Laura S. Fox
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Hungry Heart - Book #3 - Ch. 19
🕑 Added 2022-04-03 06:00:00 +0000 UTCChapter One / Chapter Two / Chapter Three / Chapter Four / Chapter Five / Chapter Six / Chapter Seven / Chapter Eight / Chapter Nine / Chapter Ten / Chapter Eleven / Chapter Twelve / Chapter Thirteen / Chapter Fourteen / Chapter Fifteen / Chapter Sixteen / Chapter Seventeen / Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen – A Place for Tigers
Toru sat on the ground, his legs folded under him, placing his palms on his knees, all the while keeping his strange hosts under his keen eyes. As much as he tried looking impressive, the words said before by Beanstalk kept ringing in his ears. He was too young, and he was the last. These strange little people had an important task ahead, that of explaining to him everything he had to know about this place.
No one seemed willing to talk to him, so he decided to take the lead and begin finding things out. “Who are you?” he asked.
Beanstalk appeared keen on appeasing his companions who were whispering in confused and slightly angry voices among themselves, but, at his question, he straightened up, in a futile effort to stand tall. “We’re the truth keepers… and you seem to know nothing about us. Didn’t your parents tell you about us?”
Toru schooled his face into an expression that hopefully gave nothing away. “No. They never told me anything about little people keeping fires and burning weird plants just to make me travel half a world.”
“Why would you need to travel half a world?” Beanstalk inquired. “Your house’s seat of power may be hidden from view, but it is not that far.”
Toru wavered in his decision to keep his origins a secret. Was it all right to tell Beanstalk and the others who called themselves truth keepers, where he truly came from? But that would be a mighty difficult task since he didn’t know the truth himself. At times, Toru liked to watch the leaves ripped from branches by a powerful wind and wonder where they would land once the wind tired of playing with them. It was like that for him. He was a leaf ripped from a branch, taken by destiny or mere whimsy, toward one destination or another, never the same.
“He should have known about us, about this place,” one from the larger group commented.
“He should have, indeed,” Beanstalk agreed, “but when was the last time you saw a tiger, Midnight?”
Toru couldn’t see why the other speaker was called Midnight. Among these tiny people with dark skin, he was the fairest, and even the mop of hair on his head was as white as snow, contrasting with his dirty clothes and considerably darker complexion. Indeed, these truth seekers seemed to have a cutting sense of humor.
“Decades, if not more,” Midnight agreed, and when he nodded, the mop of white hair on his head shook in acknowledgement.
“Let’s not look the gift bug in the mouth,” Beanstalk concluded.
“Gift bug? I think you meant a gift horse,” Toru corrected him.
Beanstalk snorted as if Toru hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about. “Do you see any of us capable of riding horses? The most we could aspire to would be a bug. Bug-riding, yes, we do that sometimes.”
Toru looked around and shivered in disgust. “What kind of bugs do you have around here?”
Beanstalk laughed hoarsely and then waved as if he had just told a joke that Toru didn’t understand. The others didn’t look half-amused, and they continued to stare at him, half in distrust, and half in hope. Toru didn’t know just yet what to make of their attitude toward him.
“He doesn’t know why he’s here,” Midnight said pointedly.
“I know,” Toru protested.
“He knows.” Beanstalk hurried to his defense. “It’s the same old quest,” he added and moved a twig-like arm in a half circle.
“I have to fight the evil and destroy it,” Toru stated, now emboldened by the trust Beanstalk placed in him. “Is it here, in Scercendusa? Is it the domestikos?”
“Ewart Kona is not so powerful. He’s nothing but a human,” Beanstalk explained.
“A human who hunts our kind and sends us to haul waste,” Midnight pointed out.
“Why would he hunt you?” Toru had a hard time wrapping his head around why anyone would find these little people a menace of any kind.
“Some humans just don’t like the sound of truth,” Midnight replied.
“Or the stench of tiger,” Beanstalk supplied right away.
Toru sniffed himself immediately and then shook his head. “I don’t stink,” he protested. “Duril forces me to wash every day.” Just saying his lover’s name made his heart jolt painfully for a moment. If these truth keepers, or truth seekers, or whatever they were, were telling the truth, that meant that Duril was caught in a very dangerous place right now.
