Tatyana nearly walked backward the entire way down the small rocky path that lead to the road leaving the village. Tok bounded alongside them. She wanted Tok to stay home, but she knew trying to keep the critter there would be an impossibility. Tok was too much of a free spirit and would roam where she pleased.
Tat waved and they returned her waves until she could no longer see them or the little cottage she had always called home. It was then that she began crying in earnest and couldn’t stop until it had turned into a full gusher, complete with panicked sobs and soaking wet cheeks.
“Gah! Crying again? What is it with you and the tears?” Aidan rolled his eyes and chuckled, attempting to be humorously sarcastic in the hopes it would distract her enough to get her to quiet some. Sadly, it did not.
“Of course I’m crying! This is all my fault even if Ba said there was no point in passing blame. This whole thing is all due to my blundering, and now it’s my responsibility to fix. I have to make this right and get your seal back. Then I have to get you back to your own world. I don’t care what happens to me, but I have to fix this.” She rambled, and Aidan let her. She had things on her mind, maybe it was best if he just let her get it out.
“It would also be great if I could somehow get another keystone for Ba and Da again too,” she sighed. “Oh, the mistakes I’ve made. If this is what becoming an adult is like I want no part of it. I wish I could just go back to when I started all this and stop myself! Maybe that would fix it! I wish I could just go back in time!”
“Well maybe we’ll run into a wizard and he can wave his magic wand and send us back to when this whole thing started. I mean, this is the fairy world, there’s bound to be magic here too, right?” Aidan joked, not really expecting an answer.
“Of course there’s magick here, but don’t be ridiculous! Wizards don’t go around waving magick wands and sending people back in time!” she snapped, but then realized it, so softened her tone. “I mean, there was the great Time Titan. They say he might have been able to do that, but for all we know he’s just a legend.” She sighed so loudly it made Aidan jump a little.
Seeing that his attempt at humor wouldn’t do it, Aidan remained silent while trying to think of another way to deal with this. He let her ramble some more but didn’t quite know how to reply since humor was the best thing he had in his arsenal to combat the dreadful cries of the female.
He decided to just change the subject and keep her talking. That always seemed to work with his mom when she was on one of her crying jags. Who knows, maybe it would take her mind off the whole thing too? He had to do something since he had no choice but to make this journey, and the last thing he wanted to do was listen to her cry the entire time.
“So, have you been to this Dorn of Breah before?”
“What? No!” Tat replied shifting her tone to an angrier one again, “My parents always kept me close to home. I guess that was because I am Errata, remember? That wouldn’t allow for much traveling now would it?”
“Oh, yeah, right–” Aidan tried to add, wanting to change the subject again before he did more harm than good.
“Besides, the Dorn of Breah is nearly a thousand miles away!” She interrupted him before he could complete his sentence as if that were the most obvious fact everyone should know.
He stopped in his tracks, “A thousand miles? We’re supposed to go a thousand miles on foot?”
“You’re being ridiculous again. Of course not. We’ll find a skitterdu and that will get us a good part of the way. Then once we get to the outer lands of the wilds we’ll find a way to huvel.”
“Skitterdu? Huvel?” he asked, picking his pace back up to match hers. Apparently, there was a lot he needed to learn about this place. ‘Are our worlds really that different?’
“How can you not know what a skitterdu is? Is there no way to get around other than walking in your world?” she asked but didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m guessing humans aren’t very smart if they don’t even have basic transportation,” she muttered, shaking her head before continuing.
“A skitterdu is hooked to an animal they train to pull heavy loads. Traveling merchants use them to transport stuff, but they also use skitterdu to carry large groups from dorn to dorn. Huvelling is a way of hover traveling through the elemental planes. You know, with faerie magick.” She stopped being mad at herself and was now focused on blaming him.
“No, I don’t know,” he said snapping back at her, not appreciating her tone that suggested he wasn’t very intelligent, “I don’t know anything about this place. How could you expect me to when I haven’t been here long? You know you’re the one who yanked me out of my world, remember! And yes, we have transportation other than getting around on foot. We call them cars – oh yeah, and buses, boats, airplanes and trains… just to name a few of the many ways we travel. No fairy magic or weird animals there. Is this place still in the dark ages or something?”
“Dark ages? What are you talking about?”
“You know what,” Aidan said trying to recompose himself, but still sounded a little wounded. “Forget it. You’ve got things to be upset about, I’ve got things to be upset about too; but blaming and insulting one another isn’t going to help any of that. It’s obvious you don’t know much about humans and I don’t know much about this fairy world, but either way we’ve got to make this work. We both have to get this errata thing taken care of so I can get back home and you can get back to – well, whatever it was you were trying to do when you found me.”
“You’re right. I don’t know much about humans, even though I am one.” Tat sniffled.
“And enough with the damn crying already! Do you plan to cry for the entire thousand miles?” he said harsher than he meant to. “Look, what I mean is, well, I gather this will take a while. That means we’re kind of stuck with one another for now. You know? So, why don’t we start over?” He stopped and turned to look directly at her. Tok jumped to perch on Tatyana’s shoulder as if she predicted the short interlude. “Hi, I’m Oliver Aidan Quincy-Spencer.”
