“Yes?” she asked.
Dierk froze. His jaw locked tight. A hundred possible responses rattled around in his skull, not a one managing the journey to his tongue. Heat flushed up his neck to his ears just from her gaze sweeping over him. His pants tightened as blood pounded into his crotch.
Say something, he inwardly screamed. Anything!
Rough hands pushed him aside. A husband and wife, coming with an older man struggling to walk. There was no time to abide his foolishness when miracles awaited. Adria turned her attention to the new couple, breaking the spell she held over him.
“Sorry,” Dierk said, far too quietly for her to hear. He slunk away, only now noticing that Vaesalaum had abandoned him. Well, why wouldn’t it? Perhaps the nisse couldn’t stand to watch him make a fool out of himself before the enormous crowd. Dierk broke out into a run. Who gave a shit if anyone noticed him? They’d all seen him. They’d all laughed at him, hadn’t they? He ran, ran until he found a small dark corner all alone and shoved himself into it.
“Stupid,” he muttered, slamming the bottom of his fist against the wall separating Low Dock from Tradeway. The pain reverberated up his arm, and while it didn’t feel good, it felt deserved, so he did it again and again, pounding the immovable stone with his scrawny hands. “Stupid—stupid—stupid—fucking—idiot!”
Bone cracked. A sob escaped his lips. Dierk slid to the ground, clutching his injured hand to his chest. His pinkie extended at an odd angle, and he feared what he’d done to the knuckle. Tears rolled down his face. He rolled his knees to his chest and stared into nowhere.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked himself. “Why do you have to be so… so…”
He didn’t know how to answer. Or maybe he was scared to voice everything he knew. His weird habits. His need to cut and skin. How being around strangers crippled him with nerves, resulting in him pushing away those his father brought over in hopes of making “friends.” And now he’d stood before the most beautiful, mesmerizing person in the entire Cradle and just… stared at her while slack-jawed and drooling.
What did Dierk hope to accomplish?
The intrusion of Vaesalaum’s cold voice sank Dierk’s head deeper into the space between his knees. To have anyone, or anything, witness his awful thoughts humiliated him further.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I wanted… I wanted to tell her that I’m like her. That I can see souls like her, that I can touch them, manipulate them like she can. That—that maybe we could talk. I could learn more about her, learn why she is what she is. Is that so fucking awful, Vaesalaum?”
He’d meant that final sentence to come across as spiteful and angry, but instead it sounded like a simpering plea in his mind.
Not awful. Dierk is not like other humans. Vaesalaum would not have come otherwise. Do not lament for what you are not. Embrace what you have. Power. Wisdom. The eyes of a nisse.
Dierk sniffled and rubbed at his eyes. A new emotion burned in his stomach. He’d cut animals out of a need he could not resist. He’d obeyed his father’s commands out of fear. This was different. This was something he wanted, wanted so badly it frightened him.
“I will see her again,” he told Vaesalaum. “I’ll let her know how special I am. I don’t care how hard or awkward it is, I have to become better. Adria and I—I think we’re meant to be.”
Meant to be? By whom, human? Goddesses? Dragons? Uncaring fate?
“I don’t know,” he said, pushing himself back up to his feet. He cradled his injured hand against his stomach as if it were his child. “And I don’t care. We’re meant to be, Vaesalaum. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”
Those words. Hearing them. Saying them. They lit a fire that burned in a cold, dark chamber he never knew existed within him.
We’re meant to be.
CHAPTER 4
Tommy couldn’t understand the soldiers’ lack of eagerness, nor the worry painted across the face of Jarel Downing. The gaunt man was in charge of the expedition that had taken them from Londheim to a farming village tucked against the southern bend of the Septen River some sixty miles west.
“Do you think the lapinkin would mind answering some questions after we’re done discussing the boring political matters?” Tommy asked him.