“To us, you don’t stink,” Beanstalk explained. “You smell very nice,” he added courteously. “But humans like Ewart Kona understand nothing of the old history. They think tigers have no better purpose in life than to usurp their pointless power.”
“So, is the domestikos my enemy?” Toru asked. “But I have so many questions for him.”
“What questions?” Beanstalk stared at him like he had just said that the sun rose at dusk, and the moon at dawn.
“About--” he started. “I don’t come from any seat of power,” he said. There was no point in keeping the truth from these people. “I don’t have any parents, and I was raised an orphan in a place with many other children. Once I was old enough, I began the roam Eawirith in search of good steak and soft beds.” Not that he minded sleeping under the naked sky, if need be, but he usually preferred clean bedding and a more comfortable surface to stretch out on and have a good sleep. Of course, if Duril was by his side, he could sleep anywhere, but that wasn’t something he was yet willing to share with Beanstalk and the rest.
His confession was followed by a short silence, and then everyone in the room began talking animatedly in that strange language at the same time.
Beanstalk was the only one who didn’t take part in their baffled conversation. “Quiet,” he called out, when his brethren showed no sign that they would take a break anytime soon. When the ruckus finally died down, he began scratching his head while throwing Toru sympathetic looks. “Well, I suppose that explains your foolish attempt to climb the walls.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Midnight protested. “He might not even be the one we’ve been waiting for.”
“He’s a tiger,” Beanstalk said promptly. “That means that he’s here with a purpose. Plus, haven’t you heard him? He knows very well that he needs to fight the evil. What better proof do you need?”
“Maybe I need,” Midnight said pointedly, “for him to be from the house of Olliandran and to know precisely why he’s here and what he must do.”
Midnight’s attitude was starting to annoy him. Toru stood to his feet so that he could tower over the little people with his height. At this point, the last thing on his mind was to be careful of their feelings. “I know enough,” he said pointedly. “You’re just a bunch of waste-haulers who do nothing all day but gardening and forging. And if I felt the call of your tiger flowers, then isn’t that enough? I’m not here to sit around with you and smell them some more. Just tell me how to climb and I’ll teach the domestikos a lesson he’ll never forget!”
A moment of silence followed his angry tirade, and then they all started laughing. Not exactly at him, but not with him, either. They were a bunch of weird little people, and maybe it was a good idea to tell them that, too.
Beanstalk spoke first. “Tigers always have fire in them. That’s why their flower burns so bright.” He gestured at the giant forge to give weight to his words. “Sit down, Toru. We owe you an apology. And since no tiger has come for so many years, we should have surmised that something might have happened to the house of Olliandran.”
“We don’t know if anything has happened to our lords and masters,” Midnight contradicted him.
Plenty of the others began to shout at him to shut up.
“No other tiger has come to your call?” Toru asked, his ears perked up.
“No,” Beanstalk said simply.
“But there are other tigers in the world. I’ve seen a few myself.”
“Only one from the house of Olliandran would be able to discern the scent of the tiger flower. It is not for just anyone,” Beanstalk explained.
“He could be an imposter still,” Midnight continued to defend his position.
“No, he couldn’t,” Beanstalk said in a tone that brooked no contradiction. “He must be the last of the house of Olliandran.”
“Do you mean I’m your lord and master?” Toru asked, a bit confused. Until moments ago, he had been no one but an orphan tigershifter. Now, he was hearing the most astonishing things.
“Yes,” Beanstalk said, his eyes shining. “That’s what you are, young tiger.”
***
Duril stared at Pie in disbelief, but then he caught himself. “These clothes were given to me by Master Granius,” he said. “I have no idea what you mean that I smell of tiger. It makes no sense.”
Pie pranced around him, sniffing him like a playful puppy. Duril shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying to dodge the strange assault. “It’s on your skin,” Apple Pie said with satisfaction. “I can tell because I have a very well-trained nose.” To make his point, he touched his nose and looked at Duril for some kind of confirmation.
“You’re wrong,” Duril insisted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Pie seemed about to say something, when he suddenly tensed, perked up and seemed to be listening to something that Duril couldn’t hear. “Quick,” he told Duril, “we need to hide.”
