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My grandpa gives me a compass and a map of the kingdoms. Andy gives me a tough hemp rope that she’s been working on for the last long while (I kinda suspected it was for this, but then, Andy ain’t much of a liar). Dan gives me a bag of chestnuts. Crazy little bug is proud as all kingdoms that he’s picked them up himself, but I’m obliged to stick to the mostly silent script for another while, so I just ruffle his hair and smile at him after he says, with his mamma’s prompting, “To guide you on your—on your way, I give you this gift. That you—what? ohh—that you may, uh, have tea.”
Then Crysy gives me five crowns. Five crowns. That’s as much money as I’ve ever held at a time, and even as I’m beaming at her and smiling at her notion of, “That you may remember that indulgence is part of what makes life beautiful,” I’m full and well distract. Because that white silk is still clutched under my arm, and I know as soon as Crys has done her part and my dad’s said his closing blessing, I’ll be able to take a closer look.
Dad’s not much with blessings, but he makes his way through the standard puddle of words, asking the grace of Ventius and the guidance of the light, and on and on. Then he looks me straight on and says, “You are my daughter.” That part’s not in the script so much, and he says it just like that. You are my daughter. Doesn’t say why he’s bringing up this fact. But there’s something so … I don’t know, boldening, if that’s a word … to the way he says it. He goes on a tick or two more about being grateful for the Velran empire and for the chance to live in the Wildes (we all know he’s speaking in something of a contradiction of terms, but that’s what it’s like here), and then he gives thanks for having a healthy family that will be worthy of sending tributes for.
All the while, though, my eyes are pretty well drawn onto the radiant dazzle of the silk. Silk like this must be worth all my other clothes combined ten times over, and then some spare crowns to boot.
My daddy sits down, which is our cue to talk as we please. I go over to Mum right away, set down all my gifts on the table except for the silk, which I shake at Mum, my eyes bulged, mouth wide and trying to catch a whole cloud of clossies. I’m a rude little blight, no doubt, but I think my mom knows full well that I’m expressing my amazement in the best way I know how. Anyway, she proffers an explanation, but it starts with, “Well, fold it out, darling, I want to see if it fits.”
I’m still breathless from the shock of it all, but I lay the silk down flat on the table and for the first time I see precisely what it is I’ve got. It’s a silken tunic with a long silk belt, all the same noon-blistering color of reflecting, tone-catching, but nevertheless amazingly pure white.
“It’s been in the family for as long as anything,” she says. “Go on, try it on! Odds are you’ll need a tailor to pull it in here or there, but you’re very well the size I was when I wore it.”
I unceremoniously whip off my belt and strip my dress (it’s poor manners, but I’ve my pants on and wore my woolen undershirt, so ain’t like I’m showing my family the ivory bits of me best hid from sunlight), then I tug the tunic down over my head. My mum does the unnecessary tugging and pulling at the sides, maybe just wanting to feel like she did when I was a kid that actually needed help getting dressed. And when it’s on, it fits … perfectly.
Not another word for it. It’s perfect. The most comfortable clothing I ever felt in my life, guiding along my curves with enough tightness that I feel flexible in it but enough looseness that it’s not uncomfortable. It stops just a couple fingers above my knees. Now, Mum’s a bit taller than me and broader in certain places (especially one area that seems infinitely important to the men-folk), but it ain’t too hard to imagine her looking a good deal like me when she was closer to my age. Still, wearing a tunic that fits this right and that once fit her the same is just … it plays with your mind a little, you know?
“When did you wear this?” I ask.
I meant, like, how old was she. But then my dad comes up and snuggles behind her, and she leans her head back against his chin as he kisses and nuzzles her hair. “At our wedding,” he says. Mum nods. “At our wedding,” she agrees.
A part of me wants to rip off the tunic, I’m sent into that kind of panic. Of course, this wasn’t exactly Mum’s wedding attire, not really. It was just her finest clothes, and rightly so. But a part of me is still having a harder time breathing, fighting the image of myself marrying some boy while I’m wearing this exact tunic. I calm myself by picking up my belt again, re-strapping it, and running my left thumb and forefinger along the hilt of my newly acquired knives.
There’s a comfort in that for me. It’s as much the familiarity of the old leather belt as it is the knowledge that I’ll be taking these two hefty pieces with me when I head out in the morning. See what man will try to take this outfit as a wedding offer then.
Shaking the dusty thoughts of me in my mom’s wedding attire from my mind, I take a seat next to Mum and Daddy. I’m all for letting the morning worry about the morning, so I close my eyes and try to settle my spiraled pulse as Grandpa tunes his mandolin, strumming out a succession of dissonant notes that sound musical even though they’re nothing but his wise old ears testing the sound. Danny comes up to me, a big grin on his face. “Did you like my present, Liddy?”
