JC Eberdt

Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Palady’s Passing

Ala had been in Thetwick for almost seventy years, as close as she could reckon it, when Palady passed away. It was early in the spring of the year 916, with snow still on the ground in many places, following a winter that had been unusually cold. There was only the slightest inkling of spring in the air and the lack of new life felt like an approprate backdrop for her funeral.

Ala was very sad, Palady had been her one constant during all her time in Thetwick, which almost felt like it was all she had ever known. Palady had lived a very long life for a human, outliving both her human daughter, Olivia and her granddaughter Amelia. No one had ever found out what had become of her other daughter Emma after her abduction by Selinan raiders. Amelia had died in childbirth, giving birth to Aubree, Palady’s youngest great grandchild. Palady’s long life was something Ala knew she should feel grateful for but she still felt very alone without the old lady. Aubree had been raised by Palady and Ala after Amelia and Olivia’s deaths. By then Palady had already been quite old, so Ala had played an important role in Aubree’s upbringing. It was Aubree who came to Ala’s rescue when Ala couldn’t stay in Palady’s house any longer.

The house Palady had lived in had been rented from one of the richer families in Thetwick, relatives of Palady’s deceased husband Jack. It was generations later though and no vestiges of a family relationship would allow Ala to live there for free. Ala had no income and she looked like a slight human girl not quite in her early teens, aside from the pointed ears that she always kept hidden under her long hair, a headscarf or a hooded cloak. In addition, women weren’t officially allowed to enter into contracts in the Westmarch or even anywhere in Iurrak, unless they were widowed. That wasn’t to say that Ala hadn’t seen it happen over the years, but the age humans perceived her to be and the fact that she was a half elf meant that such an arrangement wasn’t a possibility for Ala. Aubree’s offer to take her in was a great relief. Ala hadn’t really known what else to do and she had even seriously been considering leaving to live in the forest somewhere.

Aubree’s husband, Alexander, had died very shortly after she had married, even before they’d had any children. Aubree had always been close to Ala, even more so after her husband died. Having been mostly raised by Ala, there weren’t many secrets between the two of them. At Palady’s funeral, Aubree suggested that Ala should live with her. It was a little awkward at first of course. The two knew each other well, but Aubree was twenty three and used to running her own little household. Ala had hardly changed in twenty three years, being much like a young teen-aged human child that whole time. She was also used to taking care of everything for Palady. She and Aubree took a while to adjust, to balance their house together but they did find a way to comfortably complement each other after a time. Every so often, the fact that Ala wasn’t human would come up.

“You know Ala, it’s so hard to imagine that you’re probably even older than Palady was,” Aubree said thoughtfully once, when the were sitting together by the fire on a rainy night.

“I’m not completely sure that I am. But… you’re right… it has to be something like that.”

“Such a strange thing. I… well… humans I guess… we all think highly of a long life. But when it’s as long as yours. I see how hard it is for you to fit in among the rest of us.”

“It… well, sometimes it’s a bit unpleasant. Though it has its upsides, too.”

“I suppose. Well at this rate, I’ll be an old woman before you’re even marriageable. I think I would have liked to see that.”

“Marriage? No thanks.”

“Trust you to say that. Well, we’ll see. You’re so… timeless, I can’t really imagine it either. Sometimes it makes me feel weird.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you fault. Probably because we Thets don’t get around much. I mean, you’re hardly the only half-elf in Taladaria, I’d think. Just, we’re not used to it out here in the Westmarch.”

Every few years they had a comparable conversation. It was really the only time Ala’s different nature ever came up. When they were out, Ala was treated like Aubree’s child sister and Ala played along, but the relationship was somewhere between equal and the other way round. Ala had picked the minds of anyone who was willing to talk to her for decades, after all and she knew an awful lot compared to almost everyone in Thetwick. She also knew the school’s whole curriculum better than the Sisters of Ceres themselves. Ala’s comparatively endless knowledge and skills were something Aubree had grown up with, so it didn’t unnerve her like it tended to do with the other villagers.

In fact, Aubree looked up to Ala. Ala loved Aubree and accepted the strange way her human relationships changed during her slow life. It wasn’t as if she had any real choice. Ala continually watched the lives of all the villagers passing her by. As she grew older and her body developed boys started to show an interest in her. She noticed them, of course. She didn’t find the attention unpleasant, but none of the boys in the village interested her. She had been around long enough to know exactly what boys of that age were driven by. Not that she didn’t have similar urges, she just wasn’t quite ruled by them. The boys were all so… small-minded. Even the human girls thought the boys were immature, so it made sense to her that she wasn’t interested in them, since she had been around so much longer than everyone else.

