“Through it all, they continued to make their slow circuit of the land mass of the world. Their crafts narrowed to things that could be done more easily while traveling. No longer did they make swords or large wooden pieces. Knives and other small metal objects easily made on transportable forges, clothing, and other items were their stock and store.
“And music. The People loved their music. Some made instruments, lutes, lyres, fiddles, and wind instruments, but all of the People sang and danced. You have to understand, when the world has taken all from you, even the common decency due to all men, music has a way of lifting the spirits, making the heart free. So it was that music became such an important part of life for the People.”
Darun scanned his audience. Others had come to hear, though Aeden’s attention was only on the storyteller. The man smiled and nodded his head. He seemed to like the number of his listeners to grow.
“For over thirty years the People traveled. Sometimes they were treated fairly, but most often not. Even in places they were not shunned or threatened, there was never an offer to stay, to settle and become as others. This idea, to stay in one place, became a source of contention amongst them.
“Some among the grand caravan wanted to go back to their lives as they were before the exodus. Others, taking up the spirit of the music and the freedom that comes from not being tied to one location, argued that they must continue to move. This caused the first great rift.
“Every day, some would leave the caravan, sneak off to go settle somewhere as the stationary folk do. It can only be surmised that they succeeded in assimilating into the different nations and lost their love of the road. They stopped being of the People.
“Those who continued disagreed at times also. The structure of order started out as patriarchal, one elder head of the entire group, but that soon ended when he died, as heirs squabbled over who was to take leadership. This caused further splinterings as whole groups of the People left the grand caravan.
“As they came back full circle to Agypten, ready to reap their reward and finally regain their land, they were shocked yet again that they were refused entrance. The king had died and his son ruled. The new king had no place for traveling craftsmen and musicians and declared in no uncertain terms that they must leave his lands, upon pain of death.
“The People sent emissaries to speak to the king directly, reminding him of the service they had rendered, proclaiming the name of Agypten throughout the world, but he would hear none of it. He made a formal declaration that any of the People found on his land, one or a thousand, would be hanged as criminals. They had no choice but to withdraw and begin their traveling anew.
“Some among the People had learned things from their travels. During that time, there was more magic in the world, and some particularly clever or gifted members of the caravan learned things and passed them to others. Fortune telling, potent curses, things such as these, were incorporated into their lives, even sold for money. But the most important use was the one they directed at the king who had spurned them.
“All of those with magical talents coordinated their efforts in a lengthy and complex ritual of cursing before they left Agypten land. They created a curse so potent, its like has not been seen since.
“Its effect was simple enough, even if its casting was not. The king would be murdered within a score of days, and the civil war caused by his death would weaken the nation to the extent that neighboring nations could take advantage and overwhelm them.
“Within the allotted time, the king was murdered by a trusted advisor. Within a year, Agypten was no more, its lands carved up and taken by other nations.
“Still, the People had no home, so they began to travel again. On their circuit, they found that the rumors had spread…and changed. They were now the lowest of men, not to be trusted and to be shunned where possible. They were treated even more poorly than before. And they had been given a name. Because of their proclamation of their former nation during their travels, they had been named Gypta, a name synonymous with the lowly. In fact, in the ancient writings in the language Alaqotim, Gyptuman means lowly or despised, though whether that came from the name of the people or the name of the people came from that term is unclear.”
Darun looked at the old woman Aeden had seen before. She sat down next to Fahtin, drawing Aeden’s eyes there, and was shaking her head. She wore a sullen expression. “Of course,” the leader continued, “Jehira has other ideas about our history, but that is perhaps an argument for another time.
“Let us leave it at the traveling people, the Gypta, are reviled and spit upon in the world, but it matters little to us. We have always been set apart from others, and our songs and crafts keep us busy and our fires keep us warm. Perhaps we will settle down again someday, but I cannot see doing that. Why would we give up the ability to go where we will and chase the wind? Why would we want to put down roots and be unable to move? No, to be Gypta means to be free, and to be free? Well, I will let music do our talking where words fail.”
He clapped his hands. “Let us show Aeden from the Cridheargla how the Gypta celebrate life, how we take that which has been thrust upon us and draw from it happiness.”
Others had joined the crowd during the story, some with instruments. Many of the objects had strings on them, but some were also held to the mouth and blown through to make sound. Others were coming, Aeden saw, and soon the strains of music washed over him.
They soothed him in a way he had never felt. He was still in pain from his wounds, but as the sounds vibrated through him, he felt like getting up and dancing. The only music he had been exposed to in the clans was that of funeral dirges. This was new, exciting, and pleasurable. He lay there, propped up, and closed his eyes. He could feel the smile crawling across his face as he did so.
14
It was almost two weeks before the boy was moving around relatively comfortably, Fahtin dogging his every step. His wounds had healed well, and though he still moved carefully as if he had aches and pains, he was in surprisingly good shape for someone who had been so close to death. He began walking the camp, using a stick as support. Within a few days, he was using it only for balance, or just in case he should fall. Each day, he seemed a little stronger.
