“So, your family lost the farm?” she asked instead.
Athan looked past her, into the shadows beyond the trees. “We lost everything. That year, the blight didn’t recede with the winter. It took hold, grew deep roots, and turned everything to ruin. Dad left for the Sapphire Coast, hoping to find work on one of the trade ships; haven’t heard tale of him since. Mom died the next winter, the ill-fated babe Dad left in her belly taking them both to Faedra’s Halls. And my younger brother- Well, he hasn’t been the same since.”
Her curiosity about Athan’s past came back to haunt her in a feeling of guilt at asking him to relive such unpleasantries. A father lost, a mother dead and her baby with it, and a brother forever changed; if it was that the gods didn’t exist, or did but languished in apathy, Dnara could see it made no difference. The here and now spoke the truth of it. The blight affected all it touched, from field to family, and it had torn Athan’s family asunder.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though the words felt inadequate.
He forced a smile and offered her more jerky. “Mine is just a story of thousands. Maybe even yours, too. You were young when you were collared and your sister died, right?”
“I think so, yes.” She selected another strip of meat and suckled the end. “It’s all very hard to remember, blurry and incomplete. I do remember a fire...maybe?”
“Sounds like the blight,” Athan said. “They burned all the fields and farms in our hamlet, by the King’s order. Some farmers refused. Some farmers died at the hands of the king’s soldiers. Maybe King Eldramoore ordered your family’s land burned, too?”
Eldramoore... It wasn’t a familiar name to her, but by this point she’d stopped being surprised at all the things her keeper had kept away from her. This included her continued ignorance about the blight. “Maybe,” she answered through a yawn, feeling no closer to the truth.
“You should get some more rest,” Athan said as she quietly chewed on the jerky. “We have a half-day’s journey before we reach Lee’s Mill. But, I promise, by this time tomorrow, you’ll be in a bed with a real meal in your stomach.”
“And a bath?” she asked, hopeful.
He laughed as he stood. “And a bath. Can’t have the Lady Thorngrove smelling like a muddy forest, or they’re likely to toss you out of the inn.”
Dnara sniffed her collar, recoiling at the repugnant stench of sweat and muck. “I’d toss me out, too.”
Athan’s light chuckle filled the small clearing and Treven neighed along with it. After all Athan had been through, he found it possible to be jovial and kind and generous. Jorn had become the opposite, his madness springing from pain and desperation. As she chewed her last bite and watched the campfire under drooping eyelids, Dnara contemplated what she would become outside of her forest tower and within reach of the blight. Part of her had to wonder if her keeper’s tower had indeed been a prison, or if it had been a sanctuary.
9
The next day greeted their journey to Lee’s Mill with light drizzle and a cold wind. The gravel path pooled with water in places where the wagon wheel ruts dug deep. The river now ran southward on their left side, picking up speed as it widened.
“It empties into Maiden’s Lake,” Athan explained. “Right after it runs through the gauntlet at Lee’s Mill.”
“Gauntlet?” Dnara wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that.
“It’s what they call the dozen or so water wheels that power the grinding mills. They can eat unsuspecting river boats who don’t mind the currents.”
“Oh. Lee’s Mill,” she said in thought. “Makes more sense now.”
“Named after Garner Lee, who built the first mill a hundred years ago after the blight took hold in the Red Valley and all the corn farmers moved east to settle here.”
“Hector said he was going to grow corn,” Dnara recalled as her toe kicked a pebble. It skittered ahead of them and splashed into a small puddle. “Is corn resistant to the blight?”
“It’s had better luck than other crops, though people are getting a bit sick of eating corn all the time. Corn bread. Corn stew. Corn cake. Corn porridge. Corn fritters.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
“Oh sure,” Athan laughed out loud, causing Treven’s ears to perk up. “You say that now. Give it a few weeks, and you’ll be cornsick like the rest of us.”
“At least it’s not cabbage,” she said then bit her tongue at the bitter memory of Athan’s childhood farm that had been taken by the blight.
After their discussion last night, she felt no closer to an understanding of what the blight was. She’d learned of the terrible things it could do, but not exactly how it did them. Was it magical? A natural plague of some kind? A curse from the gods, or the creation of man?
Every time she thought to ask Athan for more details, the memory of what it had done to his family kept her words silent. He’d shared so much already, and despite his ability to smile easily and laugh often, he hadn’t been able to fully conceal the hurt which lingered just under the surface. Perhaps, she thought, the blight was something one had to see for themselves to truly understand.
So, she kept walking at his side, filled with unspoken questions as they traveled along the river road. Morning turned into day, the drizzle came and went then came again, and the farm fields to their right slowly gave way to less open land and more houses. For the first time, they met other travelers on the road heading in the other direction; well, at least other travelers who didn’t attempt