Young boys, especially younger brothers without any inheritance, were still regularly sent to join the Duke’s regiment. As Thetwick’s population grew, so did the number of children and also the number of boys who were sent to serve the Duke. Eldest sons inherited, girls grew up and had husbands and children. There were tragedies, small and big and sometimes violence. There was even a murder every decade or so. A man was caught and hanged in front of the whole town, once, for banditry along the road to the Ford Inn. It had been quite gruesome, making Ala feel queasy. Once, they even had to flee Thetwick, going north towards Oakharrow when a horde of Orcks came out of the southern mountains. The orcks were eventually driven back by the Duke’s regiment and the Levy, but several buildings in Thetwick were damaged or burned. Many men who had been in the levy had been killed. When they were able to return, signs of battle were still fresh, with defensive berms and stakes still visible all the way around the town.

Thetwick had good times and bad times during the years that Ala lived there. At times it had swelled to the size of a modest town while after the orck attacks in 861 and 926 it had taken years to recover, though the former attack, known as ‘The Great Horde’ had been the worst by far. Most of the town was built out of wood, which easily disappeared, or so it seemed to Ala who had been in Thetwick longer than many of the houses. A lot of houses had been destroyed during the orck attacks too.

Ever so slowly more stone buildings and even some fortifications were raised. They were built out of stone quarried a few miles upstream of the town. There was no wall around the town, but some of the richer families started building stronger houses as the years passed. Some more affluent inhabitants rebuilt parts of their house in stone as Thetwick became wealthier, for protection and durability. In the year 927 a grand building was erected by men sent by the Duke. Ala thought it was both a reaction to the Orck Incursion the year before and an effort to help Thetwick recover from the damage.

The meeting hall was was the largest and strongest building Thetwick had seen in living memory. It had strong walls, arrow slits and even a modest square tower, with crenellations around a pointed roof on top. Its building had been supervised by several the Duke’s men who had come all the way from Peyrepertuse to oversee the construction. One of them had been a master mason and he directed the building of the hall. It was a place for meetings, courts, festivals and a base for the levy. Outside the hall, a large area was marked out for the Duke’s use. It was the drilling field, where the levy was to meet and practice their skills. It was a square of a hundred by a hundred royal yards, surrounded by a row of solid oak trees that were planted around its perimeter. Even they seemed to grow faster than Ala did. From then on, the town had a Constable too, who customarily was elected by the council of elders to take care of the Duke’s and the towns’ affairs. The Constable also was the Lieutenant of the Levy and was in charge of drilling and leading the militia when it was needed. Ala almost never saw a Lieutenant actually practising with the militia, it was a part of the job that no one seemed to take very seriously.
\bigskip

Life was frustrating for Ala at times. Even when Palady had been alive everyone in the family had understood that emphasising Ala’s longevity among the people of Thetwick would make life harder. There was a lot of superstition and it was better not to give people cause to think about Ala as if she were something other than human. When Ala had moved in with Aubree they had also agreed that it was best if most townspeople didn’t think about Ala at all. The majority of the people of Thetwick knew of her presence, but they seemed to be prepared to ignore it as long as she stayed on the periphery of society. Partly because of that, Ala had always spent a lot of time out and about, ranging around the countryside. She was particularly good at finding edible mushrooms, far more than they could eat. She usually traded most of them for other foods. Mostly she was alone because it was so hard to find companions who didn’t eventually grow uncomfortable with her. Humans expected her to be friends with children who looked like they were in the same age bracket. As Ala was vastly older than those human children that didn’t work very well. On the other hand, older humans tended to treat her like a child, which Ala didn’t like either. Every so often Ala found someone she was friendly with for a while, but it never seemed to take long for the differences in the rates that they aged to come between them, or, as also happened frequently, for the friend in question to be forbidden to speak to her because she was a half elf.

She did make the acquaintance of some of the hunters, offering to help them in exchange for things like an occasional hide or some meat. This was a partnership that worked well as it required little talking and was always focused on the task at hand. Most of the professional hunters tended to be a kind of loners too. Hunting was a profession for those who preferred to be out in nature, left to their own devices. She learned many things from them, things like how to set snares, skinning rabbits, boars and deer, cooking over a fire and how to hunt with a bow and fend for herself. The hunters were used to working alone and it was easier to talk with them individually than when she was in the town. That seemed to apply at least as long as the subject was related to hunting. She learned a little fletching from them too, enough to make herself a serviceable hunting bow.

