by Randi Darren
“Uh-huh. Not every slave is so casual after being freed, you know. Quite a few attack afterwards. Not that I blame them. I’m just a human to them, after all,” Vince said with a grin.
“You’re far from a normal human. Far from it,” whispered Meliae.
Chapter 6
Vince woke up slowly through the fog of dreams. Blearily, he cracked open his eyes to find Fes sprawled out on her back next to him.
One of her strong forearms was laid out on his chest and one of her legs over his hips. Grinning, he gingerly folded her arm in, and then her leg. Carefully, he pulled the covers over her and slipped out of bed.
She snorted once but otherwise fell back asleep, drool trailing down her cheek.
Trying not to laugh at his very Orc bedmate, he slunk from their bedroom, closing the door behind him.
Ghosting along the hallway to the dining room and attached kitchen, Vince let his mind wander. He started cataloging what he’d need to take care of, both around the house and the forest.
Population check, secure the house and surrounding areas. Check the fringes for humans or sign of them. Secure and make sure all caches are intact. Go look for mo—
Vince’s brain hit a wall when he looked into his kitchen to find Meliae seated at the table. She had a low bowl full of dried berries, nuts, and a small chunk of cured meat.
Her eyes flitted to him as he entered and she gave him a wide smile.
“Morning to you, Vince. Your cellars are well stocked,” said the Dryad. Her voice sounded more vibrant today. While she had looked visibly improved in the last day, maybe she had still been recovering.
“Thank you. I strive to have as much food on hand as I possibly can. You never know when a storm will come through,” Vince said, forcing one foot in front of the other again.
She’d taken up residence in one of the bedrooms that had never been anything more than… empty. His parents had planned to have more children but hadn’t done so. He’d never asked them, but it seemed after having him they had changed their minds.
“Wise. I’d like to build a house of glass attached to the side of the house. I was… caught… while I was inspecting such a marvel. Everything inside was protected from the elements and warm.” Meliae turned back to her meal.
Bending low, he opened a cabinet and peered in.
In the kitchen, he kept all the nonperishable goods. Tin and glass jars lined the cabinet, labeled by a wax crayon.
He’d salvaged tin storage containers and glass jars with watertight lids.
They were worth their weight in gold. There really weren’t too many comparative alternatives for food storage.
Many a home and house had been ransacked by Vince in the Wastes for all his pickling jars in the basement.
Vince settled for a near-identical meal as Meliae’s and another that looked like it could be described as a “meat plate.”
Vince sat down at the table along with the two plates.
He put the one similar to the Dryad’s in front of himself and the other to the side of it. Dropping two water skins down next to the plates, he looked to Meliae.
“I take it you’ve decided to remain for a time?” Vince asked casually as he picked up a handful of dried blueberries.
“I have. I could leave easily enough and simply replant elsewhere. I choose not to. My freedom is mine. Besides, your body is providing more nutrients than my tree would ever receive in natural soil. Not a big tree, but a very strong tree,” said the Dryad, nodding her head.
“As you like,” Vince said, not really wanting to talk about trees growing in him and how strong they were. “That would be a greenhouse, by the way. The house of glass. We could probably do that. Won’t be easy, though. Glass isn’t the easiest thing in the world to bring all the way out here. We can make a special trip to Knight’s Ferry during next summer though for it. Will probably have some glass blowers trying to offload product.” Vince took a big bite of a dried apple slice and shrugged his shoulders.
“That’ll be fine. We can set about creating my garden ahead of that. It’ll be harder to keep it alive during the winter, but… doable,” said the Dryad.
Meliae hesitated, munching on a few nuts. She clearly had more to ask or say.
Vince didn’t pressure her; she’d speak when she was ready, and only then.
Instead, he focused on his meal.
Why is snake meat so strange when cured? He really didn’t care for snake meat, but he knew their reflexes and speed would only continue to help him. Especially with how often he kept getting hurt lately.