“I can’t imagine why they would,” Jarel replied. He was a cousin to the Royal Overseer, and that family connection had landed him oversight of the thirty soldiers currently marching between the tall grass of West Orismund toward a large farming community fifty miles southwest of Londheim. Jarel had the forgettable temperament of a man destined to be a wall ornament hanging in various mansions and halls. His hair and nails were meticulously cleaned and cut, and his clothes too thin and frail for the road. Day or night, it seemed his dark face was permanently locked in a visage of mild annoyance.
“I expect us to be nuisances to them,” he added. “And threats at the worst.”
“There’s no reason we can’t get along,” Tommy said, drawing from his well of eternal optimism to counter the dour man’s constant pessimism. Over their past two days of travel, Tommy had learned that if something could go wrong, Jarel was convinced it would go wrong. He blamed it on fate conspiring against him to make him miserable, an odd complaint in Tommy’s mind. If fate wanted to make him miserable, it’d have had him born to a destitute family in Low Dock instead of the wealthy Downing family in Quiet District.
“I can think of plenty,” Jarel said. “They refuse to give up the land they stole. They don’t trust us to keep our word. Void’s sake, maybe they’ll decide they’d rather eat us than discuss diplomacy.”
“Eat us?” Tommy said. “That’s ridiculous. Rabbits are herbivores.”
The look Jarel gave him was certainly an interesting one.
“They’re not rabbits.”
“Well, they’re mostly like rabbits,” Tommy insisted. “Just… really big ones.”
That ended their conversation, akin to how most conversations with Jarel ended: with abrupt, confused silence. Tommy was pretty sure Jarel didn’t like him. It seemed the likeliest explanation for the awkward pauses and constant sighs. The silence grated on Tommy’s nerves, for he was a bundle of energy with no outlet.
Lapinkin! How could he be so lucky? Tommy had grown up reading stories of rabbit-like humanoids called peobunnies, whose descriptions had matched perfectly to what the messenger from Coyote Crossing had described upon arriving in Londheim. The peobunnies were fuzzy and friendly beings eager to help their neighbors. In hindsight the books were thinly veiled morality stories, but still, the creatures had been dear to his heart. When orders had come to the Wise tower requesting Malik’s accompaniment to the farming community of Coyote Crossing to settle a dispute with a newly arrived lapinkin family, Tommy had begged to go in Malik’s stead.
“But what help could we possibly be?” Malik had asked.
“Well, I’ve read all the folklore about peobunnies,” Tommy had argued back. “Uh, I mean, lapinkin. Surely there is some truth to the stories, given what we know about the vanishing and return of the old world? Right? Please say I’m right.”
The pleading might have been a bit much, but damn it, he was going to meet real, honest-to-Goddess peobunnies! Tommy was practically bouncing off his pony’s saddle. His hope was that once the dispute was settled (something about the lapinkin wanting land claimed by the farmers, he hadn’t paid that much attention), he could ask them questions about their community life, their culture, and their history. Maybe he could even write books about them, just like the ones he’d read when growing up! His mind was aflame with the possibilities. Jarel and the other soldiers might not wish to discuss such matters, but at least he had one person with him who did.
“Are we there yet?” Tesmarie whispered up at him from a deep chest pocket of his robe. Tommy glanced at Jarel, who was studiously ignoring him. A little jostle of the reins had Tommy’s pony fall behind several feet.
“Soon,” he whispered back. “Give us twenty
minutes.”
The faery wiped sleep from her eyes and then stretched with a stifled yawn. “That’s fine. It’s nice and cozy in here.”
Tesmarie had offered to accompany him on his visit, for which he was terribly grateful. Unlike him, she had actual experience interacting with lapinkin, and had been the first to correct him on the proper term. I don’t know what a peobunny is, she’d said, but I think you might get hit if you call a lapinkin that. Should things get complicated, Tommy hoped Tes could guide him through. The only troublesome part was keeping her a secret from the rest of his traveling companions. He didn’t know how they’d react to Tesmarie’s presence, and Tesmarie herself had seemed pretty reluctant to show herself, only saying she “wasn’t ready” when he asked about it. Given what she went through at the marketplace when Janus attacked, Tommy couldn’t blame her.
