“I don’t believe we’ve anything else to bother with here today,” he said. “How far along are you through that book on pre-history agriculture?”
“Ah – err … I’m almost near the end.”
“Almost near the end is not what I wish to hear, Regina. That will be your requirement before suppertime. I’d like that summarized reflection on the chapter on turmeric spices you still owe me finished before bed, if you will. Come along, Dwain.”
Dwain was reclined with arms folded against a cork community bulletin board across from the clerk counter. His listless gaze peered out the barred window that spanned the front of the post office, onto Spiegel Street and into an invisible world of distant reflection. He barely acknowledged the rodent maiden who passed by him flirtatiously with her mail tucked under-arm.
“Dwain Spikeclaw!” He blinked over to Astral, who gestured for him to make haste while Regina drew the hood of her poncho overhead. The mouse politely passed between them to exit into the street.
Dwain shook his senses back into the present.
“I’m comin’, comin’, yeah.”
Astral huffed and guided Regina towards the post office door. As they trotted away from him, Regina said over-shoulder, “Why don’t you bring some of your woodwork next time we come to Keeto Town? Mrs. Pomfrey and Gaelon Wels keep mentioning how talented you are, from what they’ve seen.”
Astral agreed. “Mm’yes. A vendor’s license would be easy to—”
As soon as they reached the door, it swung open and two great shadows filled the entrance with the rich scents of steel and cow hide. Tusked visors seeped out from silhouettes made by afternoon sunlight.
A tightness formed in Dwain’s chest.
These were Alliance soldiers.
“Pardon us,” said one as they bumped awkwardly past Astral and Regina, into the post office lobby.
“Excuse me?!” Astral glared daggers into their backs, but the soldiers ignored him and continued in a straight line towards the counter, where the sleepy postal worker slouched behind it immediately bolted upright, alert.
“The Vidian Civil Alliance requests use of your community bulletin board,” said the other soldier to the clerk. “We come with recruitment forms signed by the Zuut and the Minister of Peace. They’re going up all over the city, but there will be greater benefit if these can be seen by regular traffic – in your post office.”
The postal clerk pointed across the way, past them. “Yes – yes, of course! Right – right over there!”
They turned at the waist. Their visors met Dwain’s transfixed stare. The Alliance soldiers’ steel rectangular eye sockets were black as night, empty of mammality. For a moment, Dwain wondered if they stared directly into him. An icy excitement rippled through his wholeness, sent his spines aquiver.
“Excuse us,” said one of the soldiers when they drew near. Dwain regained the sensation in his limbs and dumbly floundered out of their way. He watched them pin a single flyer over some other less important notices. The soldiers then went on their way without another word.
The flyer was large, printed on egg-white parchment, adorned with prominent colors of the emerald-black flag Dwain had seen the earlier riders brandish. The emblem of the Alliance’s illusory horned stallion towered over Dwain from the centre of the flyer. Sa’suiden runes glowed above and below the emblem in deep golden acrylics.
THE ZUUT NEEDS YOU!
HELP KEEP OUR LANDS FREE AND OUR TRIBES SAFE!
JOIN THE RANKS OF THE VIDIAN CIVIL ALLIANCE TODAY!
ALL APPLICANTS ARE DUE ARRIVAL IN Warminister BY MONTH’S END
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT YOUR Keeto Town OUTPOST!
Dwain stepped back from the bulletin board. Numb enlightenment overcame him. He shook his head, blinked away further stardust. It was then he realized that he stood all alone in the post office lobby.
Alliance, Alliance, Hup hup haw…
Alliance, Alliance, hup hup haw…
Something came over Dwain then. Something he could not explain to himself except for that it was a powerful urge for the flyer. It hypnotized him, and as he stared so deep into the runes until they became almost illegible, the chanting in the streets from his childhood echoed the memories louder, louder, louder.
Alliance, Alliance, Hup hup haw…
Alliance, Alliance, hup hup haw…
I’mma come a knight, yeah. I’mma serve these lands, proud and true, I will
I swear it.
