Tales & Treasure Chapter 31

Interlude - Mia

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Why does Vidmar keep sending me away? Mia thought, shuffling her feet alongside Taldor as they approached the grove. The boy hadn’t stopped talking since they left the barn. Question after question, Mia’s short, sharp answers did nothing to deter him. Neither did her silence.

“What’s life like in Yimser?” Taldor asked, rephrasing his question for at least the third time. 

Mia didn’t answer last time, so she felt obligated to humor him. “It’s great. There’s a murder every day, and most foreigners are killed for no reason,” she said, exaggerating Yimser’s worst rumors. But, in truth, it was fine. Life on the streets of Yimser was all she had known, and she was alive. That’s more than most people can say. 

“Really?” Taldor said, either terrified or excited. Mia couldn’t tell. “Pa says it has a bad reputation, but it’s not nearly as bad as Haran or Barna - in terms of safety, I guess. He has an old friend who lives there. He runs a shop or something. I can’t remember his name.” 

Mia sighed. “You talk a lot.” 

Taldor laughed. “Pa always says curiosity will be the death of me. I’m sorry. I get excited about new things, especially about places other than Vicus. It’s just so dull here, day after day, it’s the same: breakfast, tend the crops, do more chores, then dinner and lessons. Sometimes, Pa changes the lessons to stories, but other than that, it’s the same every day. Ev gets to go away once a season, but I’m stuck.”

“I know how you feel,” Mia said, twirling her hair. She liked the way her hair felt wrapped around her finger. It comforted her. 

“At least you get to travel with Vidmar. I would give anything to travel with him; he only stayed here two days, but he seemed smart and funny and saved our cows. And he gave me this knife. I’ve been practicing throwing but still can’t get it to stick. I must be doing something wrong,” Taldor said, fumbling with a green-handled blade with some gem embedded in the hilt. He threw the knife at a tree. It struck hilt-first and fell into a mess of rotten cherries on the ground. “Damnit,” he said, wiping the blade off on his pants. “How long have you been traveling with him?”

Mia was never good at identifying time; some weeks felt like days, and some days felt like weeks. She never found it an important thing to track. It just seemed to be a way to calculate the hours between meals, and meals for her came very infrequently.

“I’m not sure. A couple of weeks, I guess,” Mia said. She stopped and pulled her finger from her knotty hair. “Vidmar is great. He taught me how to set traps, start a fire, and throw a knife properly.”

She held out her hand. Taldor slowly handed the blade over. His fingers clung to the hilt like it was a solid bar of gold. Mia cracked her neck, set her feet, and threw; the blade whizzed through the air and stuck in the tree. Taldor’s jaw dropped; for the first time that afternoon, he was speechless. Mia retrieved the knife and handed it back to the unusually silent boy. She smirked. “Nothing to say?” 

Taldor’s face reddened. He quickly placed the knife back in its sheath. “What about Vatis? Pa doesn’t like him. He complained about him for a week after they left. Too nosey, I guess.”

Vatis. Darkness, I don’t know. Mia prided herself on her ability to judge people. It was a skill she developed to survive on the streets of Yimser. Who would spare food? Who to trust? Who to avoid? “He’s a little strange, but he’s smart,” Mia started, carefully choosing each word before she decided to focus only on his positive traits, glossing over his questionable ones. “And he’s a terrific storyteller.”

“Oh, I know. He told us a couple of stories about Dabin. They were incredible.”

“He told the story of Vidmar’s escape from Jegon at the tourney. I wonder what he will tell in Barna.”

“Vatis won the tourney?” Taldor said, leaping in front of her. “I had to convince him to enter - I knew he would win,” he said, his eyes beaming with excitement.

Mia stepped around Taldor. “Yes, he won.” Kind of. “But don’t ask him about it. He finally stopped playing around with his invitation.”

A furry, brown creature with a bushy tail nibbled on a cherry, then darted up a tree to their left as they got too close. Mia watched the small rat-like animal leap from branch to branch. She ran to get a better look. Small twigs vibrated in the air, marking its path. It chirped like a bird before she lost sight of it in a small nook. “Was that a squirrel?” Mia asked. “I read about them once.”

Photo by Pearse O'Halloran on Unsplash

Taldor chuckled. “Yes. Are there no squirrels in Yimser?”

