by K. J. Nessly
Lindsey looked at him dubiously. “I thought the Elves didn’t associate with humans. Why would they create such a place for us?”
Jasse nodded slowly. “That is very true, the Elves prefer not to associate with humans, but Guardians are not mere humans.”
“How can we not be human?” Amy asked.
“I saidmere human, not human.”
“Are you trying to say that there’s a difference?”
“Mere humans don’t have the gifts you do. In order for you to have any powers at all, there must be an Elf in your lineage somewhere.”
“But there is no record of an Elf in my family line,” Cassandra objected.
Jasse smiled at her. “There wouldn’t be. If an Elf marries a human they reject the ways of their people. In a sense they almost become human. They retain their power but they lose their immortality.”
“How far back can the Elf be in your lineage?” Luke asked.
“He, or she, could be your first ancestor.”
“If the Elf is that far back, how come I am the first in my line to exhibit gifts?” Rachel asked.
“Elf traits are dominant, but they won’t surface unless the personality of their progeny is compatible with the gift they carry,” Jasse explained. “The longer it waits the more potency it loses, although it takes thousands of years for it to degrade enough to be worthless.”
“So in a sense,” David said slowly. “The gift chooses you?”
“You could put it that way, yes.”
Natalie piped up. “You said that the power slowly degrades over time, but what would happen if your mother or father was an Elf?”
“Then your powers would be among the strongest ever seen, you also might have two dominate powers,” Jasse replied slowly. “Although such a case has not been seen since the foundation of the Guardians.”
David knew that if Jasse’s suspicions about Kathryn were true, his last comment was a lie, but remained silent and instead asked, “What ifboth of your parents were Elves?”
“You wouldn’t be here,” Jasse replied without pause, then, realizing David meant in relation to power-strength said, “You would definitely have two dominate powers and both would be incredibly strong.” He gave David an intense look, motioning ever so slightly with his eyes to where Kathryn sat a few horses to his right. Fortunately for both of them, the object of their attention was focused on the treeline and missed the byplay between them.
David understood the message: befriend Kathryn and learn the extent of her powers. Who knew, they could have a half-Elf among them. Perhaps Kathryn knew who her parents were and just wasn’t at liberty to reveal her heritage.
“Enough questions!” Jasse exclaimed as Tyler opened his mouth to ask another. “Come, explore your new home.”
“Iknew they weren’t telling us everything at school,” Tyler muttered as they moved forward.
The group dismounted and moved in different directions. Cassandra, Lindsey, and Natalie moved towards the house, the boys headed for the barn, Rachel, Elizabeth, and Leia went behind the house, while Jenna, Amy and Kathryn headed for the garden.
Inside the house the three girls were in heaven.
Natalie immediately shot up one of the curving wooden staircases in the southern corner of the house. It led first to a small alcove landing on the second floor that opened up onto long hallway with multiple doors on either side. Opening the first door revealed an armory filled to capacity with every weapon she’d ever trained with at school; as well as a few she wasn’t familiar with. Sufficiently bored, she returned to the spiral staircase. It ended at the second floor, but two smaller staircases were quietly tucked away into small niches in the far corners of the house. She picked one and continued her journey upward.
The stairway continued upward past a small landing with a wooden door which, after Natalie’s rampant curiosity got the better of her, led to a small, but comfortably appointed room with windows on two of the walls. A quick glance inside was all she needed to take the measure of the room and in another heartbeat she’d shut the door and hurried upward, pausing on the second and third landings to peer inside each room, hoping fervently that there would be something to distinguish each room from its predecessor. She was to be disappointed. Each room was exactly alike. With a pout, she flounced back down to the second floor and resumed her exploration. Opposite the door she’d originally opened was another bedroom. And this one garnered her attention. It differed from the other three she’d explored for two reasons. One, it was bigger. Not by a massive amount of space, but enough that it was noticeable. And secondly, this room possessed a desk and chair along with small niches in the walls for scrolls and other items that could be stored there. Two important details that none of the other rooms possessed.
In that instant, Natalie made up her mind. This room was to be her room. She didn’t care who she had to fight for it. Further along the hallway she discovered four bathing rooms, two on either side of the hall, another armory, an empty room, and another bedroom identical to the other on the same floor.
Satisfied that she’d sufficiently explored the upstairs, and found a room that would be perfect for her, she returned to the ground floor and gave her report to the other girls upon entering the kitchen. “The second floor has two bedrooms, the bathing rooms, and armories,” she said briskly. “The corners each have three levels of bedrooms. Which means that we all get our own rooms,” she squealed excitedly. “Unfortunately they’re all identical.” After sharing a room with another student for over a decade, the appeal of having her own room was intoxicating. Even if it was barely fit for a peasant. Her excited exclamation fell on deaf ears without an audience, in her excitement she hadn’t noticed that the kitchen was empty, and with a huff she turned on her heel to find someone to relay her news to. Her target was just entering the kitchen on her heels.
