◆◆◆
Oslow stood before a stretched deer hide. He lathered a clear paste across its surface, periodically pausing to gauge its thickness with his fingernail.
“Shouldn’t we talk about this, Oo?” Jean asked. The noise of sweeping came from where she worked nearby. “Such a severe punishment. But he did assassinate the sitting king. Aiding Cleo as we are. Well, you know they’re looking for her. We could be arrested.”
Oslow pinched an area on the pelt and frowned as though its inconsistency disappointed him. “Gnochi didn’t undertake this of his own will,” he said. “Cleo told us that he believes Silentore has his family hostage.”
“Still, he could have told someone. Told you. Or a constable. There could have been investigations. Even going to the king himself to ask for help.”
Oslow mulled on her words for a moment, then said, “For him to go as far as killing a man in cold blood tells me that he was backed into a corner with no other options. Trust me, I’ve known Gnochi since he was swaddled up with the other Nimbus babies. He’s not quick to kill. But the lad does have a wicked sense of duty and loyalty. He’d move the Earth if he thought it was to keep someone he loved safe, so if he thought that these actions were the only way to protect and save his family, I have to believe that this was the only option. All that said,” he continued, despite the sorrow surrounding his words. “When he loses those he loves, he acts in a destructive manner until he’s buried his grief well beyond reach.” The sound of sweeping stopped. He could imagine her eyes peering into his beard as if expecting to see the blush of some forbidden memory.
“When?”
“Last winteryear. His father. A group of men wanted Avril’s guitar to burn for warmth. Gnochi’s stubborn father resisted and they killed him.” Oslow paused. The memories added weight to his head beyond every gem in the ground. “Poor Gnochi. He was barely a man. But in his grief, he scoured Lyrinth finding each man who participated in the murder and exacted justice.”
“He killed them?”
“No. He branded them. Took an iron, heated it in a fire and seared their faces. The mark of a guitar.”
“How did he escape punishment?” Jean asked. “He didn’t seem equally deformed or branded when I saw him.”
“Nimbus agreed to send him out of the country as a self-imposed exile. No one wanted to see a teen killed, not even those men he branded. There was already too much death during the winteryear, you see.” Oslow paused. “I imagine that having his family taken must have brought forth that same fire.”
“Even that compelling of a story does not protect us from the law, Oo,” Jean said.
“I know,” he replied, “but it’s a risk that I am willing to take. I can’t imagine what kind of reaction he’d have if something were to happen to Cleo and we were in a place to assist her but did not.”
Chapter 19
A generous blaze burned in the foyer’s hearth. Outside, the wailing winds accompanied the arrival of more snow. The fresh snow packed onto already bowing branches. More than a few trees had split, giving up on their weakest limbs. One such limb fell onto the stable roof. Though it was light enough not to collapse the shingles and beams, it stirred up a short panic in the four horses. After that near miss, Harvey volunteered his and Roy’s service in removing snow from the manor’s roofs.
Cleo leafed through her journal, penning down notes and observations centering around the winteryear. Though she was almost ten when she experienced her first winteryear, her memories of the time were muddled in her mind. She jotted down a few story ideas based on tales she remembered reading in her father’s library but frowned as they all ended in abrupt lapses of memory. Gnochi would know a mass of intriguing, winter-related stories.
She remembered how lost he would get in his words. The way he would forget that he sat in a dim inn, instead placing himself and his audiences into the story. He wore such a bright smile when he spun his tales. It was a candid Gnochi that otherwise did not surface through his rough features. And he was sure to squash it, whenever he caught Cleo observing him, though as soon as he lost himself back in his work, it returned.
The sound of shovels grating against the flagstones in front of the manor tore Cleo from her memory. Within minutes, Harvey and Roy blustered in from outside where they had worked to clear paths around the manor.
“I don’t think I’ll ever complain about the heat again,” Roy moaned, rubbing his hands in a vicious attempt to generate heat in his chilled fingers. “In fact, once this year passes, I just may move permanently into the Brichton desert, just to always be in the heat.”
