Chapter Fourteen: Morning Storytelling
The normalcy of the canyon refuge took Hollis by surprise. A monster large enough to swallow a man had just attacked, and the survivors of Beckett’s Sound barely even remarked on it as they awaited their breakfast.
As he surveyed the people seated in the dining area under an overhang of the cliffs above, a picture began forming in his mind of what had happened here.
[Investigation lvl. 5] You see the sick and helpless. You see those left behind in the rush to flee the fog.Jane, the young woman he had seen earlier helping Tawny with the gillnet, was walking around with a tray of medicine. These weren’t neat little pills with letters on them packed into little clear cups. They were traditional medicines.
There was a glass bottle with a matching glass stopper, filled with oil, which she smeared on the foreheads of some of the elderly. Some would give her the spoons set out for their meal, which she would dip into an electuary jar, producing a thick, sticky pull of honey and herbs that the patients treated like candy. Most of the sick got a quick swallow of something that smelled like alcohol, which brought a look of relief to their faces.
Various chewing leaves and hot herbal teas were dispensed, some of which even smelled pleasant to Hollis as he leaned against the remains of one of the walls and watched.
Tawny herself took the more difficult tasks, such as burning the tightly wrapped bundles of herbs as if they were road flares or smudge sticks. She would hold five at a time, and as she passed by the awaiting patients, she would pick one or two, hold them out under the person’s nose, and give the bundles Breath, causing them to smoke three times as fast as they were before.
The patients breathed in the smoke as best they could.
“Miss Tawny,” one boisterous elderly man with a painful bulging belly called, “Tell your girl to give me the good stuff.”
“You’ve had too much of the good stuff, Joe,” Tawny called back without looking. “Now you’re gonna have to get used to the bad stuff.”
“Whatever you say, Miss Tawny,” he replied.
For the most part, her patients were ever so thankful for her services. They smiled at her as if she were an angel. She brewed potions over a fatwood flame near the cooking stove that she administered to a woman whose skin was so thin it was a wonder it was holding her together.
Then, she gathered various flower petals from an apothecary cabinet and pressed them to the skin of some patients. The colorful leaves would change color, ignite in flame, or simply float away, and in doing so, Tawny was learning things about the various ailments and vital signs of her patients.
Hollis’ Medicine and Alchemy skills were telling him as much as they could about what he was seeing, but they couldn’t keep up with her array of salves, draughts, tinctures, and poultices.
After she was done, she called out loudly, “Paul, get in here and let me see your hands.”
The thin man who had corralled the floating nests was busy staring at Dakota and his hoveleer muskrat as they repaired the grebe coop. He waved his arms, hooting and hollering as the muskrat climbed and built mud and reed walls with a highly evolved efficiency.
“Paul!” she screamed again.
The man, who must have been well into his twenties, turned and smiled.
“The mouse is helpin’ the birds,” he said once he was close enough for her to hear.
“He sure is. That muskrat does more work around here than the Kaziers, doesn’t he? Let me see those hands. Where did the birds get you?” Tawny asked.
He held his hands out and seemed to realize they were bleeding for the first time. He let out a worried grunt and looked at his mother through wide eyes.
“Well, let me patch you up then,” Tawny said, fixing the piece of twine that was keeping her hair pulled back.
She cleaned his wounds and added ointment before wrapping his hands up like a mummy’s. The wrapping was thick, as if she worried that a normal level of dressing might accidentally fall off.
The whole time, Paul stared off in the distance at the coop, that is, until he turned his head and stared at Willo instead. He didn’t care much about Hollis himself, but the little glowbug stole his attention.
After a few more minutes, Dakota and his hoveleer friend came in from the river.
“Damn coop. Why do I always gotta fix what’s broke around here?” he asked. He walked in and found an empty table. His muskrat, still dripping from its many trips down into the water, jumped up on the seat across from him.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re going to get both of us in trouble with your muddy paws.”
The hoveleer ignored him and sniffed the air, as if trying to figure out what was for breakfast.
Otis had carried his haul of snakehead fish filets to the kitchen area near Hollis. He dumped some of the filets in a big metal bowl. The rest would eventually find themselves salted and smoked if the large metal smoking cabinet was any indication.
