crew like he would any order, “I’ve… Got… One nosey customer, being quite rude!”

  The crew responded, “Invite him to come back, we’ll spit in his food!” When the entire Travelling Baking Show spit on the ground, I had to cover my mouth to hide my first true smile of the day — the first true smile of my new life. The people who had stopped to watch began to leave with grins as well.

  The short man took off in a huff, and I muttered to his back, “And that’s why you never make an enemy of entertainers.”

  As soon as he was out of our sight, Osty said, “Let’s get the cart loaded and hit the woods. We should leave before he sends the mages to ask questions. And we definitely don’t want to be out after dark.”

  I thought of a pitch black forest where treetops blocked the stars, and the memory of Escalis constricted my chest again. I needed to know more about them. How to avoid them, how to kill them. But such a question was difficult to bring up.

  “Don’t rush for my sake,” I said, baiting them into an explanation. “I don’t mind if we have to travel in the dark.”

  All packing stopped as the entire Travelling Baking Show turned to stare, like every last baker thought they’d heard me wrong.

  Corliss only scoffed. “And how would you like your corpse found? Arms torn off, throat ripped out, or with a punctured lung where you took an elbow spike through your ribcage?”

  “Corliss,” Osty scolded her as Leaf’s eyes grew gigantic. Osty pointed at Leaf and whispered, “Parents!” She immediately folded her arms and closed her mouth.

  I didn’t want to stir up anyone’s emotional hardships, but I needed more information. “I’m only saying it shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s daylight or not. If anything, it should be harder for something to track us down in the dark.”

  Corliss just squinted with disbelief. Osty was the one who said, “You know Escalis are built for tracking, right? They can see in the dark and follow scent trails. And they hear everything.”

  “Well I’m sure we have enough of us to fight one off if it finds us,” I said.

  Corliss broke into laughter and I felt my face heat with frustration. “Fight one off? An Escali?” She took heart in the joke until she suddenly gasped and pursed her lips. “You weren’t kidding, were you? What you told me?”

  I took a slow breath to calm myself before saying, “I swear on my dead memories that I do not know anything about my past life. I don’t know what this Eclipsival is. I don’t know what the Dragona looks like. I wouldn’t know my name if you hadn’t told me.”

  The bakers caught on to the situation quickly, but their sympathetic looks and sighs made me want to bolt away. I wasn’t weak. I didn’t want their pity.

  “Before we leave, will somebody just tell me how to kill an Escali?” I asked.

  The lively group became even more solemn. “You just have to hope there are mages nearby,” Osty said. “Because you don’t stand a chance otherwise. An Escali’s skin is impenetrable. No matter how sharp of a knife you hold or how fast of an arrow you shoot, you can’t cut through their hides. So to kill them, you either have to burn them, or drown them, or crush them or something. And even then, they can shake off injuries unbelievably fast.”

  I thought Leaf might burst into tears as some old past tormented him, but he looked straight at me. “They’re fast and strong, and they live to hunt people,” he said, as though warning me was suddenly the single reason he existed. “Everybody’s lost someone to the Escalis. In a way, you’re lucky you don’t have to remember.”

  I felt a new pit sink into my stomach, wondering who I’d lost, and whether I’d ever remember them. I hadn’t even been able to keep their memory alive, all because of the Escalis.

  Osty pulled Leaf over to give him a hug as he said, “That’s why we’re leaving together, in the daylight, when the mages are guarding the trails. Travelling is perfectly safe when you do it right.”

  Leaf completely ignored the attempt to cheer him up and wiped his eyes before adding, “You’re better off dead than in the Escalis’ hands. If you ever know you’re about to be captured, remember that.”

  “I will,” I said, looking into his large dark eyes to acknowledge his warning. Something awful had happened to his parents, and keeping others from the same fate was probably his only way of honoring their memory. In one look, I tried to tell him that I knew his story as well as he knew mine, and by the way the kid smiled gratefully, I think he understood.

  Corliss startled me by pushing a large chunk of bread into my hand. “We need to go. Daylight’s fading,” she said, clapping me on the shoulder. “And lighten up a little. We’ll be at the Dragona in no time.” I allowed my tense shoulders to slouch just a fraction, but true relaxation was beyond me. They might be heading straight for the Dragona, but I had different plans.