There was no time for protests because Pie just grabbed his arm and dragged him behind the tall stack of wooden boxes on which he had perched earlier. Pie whispered something under his breath and made a small gesture with his right hand. Duril stared in utter astonishment while a curtain descended between them and the dusty alley, made of seemingly nothing but thin air. He would have thought there was nothing concealing them from view if it hadn’t been for the slight reflections of light that lent the wondrous thing the appearance of sunrays melting in water. He was about to ask Pie about it when a group of guards, dressed in black armor, appeared, rounding the corner. Their grim faces made Duril’s words die in his throat. They appeared to be looking for something, or better said, someone, and when Pie grabbed his hand and squeezed it, he couldn’t help thinking that they were in danger. One of the guards stopped right beside them and looked through the curtain, but Duril could tell he couldn’t see them as his piercing dark eyes moved on further without stopping.
“We lost the scent,” he growled in a harsh voice. “There’s no one here.”
Duril felt a slight tremor climbing up his arm, and only then did he realize that the one shivering in fear was Pie. He was staring right at the guard, his eyes wide and glassy, so Duril squeezed his hand to reassure him, without really knowing why he needed comfort. If they were caught, whatever their misdeed was, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the heavily armed guards. Duril was not exactly a fighter, and Pie was as small and helpless as a child.
Maybe not that helpless, Duril thought while holding his breath. The guard was walking away now, unaware that he had failed in his quest. But what scent were they talking about? And why was Pie so afraid of them? There was one possibility, that without knowing what he was doing, he had ended up in cahoots with a tiny criminal, but instinct told Duril that the guards had to be the bad people here.
Instinct. It was sort of a strange thing, but it appeared that he had developed one lately.
Once the guards disappeared from view, Pie sighed heavily and let go of Duril’s hand. Duril shook it discreetly to make the blood go flowing back into it.
“You have magic,” he told Pie, still amazed by what he had seen earlier.
“Among us, we just call it a skill,” Pie responded and crossed his arms over his chest, in an effort to look confident in his abilities.
“There are more people like you?” Duril asked. He fought the urge to crouch so that he could look Pie in the eye.
His question earned him a quirked eyebrow and a glare. “Do you mean, short like me?” Pie asked, narrowing his eyes.
“No, not at all,” Duril protested. “Others with magic.”
“Skill,” Pie contradicted him.
“As you say,” Duril hurried to agree.
Pie stared at him a little longer and then he burst into laughter. “How did you get into Scercendusa, Decottieri? Or should I call you Not-Decottieri?”
The ‘not’ thing reminded Duril of his orc tribe and his and his companions’ adventures in the desert.
“Maybe an abbreviation like ND would work, or otherwise, your name would sound like a mouthful each time one of us wants to address you—but ND sounds too much like ‘end’ and there’s nothing like end about you, more like a beginning--”
“Just call me Duril.” He didn’t know why he trusted the little fellow after all, but someone with magic was hard to fool.
Pie’s face split with an ear to ear grin. “I knew you’d come around. And I know you have magic, too.” He pointed at the symbols imprinted by Lady Amethyst on the back of Duril’s hand.
“Can I call it a skill, too?” Duril asked.
“No, you cannot,” Pie said promptly. “What’s your magic about?”
Duril put his hand on his hip and, this time, he stared down his newfound companion. “I need to ask you some questions first.” It wasn’t like him to be so straightforward, and not with people he had just met, but Pie’s strange magic or skill or whatever he wanted to call it, the guards searching for them, coupled with the fact that Pie could smell Toru on him, warranted that he get some answers first.
To his surprise, Pie didn’t protest at his directness. “Go ahead, ask me.” He gestured with his hand like a king granting an audience to a pauper, but Duril was starting to guess that those antics were part of Pie’s personality and nothing else.
“Why would you ask me how I got to Scercendusa?”
“Because to arrive somewhere, you need to leave from somewhere,” Pie traced an invisible line through the air with one pointy fingernail as if that was enough to capture the essence of Duril’s journey, a journey that had been anything but a straight uneventful path.
“If you just want to make fun of me, I must be on my way,” Duril said, but Pie immediately rushed to stop him.