Those filets that were for breakfast were seasoned with salt, herbs, and oil before being fried on a flat-top grill resting on large flat rocks, with a fire built underneath. The seasoning surprised Hollis. Otis, with his wild hair and beard, looked more the type to eat the fish raw.
He was still only wearing his long underwear. No one seemed to mind.
“Get out of here,” the man eventually said. “You ain’t eating until the rest have. You can hunt if you’re hungry now.”
Or at least that was the best Hollis could interpret his series of growls.
Taken from NovelFire, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
As he slowly moved his way through the dining area, he noticed the patients were smiling at him. Some even had real tears in their eyes as they gazed upon him.
“May the Divine Lady bless you,” some of them said.
“The elders spoke of your arrival and the sea carried the sound,” others said.
“The Cat’s Eye makes brave men,” others chimed in.
They spoke in hushed tones. It wasn’t even like they were speaking to him directly. More phrases came out.
“All is possible for those who seek the Pass,” and “The power of the age to those who keep Olivia’s promise,” were popular choices.
Hollis knew these words. They were some of the generic phrases NPCs would say when passing them in the street. In the game, they were repetitive greetings. It didn’t feel meaningful. Most of the time, he would only see the words on the inspector and not even hear them.
Now that he heard it in real life, he realized that these were not greetings. They were prayers, and not to him.
When he made it to the other side of the dining area, he could see a pack of dogs eating the entrails and carcass of the snakehead. They wore collars, so they weren’t wild. In fact, a little one, a small scruffy brown street dog, was ordering the others around, making sure they all ate. Even the bigger dogs gave deference to him.
Royle arrived on his horse at the entrance of the dining patio. He dismounted, and his horse, a smaller variety with clawed feet, led him to the table where Dakota was sitting.
[Naturalism lvl. 6] You see a three-quarter horse (one-quarter mouse).In all the excitement, he hadn’t even thought to check the horse’s species.
The other horses grazed in the distance out near the coop. This one walked right into the dining space, as if it had done so a thousand times. Its claws barely made a sound as it walked on the old clay tiles.
As soon as the horse had guided Royle to the table, it disappeared, leaving only white, glowing dust that fell like snow and disappeared before it hit the ground.
This surprised Hollis so much that he spun on the spot to try to see what had happened. It turned out the horse wasn’t gone; it just wasn’t a horse right then. It was a little white mouse with a horse’s mane. Royle held it in his hands as he sat down and petted it gently.
The blind man must have known Hollis was there. He turned in Hollis’ direction with a big smile and asked, “So, you play any good computer games lately?”
Hollis chuckled.
“No, come on, sit at the Kazier table. You gotta tell me your story now. You said your name was Hollis?” Royle asked.
Taking his own seat, Hollis answered, “That’s me.”
“So how is our little paradise treating you, Hollis?” Royle asked.
“Nice views. Clean air. Not as crowded as I was expecting,” Hollis said.
Royle stared at his mouse-horse with his unseeing eyes. His hands were out and open, like he was feeling for the mouse to talk to him in the language of touch.
“He’s got two guns,” Dakota said. He leaned on the table, propping himself up on his elbow, and looked up at Royle and Hollis like a poker player on his thirty-sixth hour in the game. “That’s why I thought he came from out west. Where’d you find those guns?”
“Brought them,” Hollis said as he watched Jane begin serving food to the elderly and sick.
“Well, ain’t that lucky,” Dakota said. “Were you sitting around wearing those guns when you were playing Return to Periapt? I was in my tidy whities listening to Limp Bizkit when suddenly some barking drill sergeant was pulling me out of a little wooden boat.”
“He’s still wearing the same pair right now,” Royle said. “Get him drunk, he’ll show you.”
“Don’t go making things up,” Dakota said sharply after letting loose a few curse words. "It's not like you would even know."
Then the little muskrat started barking and squeaking at him, like it was telling him off for cursing or for being too loud.
“That’s enough out of you if you want some of this fish I helped catch,” Dakota said.