Lord Jasse had followed them into the house and, having heard her exclamation, said, “Early on the Guardians learned that they needed a room apart from the others to spend some time alone and in peace,” he explained to her, “Your bedroom is your sanctuary, and no one may enter unless you give them permission. As to your claim that they’re identical, your own personal tastes and preferences will set it apart from the others.”
“And we can decorate it any way we want?” Natalie asked hopefully.
Lord Jasse threw back his head and laughed. “Yes, Natalie, you may decorate it any way you like.”
“Look at this kitchen!” Cassandra shrieked as she entered the kitchen, her eyes wide with enthusiasm. Natalie turned around, arms flung wide as she spun in a circle to take in the kitchen that should have belonged in a castle.
Cass raced by her, her arms outstretched to open one of the cabinets. “Look at this!” she giggled happily as she quickly busied herself opening every door she could reach. “I could feed an entire army with this kitchen!” The kitchen was indeed large enough to feed an army, comprised of two sinks, two fireplaces for cooking, two brick ovens on either side of each fireplace, and about thirty cupboards—several of which had multiple drawers and sections. It was a kitchen that many manor cooks would have been jealous of. As she spoke she opened every one and peered inside, taking inventory of the dishes and cutlery.
“You may arrange the kitchen in any way you wish,” Lord Jasse smiled as Cass frowned thoughtfully into one particular cabinet. “You aren’t required to keep it the same way as those before you.”
“Oh good!” Cassandra said as she rushed back to one of the first cupboards she had looked inside. “It’s more logical to keep the bowls by the plates instead of the cooking pans. I’m not sure what the last cook was thinking organizing the kitchen like this,” she muttered as she proceeded to begin removing every bowl from the shelving, stacking them in neat piles on the countertops. She paused, running her hand over the wood noting the deep slices and gouges that would need to be filled in to prevent contamination. “This is going to need refinishing,” she said aloud, making a
mental note to get it taken care of soon.
“As I said earlier,” Jasse reiterated. “You are free to do anything you like to the kitchen.”
Cass tipped her head to one side, considering. “You wouldn’t happen to know which of the boys are really good at woodwork would you?”
The older man thought for a moment. “Daniel might be a good choice, so would Tyler,” he suggested.
She nodded appreciatively and went back to her task of rearranging the various utensils, bowls, plates, and cutting boards.
Natalie, who had since finished exploring the kitchen and had moved on to bigger and better surprises, burst back into the room. “The sitting room will need to be redone,” she announced with a dramatic sigh. “All those dark colors. It’s so drab and dreary.” Flouncing to the other side of the kitchen she surveyed the landscape. “Oh! A warming oven! That’s going to come in handy.”
“And that’s not all.” Jasse pointed to a small door in the wall. “That door leads to the cellar—
Before he could finish his sentence, Cassandra and Natalie had raced down the steps that led below. Deciding not to follow, Jasse listened to Cassandra’s delighted cries as she discovered the hidden treasures in the cellar. Finally he heard them coming back up.
Breathless with excitement Cassandra looked at him, her eyes shining with delight. “It’s even better than I imagined it.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Jasse smiled.
Natalie looked around. “Where’s Lindsey?”
Before Jasse could reply, the two girls raced off through the house, calling for Lindsey. Knowing that they would find her in the parlor, looking through the library, he moved outside toward the barn.
In the barn the boys couldn’t believe their eyes. “We have livestock?” Tyler asked in surprise as he looked around.
David chuckled as he nodded towards the three dairy cows. “It would appear so.”
Luke frowned. “I don’t know how to milk a cow,” he admitted.
“I’ll teach you,” Matt promised a wicked grin on his face. “In fact I’ll teach all of you.”
David grinned back. “No need to teach me. I know how.”
“Hey guys!” Daniel called from further back, “We have beef cattle back here.”
Baaaah.
“And goats it would appear,” David said dryly as the bleating of a very annoyed goat reached his ears.
Luke looked at David. “What do we use goats for?”
Matt stared at him, stunned. “You mean to tell me you don’t know what a goat is used for?”
Luke turned to face him. “I was too busy practicing my swordplay to worry about how to use a goat,” he returned slightly flustered.
David fought a grin. Luke was an excellent warrior, one might even say his friend was on the cusp of being considered a “super warrior”. At court Luke could manage to charm the shoes off a noblewoman, but put him on a farm, despite all the training, and the charming warrior would be totally and completely lost.
Matt grinned. “This is going to be fun. I get to teach the warrior here how to live on a farm.”
David chuckled, grinning at Luke. “I’d say you are in trouble.”
“Nice of you to notice,” Luke muttered. “I see you aren’t offering to rescue me.”
“The last time I tried to “rescue” you, you smacked me upside my head.”
Luke grinned broadly, remembering. “Oh yeah. I forgot about that.”
Daniel rejoined them before David could reply. “We’ve got three dairy cows, eight beef cows, one bull, six goats, and some sheep…somewhere,” he said, brushing off pieces hay that had attached themselves to his clothing and were, at the moment, proving impossible to remove.
“What do you mean somewhere?” Tyler asked.
Daniel brushed harder at the straw before finally giving up with a noise of exasperation. “Meaning I hear them, but I can’t see them.