“We have rats and crows and cats, oh and Sal,” she said, hoping the cute animal would pop its head out of the hole. “Vidmar showed me how to set a snare for a squirrel, but I’ve never seen a real one before. I’m never setting one of those traps again. They’re too cute.”

“Pa hates them. They like to eat our corn.”

Mia tried to mimic its chirping sound, but the stubborn creature remained hidden.

“It won’t come out until we’ve gone, but you’ll probably see another. They’re all over the place. Them and rabbits.” 

“Really? I saw some rabbits in the forest, but I want to see more squirrels.”

Taldor laughed and began climbing a tree. He looked like the squirrel, hurrying up the tree confidently without fear of falling. “Who’s the big, scary-looking guy?”

“Huh, oh. Kamet?”

“Yeah. Toss the basket up here.”

Mia threw the woven basket up to Taldor. He caught it with one hand. “I like him. He’s a little intimidating, and as long as he doesn’t drink too much, he’s fun. He’s Vidmar’s friend, so that’s good enough for me. Are there any squirrels up there?” 

“No, but you’ll be the first to know if I see one.” 

Taldor filled the basket with cherries that were more purple than red, different from any she had seen in Yimser. She picked one off the ground, wiped it on her shirt, and bit into it. It was delightfully sweet, less tart than the red cherries her mother had been fond of, simply delicious. She spat the seed out and searched the ground for more. “These are so good,” she said, pulling the stem out with a cherry between her teeth. A brownish crack ran down the next cherry she picked up. It seemed like a waste, but she threw it away. 

“When the merchants come through, Pa always buys a small bag of sugar and makes a pie. If it weren’t for that pie, I would have run away by now,” Taldor said, jumping off the tree, basket in hand. 

“Really?” Mia asked. She was warming up to the curious boy. There weren’t many kids around her age in Yimser, not under the river anyway. Most kids died before their fifth birthday. “Your farm is amazing. I would never leave.”

As Taldor began to speak, a tall man stomped into the grove, cursing worse than any drunk she’d heard on the streets near Geoff’s. “Fucking unbelievable. Goddamn secrets. I need to get the fuck out of here,” the man said. Mia stiffened and hid behind a tree reflexively. 

“It’s alright,” Taldor said, tapping her shoulder. “It’s only Ev.”

Mia poked her head out, watching Ev approach. He continued to curse as he kicked off the tops of mushrooms; the gray porous material exploded into the air. An innocent tree was his next target. He slapped the trunk so hard that pieces of bark fell off. “Damnit,” he screamed, shaking his hand. 

“What’s wrong,” Taldor asked timidly.

Ev rubbed his palm. “He fucking sent me away like a little kid.”

Taldor looked at Mia. “They sent us away too.” He stepped closer to his brother. 

Ev put a hand on his shoulder, relaxing. “I know. I’m sorry,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m just, ah, I’m pissed. He lets me go to Haran and Barna but won’t let me listen to a conversation.”

Taldor shuffled away from Ev and leaned against a tree. “At least you get to leave.”

Ev’s anger seemed to dissipate. “You’ll get to leave soon. I didn’t get to go anywhere until I was fifteen.”

“I know. I just want to see the world.”

Mia couldn’t believe the petty argument between these two brothers, who lived on an enormous farm with enough food for a small village. “I don’t understand,” she said softly at first, then grew more confident as she continued. “You both have a wonderful life.” Mia paused, biting her lip to restrain herself. “Last winter, I had to eat a cat. A cute, scared cat that trusted me, but there was no food. The bakeries didn’t even throw out their moldy bread.” She sniffed back tears. “I lived in a shack under a bridge for the past year. Then, I spent a month in a prison cell. If I hadn’t been a girl, they would have killed me. And now, I’ve traveled; I’ve run from guards, mercenaries, and worse. I haven’t seen much of the world, but what I have seen isn’t that great. You have a wonderful home; I don’t understand why you are so eager to leave.”

Taldor rubbed the back of his neck. “I get bored of the same chores every day. I’m sorry, Mia.” 

“Me too,” Ev said, still rubbing his palm.

Mia ate another cherry. She didn’t mean to talk so much, let alone lecture two strangers about their lives. Her face felt hot, and her palms were sweating; she needed a distraction. They spent the next hour talking about the world, eating cherries, and taking turns throwing the knife at various targets. Mia couldn’t remember a time when she had more fun. When the last rays of sunlight disappeared, they walked back to the farmhouse, laughing and exchanging stories.