“Even the desert gets cold in the winteryear,” Harvey said. “Did you already forget our trip here?”
“I was hoping to forget that entirely,” Roy said, wincing. “I suppose I could move so far south that the people don’t know what the word snow is, let alone what work it entails,” he said, grasping at the idea.
Hearing the commotion, Kiren exited from her room, her head delicately wrapped in its cloth.
“We can all go,” Roy said, closing his eyes. “South, that is. If you want. There’s nothing keeping Harvey and me here. Not anymore.”
Cleo watched Kiren’s expression contort as if struck, though neither Harvey nor Roy noticed the reaction. She was not sure if she was simply seeing conflict where none existed, or if the other woman was quick to mask her pain.
“I’m going to grab a meal. Does anyone want anything?” Harvey posed his question to the group. No responses sounded, so he ducked into the kitchen.
“Snow’s not all work,” Cleo said, though she was not sure why she had spoken. “In fact, in the first age, it fell more. And some people loved it.”
“How can someone love something that brings so much misery?” Roy asked.
“You have to remember that things were easier in the first age,” Harvey explained, returning from the kitchen. His hands wrapped themselves around a steaming mug.
“Exactly,” Cleo said. “They had machines which could push and pull the snow. No effort. Plus, warm clothing was more readily available.” She flipped through the journal to a section she had written months back. It was a story that Gnochi had dictated, but it provided no other information on the subject. “Kids. They especially, loved the snow.” She covered her eyes with her hands, imagining how Gnochi would have proceeded. “If enough snow fell, they’d have snow days, where they could stay home from school. Everyone had their own methods for ensuring that the accumulation would be bountiful.” She opened her eyes, noticing that no one moved, or whispered under her. Even Aarez, who had previously exiled himself to an upstairs room, now sat at the top of the landing and listened, interest in his eyes.
“Kids would play in the snow,” she said, closing her eyes again. “They’d make people by stacking mounds on top of one another. Then they’d adorn their ‘snowmen’ with ratty clothes and root vegetables.” A story she remembered reading in her father’s library resurfaced in her memory, its sudden reemergence evoking a feeling of warmth in her chest. Was this how Gnochi felt every time a story dusted itself off in his mind? “There was even a myth.” She paused, surveying her audience of four, though none seemed on the brink of boredom.
“One day, a few children made a snowman, decking him out in a compilation of odd clothing. The last item they adorned on their frozen friend was a hat. This hat was magical. It brought the snowman to life!” Cleo spied Aarez inch forward. “Not in the echo way,” she amended, her cheeks warming. “It was just magic.”
“Now in this town, there was a man who had made it his goal to get rid of all snow...forever.”
“Sounds like just the person we need,” Roy joked.
Cleo ignored his comment. “He developed a chemical that instantly melted the snow. And you can imagine how that would appear to people, who like you, were snow-fatigued. They threw their support behind this man and his anti-snow campaign.”
“What happened?” Roy asked.
�
�Somehow,” Cleo mumbled, the story losing clarity in her mind.
Gnochi had mentioned once that storytelling was more of an art than an exact science. ‘Your audience can smell uncertainty as a hound smells blood,’ he had explained. ‘If you have to, make something up; you’re not writing a biography.’
Right now, what had been clear a moment before was blurring before her eyes. She felt emboldened by the memory to stretch her own storytelling muscles. “The kids and the snowman convinced the people of the town that trying to erase the snow was not smart. That the world requires balance for all things, snow included.” She opened her eyes, horrified at the turn her story had taken and the failure of her own storytelling ability. Gnochi would have been able to spin a tale longer than Oslow’s beard off a whim alone. She imagined him frowning at her attempt.
“That’s it?” Roy asked.
“Don’t be rude,” Harvey said, swatting his friend. “Don’t mind him.” He offered a kind smile.
Aarez came down from the steps and sat in a chair across from Cleo. “I know you said it wasn’t an echo, but you have to see some similarities. Is there no way?”