Twenty minutes turned into half an hour, but at last the squat cottages and sprawling fields of Coyote Crossing spread out before them. Jarel marched the soldiers directly into the village’s center, where a small crowd rushed to greet them.
“Have you come to drive the beasts away?” one man shouted above the others.
“We come to talk,” Jarel insisted, earning himself several unhappy groans.
“Talking will do no good,” an older man insisted. Others in the crowd gave him space, and Tommy guessed him to be the man who owned the land they farmed. “That’s why we asked for soldiers, not diplomats.”
“Well, lucky for you we came with both,” Jarel said as he climbed down from his pony. “Goddesses above, how I hate riding. All right, where are these so-called lapinkin? I’d rather get this over with before it gets dark.”
The old man led them westward. Tommy dismounted and quickly followed at the head of the pack. He couldn’t wait to see their furnished burrows, supposedly as spacious and comfortable as any human home. Once beyond the cottages of Coyote Crossing, and with the flatlands plainly visible for miles, it was easy to spot the newly built lapinkin home, but it was no burrow.
A mansion of earth proudly faced the east. Grass grew from its rooftops. Vines stretched like spiderwebs over its walls. For doors and windows it bore spacious openings revealing short, cleanly cut grass forming a natural carpet on the floor. Flowers bloomed in tight formations between the windows, with colors carefully chosen to replicate images of forests, flowing rivers, and proud lapinkin standing atop pure white clouds. Tommy’s eyes bulged at the sight, and it took all his self-control not to sprint ahead.
“That… eyesore appeared overnight,” the old man explained. “Not sure how they magicked that, either. Was nothing but an empty hill, but then the hill’s gone, and the mansion’s there in its place. Then the first of the beasts came and told us to abandon our fields. If we try to tend them, they chase us off with spears, and they’re getting aggressive. Just last week they broke my grandson’s arm, all for the crime of picking green beans to eat.”
“Have they made any demands?” Jarel asked.
“They want us to leave and never come back. That’s it. I suspect you’ll try talking with them, but good luck. They’re more stubborn than mules, and just as smart, I’d bet.”
Tommy saw many of the lapinkin working the fields behind the mansion, much too far away to make out their features. It was only when a trio exited the mansion’s front opening that he could finally lay eyes upon the fabled beings.
Their faces were long and rounded, with flat noses befitting their namesake. Their matching marbled eyes watched the approaching soldiers carefully. Soft gray, black, or white fur covered their muscular frames, that which was visible underneath their intricately stitched leather armor. Their long ears lay flat behind their heads, the tips overlapping and linked together with thick iron piercings so that the ears seemed more like hair that hung to their waists. Two of the lapinkin wielded long spears with a particularly strange attachment, as if beneath the sharp head was an additional metal wedge like a miniature plow.
“I see the inevitable has come,” said the unarmed lapinkin with a stunningly deep voice. His fur was a brown so dark it bordered on black except for his arms, which lightened into a golden color. Seven rings connected his ears together, two more than the lapinkin beside him. “Human soldiers, come to take what belongs to others. The centuries have not diminished your avarice, only fed it.”
Jarel sputtered for a moment, clearly not expecting such an eloquent response.
“My name is Jarel Downing,” he said at last. “I come with the authority of the Royal Overseer to discuss matters troubling our citizens here in Coyote Crossing.” He hesitated, but the lapinkin did not offer up his own name. “With whom do I speak?”
“I am Warrenchief Naiser,” the lapinkin said. “And we have nothing to discuss. These lands are ours. We gave the humans here time to pack their belongings and leave, but instead they argued and stalled, and now we see the reason why. They hope force of steel will save them. It will not, Jarel Downing. Leave, and take these people with you. Do not force my windleapers to spill blood upon this green earth.”
Jarel looked beyond flustered. Given the man’s birth and connections, Tommy couldn’t imagine anyone talking to him in such a way. When it was clear the man’s tongue was too tied to be useful, Tommy stepped forward, hoping he might salvage the situation.
“I, um, my name is Tommy,” he said. He waved. “Hello.”