“Oliver?”
“Tatty Buttons?” She blushed as he called her the childhood nickname Clover and Biscuit had given her.
“Actually, it’s Tatyana Buttons Briarden of the Dorn of Knottagin in the Province of Northern Breah, but most just call me Tat or Tatty,” she corrected him with some certainty as they began walking again and Tok glided down to the path once more to walk with them.
“Wow, that’s a mouth full. And I thought a hyphenated last name was too much. Oliver is my first name. My parents used to call me Ollie, which I hated; so, once I was on my own I started going by my middle name. Don’t worry about the dumb names, all parents do that. And I promise if you never call me Ollie, I’ll never call you Tatty Buttons–”
“On your own?” Tat interrupted his rambling.
“You guys don’t have a lot of manners when it comes to interrupting conversation do you?” he asked, and she replied with a tilt of her head and a quizzical look. Aidan shook his head thinking this would take some getting used to, and then decided to just answer her question.
“Yeah, I’ve pretty much been on my own since I graduated high school last year. My old man and my mom have been split for a while now and decided since I’m all grown up it was time for them to get a divorce. I’m planning on going to college – err… well, I was planning on learning to be a game designer, but I thought it was best to take some time off and get my own place so I didn’t have to deal with the drama.” Noticing her look became even more perplexed, he asked “Ok, where did I lose you?”
“Grad-you-tated high school? Old man? Split? Divorce…” she began rambling back to him.
“Right, let me try this again,” Aidan carefully explained what he meant, taking great patience with her when she interrupted him with questions because she didn’t understand something he’d said.
Soon, it was her turn – and as amazing as his world sounded to her, her world seemed even more fantastica
l to him. She explained how the Pooka community depended on each other, how each home in the Briarden had its own little job, and each pooka in those homes had their individual responsibility for making the entire community work together.
She explained that twice a year they took all the extra things that the Pooka collected to the Dorn of Knottagin, where they traded them for things they could use but weren’t able to make for themselves.
When she told him about the bioluminaires, the thought of tiny living beings that glowed and voluntarily lived in some lamp thingy so other beings could have light blew Aidan’s mind.
He also found it fascinating how the Pooka children didn’t go to school to learn, instead they learned everything from their parents, relatives, neighbors or even from older children left in charge of the younger ones.
It didn’t take him long to realize that some of her strange sounding words converted easily over to what he knew with different words, such as dorn meant city or town and while he knew what a province was; he realized that it could mean an entire country here or just a section of one.
What really puzzled him was all the English they spoke. After all, it’s a different world, wouldn’t there be a different language? Even so, Tat corrected him. It wasn’t this so called ‘English language’ at all but the tongue of the Fae known as ‘Faerian’.
Eventually they both agreed that the early humans must have known it, or some version of it; from before the worlds were split. Then maybe they passed it down through generations and it evolved similarly as time passed. That must be how they could understand one another so well. And if there was a different explanation, they decided they’d spent enough time trying to figure it out and it didn’t really matter anyway.
So many things continued to surprise them as they explained their different worlds to one another. Hours passed as they walked side by side with Tok alongside them either gliding, walking or hitching a ride perched on either of their shoulders. They found they had no end to questions about one another’s worlds while they continued their journey in the ancient forest and serene hillside of the Knottagin Province.
Stopping with the beckoning call of hunger they decided to appease their grumbling stomachs. Pulling out the cheese, the bread, and some other small bits of carefully wrapped food that Clover had wrapped with some strange looking broad leaves and twine, the three of them ate without delay before hurrying back to the trail to continue their discussions.
The sun began setting, melting the sky from a deep calming blue with white wispy clouds to shades of purple and pink. Barely visible stars twinkled in the distance. It wasn’t until the sun reached the mountains, outlining it with a golden aura did Tat think they should probably get out their bio-torches.
Knowing what Aidan had recently learned, he was eager to take a sneak peek at the tiny sprite beings who lived their entire lives inside these strange little lamps. Tat laughed as one bit down squarely on the tip of his finger after flicking up the shutter. Perhaps he kept it up longer than he should have, but he couldn’t resist seeing them and their miniature village more clearly.
“Ow! You didn’t tell me they bite!” he snapped at her.
“I know,” she smirked. “What did you expect? Would you want someone staring at you like that?”
“I will never get used to this crazy world,” he muttered; shaking his sore finger as if that would make it stop stinging.
“GAHHHH!”
They jumped, hearing someone up ahead on the path yell.
“What the heck is that? Is it another monster?” Aidan questioned with panic in his voice.
“I don’t know what that was, I’ve never heard that sound before. I think it might have been someone yelling over that hill. Let’s go see.” Tat slung the pack back over her shoulders and headed in the noise’s direction with Tok leading the way.
“Wait! We don’t know what’s up there,” Aidan tried to warn her, but she ignored him and kept going. For a second he thought about staying where he was, but then decided he’d better go see what was going on before she got herself into another situation. Besides, he definitely didn’t want to get separated from her and end up being alone in this bizarre world.