Alliance, Alliance, Hup hup haw…
He peeked over one shoulder. The postal clerk’s back was turned, sorting a new stack of mail into the appropriate boxes directly behind her. Dwain took a deep breath. He turned back around, and as quick as a knife stroke, plucked the Alliance flyer free and darted out into the street before the clerk could even notice.
24. Purring Skies
As the days passed since their trek to Keeto Town, the thought of the Alliance and the opportunities promised by its Civil Peace Corps pervaded Dwain at every moment. And with each thought brought blooming strength to his fragile heart.
The flyer from Keeto’s post office stared up at him, torn and crumpled, creased from the many times he’d folded it away in secret from Regina and Astral. It knew him, what he needed. What he had to do in order to regain a sense of peace in his own life – a sense of peace that Regina had seemingly sequestered so easily through her alchemical studies.
Dwain imagined himself clad in the emerald armour of a Vidian Peace Officer. He saw himself riding among a fleet of proud fell ponies on their way to Keeto Town’s Alliance outpost on Drury Street. He heard the cheers of the grownups, the gasps of their kits as their favourite officers rode past. Dwain felt the fire in his soul, the yearning of these mammals – the justice and protection they desired, and a justice and protection he provided them. Dwain felt for them – and the pride he felt as a peace officer was the very derivative of this. These mammals who cheered and chanted with unbridled pride and awe – they inspired Dwain. His newfound purpose was now a reality: to serve Galheist and the tribes across its very lands with honour, with compassion, with a just paw.
But as he rode through Arks Road, the skies became black with thundering rainclouds. A cloud of dense vapour billowed in from the alleyways. Black smoke appeared overhead Keeto’s hay-thatched roofs. The smell of smouldering harvest filled his nose.
His fell pony became restless. Dwain cooed to it, reeled gently on its reins and realized he was alone in the street. The cheering of the crowds became stillness, a deathly silence beneath faint crackles of flame, the combustion of hay roofs that collapsed within hollow field-rock walls. All around him, the grownups who cheered and chanted, and their kin who clapped and praised, all lay in lifeless piles across blood-stained cobblestone.
Dwain gasped through a shudder of horror.
A voice from the vapour in the streets called to him.
He looked over his pony’s mane. Within the smoke that billowed towards him appeared little skunk kit. She came forward on timid footpads, caressing her bushy tail between trembling paw digits. Her fur was matted to her body by soot and mud. Her eyes were wild with fear, crusted with dried tears. A filthy nightgown clung to her body, smeared with blood that didn’t belong to her.
Dwain gasped. “Reggie…!”
“Don’t leave me…” she said in a quiet voice. “Please … don’t … don’t go…”
Dwain’s fell pony reared up on its hind legs. Lightening crackled, and the devastated Keeton skies were filled with shrill equestrian screams.
He shuddered. Reality brought him back to the loft above Phalanx’s barn. Disturbed eyes fell to the Alliance flyer in his lap. The emblem of the horned stallion stared up at him from the middle of the parchment sheet. He swallowed hard, enveloped by the choking humidity of the barn loft.
Dwain suddenly rose from his spring cot, tossing the flyer onto the pillow. He fled the loft, galloping down the steps that encircled the side of the barn with thundero
us footfalls. He needed to escape the Hollow – even for just an hour or so. Needed to clear his head and evaluate his heart in a space – a neutral space – that allowed for it.
Dwain claimed an errant wood-splitting axe left leaned against Phalanx’s covered oats barrel on the other side of the barn and trotted along the dirt path, towards the incline down to the property’s gate.
Often, over the season, Dwain would leave the Hollow to chop wood without breathing a word of his departure to Regina or Astral. He doubted they ever even noticed, as the few times he peeked in through the study’s window, they were found deeply immersed in alchemical teachings, and never brought up his whereabouts when suppertime came.
Dwain didn’t mind. He liked the solitude, the secret conversations he kept with himself. The peace he found within the Keeton Woods gave him the chance to reflect and truly understand himself in ways where supper-table debates with old, know-it-all, wizard-hogs rarely succeeded.