Fahtin found him fascinating. She had never met a young Crow before and wanted to learn everything about him.
Besides his walking, he also practiced some kind of dance consisting of what looked like fighting movements. He did it each day, very slowly, seeming frustrated when he lost balance. In those cases, he would set his jaw, start from the beginning again, and do it all over. Each night, he fell into his cot right after eating the evening meal and went immediately to sleep. She was exhausted just watching him.
She sat on a log at the edge of a small clearing, watching the boy. He had healed and was able to move about, hardly ever showing that his wounds still pained him. At the moment, he was doing those strange exercises he did every day.
She had been the one who found him as she was out gathering wood for their evening fires. He’d been a mass of bruises and cuts and seemed like a corpse already, though his chest did move with shallow breaths.
He had looked like he had been through a battle, but the area didn’t look it. There was some trampling of the vegetation around where he lay, but no significant damage to nearby trees or shrubs, no blood, and nothing else that indicated he had fought back or that anyone else had been attacked. Well, except for the other boy twenty feet or so away.
The other boy looked to have tried to run or to defend himself, as evidenced by the more pronounced bruising on his forearms from trying to block blows. His damage was more severe, too, not as precise. Wilder. He was dead of his wounds. Neither boy bled much, so Fahtin’s father stated that they had not been attacked with weapons, even blunt ones like a cudgel or a quarter staff. No, they had been beaten to death with bare hands. Almost to death, in Aeden’s case.
Aeden was now unrecognizable from that discolor
ed lump of flesh she had found. Her heart had sunk when she had really taken a good look at his injuries, when she had gone to get her father and others. She had expected him to die while she was fetching help.
But he didn’t, and though he was thinner than he probably was before his injuries, he looked human again. Even in the last week, he seemed to be putting on a little weight, eating as much as any three other people in the caravan. He looked to be a victim of starvation, but he would fill out. She wondered what he would look like when that happened.
He moved with the grace of a dancer, like one of the Gypta. It intrigued her. His red-brown hair, matted and tangled when they first found him, had been shaved off so his head could be inspected for wounds. It was just fuzz covering his skull, but he looked good with it short like that.
He really was very handsome and exotic. She’d never seen eyes like his, the same color as the shallow waters of the Aesculun Sea far to the south, a blue-green she found fascinating. Her heart leapt when she thought what he would look like when he had regained his normal appearance. How he looked already did things to her body that were at once mysterious and exciting.
She thrust the thought from her mind and watched him more intently. He started his exercises the same way every day, going through slow movements, turning, balancing on one leg, dropping low to the ground. As he proceeded, his speed would increase, just a little at a time. It took him almost half an hour to work up to his full speed, but once he did, it was clear what the exercise movements were.
He was fighting as if surrounded by invisible foes. He whirled, struck out with his hands, feet, knees, and elbows. He evaded, blocked, and moved about with such grace and flexibility, it was hard to believe this was the same boy who just a few weeks before couldn’t even lift his head. And he was not healed completely yet. How fast could he move when whole and healthy?
Aeden stopped, as he always did, with his right knee bent, left leg straight out behind him, left arm above his head—forearm parallel to the ground—and his right arm thrust out in a fist, as if he was lunging in and striking someone in the belly. Then he stood and turned to her.
He wore a sheen of sweat, and nothing else above his waist. His clothes, ruined from his attack, had been replaced with Gypta clothing, the loose, colorful pants allowing him to do his movements without obstruction. He was thin, but he still showed wiry strands of muscle through his torso and arms. There did not appear to be any fat at all on the boy. She wondered if that would change if he kept eating as he had been.
He also had scars, many of them. Shoulders, arms, some across the chest and on his back. Fahtin was glad he didn’t have any on his face. She had heard that the clan savages liked scars on the face, but his sweet, smooth, boyish face would not wear them well, she thought. She pondered that face as his pale eyes met hers.
He smiled that boyish grin he sometimes wore, and she was grateful that his attack did not knock out any teeth. That was a wonder to her, with how much damage there was to the rest of his body.
“You do those exercises without fail every day, at least since you were healed enough to do so,” she said to him. “You seem committed, so intense.”
“Aye,” he said. She liked his voice. It wasn’t deep yet, though she thought it would be in a year or two, but it was just…pleasant. And she liked that accent, so unfamiliar to her. “I am not fully healed yet, and the time when I was unable to train has made me slow and weak, but it feels good to do them again.”
“Why do you work so hard at it?” she asked.
“My father used to say, ‘If you’re going to take the time to do something, then you better do it well.’” As he spoke, his brows drew down and his eyes grew cloudy, almost liquid. He dropped his gaze to the ground. “Hmm.”
“What are you thinking?” she said. “What just occurred to you?”
His eyes snapped up to hers as if he had forgotten she was there.
“I just thought of something about what my father did. It’s nothing.”
Fahtin stood up and went to him, taking one of his hands and pulling him toward the log where she had been sitting.