She did grow, ever so slowly, slowly developing into a beautiful young girl, seemingly in her teens. She had continued to dye her hair a mousy brown colour just as Palady had always insisted she do. It had actually taken decades before Ala really knew what her real hair colour was.

“Ala, your roots are showing again,” said Aubree one afternoon.

“Already?” Ala sighed.

“You could just… you know… not dye it? Your natural colour is so wonderful.”

“No, I promised Palady.”

“I know. Well, I think we still have everything we need to make more dye from the last batch. I’ll mix some up for you. You might need to bring back some nettles with you from the forest, we’re probably going to need more of those.”

“I will.”

Palady had made her promise to keep it brown after she died, which she dutifully did as often as she remembered to.

Ala’s favourite job was helping the many horse breeders of Thetwick. Not many of them would tolerate her around their farms at first, but there had been a few since she’d started looking like she was in her teens that hadn’t turned away her help with grooming and walking the horses. At one of the farms, the owner saw her whisper a huge unruly breeding stallion that no one else dared approach to calmness and that was all that was needed for her to be given more substantial jobs. Eventually, word got around that she had a knack for horses. Ala knew that the Duke had given a number of his Regiment’s former cavalrymen a grant of land in Thetwick, as well as a contract to supply warhorses. It had developed into Thetwick’s most important source of income from outside the county. Thetwick had become famous for its horses in the decades that Ala lived there. Even the Duke of Taladaria himself was said to ride Thetwick bred destriers, a fact the villagers were all very proud of.

Ala just liked the fact that the horses didn’t judge her. The majestic creatures always seemed to really like her, especially when she spoke to them in elven. The only thing that fascinated her more than horses was swords and swordplay, though there was no way for a young girl in Thetwick to do more than watch the levy on those rare occasions when it was called out to practice. When they did, something in the back of her mind told her that they didn’t really know what they were doing, though she never said anything. Sometimes some young men would start a group for weapons practice, but that usually didn’t last for long either. She had tried to join in when boys were playing with wooden swords many times but she had always been turned away, sometimes violently. In the rural culture of Thetwick, a sword wielding girl was unimaginable.

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Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Keeping Count

She had been in Thetwick for more than forty years since the day she had decided it would be a good idea to start keeping count. It was then that she had started keeping track of dates too and she made it a point to remember that that year had been 855 by the way the humans of Iurrak customarily counted them. She’d since learned that in Selinus they sometimes used the years of a monarch’s reign, or the elven calendar that she’d heard went back far further. She didn’t really know how either of those worked though. She wasn’t certain how long she had been in Thetwick before 855, but it couldn’t have been more than a decade or two, she thought. She remembered that the village had been little more than a hamlet when she first came to it, it had grown a lot since. She also still didn’t know how old she was, but it was much, much older than the ten human years or so that she now looked. Too many people lived in Thetwick now, but she didn’t think there were more than a handful who were older than her and they were the most ancient people in the town.

She still only had vague memories of the time before her adoptive mother, Palady, had taken her in. They were partial and dreamlike, all of beautiful, tall and slender people, musical voices and white stone cities among enormous trees. The city or cities she remembered had been filled with enormous, airy buildings and magnificent towers reaching into the sky, with the wind making nice strange noises as it found its way around the tall structures. There were figures in her memories who she thought might be her mother and father, but she hardly had more than shards of images. She remembered that there had been plants, coaxed to grow around white stone and the sound of many birds. She also remembered strange and beautiful creatures in a magnificent forest somewhere. There might have been less buildings there, but she wasn’t sure. It had smelt of spring and life. The only other thing she was really certain of was that she must have come to Thetwick after she learned to talk, since she could speak and even read, elvish, a skill which no else in Thetwick seemed to possess.

A fair number of people in Thetwick could read, which they usually learned at school. Her command of elvish puzzled her a little though. She assumed that learning to read elven must have been with her elven parent, though she didn’t even know if it was her mother or father who had been an elf. The way she learned wasn’t exactly like human children. She realised it was very uncommon for a human child who was the same size as she had been when she’d arrived in Thetwick to have already learned to read. She guessed she must have been the size of a four or five year old human child, then but she thought she might have already even been decades old, even then.

She thought that simply having more time was what made the difference, rather than learning to read being too difficult for a four or five year old human child. It was just that humans were a few years older when they mastered it, just because it took a few years to master. Even if Ala had learned when she was even smaller and it had taken her five years, she would still have looked like a four or a five year old human child by the team she’d spent far more hours learning than a human child had by the time they were eight. It seemed logical to her that she could have learned to read elvish even though she still would have looked quite a lot younger than even the youngest of literate human children.

