Catastrophe Jones

After a meal, a wash, and settling in to fresh sheets, Laila was certain that she would sleep quite soundly. It was not to be; she could hear the voice of Nine Trees, and no matter how she turned and laid her head to the pillow, she could not quite rest, and was lulled into listening to his song. She recognized it as an old lament, a song sung by many young men who had lost the gaze of their objects of affection.

My love is fair and fair again
in gaze and walk and smile, and though
her heart’s as hard as rough-hewn stone,
her face is fair and fair again.

She didn’t know the rest of it, however, and when Nine Trees kept singing, Laila found it hard to focus on the words, for dreaming had finally tried to settle round her, with soft hands and warm breath. Fighting sleep, she listened, and drifted away on dreaming, eventually, as Nine Tree’s voice wrapped round her and carried her there.

Gone away to fairy glen,
my love has spied a prince of thieves
among the green and golden leaves;
his face is fair and fair again.

Her heart is lost to Fairie, then,
and will not come my way again;
she pines not for the love of men
who’d find her fair and fair again.

The pale, rosy fingers of dawn peeled back the purpleblack of twilight, and let silvergold morning splash over the valley, thickening on the leaves of the trees and puddling in the dew on the ground where the barn cats were slinking back to find places to sleep away the day after a long night of mousing runs.

Nine Trees was only just waking when Laila was already up and making breakfast; the woman felt refreshed in a way she’d never known before. She was quiet and smiling, moving as though the whole of her life and existence were a perfectly timed and brilliantly moving dance.

She looked up in the midst of her working to find Nine Trees watching her the way he had last night, and when he opened his mouth to speak, she lifted a hand, shaking her head briefly. Not yet. Not now. “The morning meal is nearly ready. While we eat, you can tell me everything. For now, just set the table,” she told him, almost smiling.

For the first half-hour of it, he was still mostly silent, eating, and she didn’t push, but it vexed her, increasingly, his silence, and finally she all but tossed down her fork.

“Medowin, my teacher, is an ancient from before time,” he began, and watched her face for signs of disbelief, for signs of the sudden fear she’d displayed at the first of his explanations last night. “She keeps song-lore and all the tales that have come before now, to hold the memories of each age of mankind,” he explained. Finding no interruption in Laila’s attentiveness, he went on, “She sent me to walk the world in her stead, so that she could watch from her Tower, and I would bring back all the news of the world itself, to be able to help her find the person who would eventually be the one to usher in the newest age.”

“You’re speaking in riddles,” Laila said quietly.

“You will be the one, Laila,” Nine Trees said, setting down his napkin. “I have searched for over two-score years. I have found many who might have been what I was looking for, but those possibilities were turned to ash the moment I first saw you. You may think yourself simple, Laila, and the songs that will be sung of you will no doubt have their own way to sing your beginnings, but I promise you, you are the one I have sought.”

“How do you know? And this is absurd — Searched for two score? You’re no more than a lad yourself!” she yelped, exasperated, shoving her chair back and standing up.

“How do you know the sun will rise and set? How do you know to blink? How do you know how to sleep? How do you know to eat and breathe and move?” he wondered, shrugging. “I can offer you no proof, Laila, save for the surety of my thoughts and hopes.”

“But you sound as though Medowin will be surprised?” she asked.

“I believe Medowin would sooner bear a litter of kittens than have forseen this,” Nine Trees said with an almost mock-solemnity, and the moment of near-fear for Laila was broken, and she threw her hands up in surrender, shaking her head, laughing.

“I would meet this Medowin,” Laila said, finally, moving to clear the dishes.

“I’ll have it no other way, for perhaps she may set your heart at ease,” Nine Trees told her.

It was with that last bit of conversation that things were decided without being spoken further. Laila would journey to meet Medowin with Nine Trees, leaving behind what she knew to try and understand what was to come.

Part One — Part Two — Part Three — Part Four — Part Five — Part Six — Part Seven — Part Eight — Part Nine — Part Ten — Part Eleven

Laila’s face, weathered and sun-cheeked as it was, held a certain sort of beauty in its amazement and confusion, as she stared at Nine Trees. She couldn’t help but open her mouth a few times as though to speak, and it was finally laughter that broke the silence, on the part of Nine Trees, who helplessly hiccuped and spluttered “Without a doubt, I’d thought you were a bird, but I’m thinking now that instead you’re the fairest fish I’ve ever seen.”

It earned him a clot of dough in the face, and Laila stood with her hands on her hips, feeling much abused by the stranger whose name she still did not know.