Just up the packed dirt road and over a small hill they could make out a darkened silhouette of someone.
“Look!” Tat said with some surprise. “There’s another traveler on the road. We should go greet them.”
Aidan started to object but realized it would do little good, so instead he reluctantly followed them.
“Good day traveler,” Tat called out. Waving, and with the biggest smile she could muster, she sauntered towards him as if the salutation were quite natural.
Reaching closer to the lone traveler, Aidan could see that he was just some kid; and from the looks of it probably no older than they were, that is, if he’s human.
The stranger appeared to have a darkened olive complexion. His short but wavy brown hair was so dark that it was nearly black, matching his soulful eyes. He wore a deep green hooded cloak over his clothing, covering his head, making it impossible to tell if his ears were long and pointed like most of the Fae.
“Oh, hello,” the boy chimed back somewhat awkwardly, quickly stashing something into a rumpled brown paper bag under his cloak. The bag’s contents wriggled fiercely as the boy began to visibly perspire. Curiosity got the best of Tok who braved the stranger and proceeded to bat playfully at the parts of the bag the boy was unable to conceal.
“Merry meet,” Tat said approaching him, continuing the usual general greeting she was taught that one says when meeting a stranger. “How goes your travels?”
Aidan shook his head, apparently personal boundaries and privacy weren’t as popular here as in his own world either. He thought it was somewhat rude and invasive for her to just run up to a complete stranger like this. Not to mention, was she not afraid of potential harm this stranger could present?
“It goes… fair,” the boy replied with a quiver in his voice. “And yours?”
“Oh, we’re fine,” Tat smiled. “We’re headed to Knottagin. We’re hoping we can find passage aboard a skitterdu headed south. We have business in Breah Dorn.”
“Oh really?” the boy asked floundering for what to say next, trying his best to keep the bag still. Its contents became noticeably restless as Tok scratches intensified.
“Yes. Are you traveling that direction?” she paused for a second, but before he could answer she continued. “Oh, of course you are! There’s nothing the other direction but the forest, pookas and briars. Maybe you would like to join us? As they say, the fates look fondly on those in numbers you know,” she smiled, doing her best to be congenial.
“Well, thanks for the invitation and all, but I am doing some, uhm… well I guess you could call it foraging. You know, looking for certain plants, and I would have to stop several times.”
Aidan couldn’t believe how naïve she was being. It was obvious this boy didn’t want to be having a conversation with them much less joining them while they traveled. He decided he should help the boy out a little. “Well, it’s getting late, perhaps we should be on our way?”
“The sun will be down soon, and this looks like a great place to camp. Why don’t we all camp here for the night?” Tat suggested, not taking the hint from either of them.
The ‘thing’ in the bag shook with force beneath the cloak, and then with one sudden thrust it burst through, falling to the ground, acclimating itself for just an instant before fleeing Tok just as she was about to pounce.
“Oh no! The wyren! Stop it! I have to stop it!” the boy screamed.
Aidan, being the closest to its path instinctively dove at it; although if he’d taken just a second to think about it he would realize just how absurd this was. He was chasing down a little green plant creature that had bushy stalks and leaves for legs and arms with a flowering crown of small pink petals on its head, and it could run from him! He didn’t think about it, he simply reacted to being
told to ‘stop it’.
Tat grabbed Tok to keep her from pursuing the poor thing. What was this boy doing with a wyren in a sack? Was he some kind of poacher? Was he there to harm the wyren? She had heard that some dark magick users and their ilk did such things. Dried the plant folk out and ground their skins up for magickal ingredients. She refused to believe it. He looked much too innocent to be of the dark. Surely, she was a better judge of character than that. But what reason would he have to put such a gentle plant fae in a sack beneath his cloak like that?
Aidan managed to grab one small leaf on the little plant being’s leg. He yanked trying to get a firm hold but caused the leaf to fall off instead. The wyren yelped and mumbled something unintelligible and angry sounding. Before Aidan could blink it jumped down some tiny deep looking hole.
“It’s gone. I can’t believe it – it’s gone.” The boy dropped to his knees and began to cry. “I’ve been tracking it for days!” he choked out, pounding his fist hard on the ground. “I’m so sorry Amma.” He sat back and looked up at the sky, tears running down both cheeks. Slumping his head, he let his guard down and his hood fell backwards.
“You’re… human!” Tat announced with some surprise.
The boy looked at her in silence, not sure what to make of it. “Of course I’m human, so are you aren’t you?”
“Look Aidan, another boy. Another human boy.” Tat beamed.
Aidan looked at her rather than the boy. “Tat, you’re being a little rude, I think we’d better go.”
“What? No I’m not,” she blurted out. “I just figured he’s probably Errata like us. Why else would a human be here? Maybe he can help us find Serendi!”
“Woah, wait. I’m human, ok, but I’m not Errata. And furthermore I can’t become Errata. I’m fate-kin, of Fortuna’s people.”
“So there are humans that live here too? Actual humans, not just fairy people?” Aidan looked confused.
“No, I didn’t say I lived here. I’m from Raleigh, North Carolina, back in the States. I’m just here running an errand for my family.”
The Fateless: Errata Page 5