Naiser and Jarel stared at him with a shared sense of mild confusion.
“Yes?” the lapinkin asked.
“I just wanted to say that, uh, that the soldiers here were just for our safety since we didn’t really know anything about… you. You lapinkin. It is lapinkin, right?”
“It is,” Naiser said, his annoyance growing.
“Great, great. But as I was saying, we’re not here to fight, right, Jarel? We just want to talk, and get all this figured out. Most of the people here have farmed this land since they were born, and they know of no other home. It’d be most cruel to force them out, wouldn’t you agree? I think that, if we sit down and talk, we can come up with a solution that makes everyone happy.”
He smiled, relieved he finally got all that out. Naiser took that relief and stomped on it with one of his long, bare feet.
“Force them out?” he said. “Our castle warren was built long before this village sprung up in its shadow. We have woken from your Goddesses’ imprisonment to find our lands taken, and so we have taken them back. We have already begun planting our crops. In time, we will rebuild our homes. We will plant the roots of our communities deep down into the stone itself. Heed my warnings, humans. Any who would attempt to move us will die.”
“But these lands are ours,” Jarel said. Splotches on his neck were turning red from anger. “We won’t give them up just like that!”
“Your lands?” Naiser took a step forward. Armor rattled throughout the accompanying soldiers. “How great your greed. How swollen your arrogance. We had an agreement in ages past. Londheim was the farthest west humanity would settle, and we shared that magnificent city.”
The lapinkin stepped so close, his and Jarel’s noses were inches apart. He showed no fear at the swords the human soldiers drew. His marbled eyes bore into Jarel’s with the viciousness of an angered wasp.
“From the very first breath drawn by the very first human created by the Sisters, humanity has warred against us. There will be no happy solution to this, nor will there ever be.” He cast his gaze to the entirety of the gathered humans. “Leave. Now. Our patience is at its end.”
And with that, Naiser spun about and marched back into the mansion. The two spear wielders took positions at either side of the entrance, and they glared with undisguised anger. Jarel stood and blubbered angrily for a bit.
“Back to the village,” he said at last. The soldiers put their backs to the earthen mansion and marched. Tommy lingered, a frown plastered to his face. It felt like his heart had been broken to pieces like so much cheap glass.
“Is somethi
ng the matter?” Jarel asked upon realizing Tommy wasn’t following.
Tommy sighed long and deep, exhaling broken pieces of his childhood.
“That wasn’t very fuzzy and friendly of them at all.”
The villagers offered their homes to the soldiers, and while most gladly accepted a bed over another night sleeping on the hard ground, Tommy turned them down and staked his tent on the village’s outskirts. A snap of his fingers set his small bundle of twigs to burning, and he slumped before it with his head in his hands. The stars winked into existence one by one as the sun dipped below the horizon.
“Try not to let it get you down,” Tesmarie said. She floated above the fire, appreciating the warmth and glad to stretch her wings after such a long journey stuffed in Tommy’s robe pocket. “Most everyone is cranky after waking up from a long nap. No doubt they’re the same.”
“I’m not sure what happened is all that comparable to a nap,” Tommy said.
“Fine. But it doesn’t change how cranky they are. I bet with just a little bit of time, they’ll warm up to you.”
Tommy smiled at the onyx faery.
“I hope so, but the lapinkin being rude isn’t what really bothers me.”
“And what is that?”
He chewed on his lip as he tried to put his thoughts into proper order.
“It’s that… well, I don’t have any way to argue with them. Why does the claim of those living here now outrank the claims of those who lived here centuries ago? Especially when it sounds like their disappearance was the fault of the Sisters? You know, our Goddesses? At best we could appeal to their sense of decency by showing how difficult and traumatic it’d be to uproot an entire community. But then again, why is that worse than their trauma at being put into some strange sleep and awakening to the entire world having moved on, their homes destroyed and their lands taken? It’s not worse. So I find myself sitting here thinking, if I wasn’t a human, and hadn’t come here with representatives of West Orismund… I think I’d be arguing on behalf of the lapinkin.”
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