“Forgive me,” he said quickly. “I was just thinking you were too good a person for a nasty city like this one.”
Duril stopped. He had no intention to walk away, but at the same time, he needed Pie to treat things seriously. Anyone able to smell Toru on him was good to know. “Nasty? Why is it nasty?”
Pie looked around and pursed his lips. “I have lunch ready. Come with me, and then ask me the important questions.”
Duril was about to protest that he had no time for lunch, but right at that moment, his belly growled. “All right,” he said, “but I do need to be back at Master Granius’ place before he comes back.”
“You will be,” Pie assured him.
He didn’t move, though, and Duril wondered why, but the next thing he knew, Pie snapped his fingers and the dusty alley disappeared, along with the wooden boxes and the sounds of Somergan Market.
Instead of all that, he found himself in a room with a low ceiling, illuminated by the sun outside through narrow windows that allowed streaks of gold to paint the floor with their vague silhouettes. In one corner, in front of a cooktop, someone of the same stature as Pie was getting busy with a boiling pot.
“I brought someone to lunch.”
The cook didn’t appear to hear them or notice their presence in any way, so Pie walked closer to him and yelled into his ear. “I said, I brought someone to lunch, Moth!”
Moth, who actually looked nothing like the creature he was named after, turned toward Pie and then promptly slapped him on the forehead with a ladle. “You don’t have to yell. I heard you the first time.” The cook was very thin, even by the standards of the type of people he and Pie belonged to, and his overall was white and splashed with stains of various colors that had to come from the food he was cooking. His hair was ginger red, and the look in his eyes was kind as he turned toward Duril. His face was very drawn, and the skin was creased so much that it made him look very old, but Duril wouldn’t have ventured to estimate an age for him, since both he and Pie were such peculiar human beings, if that was what they could be called.
“I’ll set up the table right away, visitor,” Moth said primly. With studied movements, he shut down the cooktop and then disappeared through a side door, to re-emerge from there wearing a new white overall with no stains on it.
Duril observed his surroundings, trying not to gawk too much. “Thank you for having me,” he said politely. The pot gave off an appetizing smell that made his belly rumble with glee in anticipation of the treat. “I apologize,” he said and placed his hand over his stomach to make it behave.
Moth watched him intently, his eyes on his hand to the point that Duril began to feel slightly uncomfortable. “Magic,” Moth concluded after his keen inspection, and Duril let out a breath. The fact that he only had one arm didn’t appear peculiar to many people here, in Scercendusa. Save for the merchant selling bad apples, not even Master Granius had questioned him about it.
“We’ll talk about it once we have our bellies full,” Pie recommended.
“About what?” Duril asked, suddenly wary of the circumstances by which he had happened to be there, in that low-ceiling kitchen.
“About tigers,” Pie said cheerfully.
“Tigers?” Moth asked and his nostrils flared. “Tigers,” he repeated, this time as if he was just realizing something, and with a tinge of relief and hope.
“It took you a while. It’s not enough that you don’t have ears; you don’t have a nose, either,” Pie said airily.
“Let me just grab that ladle,” Moth threatened, and Pie quickly snatched up the offensive kitchen implement and hid it behind his back.
“Where am I?” Duril interrupted their little squabble. While his hosts were busy exchanging light insults, the kind that would only leave hearts and souls intact when spoken between lifelong friends, he had stolen furtive looks around.
The walls on three sides, including the one with the cooktop, were lined with shelves on which small jars, vials, and flasks of various shapes were lined up neatly, one after another. What made him wonder about the place he found himself in the most were the vibrant colors that appeared to fill all those vessels. A pleasant hum, tickling the ear, filled the air, and Duril was yet to decipher where it was coming from. Another astonishing fact was the presence of only one door, the one through which Moth had disappeared earlier to change his clothes, which meant there was a lack of a door through which he and Pie had come in—
But, of course, they hadn’t arrived there by walking over the threshold of the kitchen. All the more, he needed to know. “What is this place?” he asked another question.
Moth and Pie both eyed him carefully.
“He’s a good man,” Pie said first.
“He smells of tiger,” Moth added.
Duril remained silent. Were they expecting him to contradict them?