“Why do you agree so easily? You eat with me as if it were nothing. You keep a warrior Orc as a—” Meliae stopped. Vince had to wonder if she was searching for a word she liked. “Mate. It’s abnormal.”
Vince shrugged his shoulders. “I would agree with you. Up until Fes, I honestly killed any Waster that I came across that was hostile. Then I met her and… well, things change, I guess.”
“Waster?” Meliae asked.
“Err, inhabitant of the Wastes. Wastelanders. Wasters.”
“Wastes. Was it not always as it is today?”
“No, not at all. In fact, it was part of a fairly large human country. Your kind, and all of the Wastelanders, didn’t even exist one hundred years ago.”
Meliae frowned, her brow furrowing. “I had no idea. Well, I’m glad for your recent change. How exactly did you take… Fes… for a mate?”
“Hm. Honestly, it’s a little odd. She was starving out in the plains. She had originally planned to steal our meat supply. One of my clients noticed her. We ended up fighting. I won. Then… I realized what her problem was. I gave her all the game I’d caught that day and… left her there.”
Vince picked up a flask of water and took a sip.
Meliae nodded her head slowly.
“After that, she didn’t show up again until I was ambushed by six crocs. I think it was six? Anyways. Crocs ambushed me. I killed a number of them but was simply over run. Fes showed up, threatened them, and dragged me away as I blacked out. And there’s the story.”
Meliae chuckled throatily. She tilted her head to the side, white hair fanning out.
“You realize how unlikely that all is?” asked the Dryad.
Vince shrugged yet again. “Doesn’t change how it happened.”
From down the hallway, he heard Fes stumble out of bed. She wasn’t a quiet morning person.
The door opened and Fes’s heavy footfalls came towards them.
Smirking, Vince watched as the Orc woman looked first to the Dryad, then him. Her dark eyes were coming to life from the land of her dreams.
He gestured to the meat plate set at his side, then pushed a skin of water next to it.
Fes gave him a broad, sleepy grin and sat into the chair next to him taking the proffered plate and skin.
“Vince, thank you,” murmured the Orc. A green hand reached across the table and patted his forearm.
“Course, Fes. Need anything else?”
“No. Good. Happy.” Fes picked up a section of meat and started in on it.
The warrior woman’s eyes closed and she rested her elbows on the table, eating her breakfast while practically dozing.
“Any other surprises? Other than taming one of the fiercest Orc women I’ve ever seen, living in a… Waster-inhabited forest, and purchasing and freeing slaves?” Meliae asked, her full lips curling up into a bright smile.
Vince said nothing, not wanting to admit anything further about how different he was.
Instead, he tried changing the subject.
Turning to Fes, he reached over and laid a hand on her wrist.
Two sleepy black eyes opened and focused on him at the touch.
“I need to travel the forest for a few days. Will probably head out after breakfast. Check on everything. Make sure we don’t have anyone else around, check in on the populations and confirm they’re in balance, and that the forest is healthy. I’ve never had anyone ever make
it to the house, but that’s no guarantee.”
Fes nodded her head, her hand patting his own.
“Take Meliae with you. Her forest eventually. Plant seed with her. Will defend home while Vince away. Need to train and build anyways,” Fes said softly.
“Will do. Thanks, Fes, I appreciate it.”
“Duty of Fes. Vince won’t regret Fes,” said the Orc, brushing aside the concern physically with her left hand in a wiping motion, her right hand resting on his left hand.
“You willing to come along, Meliae? It’ll be a few nights out there. We’ll need to plan accordingly,” Vince asked, looking to the Dryad.
Her cheeks were a deep red, contrasting sharply with the color of her hair. She nodded her head slowly. Apparently the idea of exploring a forest excited her.
Can’t blame her. How many Dryads get to claim a forest for themselves, I wonder.
Vince brushed his fingers over the trail. He couldn’t explain it, but he had the feeling the game trail hadn’t been used in a while. The print under his fingers had long ago dried, and the edges of it were cracking and fading.