“You bet your bright little rose-buds I did.” I grab him in a pincher’s grip, two fingers tugging at each of his cheeks. He quickly scrambles to get my hands off him, and when I pull my grip away, I stick out my tongue at him. He walks off, rubbing his cheek. A few steps away, he turns, cocks his head over his shoulder, and sticks his tongue out right back at me.
Danny … I think maybe I feel worst about leaving him behind. Kid’s had too much of that already.
Grandpa’s got his instrument tuned, clears his throat to call everyone’s attention to him. I turn attentively. Crys and Andy break off their conversation and turn too. And look, I won’t bore you with the extra details of the song and all, especially since I can’t come close to doing it any kind of justice. What you oughta understand is that it’s something you can’t understand unless you’re there. Grandpa has this sort of voice that’s maple bark—rough but holding all kinds of sweetness. As he’s gotten older, his songs have become more rough and rugged, like all of us get, too, as the years go by. But the sweetness underneath is just as fine. He’s old enough—in his seventh decade, now—but his fingers don’t shake none. He’s a healthy man. Real Wilder spirit in him.
He tells three stories, mostly ones that weave into and out of music. It’s the sort of tales you usually hear at the fire—of the mages and the dragons and every other wonder that the world claims it holds, or wonders it claims it once had. As is proper, the family has hushed conversations about the stories he’s telling while he’s in the midst of telling them. Daddy says that if you don’t whisper at least once to tell someone something or ask something about the story, you’re not doing it right. That stories belong to the whole lot of us, and it’s our job to bring the stories to life. Part of how we do that is we whisper about them, I guess. And during the second song Grandpa sings (about the boy who traveled into the Frozen North to reclaim his love from the Blare clan-folk), the melody gets to a racing sort of beat, and everyone claps against the table.
As the stories wear down, Grandpa plays out his tunes and the family dances the few dances we know by heart, and then we dash in and out and about, making up our own kind of dances too, since it sort of fits us. We’re Wilder folk, after all. You have to learn to go with the truss and bow, here, and walk with the wind’s grain.
As the songs starts to mellow out, playing themselves into the fine sort of stupor that the night will cause, people stop their dancing one by one and find themselves a spot at the table. The little bug dances around longer than most of us, and by the time he’s all tuckered out, the sun’s been tuckered too, has fallen well below the forest canopy. And that’s the point when Mother goes and gets the makings of the feast. She heats the tea to hissing then brings an army of dishes, one after the next, in our finest wooden bowls.
Now, I wanna say bowls because I think that’s the truest way to actually state it, but these are monster bowls—the sort of bowls that eat the other ones ten times over. The sort we don’t usually have cause to work with unless we’re bathing. Tonight, though, it’s leafy greens overflowing with dandelions and chopped onions and parsley. It’s beet stew with spicy radishes. It’s smoked venison down from Marsh, given to us all in hefty portions. It’s potatoes with a flow of gravy stock as thick as mud and rich as kings, color glowing that sort of brown that seems gem-like. A color like tigerseye, almost.
But the real treat—the real, light’s honest treat—is what comes in for dessert. Blueberry tarts, with the juice gelled up right and sweet, all hidden beneath this gorgeously golden, flaky, buttery outside that crisps and melts when you bite down on it. My first bite is when the tarts are still hot, just pulled out from the fire in the baker’s shelf we got, and it unleashes that frenzy of juices and sweet right from the blueberries. It’s so hot it scorches. I stick out my tongue and make them rasping noises, trying to get the air to cool it. Even with half my taste buds scorched right from my pretty little mouth, I keep at the tarts, eat a solid three and then a bit before the celebration wanes.
Crys takes Dan up to the loft soon after the tarts are eaten. Andy stays up with me for a while, telling stories and playing a game of stones, but I see her eyes batting off. I tell her she should sleep, and she nods drowsily before retiring. My grandad grips me firm on the shoulder and nods. “I’ll see you in the morning, Eldest,” then goes his own self. I ain’t even quite sure if he’s using the title of heritage as a joke or not. Then Mum comes over to me, looks me right on in the eyes, and says, “I know the angels will watch over you.” I nod like I’m agreeing. Then it’s just me and my dad, both of us set to leave before the sun even rises in the morning, and maybe eight hours between now and then. Seems like he’s got the same contagion I do. We’re neither of us quite able to sleep. We stare into the fire in the same silent way, both lost in thought and maybe fear.
It’s, by my guess, two hours later when Daddy finally gets up to join my mom. He hovers in front of me, accidentally intimidating like he normally is, the fire scorching the outer edges of his color but his face all blackened by shadow. “We’ll be leaving in about four,” he says, that low rustle in his voice. I see him hesitate, the too-still way his body goes, as he decides whether or not to tell me to get to bed. Seems he decides against it. Instead, he just says, “Okay?”
“Okay,” I say. And he grips me on the shoulder, nods, then walks back to his side of the loft.
I grind my teeth as I stare at the fire. I stare until it’s nothing but embers, glowing away at the pale and cold night air.
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