Young Writers Society

(1580 words for Last Man Standing contest - the final part of this chapter.)

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Not one pair of eyes turned to Carys as he crept in the shadows between the houses, keeping close to walls and avoiding the windows. His fingertips followed the cold, strangely grainy texture of the rock used to build the round walls. It was different, but not unpleasantly so, from the familiar feeling of wood under his fingers whenever he’d touch the walls of their house in the forest. Here, people seemed to not care whether their homes were alive - judged by how silent the walls were, Carys guessed these houses’ owners didn’t even know how to read and understand them.

I wonder if that’s so in the town as well, he thought as he pulled himself closer to a window. It was rather small and not very high from the ground - Sir Oristan would have to bend over slightly to look through it properly - and it offered Carys the view to a room as round as the outer walls. He could spot swings made of sheets, hanging around the hearth in the middle, and a small dog sleeping under one of them.

He leaned his head to a side a bit, his nose nearly touching the transparent fabric spread over the window’s opening to keep insects and animals away. Following the wall right from him, there was a long table with four seats, and a smaller seat on tall legs stood a bit further, with a toy on the floor next to it. Carys smiled a little, turning his head to the other side - but before he got to see anything more than the front door and wooden ladders leading somewhere up next to it, something tugged at his pants.

“Don’t--” He frowned as he nearly jumped back. A small child - girl, as much as Carys could tell, maybe two or three years old - was looking at him with her hand still reaching for his clothes, blinking curiously. “...Hello.”

The girl flashed him a smile, cocking her head a bit to a side.

Carys licked his lips. He has seen children in the forest - not many, but a couple - but he had no way of knowing whether this child was the same as them. Over the years, much thanks to Sir Oristan, he has heard stories of life and history of the people in the kingdoms and the Empire, but none of those stories ever told how to talk to one of them - especially not to one which seemed too small to even talk properly.

“I was…” He stole a quick glance at the window as the girl looked at his shirt. Compared to that dull-coloured little robe of hers, I suppose my clothes really are interesting. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Should you be here alone? Do you live here?” He pointed at the house. “Is this your home?”

The girl opened her mouth, and Carys gave her what he hoped to be an encouraging smile, but if she was going to say anything, her words got cut by the sound of a horn.

Looking up, Carys automatically took a step back. In the forest, the sound of the horn meant the approaching of a pack of wolves, a stranger or a creature more or less benevolent than either of those. Here, however, it didn’t seem to make anyone scared. Smiling widely, the girl turned around and ran towards the sound, and Carys reluctantly turned back to the woods.

You’ve seen nothing yet, a voice inside his head noticed in a singsong tone, and he stopped with a frown. A small child wasn’t afraid, so why should you be?

“I could just keep to the shadows and take a look,” he muttered, carefully turning his back to the woods again and walking in the direction the girl left.

*

The small clearance he walked into was covered in stone as well, but different kind from the one they used for houses. This stone was familiar to Carys, and he could feel it slightly vibrating under his feet, offering its stories to whomever was able and willing to listen. He had seen such stones in the forest many times, laying nearly hidden in ivy and wildflowers, providing a hiding place for small animals and reptiles - and even Carys himself, back when he was small enough to play such games and fit in such places. But the rocks here weren’t left under care of the nature; they were shinier and cleaner, carefully laid so the ground would be as flat as possible.

Carys knew the roads made that way could last for a long time. He could see one extending to both sides of the small square he stood on - one lead further south, in a direction he wasn’t familiar with; the other snaked north, disappearing in the woods only a few houses away from where Carys found his way into the village.

“Move, boy!” Something heavy pushed his shoulder, and he found a short, sturdy man grinning at him as he found his balance again. “You don’t want to be ran over by His Excellence, do you?”

“What…” The man was speaking Larish, but with a heavy accent Carys placed somewhere much further to the south. He frowned a bit. “...Whose Excellence?”

The man’s grin now threatened to swallow his own face, his head hanging a bit on the side. His eyes slid over Carys’s appearance and he hissed silently. “You’re not from here, are you?” The man turned serious, only to smirk a moment after. “His Excellence the Emperor, that’s who. I tell you… Go to one side…” he moved his hands to the right, “...or to the other.” He demonstrated by moving his hands to the left and shook his head. “You’ll get stamped over by his horses if you stay here.”

It was Carys’s turn to have his words cut off, as a woman called the man from one of the houses. He left shaking his head and muttering something about strange ways others raised their children, and Carys turned from him after a few moments. He headed across the square instead, approaching a table filled in different fruit. A young woman raised her eyebrows as he stepped close enough, her eyes too sliding over his appearance first.

“You look hungry.”

I’m not, he wanted to say, but just nodded a bit as she took a pear from her table. He had tried one only once before - they weren’t common in these parts, he knew, nearly as much as they were in the kingdom of Naavia and some of the Empire’s islands.
He dug through his pockets, remembering the stories Sir Oristan told him. The people on the outskirts of the forest still despised money - gold, silver and copper coins of different shapes and sizes people used in the cities - but they didn’t understand the concept of sharing either, expecting something in return no matter who the other person was.

Not finding anything he could really offer, he sighed and looked at his weapon. It was nothing but a small piece of wood, with a couple of meaningless symbols carved on its surface and only a few tiny arrows dripped in poison stored inside, but he saw it valuable nonetheless.

Maybe she does too, he told himself. And if the people here like you, you could return and talk to them, as them to tell you stories not even Sir Oristan knows…

He smiled a bit, offering it to her, now hoping she’d take it although his heart hurt a little at the thought. You’ll return later with something else and trade it back. His inner voice sounded convincing as the woman nodded and took it, observing it closely and then putting a small bag of pears in his hand. He met his eyes for a moment as she did that - they were dark as the evening sky, but shining softly as she smiled.

“Anything else for the colourful stranger?”

“No…” He glanced at his weapon in her hand - she was holding it like a living easily breakable thing - and smiled back. “Thank you.”

*

Despite the man’s warnings about the horses and the carriage, Carys didn’t see as much as a glimpse of the Emperor as he kept exploring, walking around the square and politely smiling to strangers.

The more time he spent there, the more relaxed he felt. Several pairs of eyes still turned to look at him curiously, but he payed them no attention, and soon enough he couldn’t understand what ever stopped him from coming here sooner.

Sir Oristan’s words. His warnings, that’s what stopped you.

He leaned against a wall of one of the taller houses, counting the pears he had left before deciding to just eat one more and saving the others to give the others in the forest, when he heard the horn again. This time, it seemed closer, and not even half a pear later he saw the first horses.
 Tall and proud, two black stallions lead the way for six others, each with a rider in dark orange suit. The first one carried a flag as well - dark coat of arms with a bronze wasp on the black surface - and the carriage followed shortly after.

Carys only managed to catch the same wasp on its side, and a figure hidden in the shadows of the inside, before a familiar gloved hand clasped his shoulder, without a word pulling him back into the woods.

***