He departed the Hollow without anyone’s knowledge and spent the rest of the afternoon deep in the Keeton Woods, surrounded by the sounds of rushing streams and bird-song while he sorted through the confliction that brewed within him. He mediated heated conversations between thoughts and emotions, presented evidence of facts and considered speculation of what may come. All the while, the built up week-long stress finally released through swift axe strokes upon soon-splintered hunks of dead sycamore wood.
Dwain wiped sweat from his brow, reached to toss split lumber that flew from the dried-out stump he used to chop with, into a sizable pile of firewood nearby. He placed another virginal log upon the sacrificial altar and hoisted the axe overhead.
Just then, the skies began to hum.
Dwain paused, lowered his wood-splitting axe, and watched a fleet of Alliance airships migrate east – possibly towards Warminister. Purring skies. The sight of them over the Hollow had always filled Dwain with restlessness, made him feel so helpless – trapped. But this afternoon, as the Doblain vessels cruised so seamlessly among the clouds, a calming freeness tingled through his veins.
He knew what must be done.
~
Dwain returned to the Hollow beneath a fiery sky, dragging a net of heavy firewood up along the dirt path. He leaned his axe up against the side of the barn and left the net of firewood beside it. Tired and sore, he climbed the loft stairs with heavy, begrudging, footfalls.
There was a faint glow through the window of his apartment’s door. Dwain slowed before the last few steps, wondering whether or not he’d left a candle lit before leaving for the forest that afternoon. Thoughts of smoke and flame-licked cot sheets taunted him into a sudden lunge up the rest of the stairs. He threw an aching shoulder into the apartment door and braced for the worst.
An oil lantern from the cabin wavered safely-kept flames on the work table in the corner. Regina stood by his cot with her back facing him. She turned around on slow heels.
Total paralysis swept over Dwain.
Regina’s wire spectacles gleamed in dim lamplight when her eyes levelled with him over the top of the discarded Alliance flyer. She uttered only a single sentence – a voice so soft, the gravity of a thousand realizations.
“…You’re leaving us?”
~
Astral took a deep puff from his pipe, filling the kitchen with dense duskroot smoke. The Alliance flyer lay before him at the table with the horned stallion emblem slightly upright due to a horizontal crease in the sheet. He snagged the bottom edge of the flyer with a single hoof clove and dragged it forward to have a better look.
“Interesting,” he said. “Dwain, where did you get this?”
“In Keeto Town – during our last market run.”
“Ah – of course. Says so right here: For more information, see your Keeto Town outpost … so you’ve been chewing on this for at least a week now, then.”
“Am I under trial, yeah?”
Astral blinked back surprise and pushed the flyer away. “Hardly. A scholar just likes to understand all the details. That’s it, really. In the five years we have been in the presence of each other’s fates, I have tried to impart you both the teachings of Mother Azna in ways that complimented your individual needs. Regina learned of Life and Mana. Dwain, you learned of inner reflection and awareness despite the anger that flows through you. Do you feel it is your true purpose to pick up a blade and cause end to another mammal’s life?”
“It’s not about that, Astral!” Dwain rose to a sudden stand, slamming his paws upon the table with such force he nearly spilled their supper all everywhere.
“Dwain, I am not judging your perception,” said Astral from where he sat. “But it is a fact that these peace officers you’ve so idolized since kithood – they carry weapons. Swords. Javelins. Crossbows – Maces, even! I’m not quite clear their purpose; why, if the Zuut has declared peace across the land, does he need an army to contain such a promise? And those horrid horned visors that hide their eyes … they seem nothing more than armoured brutes to me. They impose peace through fear, control. Corruption, indeed, is in the air.”
Dwain shook his head. “The Alliance offers what Alexia the Sage failed to uphold!”
“Oh, no. Not all that again. Don’t speak to me of Retainer nonsense. Now, sit—”
“It is nonsense!” Dwain agreed. “Altus weren’t strong enough t’ withstand the blades and torches of rovin’ canine bandits, and she who promised our aid never came! Alexia Garbonde vanished like – like – like she were nothing ever at all! A coward in the night! Our families, we were like fresh berries straight from the bushel stem! Would it be that way if’n the Alliance were there to aid us?”