“You’re not the tiger,” Moth continued and pointed a long finger at him. “Where is he?”
Duril clamped his mouth shut. As much as he liked the little room, and Moth and Pie both, he didn’t know them, and there was a possibility that he was walking into a trap with his eyes closed.
“Let’s eat,” Pie suggested and sat at a round table in a corner, while gesturing for Duril to do the same.
Moth nodded eagerly and began moving about the kitchen with practiced ease, gathering plates from a cupboard, forks from a drawer, and then a small vase from one of the shelves. He arranged the table in an orderly fashion, and then placed the vase in the middle. Duril stared somewhat suspiciously at the empty vase, but then Moth blew gently over it and before his very eyes, a few flowers materialized, swaying slightly as they dipped gently and nodded their heads. Duril stared, wide-eyed, at the flowers in tones of orange and black. A sweet smell traveled to his nose, and his heart filled with longing.
“What are these flowers called?”
“Haven’t you ever seen one like them?” Moth inquired. “They are tiger flowers.”
“Tiger flowers?” Could that be why his heart filled with longing at their smell and sight? He had last seen Toru that morning, and as much as he knew they would be forced apart for some time, he couldn’t quite explain why he already missed him so much.
“He smells of tiger, but he doesn’t know anything,” Moth pointed out.
Pie nodded in agreement. “Let’s eat, let’s eat, while the stew is still hot.”
Duril felt a hunger pang twisting his belly. “I will ask you some questions afterward,” he said.
“And we’ll ask you questions, too,” Pie added.
***
Varg and Claw accepted Rosalind’s invitation to join her and the others at a place where a fire burned in the middle of a clear space, used for preparing food, as it was the lunch hour. They could both tell that the people were curious about them, touching them in passing, observing them with questioning eyes, and overall, seeming not knowing what to believe of their presence there.
Throughout his life, Varg had learned to value patience, and accepted the food offered on a tin plate. It was just black bread and beans, but both he and Claw could use a bit of nourishment, seeing how they were far from any hunting grounds, and access to the city had been denied to them.
Rosalind spoke in low voices with a few of the people who seemed older and wiser than the rest. Varg perked up his ears, as even in human shape he had quite good hearing. Claw’s nostrils flared, as the bearshifter took in their surroundings. They had been accepted here, but it was not like they had stopped being strangers. A trial of sorts was bound to happen, and Varg waited for it, without missing a bite as he started in on his food.
“Tell us about your tiger,” Rosalind said. It appeared that the people had decided that she should be their mouthpiece.
“His name is Toru,” Varg began. “We’ve been traveling with him since winter left the northlands.”
“From your place, Whitekeep?” Rosalind asked. “It must be far away as we’ve never heard of it.”
“We haven’t heard of many places,” one of the older people corrected her.
Rosalind nodded and cast her eyes down for a moment. It was easy to see that she was proud of being given such an important task, that of speaking to the strangers who walked with a tiger, someone who could be the same as the one mentioned by their old stories or not. Therefore, for her, each step was one taken with much consideration.
“After Toru appeared in Whitekeep, things began to happen, things not so easy to explain. Our town was assaulted and destroyed, and we followed Toru from there to Vilemoor.” Varg stopped for effect. There lay the power of the storyteller; eyes and ears, all for him, ready to absorb each word that left his tongue. “Vilemoor turned into Fairside.”
Rosalind exchanged glances with her fellow people. It was clear as day that they had never heard of Vilemoor or Fairside either.
“If that place turned,” Rosalind began hesitantly, “did it do so for the better? Fairside has a nicer ring to it than Vilemoor, if I may say.”
Varg nodded solemnly. “You can say that again. The place had been overrun by evil, and Toru fought it back, bringing peace once more to those lands. A young pup rules over there now; his name is Lord Onyx, but don’t ever let his size fool you. His heart is as big as mine.” He quieted down. “But we lost Whitekeep,” he said and fought back the tears coming to his eyes. “Not all of it; we saved a few. Too few. We brought them to Fairside, and then we traveled on.”
“Where did you go next?” Rosalind asked, her eyes as big as saucers now.
“We arrived in Shroudharbor in spring,” Varg continued.