“I don’t think so,” Cleo said, grateful for the conversation to drift away from her story’s ending. “This was a children’s story. Magic did not need to have real-world ties. It just existed.” Her hands flipped through the journal, searching for further notes or anything she might use to resurrect her dying story. Failing to find anything useful about snow, she focused on the echo angle. “Gnochi never said anything about there being echoers in the first age, but he did have me write down a bit about them.” She stopped on a page and pointed with her finger.
“He wasn’t an echoer, was he?” Aarez’s voice sounded as though he doubted it.
“No,” Roy said. “We met an someone in the mountains who could sense echoes, and she said nothing about him.”
“We know that echoes are passed from parent to child,” Cleo said, skimming paragraphs of notes. “Only one parent has to be an echoer. So, you could have one deaf parent—that’s you, Harv or Roy—and one echoer parent. The child will have an echo.”
“Why aren’t there more of us then?” Kiren’s voice came quiet.
“Because of the genocides. Lyrinth has zero tolerance for echoes. It’s instant death for us,” Aarez said, faint anger brimming in his voice.
“Echoes are commonplace,” Cleo said. “On eastern continents. So much so, that we’re looked at as plainly as if we had been there since the first age.”
“Must be nice to be able to flaunt your true self openly without fear of losing your life,” Aarez said, his tone sharp. “I know echoers who would kill to get a ride east across the ocean.”
“It’s not like I knew about my echo while I lived there,” Cleo responded, a spark of fire kindling in her own voice. “I only found out after coming here.”
“But you’d go back if you could?” Harvey asked.
After a moment, she said, “No. There is nothing left there for me.”
“Just a population that neither fears you nor hates you for being you.” Aarez’s comment silenced the group.
Harvey and Roy had refrained from contributing. Cleo assumed their silence was due to their being outsiders in the conversation, their lives unaffected by the struggles of an echo.
Finally realizing that he had killed the conversation, Aarez supplied another bit of information. “You haven’t mentioned this, but did you know that your echo is not dependent upon your parent’s echo? In fact, it’s quite rare for a child to develop the same echo as their parent.”
“Evolution,” Cleo said, “except completely askew.” When she saw the puzzled looks that greeted her, she clarified. “In my father’s library, I read a book about this concept called evolution and the survival of the fittest. It claimed that characteristics benefitting a being would be passed down to its offspring. Likewise, characteristics that hinder a being will die off because that being will then be unable to pass them off. But, what Aarez said about the echoes doesn’t line up with this theory at all. If an echo ensures that someone will live, and you just said it’s rare for an offspring to share the same echo—”
“I’m not saying it makes sense,” Aarez said. “My parents came from overseas. They were active in an echoer community and they told me that it was odder than a warm winteryear for a child to share their parent’s echo.” This admission quieted the group again.
“Well, this was about as far from Gnochi’s stories as possible.” Cleo frowned, feeling her cheeks warming from embarrassment. “When he spins, the audience gains a comfortable footing in first age understanding. Instead, we are more confused than when we started.” She slammed the journal closed and quit to the kitchen, grumbling about hunger.
◆◆◆
“I hate riding,” Oslow complained. He grasped the pommel of his saddle with his hands so tightly he left large imprints in the hard leather. “I can’t see anything. Can’t feel anything. What if this infernal beast walks into a tree?”
Jean, from atop her own mount a mere pace away, chuckled. The pair of horses and their riders walked at a brisk pace through the woods between Mirr and the Hopewell Forest Manor.
Oslow wore the heavy furs of a merchant out of his element and had wrapped his jewel-laden beard around his neck as though it were a fine scarf. Chilled breath fogged before his face, though the warm air hesitated as if afraid to leave the comfort of its hairy cocoon. His teeth chattered and his knees shook.