“But the Alliance wasn’t there to aid you, either,” Astral said, gravely.
Dwain ignored him. “If there’s anything in me power t’ make sure that somethin’ like Altus never happens again, then I feel a moral obligation to do so! The Alliance offers that chance!”
Regina touched her paw to his. “But – but Dwain. Master Astral is right, those Alliance soldiers are—”
“They’re the only thing keepin’ us wheda safe from another canine attack, that’s wot.”
“By inciting violence and fear?” Astral asked.
“Oi, then!”
“Please, I will not ask you again, sit down. You’ve clearly thought this well over for long enough. Calm yourself and we can talk about this in civility.”
Dwain took a deep breath and slumped back into his chair.
“Thank you,” Astral said with a nod.
Regina examined Dwain with serious eyes from where she sat, beside him. She continued to caress his paw. “You don’t need to do this. I wish there was a way somehow, but – there is nothing in our power that will bring Altus back – our families back! Don’t do this. Please, we need you here in the Hollow—”
“I share Regina’s sentiments,” said Astral. “I see it in your life chart – you are destined for much greater things than to be a government-ordered blood-letter in the name of peace, my boy.”
“So I’m forbidden t’ go,” Dwain said. He shook his paw free from Regina’s touch. “I thought I weren’t a prisoner here, yeah.”
Astral snorted. “Don’t be preposterous!”
“Well it shore sound like it!”
“You’re not, lad. You can go wherever you please in the world, do whatever it is that you want with your life, I suppose. But do you deny that it is our right, as your family, to announce valid displeasure towards your decision?”
Dwain scowled. “I’m still goin’.”
“So you’ve made clear,” said Astral. “When do you intend to part ways with us, Dwain Spikeclaw?”
“The Alliance is takin’ volunteers ‘til the end of the month,” said Dwain. “Says so right in that flyer, yeah. Bet I can make it with plenty oh time to spare if I leave early next week.”
“Next week?!” Regina blared, incredulous. She threw a desperate look Astral’s way. “Master! You can’t seriously consid
er this!”
“Regina, it’s all right.” said Astral.
“No, it’s not—”
“Regina. Stop.” Astral turned his gaze Dwain’s way. “Next week. Hypothetically speaking – say, you sleep on it tonight and feel that the decision is still true to your heart in the morning. How will you get to Warminister?”
“Purchase a pony from the livery in Keeto, o’course.”
“There could be bandits along the way. Even if you make it to Warminister with all your limbs still attached, what makes you believe the Alliance will recruit you?”
Dwain blinked. “I’m able-bodied and of age. Why wouldn’t they?”
Astral leaned over the table with elbows folded. Radiant orbs shimmered from beneath a wide pointed hat brim. His shadow seeped across the crumpled flyer. “And you are sure this is what you wish to accomplish? Your heart yearns for this most of all?”
“More than anything in the world,” Dwain whispered.
Regina threw herself away from the table. Quiet whimpers filled the study as she fled into the Hollow with the slam of the front door her final protest.
Dwain watched her go, but a heavy weight of betrayal kept him firm in his seat. Shameful eyes clenched shut to keep guilty tears at bay.
“Do not worry. The bond you share will never wither,” Astral said. “She may think so, but it will not.”
“I’ll go talk with her, yeah,” Dwain said. He started up out of his seat when Astral stopped him.
“I cannot stop you from going to Warminister,” he said. “I do not understand, nor do I support your infatuation with the Alliance. We do not see eye to eye on many occasion, and I know that you are wary of the influence I hold over your sister. I do not blame you. I’ve done you both a great disservice.”
Dwain blinked at him. “What are you talkin’ about, then, yeah?”
Astral stared at him with a sobered expression. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Dwain Spikeclaw. You’re no delusional hedgehog. You’ve remained here at the Hollow only for Regina’s sake when you could have easily fled into the night in search of vengeance, in search of the others. That was my undoing. I failed you.”
The Book of Wind: Page 18