“I have heard of Shroudharbor,” one of the elders said. “It is a place by the sea, far, far away. They have the most beautiful pearls there, taken from the sea,” he added reverently.
“Not taken from the sea, unfortunately,” Claw intervened.
“But where from then?” Rosalind asked. Everyone was now drinking in each word they said.
Claw made an invisible circle with his finger over his belly. “I had a pearl as big as my fist right here, inside me.” A sound of awe traveled through those present. “This big pup here, together with another friend, they took it out. And boy, was I happy to see a living soul after roaming the labyrinths under the house of merchants for centuries.”
“Were you locked in there?” a young miner asked. “What for?”
“For the fault of knowing too much. And asking too many questions.” Claw showed his teeth in a smile, making the youngster pull back, slightly intimidated. Claw laughed wholeheartedly to put his mind at ease.
“We’ll tell you our stories at length when we have the time,” Varg interrupted them. “Toru fought evil there and freed the people from the merchants keeping them there to kill them and harvest the precious stones they sold right from their bodies.”
Rosalind shivered in fear combined with disgust. “Did he kill the merchants?”
“We don’t know if creatures like them ever truly die. But for all that is worth, we believe that Toru, with a little help from us, did save Shroudharbor, and now it is a better place.”
“Was it the same evil?”
“The one fueling the merchants’ greed? It could be. But it was the spirit of a little girl once done wrong and left alone in the world that kept the place like that and then freed it once we…” Varg trailed off, remembering Duril. “A friend of ours reminded her of why love is still important in the world.”
“Not Toru, another friend?” Rosalind asked.
“Yes, another friend, and before you ask, he’s not a tiger. He’s an amazing healer, a speaker to the trees, and a speaker to the wind.” Another collective gasp of admiration moved those present and filled Varg’s heart with pride. “We almost lost him to Zukh Kalegh.”
“Zukh Kalegh? The Great Barren?” Rosalind and many of those present knew about the desert.
“More like the orc tribe living there and calling it home.”
“Bloodthirsty orcs,” one of the elders said in a trembling voice. “How did you escape from them? How did your friend?”
Varg hesitated for a moment, but a small sign from Claw convinced him that there was no point in keeping things hidden. “He’s half-orc.”
“Half-orc?” Rosalind exclaimed. “How is he a healer then?”
Varg smiled. “You’ve met him already.”
Rosalind’s eyes grew wide. “Duril? The one with the kind eyes? I couldn’t tell, although his lower teeth… I just didn’t want to comment on them.”
“An orc has been here?” one of the elders asked, his voice high-pitched in fear.
“A half-orc,” Rosalind said with self-importance. “And he looks more like a human than an orc. Did he survive the horde? But how?”
“His sire’s blood helped him,” Claw explained. “And now we can say that we have a horde of friends there, in the desert.”
“I wouldn’t bet much on that,” another elder said. “We’ve known them as nothing else but creatures that burn everything to the ground and drink the blood of innocents from the skulls of their enemies.”
It was hard to argue with that. “They were almost killed to the last one by the evil Toru has been hunting down since Whitekeep,” Varg said.
“And I wouldn’t have shed a tear if that were the case,” the elder continued, set in his ways.
“Would you rather have this evil become stronger with thousands and thousands of orc souls?” Varg asked.
Rosalind was moving her head, staring at Varg, then at Claw, then at her tribespeople. “Does it feed on souls? We only know that it breeds greed and greed breeds violence. And in the end, violence consumes everything until the tiger comes and destroys Scercendusa.”
Varg didn’t know what to say. “That is what your history says. But maybe Toru is here to write new history.”
“Maybe he’s not the one,” one elder commented. “Maybe we have the wrong tiger.”
“But how could he be the wrong tiger?” Rosalind asked anxiously.
“The tigers before him never traveled with other shapeshifters,” the elder pointed out. “They didn’t keep company with orcs. And they never traveled from half a world away, from places we’ve never heard about in our lives.”
TBC
Comments
Laura S. Fox
Thank you for your comment, Margaret!
MM
Yes. He is getting wiser and more confident!
Dave Kemp
I love this tiger.
MM
Fabulous! So many bends and turns and weaves. I love it!