The animals of the forest ran it freely. Vince made it a point to keep the predator population low. Acting accordingly, he took more prey animals so that their population wouldn’t strip the forest.
In this way, he had managed to always have more meat on hand than he’d ever need. Cured, smoked, salted, enough meat to get him through a winter or two if he became wounded and unable to hunt.
That, and when the snow really dumped and he got trapped indoors for a while.
Lifting his head up, he sniffed deeply, willing the scents nearby to tell him the story.
There.
It was faint. Almost to the point where he wouldn’t have noticed it. Death.
Standing up, Vince brushed his hands over his pants. “Trail is dormant. Need to track into the woods over yonder,” Vince said, pointing towards where he felt the smell was coming from.
Meliae nodded her head, staring up at him.
She’d been quiet for most of the day. They’d left immediately after finishing their meal. Fes had been dozing at the table as the door shut behind them.
The Dryad had said barely more than a handful of words since then.
Dismissing the problem, since it wasn’t one, Vince set off after the scent he’d picked up on. It was a unique smell he’d never be unable to forget.
As they picked their way through plants, bushes, and small saplings, Vince kept his eyes moving, trying to pick it out before he found himself drowning in the stench.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t successful. One moment it was only a trace smell, the next, the nauseating, gut-wrenching mess of a rotting corpse hit him.
“Ugh,” Meliae whispered.
“Yeah. Something died out this way that isn’t normal for these parts. Critters in this forest are a skittish type to abnormal smells. Death is normal; whatever died doesn’t belong here.”
Then Vince was suddenly on top of it.
Laid out before him were the festering remains of a humanoid. A slave collar lay in the moldering throat of the body.
“They send slaves they don’t want out here to die. I’ve buried or burned my fair share. It’s where all those slave collars come from,” Vince explained. Reaching down, he fished out the collar and set it to one side.
“I see. I can help with this,” Meliae said.
“Oh? I’d be much obliged. Digging takes a while, and this isn’t the best part of the woods to be lighting a possibly uncontrolled fire in. That, and the stink of a burning body is awful.”
Meliae didn’t respond, and instead lifted her left hand. All around the corpse, the dirt shifted. Cracks and rifts formed in the soil and the corpse was pulled down, into the earth.
As quickly as it had all started, the dirt mounded itself up over where the corpse had been and ceased moving.
“There, the roots will feed on her. She shall serve in her death to grow nature.”
“She?” Vince asked. He hadn’t been able to identify the gender. The clothes had been nondescript, and the corpse too far gone to figure out.
“The trees told me. She was an Elf. She lay down and died right here.”
“Ah. Probably killed herself. Go far enough away from the owner of the collar and it’ll start strangling you. Depends on the allowed range. Take too long to turn around and you’ll end up dying. Thanks for the assist, by the way, it was blessedly quick,” Vince said, grinning at the tiny Dryad.
Her eyes were pinned to his own. She blinked twice, her small hands pressed to her stomach. She finally gave a small nod of her head. “Of course. The trees speak of you. That you wander often. Even as a young boy.”
Vince tilted his head. He’d heard tales of Dryads from his parents and that they were far different than the physical world. That they had powers over nature and woodlands.
“You protect the woods. You drive away those who would harvest the trees for lumber and keep everything healthy. The animals do not fear you. They view you as a natural predator. That you come and collect the weak or sick.”
The Dryad’s voice had taken on a strange quality during her speech. Vince simply waited for her to finish, wondering if she was communing with them.
“I try. This wood is in my care, as per my father’s wish. Though I do think it could easily foster a village or a town here. Would do well, too. I limit the population, but it’s still a very large population. I’m constantly trying to cut down the numbers with the speed at which they reproduce. They’re Wastes beasts. They eat anything. Leaves, pine needles, bark, poisonous plants.”
Vince sighed and rubbed two fingers to a temple. “Alright. We should probably head north. This is all hilly, rocky mountain country and it’s slow going.”