  Their one horse even had a sense of humor, stealing Osty’s small hat off his head before leaving. Then the wheels hit the trail, and the Travelling Baking Show began their journey with a loud chorus of Why is the Pear in the Pickle Plum Tree? I lagged at the back of the lively procession to watch for danger and the chance to disappear unnoticed.

  I had known I’d be returning to the wildflower patch since I first remembered the brutal attack. Seeing the last place I’d been to before my crisis might just jog my memory, and even if it didn’t, I had to pay some sort of respect to the mother and two kids.

  A massive cedar tree leaned over the path ahead, and I made sure everybody was preoccupied before dreadful guilt forced me to step out of sight behind it. Was it my fault the Escalis had gotten to them? I scolded myself for making that a question when I already knew the answer. They had been running straight to me to help. The real question was, why had I been alone in the woods to begin with?

  As the boisterous voices of the Travelling Baking Show died away, I trod across the soft ground and found the patch of white flowers from my memory, many of which had been crushed or bore flecks of blood on their petals. The flattened foliage showed exactly where two bodies had been lying, one significantly smaller than the other. Mother and son.

  Standing among the wildflowers didn’t stir any more of my past, so I scoured the area for the little girl, finding only a shred of her hair on a scorched branch where the leaves had been ripped off, as though she had tried to hold on. I didn’t wonder where she was. I didn’t want to know.

  Better off dead than in the Escalis’ hands…

  Overcome with guilt and frustration, I smashed a cluster of flowers into the ground with my heel and kicked the heads off several others, stopping as the whistle of a bird resonated through the dimming forest. Instead of twitters and chirps of no meaning, the duskflyer whistled a full melody, a tune of mourning.

  I knew the bird was called a duskflyer like I knew a tree was a tree, or a foot was a foot. It was knowledge, not memory, and the calming simplicity of the song allowed me to realize that two moons now glowed brighter than the pink clouds in the sky. Although the forest hadn’t grown dark enough to steal my shadow, the evening gave me a sense of unease.

  I retreated to the trail and put my runner’s legs back to use to overtake the Travelling Baking Show. Long minutes dragged by as I ran, and I picked up speed after I felt I should have reached them. I knew they wouldn’t have stepped off the trail, but I couldn’t believe how quickly they covered ground.

  The beautiful birdsong died away, leaving the forest entirely silent. My ragged breathing only had to compete with a few crickets in the distance, so I didn’t miss the flapping of powerful wings above me as a bird of prey swooped in the dark. Even the crickets ceased chirping when the falcon pierced the night with a screech that clearly meant, Come here, I found it.

  As fear lurched through me again, my ins
tincts slammed me with the awareness that Humans didn’t hunt with falcons. Escalis did.

  Chapter Three

  As I tore down the dirt path, my survival instincts briefed me on everything I needed to know. I needed to find a leafy bush with purple — there! I snatched a handful of leaves and purple berries as I sprinted past, knowing that their crushed scent could hinder an Escali’s senses. I rubbed the bitterly potent juice on my arms as maps flashed through my mind, telling me the distance between Tabriel Vale and the Dragona. I had a chance of making it back to the Dragona as long as nothing caught up to me first.

  I caught a glimpse of something running to my left, but the blur was so fast it was able to spring through the air and knock me to the ground before I could even react. My momentum hurtled me into the base of a tree while the Escali rolled back onto his feet, crouching to growl at me.

  My right knee took most of the impact in a sickening crunch, causing more than enough pain to curl up and cry over. Despite my certainty that it was broken, I only lay still for a few seconds of shock before I grabbed the tree beside me and pulled myself back up. My instincts screamed to not appear cowardly, even if my eyes watered and I had to put all my weight on my left leg to stay up. The Escali kept his stance and assessed everything about me as I shot a stare back at him, holding his gaze.

  His bared teeth, the wide angles of his face, and the set of his eyes all made him seem wolf-like. His green irises were clouded with undefined pupils, and the staff he carried on his back gleamed with blades on both ends. The spikes of bone jutting from his elbows alarmed me more than the conventional weapon.

  All of my limbs shook violently, filled with adrenaline for which I had no direction. What options did I have?

  “This one is fast,” an Escali woman said as she caught up and abruptly stopped. She had the same alarming look about her, as though mostly person yet part monster, but the protruding bones of her forearms rested against her upper arms since she held her hands loosely at her sides. Every time she switched her attention to something new, whether it was my injury or the other Escali, her movements were quick and her gaze intensive.