Owlflight

there was a line of fine, golden-brown berry-pockets cooling in pans on the windowsill and just beneath it, sitting on upturned buckets so she could reach them from the window. Juice oozed from them enticingly, and there were at least two dozen of them.

Darian sidled up to the window and took a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching, but the area was deserted, and he could hear Lilly talking to Hanbil up in the loft. He snatched, and ran, juggling the pocket from hand to hand to keep from getting burned, while his mouth watered with anticipation.

A moment later he was safe in a spot he often used for strictly temporary hiding, the hollow behind some juniper bushes under the window of what passed for a shop in Errold’s Grove. Nandy Lutter and her husband used to buy their goods from traders, but with fewer and fewer coming through, they had to go fetch their own goods. They were the only people in the village who ever went up the road to the outside world. Once every three months, Derrel Lutter would hitch up his horse to his wagon and drive off across the bridge with a wagon full of whatever he and Nandy had traded for over the previous three months. When he came back, he would have the things that the village could not make for itself, and he and Nandy would set them up in the shop, and make trades over the next few months. They brought in things like needles and pins, ribbons and colored thread, sugar-loaves, spices, and salt. They were two of the Errold’s Grove elite, and as a result, Nandy had gone to the effort of planting things around their house that were pretty, but impractical, as a means of displaying their wealth. She had beds of spring bulbs, flowering trees that had no real fruit, rose vines, and evergreen-holly and juniper. The latter were planted against the side of the house, and the hollows against the wall where the branches had died back for lack of sunlight made a good hiding place. That was where Darian went when he’d filched a pie; better to get under cover, eat it quickly, and dispose of the evidence at once. They couldn’t accuse you for having a blue tongue; you could claim you’d been berrying yourself.

He wriggled into place just below a window, and proceeded to nibble delicately at his treat so as not to waste a single crumb. For such a poorly regarded woman, Lilly was a remarkably good baker, and her efforts certainly surpassed anything Darian could produce. The pastry was flaky and light, perfectly browned and crunchy, the filling sweet and juicy without being too runny. He took a great deal of satisfaction, not only in the fact that he’d cheated Hanbil out of something, but out of the fact that taking it by sleight-of-hand had been a great deal more efficient than trying to get it by levitation or some other daft method Justyn might have suggested. I don’t need his stupid magic to get what I need. I can do anything I have to do with my two hands and my wits.

The more he thought about it, the more discontented he became. This was no life for anyone with any courage or ideas! This was no place for anyone who wanted something besides a place to sleep and steady meals and - predictability! Errold’s Grove was dying, or dead, and no one had noticed it but him. And he had to escape before he died, too.

Nandy and another woman were talking inside, but he didn’t pay any heed to them until the tag-end of a sentence caught his attention. “ - that old fraud who calls himself a wizard.”

“I don’t know why we give over anything to support him,” the other woman replied querulously. “It’s not as if he was like Kyle, and useful.”

“I’ve said as much to my husband,” Nandy replied with an air of triumph. “I’ve said to him that there’s nothing that man could do that one of the girls couldn’t learn. Take Ida’s Saffy - “ she chuckled cruelly, “ - and the gods know there isn’t a boy in Errold’s Grove who would.”

“Nandy!” her visitor exclaimed in mock shock. “Now how could you say a thing like that?”

“Twenty years old and not married, a face like a horse and a body like a washboard? It’s only plain speaking,” Nandy retorted, with obvious pleasure. “Now look, my man could take her up when he next goes off to the city and leave her at the Healer there. He’ll train her for nothing, we’ve already asked. In a year she comes back, and we can send that good-for-nothing fraud off to swindle some other village. Saffy could go back to living with her parents, just like before, but then she’d go from being a burden to a blessing. The rest of us could pay for her services as we need them, not before, and there won’t be that drain on everyone, which is purely cruel. And now there’s two to feed, him and that useless, feckless, bit of bad blood that he calls an apprentice.”

“Well, it isn’t fair,” the other agreed. “If you’re never sick, it doesn’t seem fair to have to keep giving over food and clothing and all. Of course, he does do Finding, and Weather-watching - “

“And a careful person don’t need a Finder, and as for Weather-watching, we got along well enough without it before.” Nandy pronounced that as the end of the argument. “As for the boy, well, I don’t doubt that if he doesn’t manage to bring the Forest down on us all as his rootless parents tried to do, he certainly won’t amount to anything. He hasn’t the intelligence of Kyle and he’s as shiftless as Lilly, and the sooner we’re rid of both of them, the better off this village will be.”

Nandy and her customer moved away from the window at that point, and Darian couldn’t hear anything but the murmur of voices.

He sat where he was, not out of shock, but suddenly struck by a sense of hopelessness so deep he couldn’t have moved if his life had depended on it. Now they grudged even the scant food they provided him - they were going to turn him out to fend for himself as soon as they could get away with it. And they were going to do the same to Justyn, too - but of course, Justyn would have a year or so to try to find a new place to go, because they couldn’t do without him until Saffy was trained. It sounded as if - supposing Nandy had her way - they were going to just throw Darian out as soon as Nandy could get enough people to agree with her. And Justyn at least had some skills he could barter for a new place somewhere. Darian had nothing except the clothing he’d brought with him, the ability to shoot a bow, and whatever he could convince folks he could do.

So what am I supposed to do? Go live off the Forest, with no supplies and no weapons but my bow and few arrows? It was one thing to plan to become a great hunter and trapper when he was older, and had built up all the things he needed to properly live in the wilds - it was quite another to know that he was going to be cast out to make shift for himself with nothing whatsoever to help him. No point in asking Justyn for help either - the old wizard would have a hard enough time finding a new place for himself.