“Aeden,” she said. “Tell me about it. Please. It’s obvious that it’s a painful memory. It helps to share things like that. We can talk about it, or I can just listen silently, but I would like to know.”
He looked at her dispassionately. He always seemed so calm and in control, not at all like the other boys his age in the caravan. What kind of life had he led that would turn him into a grown man inside at fourteen? Like most girls, she was more mature than her male counterparts, but he seemed…old. He seemed like an adult, with adult stresses and responsibilities. It broke her heart.
His eyes flicked to his hand, still clasped in hers, and back to her face.
“I will tell you.” He gently pulled his hand from hers and put it with the other in his lap.
“My father is the chieftain of our clan, a leader and a great warrior. He proved his valor and skill in many battles with the other clans and in hunts.”Aeden studied his hands for a moment, wringing them and turning them about. “That night, when I was cast from our clan and beaten, the responsibility was his to strike the final blow. He told us this himself. The other boy, Seam, and me. His father, Dor was also there, and was to strike the final blow on his own son.
“As I have said, my father is a skilled warrior. When he struck the final blow, it was to end my suffering, end the ritual beating. To kill me. It did not, obviously. But why? Why am I not dead?”
“Because he spared you,” Fahtin said. “Because he loved you.”
“It is not so easy a thing as that,” Aeden said. “If it was an accident, if he tried and thought he succeeded in striking that final, merciful blow to end my suffering, why am I not dead? If he tried but failed, then he is not as competent a warrior as I believed, and he is less in my eyes.”
“But—”
Aeden raised his hand to stall out her objection. “My second thought is this. If he is in fact a skilled warrior, controlled and capable and able to direct a blow that can kill, why did he not do so? Was it because I embarrassed him and our family so much that he wanted me to suffer longer? Even if it was because, as you say, he loved me, why did he put me before clan? To disobey a tradition as old as the clans themselves shows a flaw in his character that is wholly unworthy of a chief.”
Fahtin put her finger under his chin and raised it so she could look in his eyes. The pain swirling in those eyes made hers water.
“So you see my conundrum,” he continued. “Either my father hated me so much that he wanted to prolong my agony beyond what tradition dictated, he is an incompetent warrior, or he is not as loyal to the clan as he should be. All of these things are troubling.”
He blinked three times and the glaze that had come over his eyes cleared away. He looked into hers, focused on them, and forced a smile onto his face. “But his advice is still good. If I am to do something, I will do it with my whole heart and everything I can muster. So, my dear Fahtin, my savior and nurse, that is why I exercise intensely.”
It felt as if she had been staring into storm clouds, anticipating rain and thunder and lightning, and then they cleared to a bright blue sky. She smiled back at him and saw his transform into a more sincere one.
“I understand,” she said. “I know no one else like you, Aeden of Clan Tannoch. You are unique.”
“No. I am different than you in some ways, but the same as others of my clan. Within us, all people are the same, I think, even if you do have some ideas and customs that are strange to my mind.”
“We have strange customs?” she said. “This from a boy who was beaten nearly to death for failing a test?”
“Aye. Maybe we both have strange customs. To each other.” He got up from the log and put his hand out to her. “Let’s go see if your father needs any work from me. I am ashamed of the care I have received and the food I eat without repaying your family’s kindness.”
Fahtin to
ok his hand and followed him toward the main fire pit. “You are unique to me, Aeden. I think you are probably unique even within your own clan.”
15
Darun did, in fact, have chores for Aeden to perform. The next day, the caravan would be moving on again, continuing in the perpetual travels, so there were preparations to make. The clan boy was uncomfortable with what this might mean to him. Would they cast him out, or would they allow him to travel with them until they came to a settlement where he could live? He could no longer go back to his own clan’s lands, and if he tried to assimilate into another clan, he would be killed on the spot at the worst or cast out anew at the best.
His tasks involved mainly getting firewood and helping the old soothsayer Jehira gather herbs before they left the area. He knew many of the herbs, ones that grew around his home as well, so they were pleased with his help.
Fahtin, though she had work of her own, as all the young women in the caravan did, stayed with him for a few hours, helping to forage. He taught her about some of the herbs they gathered, and she was a quick student.
The day passed quickly. The family prepared an evening feast as a celebration of moving on to a new location, a new adventure. It created a lump in Aeden’s throat that, though they had never said so, it was for him and his healing that the caravan had stopped for so long. Even if only for that, he owed them a debt of gratitude.
“What is it to be tonight?” Darun asked the family gathered around him. “Who will tell a tale of daring, of adventure,” he looked to the young women in a bunch off to his left, “or of romance and undying love?” The girls giggled and some of them blushed. “Who will give us a story to start off the festivities?”
There were often stories around the fire at night, but this was the first time Aeden had seen the entire family gathered as one. Usually there were several fires and groups, simply because it was difficult for so many to physically fit around one fire. They were nearly two hundred strong. The problem was solved by digging four new fire pits in a location a short distance away from the one Aeden usually frequented. It was usually Darun who told the stories around his fire, so the call for a teller surprised Aeden.
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