“Don’t you laugh at me, sir! I’ve brought you into my home and you tell me strange tales of searches for chosen ones, and how I am to be one myself?” she fumed.

“It was not meant to be a spiteful jest,” Nine Trees stated apologetically, wiping flour from his long eyelashes. “It was only that you were so surprised–” he began, but again fell to laughing; he could not help himself. He lifted his hands to fend off another barrage of dough, which he felt for certain must be coming, but when he found that it was not happening, he opened his eyes to her and at once looked abashed. The heat in his cheeks flamed; she wore an expression of near-pitiable confusion, mixed only with fear.

“I don’t even know your name, sir, and you named me hero. How am I supposed to speak and think after announcements of this nature?” Laila said, her voice quiet, and even afraid.

“First off, I am not sir, and you needn’t address me as such,” Nine Trees tells her. “Though,” he said, dropping into his lowest, courtliest bow, he announced himself in such a rich tone that Laila knew he was quite serious again. “I have the manners of one, I suppose. I am Nine Trees, sent of Medowin, last Child of Raduli–”

“–first child of Sarad,” Laila whispered with him, finishing the statement as she dropped to her knees. “Not, sir, no, but Lord,” she breathed, bowing her face to the dirt. “Forgive me, Lord, I meant no ill, I did not realize when you said Win that you spoke of–”

“Get up,” Nine Trees said impatiently, and was shocked to see Laila pick herself up immediately, her face flushed, her dark eyes wide, her brown hands trembling.

She was in such a state as he had seen too many forest animals treed by kings’ hounds. Certain, then, of her own coming doom, Laila closed her eyes and fought not to faint, for she was not a weak woman, not a milksop maid, but a proud, stubborn thing. Not bawdy, not lusty, not spiteful or wild, but quietly and happily and freely she lived, unbothered by the orders of any. “Yes, Lord,” Laila said quietly, and Nine Trees could not help but be half-ashamed of how he’d bemuddled things.

When he reached for her, to try and shake from her the sudden spell of fear and obeisance, she flinched, and it was then that he’d had enough. “In Sarad’s name!” he cursed. “Stop your bowing and scraping, I work for her; I am not of her line,” he said, exasperated. “I’m just a bastard foundling she took in, Laila, not the gods themselves come to your door. In truth, you are far more important than I — I am only a listener of stories, Laila. You are the one the stories will be about.”

She stared hard at him, certain that for all her struggle, she was still too near to fainting. “Would you please, Lord–”

“Call me Nine, if you would–”

“Nine, then, but you’re the queerest sort I’ve ever met,” she said plainly.

“I’m afraid I get that a lot,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Would you consent to come with me, then, to where you can be further enlightened? This time and place move quickly, and the people here would miss you for the days that you would need be gone to hear these explanations,” Nine Trees said, opening his hands in a gesture of offering, of vulnerability, for it was plain to Nine Trees that he had found the one he had sought for so long, it was there in the music of her movement, of her laugh, but for all that he knew this, there was no way to force her to any path; Laila would have to choose.

“How else would time move but slowly, of course, save when you’re doing as you love,” Laila muttered, looking irritated and confused. “The sun’s gone down and I’m not finished with my work. If you please… Nine, I shall finish it, and when I am finished, we shall break bread. When the nightmeal is done, I am bathing and going to bed. You may stay and sleep in the loft if you like, with the chickens, or on the midden, whichever suits you and your tall tales. In the morning, after breakfast, you will tell me everything, and by everything I mean you will leave not a thing out, and if, by then, I am not satisfied by your strange tales, sir, then you will remove yourself from my home and my sight. Do we have an agreement?” she asked, talking on and on, her words clear and crisp and rapid as an icy river made of spring thaw, “Because if we do, be off with you then, as I’m busy, and if we do not then there is the door and you may walk yourself out it upon your own two legs!”

Nine Trees listened to the tirade much like a child will listen to a thunderstorm in awe, half-smiling politely until she finished, and he painedly said, “May I ask you one thing?”

Laila took a long, hard look at the young man who seemed half-child and half-rogue and found herself surprised that she was crushed for the lack of the merry twinkle in his eyes. “…you just did,” she said pertly, but the twinkle in her eyes proved to wake his, and he smirked, giving a little bow.

“Fair enough, dear Laila,” he murmured. “We have an agreement. May I help you with dinner?”