The door opened and David turned to see Lord Jasse join them. “Have you checked out the loft yet?” he asked casually, pointing to the almost invisible ladder in one corner of the barn.
Immediately Daniel and Tyler raced up the ladder and pulled themselves up into the loft.
“We have now,” David replied.
Jasse shook his head in amazement. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say they were mountain migpens.”
“You and me both,” Luke agreed.
Laughing Jasse nodded up to where large golden squares sat near the edge of the loft. “Have you ever pitched hay?”
“No.”
Grinning at Luke’s mournful tone Jasse nodded towards a pitchfork standing upright against the wall, “It definitely gives your muscles a work out and it’s excellent for conditioning muscles for swordplay.”
“Don’t tell Matt that or he’ll have me pitching hay all day,” Luke groaned.
Jasse left David laughing at his friend and left the barn, heading behind the house.
Meanwhile Rachel, Elizabeth, and Leia were discovering a river behind the house. For a moment they stood stunned, then Rachel, tired and extremely hot from their journey, not bothering to change her clothes, leapt into the water, Elizabeth and Leia following quickly. For a few moments they laughed and shrieked as they splashed each other with the cold water. Then, reluctantly, they climbed out and stood on the bank, the warm sun quickly began to dry their clothes.
The river, they observed, was about thirty feet wide and, at least where they had been, and over a meter deep in the middle. The water was clear and cool with smooth stones littering the bottom.
“This is amazing,” Leia laughed as she wrung the water from her hair. “Fresh water every day, and we didn’t have to dig a well.”
“Not to mention a quick way to cool down in the heat of the day,” Rachel added bouncing up and down, her head pulled to one side, trying to get water out of her ears.
Elizabeth started to comment when then noticed something. “Look!” she cried, pointing across the river. “A training field.”
Rachel and Leia noticed what they had been too excited to see while immersing themselves in the river, a fact that would have earned them a slap to the head by one of their instructors for their inattention had they still been at school. Beyond the river was a fully functional training field. Together they crossed the river to the other side to get a closer look.
There were seven archery positions, each with four group targets. Each group of targets had different sizes, positioned at different angles. The target groups were positioned about fifty paces apart.
On the other side of the field was a jousting fence and in between the archery targets and jousting fence was a large space for swordplay or hand-to-hand combat practice. Just beyond the fencing field was a tall masonry wall that resembled a castle keep. It looked as though someone had started to build a castle and stopped when the archer’s towers and infantry gate were finished. There were several like it at the school and they were used for mock sieges and tactical planning sessions.
Rachel remembered one particular time where her “teammates” during one such siege had shot arrows into the mortar for her to use as handholds while another “team” had worked hard to protect their “keep”. Too bad she had slipped and fallen on her backside halfway up causing her team to lose the fight.
Elizabeth spotted Lord Jasse moving to join them and waved.
When he reached them, Rachel looked him up and down. “How did you cross the river without getting wet?” she demanded.
Grinning, Jasse pointed to a small bridge they hadn’t noticed, adding a second phantom headslap to their growing repertoire for the day, and then asked, “What do you think?”
“How in the world did they manage to locate a place like this and claim it before the nobles did?” Elizabeth asked.
Jasse laughed. “Because the nobles don’t know about it.”
“Let me guess,” Rachel said quickly. “Elf magic.”
“Good guess.”
Sudden
ly Leia was struck with a thought. “What do we do for water in the winter?” She asked. “We’re south enough for this area to receive a lot of snow in the winter.”
“Good question, but you needn’t worry, the river won’t freeze over. At least, not unless you experience a deep freeze.”
“Why not?”
Rachel intervened before Jasse could reply. “Elf Magic.”
“You catch on quick.”
Leaving them to return to their water-play, their dripping clothes and hair had been the first thing he’d noticed upon catching up to them, he went searching for the last group of Dragons.
Kathryn, Amy, and Jenna opened the gate that led to the spacious garden. Destiny flew down and perched on the fence as the three girls knelt down to inspect the growth that was just beginning to appear.
“I think this is cermia,” Jenna observed, referring to a sweet seed that grew in bundles, as she pulled out some weeds that had taken root.
“This is definitely sirime and ahrea,” Amy called from the other end of the garden. “Fresh sallat greens directly from our garden, any time we desire them! Oh, I can’t wait!”
“I’ve got reghire and shcein,” Kathryn called quietly as she ran her hands over fresh growth sprouting up from the ground. The red and green roots were a basic staple of sallats and were delicious when stewed. The smell alone was strong enough to permeate the air and rarely was a dinner gong needed when the two ingredients were included in that night’s meal.
Jenna found hermea, a thick bulbous root that was blue and tasted good in stews, artise, a thin round tubular root that was used to add flavor to nearly every recipe, and verisce a few rows down from the cermia. “I hope everyone likes verisce,” she commented sticking her hands into the dirt, feeling the thick, brown tubular root that would produce a fluffy yellow center when cooked that was excellent when paired with butter from cow’s milk and schein.
Amy looked up from the plant she had been inspecting. “Why do you say that?”
“Because there looks to be about six rows of them!” Jenna laughed.