She didn’t know how old she had been when she arrived and even Palady had never really dared to make a proper guess. Palady described it as if she had been about the size of a human four or five year old as well, anyway. What that meant in half-elf years she simply didn’t know, but she decided it must have been decades. Of course she wasn’t actually sure her rate of ageing was constant. It was quite difficult to make any guesses without anyone knowledgeable to ask.

When Palady was already very old, she had sat Ala down and explained to her in more detail about the group of the Duke’s soldiers that had left Alagariel in Thetwick. They had rescued Ala somewhere, Palady didn’t know exactly where, but she thought it might have been near a small fief to the West, named Seraphim. She told her again about the senior guardsman with the patrol, William the Bull. Mostly, Ala knew the story and even thought she remembered shards of those days which were filled with terror. Palady also told her how she had chosen the name ‘Alagariel’ for her. As a little girl she had only referred to herself as ‘Ala’. It was one of the few things she had ever said during the first few years in Thetwick. Palady thought it was probably part of a longer name, shortened to make it easier for a child to say. Trying to imagine a longer form of Ala, the name Alagariel, who was an elf queen in a popular faery tale, had seemed fitting. Her name was usually followed by her saying things in elven that Palady obviously couldn’t understand. There had been improvement though and eventually, Ala had started speaking the common tongue too.

The name Palady had chosen, was very well known name among the people of the Westmarch owing to the popular tale. It wasn’t customary to name girls ‘Alagariel’, but everyone knew it well nonetheless. Children all across Taldyr learned the nursery rhyme. It had been Palady’s favourite story when she was a girl herself. It was about an elven queen and her dragon friends who had driven the demons from the world together at the beginning of time. Palady had learned the story from her grandmother. Alagariel knew it was a common story that was always told to awe young children. The Alagariel in the story was strong and smart, a warrior, a fire sorceress and a stern though fair Queen. She was presented as someone who would come to save you if you were good. Ala loved stories, though if she was honest her favourite was a different tale, one about a Northern shieldmaiden named Kára. Still, she understood that Palady had chosen the name for her because she was a half-elf and she had found it fitting for a child who called herself ‘Ala’.

Ala was sure she had had a different name before she came to Thetwick… she was sure it hadn’t been Alagariel but she just couldn’t remember it. Once she realised that her new name was different she had spent a lot of time trying to remember what the old one was. Sometimes she thought she had it but eventually she realised she just couldn’t be sure. It was a lot longer than ‘Ala’, that was the only thing she was certain about.

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Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Palady Explains

Once, when she had been in Thetwick for some time, Palady had sat her down and explained things to her.

“Now Ala, I think you’re old enough that we should have a little talk about you and where you come from.”

“Old enough?”

“Well, I admit that I don’t know how old you are, but you certainly look like you’re around six years old or so.”

“We have to talk about me because I look like I’m six…?”

“Like a six year old human, yes. You get older very slowly, I’ve explained before that that’s because you’re a half-elf, right?”

“I know, Palady. You’ve told me many times. You tell me… most days.”

“Good. What I haven’t told you about is how you came to be in Thetwick. At least not in any detail.”

“I think… I was brought… by soldiers?” Ala said, feeling a stirring of memories.

“That’s right. About twenty years ago now, when my Jack was still alive and Emma was still with us.”

Ala grew quiet. It always made her sad when she thought of Emma. Emma was… or had been one of her two human sisters, the younger of the two. The girl had been abducted by raiders from Selinus, she knew. She’d really loved Emma. She didn’t know where Selinus was, but she knew Emma hadn’t been the only one taken that day. Other villages had also been dragged away by the Selinan men. Palady had explained that it was something terrible that sometimes happened in the Westmarch. It was very rare that they ever dared to ride all the way to Thetwick itself. The last time, before the day Emma had been taken, had been years before Ala arrived in the village. Some of the hamlets further north had to contend with raids more often, Palady had told her. The Selinans came to steal cattle, horses and sometimes, like on that day, even people.

“I still miss Emma too,” Palady comforted her, stroking her hair. “As well as Jack. It’s quite normal to think of her. Let’s hope she’s safe, at least, shall we?”

Ala could see older woman’s eyes reddening at the thought. Palady quickly pulled herself together and continued.

