CHAPTER 1.38 - VILLAGE LIFE: IV
With all seeming well between himself and Thae, Hugo’s mind turns inevitably to Anuk. He simply doesn’t know what to think of her book, nor of the woman herself. If only, he thinks, she’d utilised the tome as a journal, he might have some insight into the fuel for her apparently boundless anger. Then again, he thinks, he too has seen enough of the grimier face of life’s coin. To him, humour and approachability are a shell he constructed a long time ago. He wonders what might truly be inside that shell. The reflex has become so ingrained, so instinctual that it feels like this is his personality. What more could there be?
He knows this is…not a lie, precisely, but the shape he’s become. The urge to be friend rather than target was formed hard and early. X set the template. Then, as the man had gained power and importance, the people who accreted around him bore his resemblance. Both in approach and mood. An endless succession of blunter, angrier, more violent versions of X. Incentivised, on many occasions, to exaggerate his worst qualities. After all, how does one stand out in a crowd of violent criminals? Hugo shudders, contemplating how standing out in a different way had worked out for him.
As he enters their room, the fresh scarring he feels on his heart blinds him to the fact that it’s occupied. Anuk’s on her bed, staring at Hugo with a look of surprise. The book is, of course, open on her lap. Apparently to the first of the blank pages following the entries he had scoured the previous night. He can see the suppressed motion, the urge she’s fighting to slam the book closed, maybe to hide it. His long experience of deception tells him she’s decided to resist the instinct, understanding that the action might draw more attention.
He smiles, genuine amusement repurposed into carefree greeting, saunters towards his bed with a nod to his ally. “Just grabbing Three’s nuts…” he begins, allowing the double entendre to cover any tells she might have spotted. The squirrel, hearing his name, scampers out of Hugo’s shirt to perch on his shoulder. In his peripheral vision, he spies Anuk using his inattention to close the book. Her spine stiffens as his pet springs from its vantage point onto her bed, standing on hind legs and sniffing rapidly in her direction.
Hugo kneels to reach for his wolfskin bag under the bed, having already palmed Thaesurala’s seed pouch. He had intended to spend some time working on the elusive effect he had promised the group, doubly important now with Rudolf Mentari’s men threatening the village. Neither he nor Anuk, he’s certain, would welcome the other’s presence in what was intended to be a secluded corner. The woman’s muttering something under her breath, but it seems even, measured, rather than her cursing his or Three’s name.
As he completes his pantomime of retrieving the beautiful woven pouch, he becomes aware of a distinctive scent. He turns back to the pair, nostrils full of the smell of roasted chestnuts. He’s perplexed, wondering how Anuk managed to have hot, fresh snacks up here. Her hands are empty, the surprising sound of the woman chuckling gently as Hugo sees that Three has begun to scale her arched calves, pausing to rub his head ecstatically against her knee. He realises her muttering must have been some invocation to create the scent. A nicer manifestation of her power, he thinks, remembering the window frames shuddering in the attic room.
Murmuring some kind of low-key apology, always a preferred option when dealing with the pale lady, Hugo extracts Three from her trousers. He has a few of the remaining seeds in his palm, his little friend distractedly prying at his closed fingers as he is picked up. As ever, Three is his greatest accomplice as Hugo confirms that the book under Anuk’s lap is now a black-bound hardcover tome. It’s noticeably thicker than last night, suppressing a shive as he recalls the thing moving under his fingers.
He hopes he managed to hide his look of shock as he bids Anuk goodbye and allows the door to swing closed behind him. If anything, their encounter raises more questions. Is she haunted? Possessed, maybe? Maybe thanks to the recent suspension of hostilities between them, his mind rejects the theory of ‘just plain evil.’ He feels he has experience of that, some of it very recent, and she doesn’t resemble that. Not entirely.
-x-
The afternoon drifts pleasantly into evening. The day has been rainy with changeable wind in a combination rendering any shelter outside pointless. He settled on the ground floor of the Hall, not ideal for seclusion but charming as he watched the community ebbing and flowing around the hub. He’s spent an hour with his committed accomplice Nina, pleased with the girl’s enthusiasm to learn.
He feels genuine pride at how completely his plan worked. By insisting she perform for the community, he’s made them all complicit in her talent. He could easily have imagined the youngster’s commitment waning on his inevitable departure from the village. Had he simply indulged her curiosity, a brief curio himself, she might forget, the learning atrophying. He’d intended to visit the local merchant today, feels happy he was sidetracked as his shopping list has expanded.
Hugo interrogates his previous conception of village life. City born and raised, he understood a rural existence to be unsatisfactory, lacking in hustle and bustle. Assuming those qualities were noble, central to one’s value or purpose. As an outsider, his assessment seemed flawless, uncoloured by ignorance or bias. He realises how many assumptions, and shaky ones, shaped this opinion. First of those being that his experience was somehow the ground state, life’s standard.
He watches his little student, so similar to himself in so many ways and yet strenuously her own self. Nina has such an absence of deceit to her, no mask as she expresses her delights and frustrations, her amusement and focus. All observed as he pushes the edges of her unmistakeable talent for his metier. He sees how nourished the girl has been, living surrounded by people who know her and care deeply for her wellbeing. Particularly when she fails. There’s no flinch, no implicit fear of punishment to the youngster. Hugo suspects his 33-year-old self handles failure less gracefully than this child. He lets her get on with things for a minute as his throat thickens and his eyes mist, struggles to regain his own control.