And so it was that the two moved through the kitchen to prepare for the evening meal; Laila finishing her work while Nine Trees cooked them a veritable feast. Now and again, dough landed in his hair or a bit of gravy spattered her cheek, but they managed to cook and eat and get more of the food in themselves than on themselves.

Part One — Part Two — Part Three — Part Four — Part Five — Part Six — Part Seven — Part Eight — Part Nine — Part Ten — Part Eleven

Laila wiped coarse sugar from her fingers and stared at the stranger with a disapproving frown as he stood out in the yard of her cottage, splitting wood. He hummed as he worked, and the axe split each piece with ease; a rhythm was established in the way he would set the wood on the block, bring down the axe, and reach down for another piece. Now and then one piece got stuck, but strangely enough he was already humming a happily little repetition there, and he never really stumbled or stuttered.

While Laila cooked, staring at the man, she couldn’t help but keep frowning, though it wasn’t of irritation in the slightest. She wasn’t mad at him; she was quite angry with herself.

Here she had a perfect stranger who’d bought a week’s worth of pies, and she had him out front, chopping cookwood!

Except, she reasoned, she had done no such thing. He’d put himself to work almost immediately, cheerfully cleaning, playfully flicking wood chips into her hair when she came out to fuss over him, telling her to go make more pies and stop hovering.

She hummed while she worked as well, and it wasn’t until she was bathed in the waning glow of the afternoon, half-covered in flour and spatters of pie filling, that she realized she was being watched. She looked over her shoulder and flicked her braids back out of her face, quirking a mock-irritated brow at the stranger — whose name, she just realized, she still didn’t know.

How long he’d been standing there, she had no idea, but once she’d stopped humming, he roused himself from his dream and said almost to himself, quite solemnly, “Win’s certainly not going to believe this.”

“And who in Sarad’s name is Win?” Laila wondered, pursing her lips and looking amused. “…and what won’t he believe?”

“She,” Nine Trees murmured, correcting the woman who was now dusting her hands on her apron and looking bewildered.

“Well she, then,” Laila murmured, humoring the young man.

He wandered right back out of the house and she trailed after, holding her apron, her eyes wide. “Wait, wait!” she cried, half-alarmed that she might’ve somehow offended him. “Please wait?” she said, bursting out the door of the kitchen, into the lawn, scattering chickens about the yard.

He looked at her, over an armful of wood, and cocked his head to the side, wondering blankly, “Don’t want the wood just yet?”

Frustrated and half-embarrassed, and oh, how her cheeks flamed as she thought of how she must look, chasing after him in her floured skirts with her brown hands and her half-undone hair, Laila chided herself bitterly and said primly, “In there,” and pointed with an imperious finger toward the woodstove.

He nodded, winking, for he was a scoundrel of a young man, sweet and charming and kind, and though he knew she was half-distressed for some reason, he could not begin to guess why, and so he only sought to see her smile again. If she smiled, she might laugh, and if she might laugh, she might again sing and it was her singing that he truly adored.

Once the wood was down in a neat little pile, Nine Trees dusted off his hands and wandered to the sideboard where he lifted a slice of mutton pie to his mouth and ate it in four quick bites, grinning wolfishly as he licked his lips and then leaned there, eyeing Laila thoughtfully.

“Win is my teacher,” he began. “She knows the art of songlore, and keeps track of the ages of man,” he said to Laila, and she could tell, by the tone of his voice, that this was no longer playful banter. This was the sound of a Truth being told, and she soaked up the knowledge like a reed takes on water, listening attentively. “She has long been searching for the one chosen to usher in the next Age,” he explained patiently, watching Laila’s face as she was made a silhouette in the doorway by the setting sun, afire with the day’s dying light. “Win bid me join her in her search, and bring news of my findings,” Nine Trees murmured.

It was then that the weight of Truths became a little too much for Laila, and she frowned in true distress, opening her mouth to interrupt, but the young man continued to speak, his melodic voice silencing her before the words could leave her lips. How like a little bird she looked, just then, he thought to himself. How like a wren, all brown and small and frightened, caught in a net and only just now realizing.

“You were about to ask me if I have found this chosen one,” Nine Trees supplied her quietly.

Lailah only nodded mutely, narrowing her eyes again.

“Indeed I have found this one, the chosen, Laila,” the young man confirmed, the glittering in his eyes returning. His next word was heavier than all the previous Truths combined: “You.”

Part One — Part Two — Part Three — Part Four — Part Five — Part Six — Part Seven — Part Eight — Part Nine — Part Ten — Part Eleven