Royle’s little mouse-horse stared at the exchange with a nervous energy while Royle petted him, trying to calm him down.
“You know what, guys,” Hollis said. “If you could tell me about the fog, I’d be good. Introductions can wait until I know what’s going on. I take it the town was abandoned, leaving anyone who couldn’t get hired on a wagon train behind.”
The men paused for a moment, as if they had been hiding in the canyon so long they had forgotten how it must look to an outsider.
“No, not everyone who could get hired on,” Dakota said as he removed his bowler hat. “I got hired a few times for some runs, but I always hated it. My last trail boss was a jackass, so I came all the way back down the trail by myself. I’d rather stay here anyway. Going back and forth, cutting back the forest, coming and going, wasn’t worth it to me. There’s nothing out there anyhow.”
Hollis only knew a little about what existed past the trailhead. After he had turned down the offer to escape the Periapt the first time, he had been allowed to continue playing the game until his character died. After that, the disk melted, leaving him without proof of his fantastical adventure. The next town was called Burnt Cabin. It was nothing more than a trading post, as far as Hollis could recall.
“Yes,” Royle said. “Everyone who could get a ride out of this place did. We sent a party westward about three years ago. They were supposed to get enough folks to ride out and bring us out of here. No one ever showed up.”
The whole time they were talking, one of the women under Tawny’s care had been watching them intently. Hollis was only vaguely aware of this. She wasn’t the only one staring, but she was the most intense and the most interested.
“He doesn’t want to know of the trouble beyond the trailhead, sweet Royle,” the woman said in a faint voice that seemed to echo its whispers around the canyon. She was old, so old she made Tawny look like a young woman. “He wants to know of the fog and the monster that lives within it. He is a hero from a faraway land, a Kazier of great bravery, here to fulfill the promises of Olivia Gordon, here to protect the settlers of this land.”
Silence broke out over the dining patio. The only sound was the river to the west.
“Don’t start with that nonsense, Mae,” Tawny called out as she was delivering fish, squash, and beans to the patients. Some of them got theirs all mushed together into a paste. “That kind of talk won’t help us now. You should know that better than anybody.”
She didn’t seem angry, just frustrated.
“Tawny, you gave up on the old stories long ago,” Mae said, “but stories ain’t the kind of thing you can just not believe in. Winding yarns and talking tales are moving through us all the way back to the olden times.” She turned her attention back to Hollis. “Now, young man, you want to know the story about the fog? About the town that got swallowed up in the night? Well, come close, and I’ll tell you all we know, but not enough to satisfy.”
Tawny delivered a plate of food to the woman, Mae, and then said to Hollis, “Fella, whatever your name was, Old Mae’s stories can make a Kazier brave; I’ve seen it before. But if you go chasing that fog, eventually, you’ll find it, and that’ll be the last of you. If you came here to help, stay and help. Don’t go chasing this nonsense just cause you think you ought to.”
She walked back to the kitchen area, red in the face. These were some old emotions being touched on.
“But can’t you see what kind of man this is?” Mae said in her whisper-echo voice. “This is the curious kind. He wants the truth, and nothing can stop him. So, Hollis, do you want to know about the fog?”
Hollis wasn’t even sure where she'd learned his name, but gossip could spread fast in small communities.
“I want to investigate it,” he said. “Things weren’t always like this. I figure if I can find the root cause, there might be a solution. It’s worth looking into. I don’t know if it’s even possible.”
He felt like a fool even suggesting it, as if a hundred others hadn’t tried to fix the problem before he came along. All he knew was that his Temper was Curiosity, and if he was going to become powerful enough to help these people, he needed to look for answers.
So, as the sickly survivors of the fog ate quietly, old Mae began an accounting of the fog and its devastation. She was a storyteller, and it was clear that storytelling was the height of entertainment in Periapt, especially in this group cut off from the world.
As Mae began to speak, starting her story the way all campfire stories in Periapt began, with the phrase, “All stories in Periapt are true, even this one…” Hollis noticed that Tawny had finally sat down to eat. She watched him as the story was told, her face tired, detached, and defeated.
He couldn’t pay attention to that.
He needed to listen.