“But today we need to talk about something else, alright? We can’t think of the people we’ve lost and loved all the time, even though we sometimes want to, can we?”

“I guess not,” she said, though she was wondering if they did it too little.

“So now I’m going to talk to you about how you came to Thetwick.”

“OK.”

“The soldiers that brought you were led by a warrior, William the Bull. A proud and honourable man, he was. A hero. William was Jack’s half brother.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s true. He was a good man, it’s said that the Duke even commended him personally many times. He was one of the Duke’s best soldiers. Anyway, William and his soldiers happened upon some enemy soldiers, humans and even some other creatures. William thought they were probably returning from an ambush…”

“An ambush?”

“Yes, that’s a place where travellers had been attacked and hurt by orcks and nasty creatures. He and his soldiers stumbled upon them by accident, William said.”

“What happened then?”

“They managed to chase off the bad creatures and men. They didn’t have time to look where exactly the ambush had happened, even though they could tell from the things that the bad creatures were carrying that it couldn’t have been far away. They looked around, but couldn’t find any other survivors.”

“I was really the only one?” She asked, hoping, though she really knew the answer.

“I’m sorry Ala. I don’t know if your real mother and father were among the casualties, but I’m afraid… I think they might have been. It’s more than likely, I’m sorry.”

“I know, Palady,” said Ala seriously. Thinking about it made her feel empty inside.

“Of course you do. Yo know so many things for such a little girl. Now let me continue the story. The soldiers found you, tied up, slung over a horse. You were a prisoner, so the soldiers freed you and took you with them. Apparently you tried to run away several times. William didn’t really know what to do with you, so I said it was alright if you stayed with me. I promised to look after you.”

“You look after me very well, Palady.”

That caused the woman to smile. “Why thank you, Ala. That’s kind of you to say. But, I think we both know you mostly look after yourself, don’t you? Sometimes you are even the one looking after the rest of us.”

It was partially true. She often took home what she found in the forest often bringing home many mushrooms, berries, wild plants and roots that they could eat. She liked to cook and often did help with the many things that were needed to keep the household running. She really did feel that Palady looked after her very well though.

Ala’s other, older, human sister, Olivia, was already married by then. She had a daughter of her own, named Amelia. Ala often looked after Amelia. Ala was so much older than she looked so that everyone in Palady’s family knew looking after Olivia’s daughter could easily be left to her. It was strange to some of the neighbours to see Ala and Amelia alone together when they were roughly the same size. Thirty years later, Amelia died in childbirth, greatly saddening Ala. After that, she also looked after Amelia’s two older children, Garrett and Aubree, very often.

Ala didn’t know any other half-elves and neither did anyone else in the town. She hadn’t been able to find anyone else who knew any, at least. A half-elf would live a lot longer than other people, Palady had told her, that’s why it made sense that she grew slower. She ached to know how much longer it would take and no one in Thetwick that she’d dared ask had been able to tell her anything useful. No one seemed to know how much longer it took a half-elf to grow up and the answers she’d had had been so different from one another that they were of no use at all.

Palady, her adoptive mother, whom she loved dearly had gotten very old before Alagariel had even developed breasts. That certainly wasn’t the way things worked for humans, she knew. She sometimes cursed her heritage because it put her so far outside the human world. She didn’t fit in with the other children of the village and she didn’t fit in with the adults, so she spent a lot of time on her own. Palady had always tried to hide the fact that Ala was a half elf. She kept Ala’s hair dyed brown and made her wear a headscarf or a hood and sometimes even both to hide her pointed ears. She made Ala arrange her hair so that even if the hood came off, her ears wouldn’t be clearly visible. It wasn’t that her being a half-elf was really a secret. Palady had tried to explain that it would just be safer for Ala if the villagers weren’t constantly reminded that Ala was different.

She often said, “not all folks are as open-minded as me, Ala, best be careful.”

Ala made sure to pay heed to her advice, Palady’s point had been made painfully clear so many times that it was impossible for her to forget about it. She had made a few friends over the years, but many of the villagers kept their children away from her. Those few friends she had made tended to drift away as the discrepancy in ageing made things strange for them. She seemed to lose the connection with them, somehow, when they grew up. The people around Thetwick were used to how she looked, with most knowing about her pointed ears, very pale blue eyes and her skin, which had a slight reddish-gold tinge. Ala didn’t think anyone knew that her hair wasn’t really mousy brown. Even so the villagers still mostly ignored her as they would most children even though she was usually far older than both the children and their parents. She was often even older than their grandparents, which she sometimes even forgot herself.