Setting off in the direction he wanted, Vince let his mind start to wander.
“What are you looking for in the north?” Meliae asked him.
Vince stopped dead in his tracks at her question and looked over his shoulder at her.
“Same thing as here. Corpses. Sickness. Anything that would cause a problem for the health of the area. Why?” he asked after a moment.
Meliae closed her eyes and held still. Vince turned around and watched her, waiting. Several minutes passed in silence.
Then her green eyes slid open. “There is a problem with a water source west of here. Nothing is wrong in the north. East and south are equally without problems.”
“Handy. Remind me to take you with me on my forest walks,” Vince said, giving her a smile.
“Mm. I will.”
“West, you said? There’s a creek west of here. Blocked?”
“I’m not sure what the problem is. Just that there is one. That’s what the trees told me.”
“Off we go, then.”
Vince dropped his pack down in the small clearing. The problem Meliae had directed them to had ended up being minor and yet horribly annoying at the same time. The creek had indeed been blocked, by a minor rockslide from the surrounding area. It’d clear eventually, though it’d create problems for everything downstream until then.
He’d chosen a spot that managed to provide shelter as well as a windbreak for them, the trees having grown up close to one another and a small dip in the land providing the protection.
Meliae sat down on a rock nearby. Her fingers picked at her clothes as if they bothered her.
“Something wrong with the fabric? We can try washing it to see if it was something we picked up on the way,” Vince offered. Kneeling down, he struck a flint stick to the side of his hunting knife.
With a handful of strikes, he caught a spark and then blew gently into the kindling as it started to smoke.
“I’ll adjust in time. Dryads don’t wear much, and when we do wear clothes, it’s skins or furs. Nudity doesn’t embarrass us.”
“Oh?” Vince immediately thought of when she was on the auction block. Standing there nude for the whole world to see. Taking a deep br
eath, he blew into the smoking bundle of moss, bark shavings, and small twigs.
It leapt into flame and he slid it under his pile of small sticks and branches. Leaning in, he blew on the whole thing, feeding more dried moss in on top of it.
“Being looked at like a piece of meat to be devoured is entirely different than being nude.” Apparently her own mind had gone straight back to the auction as well.
Setting larger branches atop the now burning smaller ones, Vince built up the fire. “Understandable.”
“When you’re done with that, I’m ready,” Meliae muttered.
“What, for sleep? Hit the sack, then. There’s little out here that would bother us, so there’s no need for a watch.”
Vince opened his pack and pulled out a piece of dried jerky. He couldn’t remember what kind of meat it was, but at this point he didn’t really care.
Meliae said nothing to that. Vince looked up to find her hunched over the pack between her knees. Her eyes were watching him. Curious and with a hint of concern.
“What do you know about the Fes’s culture?” Meliae asked him.
“The Fes?” Vince asked around a mouthful of jerky.
“I suppose that answers that,” Meliae said with a sigh. “Fes isn’t her name. Her name is Berenga.”
Vince felt his face turn into a frown. There’d been a number of times when Fes—or Berenga, he supposed—had spoken quietly with Meliae.
“Fes is a title. Before we get into that, what do you know of Orc culture?”
“Nothing. Except they’re warlike and tribal.” He had no problem admitting ignorance.
Meliae tilted her head to one side and then nodded. “Unflattering, but accurate. Orc culture is tribal at its lowest level. Nomadic, almost. As it moves upwards, it gets larger until it’s clan sized. The clans can be very large. These clans are measured and evaluated on the strength of their leaders. Their leaders are always men.”
Vince nodded, taking another large bite of his unappealing dinner.
Unsurprising. Backwards society.
Vince was of the opinion that man or woman could easily be… well, whatever. There really weren’t limitations on the sex in this world. You weren’t going to complain if a woman merchant smashed you into the ground because you were too stupid to get your prices correct. Or if a woman leader outdid you on the political scene.
