Nights of kinship, so underscored by joyous laughter, will forever become inextricably tied to the memories of a fading youth; between these misspent nights of carousing and falling off of chairs, lies absence, a darkening void of long forgotten–or otherwise equally repressed–memory.
Scattered fragments of horrific recall that wisp past the vision in hazed blur and seem to leave behind the kind of bar tab that a publican had no right to encourage.
Three days of washing dishes and further two nights spent splitting hardwood had removed both the knuckles and a forgivable-enough portion of the debt racked up by Aya, the potion smith, and her scruffy wizard companion, Carrick.
Their night of inebriated mirth had been a celebratory sigh of relief, bookending not only their escaping of Trolls, but overly-keen archers and a small pack of opportunistic wolves, who–in their arrogance–didn’t expect a pale woman picking flowers by moonlight to possess quite so strong a right hook.
This impromptu ‘one or two drinks,’ had quickly hurdled past what was to be a nightcap, and landed directly into the realm of hard liquor–to which any of the following decisions could not be recalled as performed within the full soundness of mind.
Bets were made, woodcutters were wrestled and the resulting hangover had still managed to linger some five days after the fact.
‘I believe myself to have been slain Aya,’ moaned Carrick as he lay in the Flanksman’s wagon and watched as the treeline ambled by. ‘Poisoned, by a devil most vile and sent to the hells of torment as reward for my living misdeeds. I shall forever be visited by vile imps of chaos; no’ere more I shall know joy; fowl melancholy shall reign–’
A–debatably aimed for–bump in the road halted the melodramatic ranting that was wafting upward from the rear of the wagon, drawing a shout laughter from the two riders up the front.
*
Many things had all happened rather quickly in recent days–as hindsight often causes them to.
In finally working off their bar tab at the Woodbrush tavern, Carrick and Aya had managed to hitch a ride with an injured, but nonetheless chipper, Postman by the name of Sunny.
Shortly after falling off a mountain, Sunny had found her way to the Woodbrush tavern and was duly convinced by the two indentured dish-hands that, as a Postman’s duty was to deliver the mail, no matter the trial, this could extend to delivering people as well. Despite this firmly being against the rules of what was essentially just a horse mounted postal service, their logic proved too hard to argue against while carrying a concussion.
‘What do you think a cat tastes like?’ asked Sunny, as she watched the road and attempted to stop it from listing to the left.
Travel through the plains of East Joyce was rarely a scrap past uneventful, and as the hours swamped by Aya had become bored enough that this question almost appeared as a sane one.
‘Bitter,’ Aya nodded to herself with confidence. ‘Anything that radiates the same self confidence as an accountant has to be bitter right down to its bootlaces.’ Stuffing a paradox of antidotal and equally poisonous herbs into some tobacco paper the potion smith rolled herself a cigar and tried to blink away the last remnants of her headache.
‘I always thought they’d be dry,’ replied Sunny, dreamly staring off into middle distance and offering no further context to her question.
The crisp air of the spring morning played with the flat grassland of the Eastern Joyce steppes, in the distance a falcon mistook a wombat for a field mouse and then learnt a very important lesson about distance and perspective.
‘So…’ Aya cautiously began, hoping to steer the conversation back to the relative safety of small talk, ‘You were saying that a knight paid you to deliver something to a troll?’
‘Oh yeah,’ replied Sunny, her train of thought returning to the present with the galloping tragedy of a dog hearing the words din dins, ‘Some knight in, over-polished armour–you know the type, real maiden saver–paid me to deliver a single letter to the king of the trolls, whatever that is; I tried asking a few of them for directions but they never seem to be very conversational. Anyway, after searching high and low I eventually found a troll that looked regal enough to be a king, so I gave him the letter and then fell off a mountain.’
‘I feel like there’s a bit missing there Sunny,’ muttered Carrick, who was eavesdropping from the rear of the wagon and lamenting the cobblestone construction of the road below. Hugging a canvas bag of undelivered mail to his chest for emotional support, Carrick slowly let himself remember that cobblestone streets were a defining trait of his homeland, and the home of far too many people that he owed money to.
*
A stone wall loomed indifferently above the flat grassland below. Brick upon stone brick, knitted together and drawing questions as to where the nearest quarry was, as the daydreaming travllers lined up and awaited permission to cross through the vaulted iron gates beyond.
Ahead guards were checking wagons before allowing them across the border into the kingdom of Gorey.
‘What’s the problem with the Postman? She looks drunk,’ commented a tired looking guard as he approached the wagon and gave one of its wheels a cautionary kick with the toe of his boot–he’d seen other guards do this in the past and had never been brave enough to question why.
‘Not drunk,’ replied Aya while searching for the correct words. ‘She’s just recently had a disagreement with the incline of a mountain, should be right after a bit of a lie down,’ she finished while clicking her fingers in front of Sunny’s eyeline, hoping to draw her attention away from the clouds drifting by overhead.
‘Should she be driving a wagon in her state?’
The silence of an already lost debate settled over the wagon as its two passengers watched sunny slowly fall out of the driver’s seat and onto the road below.
‘Where did everyone go?’…
Logic is often a flighty subject and as Carrick begrudgingly steered the wagon away from the checking station–bereft of gold and severely chastised about duty of care–he tried to see the positive side of the situation. He was hungover; returning to be murdered by his debtors; pennyless; and still missing the only spellbook he was ever able to use.
Oh, he thought, it’s starting to rain…
J.McCray
2020
Sunday Short Stories 