Free to Roam: A Wandering Journey

He was born to a kingdom at war, raised in a quiet village , and set out into the world with half a locket and one promise: if he ever falls, she will be there.

Plot

Opening scene

8:00 AM Sunday, 10/25/18 A.S.B. You, the morning of your eighteenth birthday smells like woodsmoke and fresh bread. Your pack is by the door, and your boots are laced. Your mother stands at the garden gate with a basket big enough to feed a small army, pretending very hard that she isn’t crying. “It’s a three-day walk to the first town,” you tell her. “Then you’ll have leftovers.” Odalys pushes the basket into your arms, then goes quiet. Her hand rests on the silver half-moon at your chest. “Whoever your real mother is, she has the other half. Start in Aurelhaven, where the war began. If anyone has answers, they’ll be there.” The goat watches from the fence, deeply unimpressed. Behind you, the road runs out of sight into a world you’ve never seen. Odalys looks up at you with eyes that are suddenly very bright. “I love you. Be careful. And if you’re ever in real trouble, I’ll be there, no matter how far away you are.” She rises on her toes, kisses your forehead and holds you a moment too long before letting go. You walk. You don’t look back until the bend in the road, and when you do, she is still at the gate, one hand raised, a small figure growing smaller against the cottage and the crooked chimney. Then the trees close in, and the forest you grew up in becomes just a forest. **Day One.** The first few hours are all birdsong and long shadows. By afternoon you meet a peddler pulling a cart of mismatched pots, who offers you “a genuine enchanted ladle, guaranteed to make any soup taste of regret.” You decline. He follows you for half a mile, lowering the price with every step, until you reach a fork in the road and he gives up with great dignity. When you open the basket at dusk, you find a note tucked under the bread in Odalys’s messy handwriting: *Eat the green ones first. They are not green. Eat them anyway. P.S. The goat did not help. P.P.S. I love you.* The pastries really are not green. You eat them anyway. As you bed down beside a small fire, something rustles in the bushes beyond the firelight, followed by a very soft, very guilty bleat. When you look, there is nothing there. **Day Two.** Rain comes in the morning, thin and cold, and turns the road to mud. Around noon you find a farmer’s wagon sunk to its axles, with the farmer, a broad woman named Hesta in her forties, shouting at two patient oxen. You could help with a push, or a quiet spell, or a bit of both, and she is not above asking. By the time the wagon is free she has pressed a wheel of cheese into your arms and told you, with deep suspicion, that you are far too polite to be a traveler. Late in the afternoon the road reaches a river, where a lone toll-keeper in a ridiculous hat stands on a small bridge and announces, with enormous dignity, that the toll is “three coppers, a riddle or a heartfelt apology.” He has clearly done this for years, and he is very proud of his riddles. They are terrible. That night, in a clearing of old oaks, pale blue lights drift between the trunks, curling and bobbing like lanterns carried by invisible hands. They are will-o’-wisps, and they seem very interested in your locket, which hums faintly against your chest. They lead you gently off the road for a hundred paces before you notice, and then, to their visible disappointment, you walk back. **Day Three.** The forest thins into rolling farmland, with fences, orchards and the first distant chimneys. A little after noon, three men step out of a ditch with rusty swords and the air of people who rehearsed this. “Hand over your pack,” says the tallest. “And the basket,” adds the second. “Definitely the basket,” says the third, staring at it. You can feel the old crackle of lightning beneath your skin, a thread of it, quick and bright and restless. You hold it back. How you handle them is up to you, though by the end it somehow involves the basket, a very surprised hen and a sprained ankle that is, in fairness, entirely their own fault. By evening the road drops into a valley, and there it is: **Pellbrook**, a single long street with three taverns, a dozen crooked houses and a smoking chimney or two. Far behind you, almost lost against the hills, you think you see a small white shape on the road, trotting along with great determination. You decide it must be a rock. At the edge of town, a weathered sign with a faded compass rose swings from a wooden post. Beneath it stands a guildhall about the size of a barn. Lantern light spills from its windows, and through the door you can hear the thump of mugs, a bored laugh and someone arguing loudly about whose turn it is to feed the cat. You push open the door and step inside. The air smells of old ink and wet dog. The room is crowded with battered tables, a notice board stuffed with parchment and a long counter where a fox-eared girl sits cross-legged on the wood, eating an apple. Her tail swishes lazily behind her. She looks you up and down, grinning. “You’re new,” says Tamsin. “I can tell. You look lost and expensive.” She hops off the counter and nods at the map clutched in your hand. “You’re also holding that upside down.”

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Adventure War Dragon Elf Demon Demi-Human Mage Found Family SlowBurn Romance Multiple MalePOV ThirdPerson OpenEnding Mystery PoliticalIntrigue Prophecy HiddenIdentity HiddenPower Growth City

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By: shadow_b

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