The lie at the heart of his dismissal of ‘bumpkins’ is laid bare by his experiences since leaving Caladria. The prejudiced image of some farmer leaning on his fork, slow in thought and speech, lacked some crucial detail. He’s become sharply aware that the ‘rhythm of nature’ he might have mocked is, in fact, an inflexible tyrant. Certainly, his group has encountered some days like today where they have only whatever purpose they assign themselves. But the villagers’ lives are at the mercy of the weather and an entire interlaced network of beasts and humanoids, each fighting for their own survival.
Calm once more, he watches an oblivious Nina, unbothered by his scrutiny. Sees how purely she channels delight as she manages a clean transition from one note to another, limber fingers becoming used to the movements, adjusting the pressure she must exert on the strings. Envies her the lack of a mask, of striving to be eternally detached, disavowing the humanity of shock, surprise, novelty.
-x-
Thae and then Anuk reappear as bread, cheese and meat are brought for their dinner. Hugo’s surprised at the relish with which he attacks the simple meal. This is the third iteration they’ve had of the meat prepared for the feast, over the last two days. The variety in the presentation surely helps, but Hugo is hit by how pampered he’s been. By a city within whose walls a dozen different cuisines thrive side-by-side. Swears that the next time he spies a ‘Frites et Fromage’ stand he’ll savour the traditional ‘crawling home drunk’ snack as haute cuisine.
Thae fills them in delightedly about the progress of Durn and Marek, the former only persuaded to remain in his sickbed as company for his friend. Both are expected to return to their roles within a day or two, the cleric deflecting Hugo’s congratulations in favour of The Goddess. Classic Thae. A new wrinkle emerges, however, as he enquires after Rian and Bertak. The half-elf is obviously evading. A liar as accomplished as Hugo can smell the spoor as his friend flatly announces the woodsman’s chosen to eat at the forge tonight. Spots the half-elf’s cheeks redden even without follow-up questions about what they might be up to. Thae’s focus is apparently consumed by the food, rather than vice versa. For the second time today, the gifted liar is jealous of someone being so alien to dishonesty.
-x-
As he climbs the stairs to their room, Hugo muses about the snatches of conversation he overheard from the hunters with whom they share the Hall. Primarily, he is relieved that there have been no further sightings of Perasta, nor even a hint of bandits scouting Highbarrow. Apparently, Atheran’s insisting that someone still stays on duty at the overhang up the hill. He’s touched by the hunters’ faith in their elder, however surmises that little of their attendance to this duty is reliant on respect for her. In fact, from what he could make out of their quiet discussions, Durn isn’t the only one to have heard noises behind the white stone. Nor is he the only one to be spooked.
He's a storyteller from head to toe, and the nominative determinism of ‘Highbarrow’ should be pleasing to him. Maybe even a little on the nose. He should be amused by the fear-of-the-dark response to the uncovering of a foible of the village’s geography. Particularly a foible ignored for generations by the populace. He feels the conflicting pressure, however, of the traditional meaning for ‘barrow’. The thought of the unusual white rock, definitely too even to be natural, as the entrance to a primitive place of burial, gives him pause. If he’s honest, his and Thae’s horrifying encounter leaving Caladria further colours that possibility, resonates with the idea of noises from somewhere previously sealed by mud and roots and stone. Possibly sealed to the point of preventing the ingress of, you know, AIR.
For the second night in a row, he files his concerns under ‘spooky thoughts in the dark’, decides to involve the group when they’re all together. He’s certain he’ll be talked down, possibly mocked for his anxiety. He distracts himself by wondering what possessed Anuk – again encountering the term in his thoughts about her – to uncover the stone in the first place. He has altogether too many loose threads of thought about the girl, decides this might be pushing his brain to knit small mysteries into whole cloth.
As Hugo enters their room, Thae is kneeling in silent meditation. The half-elf came upstairs an hour previously, preceded by Anuk by more than the same span again. The woman watches him enter and observe the cleric, raises her eyebrows with a tight smile. He remains somewhat on the back foot at the transformation of their relationship, but attributes some of the warmth, the lack of mocking mirth in her expression to her obvious care for his pal.
He lies on his bed, content within the silence. Anuk’s book’s nowhere to be seen, suggesting she too is sitting with her thoughts. As unguessable as those remain to him, keen observer of human nature that he is. Or half-elven, as the case seems to be. Hugo produces the length of reed he plucked from the edge of the settlement’s shallow lake, along with the pocketknife he borrowed from one of the hunters.
He feels Anuk’s eyes on him as he begins to mark a length suitable to his purpose and trims the reed down. He feels a sudden urge to chuckle, engaged as he is in an activity so stereotypical to his image of village life. He decides something so full throated could be interpreted as mocking her, so instead looks up and smiles at her. From the corner, Thae’s voice remarks “This is nice, is it not?”
Yes, Hugo thinks as he feels more than hears Rian’s presence approaching their door. Yes, it is nice.