“Oo, you have to relax,” Jean said, hoping the comfort in her voice would ease his fears. “Trust the fact that your mount is an intelligent being who doesn’t want to see himself injured any more than you do.” Though she wore out-of-season clothing and relied on a thick coat to keep her heat in, she showed no signs of discomfort. With every breath, she relished the prickle of icy air as it thawed in her lungs. A smile beamed across her face. “And if you don’t trust your steed, then trust me. Know that I won’t lead you into a ditch.” For the third time in as many minutes, she tugged on the lead rope conjoining Oslow’s horse with her own. Content in the line’s integrity, she relaxed. “You do trust me, don’t you, Oo?”
“Of course I do, Jean. You know I just hate change. I don’t know why we couldn’t just let the kids come to the store to pick their supplies up. Instead of sitting cozy before my hearth, I’m freezing my beard off, traipsing through the woods like some love-struck huntsman. I’ll have you know that I am neither young, nor a huntsman, though am I love-struck?” The tanner chuckled. “If this beard is any indication, I’m older than dirt and my eyes are so bad that I couldn’t—how would Gnochi say it? Ahh yes. I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with an arrow if I tried.”
“You put great stock in his wisdom,” Jean said, navigating her mount through the frigid waters of a stream’s tributary. “Eyes up. Oops.”
“What?” Oslow managed to ask before his horse clopped into the shallow water, splashing the frigid liquid up its his legs. “Lord Providence, that is colder than cold!” Had the mount sacrificed the splash in order to get back at the man who would not cease fidgeting in his saddle. “Next time we talk to that neighbor of mine, I’m going to get my money back. This animal is possessed by something evil.”
“We’re almost to the manor. Can you hold off without needing to change your pants?”
“I suppose I’ll have to manage,” he groaned. “I can tell by your tone, you know, that you don’t want me to say ‘stop,’ even if my legs were encased in ice. I suppose this is what I get for inviting you into my home.” He chuckled.
“No,” Jean said, scooping a handful of powdered snow off a nearby branch and tossing it at his chest. A rogue pinch of the snow flew into his beard, twinkling like multicolored stars as it melted and dripped between gems of all conceivable colors. “I’m what you get for purposefully blinding yourself.” For a minute, the only sound breaking the wintery silence was the crunch of snow under the horses’ hooves.
&nbs
p; “Hey, I wasn’t doing too bad,” Oslow said. “Bachelor living aside, I was making due.”
“It’s a shame you couldn’t see how your bachelor living almost killed you. A few loose nails. A drawer not fully closed. You were an accident waiting to happen.”
Oslow smiled at her remarks but made no retort to her assessment. “I do,” he said. “I put stock in Gnochi’s wisdom, that is.” He brushed snow and melt from his beard and chest. “Gnochi is an old soul. He is wise beyond his years. It’s more than simply knowing stories from the first age, though that certainly helps.” He sat in silence. Thick billows of steam shot from his mouth as though he kindled a fire in his throat. “The man knows people, Jean. He knows how we work. He can enter an inn and know exactly what every person needs to hear. Add to that knowledge a catalogue of thousands of stories and tales. He has a remarkable mind.”
“You raised him?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“It just seems like you revere him a little more than it would be expected for a simple tanner and their clientele.”
“So, I’m only a simple tanner?” He asked, belting out a roar of laughter that kicked up a hare foraging in nearby underbrush. “If a heavy-set, blind tanner with a gem-woven beard is simple, then I’d loved to meet the extraordinary ones.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I look after all my clients as well as I do Gnochi and his kin? No.” He seemed to contemplate his next words, mouthing them in silence before speaking them. “In a way, I did teach him, though not in the way you are thinking. After he returned from his exile out of Lyrinth, he lived with me. He was still very raw and not emotionally whole. For a time, he was bent on exacting further revenge on his father’s killers. There was a year when I didn’t know if I’d wake up to find him gone.” Oslow leaned back and gulped in a draft of cold air. “Over time, he learned what he wanted to do, not just with his revenge but with his life. How he wanted to use his…gift. When he finally figured out what his passion was, what his drive was, once it wasn’t revenge, he was able to allow my advice and teachings to come to fruition.
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