E08 - Ch 35: Of Fathers and Sons

Maybe that’s the difference between youth and old age. But I think it was also the excitement of the market. There’s just something magical that happens when you do the thing you love. It’s like having an extra chamber of fuel in your body, and it keeps you energized long after your strength is spent and your will should have faded.

As I came over the hill that overlooked our homestead, I was surprised to find my father sitting on the porch outside. Elder Calm must have released him. He had his leg propped up, and there was the faint glow of a pipe. He must have been smoking shrewvine, which he almost never did, but I suppose it was to help keep him awake while he waited for me to return home.

I couldn’t see his face too clearly in the shadows of the roof, but I gave him a wave as I pulled up with the wagon. I felt a pang of anxiety that was shared by the boy inside me. I’d yet to speak to my father since I’d been resurrected, and the last time the boy had spoken to him, it had been words of anger.

“Hello, son,” my father said, his voice careful as if he was unsure if I was still upset with him.

“Hey, Pa,” I replied as I stepped down from the wagon. “Surprised to see you up so late.”

“I thought I’d wait for you so we could talk,” he said. “But we best keep our voices down, your mother’s sleeping.”

I nodded and came and sat down next to him on the bench, and we sat in silence for a while, staring out into the field.

“I heard you climbed the world tree,” he said at last.

“I did… hope it didn’t worry you and Ma too much.”

“I’m glad we found out only after you’d already come down. Someone had gone to tell her, but she’d come to see me at Elder Calm’s. I’d tell you now that you’ve got to be more careful, but I suppose I’m the last person in the world that should be giving that lecture.”

I smiled at him. He returned it.

“What was it like up there?”

“It was beautiful,” I said. “Felt like I could see all the world up there.”

He nodded and stared out at the night sky. “That’s wonderful, son. I’m glad you got to experience that. Must have been something special.”

“How’s the leg?” I said, noting that his leg wasn’t in a splint anymore, which was surprising to me.

“A lot better,” he said. “I can get around with the help of a cane.”

I raised a brow. That was fast, even by modern 21st-century standards back on Earth.

“Elder Calm knows a healing spell,” my father explained. “Just a small one, but it’s helped a lot. Don’t tell anyone, of course. If the Conclave of Helera found out, they’d brand him a heretic.”

I nodded, for I knew this custom. The Helera, who oversaw the Temples of Heleric, were the healers of this world. Only the Helera were allowed to learn the spells of healing. These spells were a tightly controlled resource. To pass a spell outside the Conclave of the Helera was a fatal crime, and to know one was just as bad.

This was because their faith believed that only the chosen of Helera should control the powers of healing and life. Not even Ascendants or Crownbled of other conclaves had access to such spells.

Though now that I was thinking about it, it sounded like a bunch of hogwash to me. Getting healed at the temple required an excessive “donation,” which meant it was nothing more than a big monopoly that the power players wished to hold onto so that they could charge exorbitant prices. And as an old-school capitalist, there was nothing I disliked more than a monopoly. It not only killed competition, it often prevented growth and progress.

But like the other Five Holy Conclaves of the Empire, and all of the continent of Caelonia for that matter, the Conclave of Helera was controlled by Ascendants, a higher caste than even the lords and the Emperor himself, who were only Crownbled. Although Ascendants were barred from direct rule, the laws were set up in their favor.

I was suddenly curious to know more about that aspect of the world, but I found that I only had bits and pieces of information. Nothing more than the basics that a teenage farmer would have learned in the few years of schooling he’d had.

“What would it cost to have your leg healed fully?” I asked.

My father shook his head. “A lot more than we can afford.” He coughed then and cleared his throat, and I realized there were tears in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry, son,” he said. “You were right. I wasn’t thinking when I confronted the intruder. I got hurt, and I’ve made it harder on you and your mother.”

I could tell it was hard for him to get through the words, and I felt my own throat hurting. Like I said, I’m no good with the gushy stuff. My father on Earth had been a good man. But he’d been stern and restrained, and we never shared our true feelings with each other. It just wasn’t his way, or maybe it was the times, and I guess that rubbed off on me too.

But seeing this grown man come clean with his feelings and admit to his mistakes was breaking something inside of me. I didn’t want to see because it was uncomfortable and against everything I knew about fatherhood. But at the same time, I couldn’t look away, because it was a glimpse into a different kind of upbringing, a different kind of relationship with a parent.

“I failed her,” my father continued, snorting and wiping his eyes. “She told me today about what she had to do. Great gods, I’ve been such a fool, thinking that the legionnaire delayed our debt payment out of leniency and goodness…” he looked up at me then, his mouth trembling. “I’m… I’m so s-sorry you had to see that, son. I’m sorry you had to deal with that on your own. That’s not the kind of responsibility a boy should have to bear. It was my burden, and I failed you. I failed. I know I did.”

“Pa…” I began.

“Then I went and got myself hurt on top of it all,” he shook his head, wiping his eyes again, the tears were freely flowing then. “But I promise you, Aelric, we’ll find a way out of this. We’ve still got friends that we can rely on. Tomorrow I’m going to go to each of them and ask for their help. I know they’ve all got their own troubles with the increased taxes, but I know I can count on them to lend a hand. I should have asked them a long time ago. But I guess I was just too damn stubborn. I… I was born Mirebound, son…”

I held my breath then. This was something he’d never spoken about before. Each time his caste had been brought up in the past within our family, he’d clam up or get upset and change the topic.

“You know what they say about Mirebound,” my father said, sniffing, getting his emotions under control. “It was the same when I was growing up. That we’re thieves and beggars. That we were killers and evildoers in our past lives and likely to commit the same crimes again. I guess hearing that my whole life, I was determined to never ask anyone for anything.” He shook his head again, new tears falling from his eyes. “And in my blindness, your mother had to make sacrifices that no one should have to make. I’m so sorry to you both…”

“Pa…”

“I know you can’t see it now,” my father said. “But I promise, I’ll do whatever it takes. You don’t need to worry anymore. Your mother and I–”

“Pa,” I said, with some insistence.

He paused then and looked over at me. And I grinned at him.

“I made four hundred and sixty-two arcas at the market today.”

The expression on his face is one of those happy memories I knew I’d never forget for the rest of my new life.

“Four… what?”

“You had the right idea to go to the market, Pa.”

“Did... did you say… four hundred…”

“And sixty-two arcas,” I finished for him.

He laughed half with relief and the other half with disbelief. “Bright Heleric… I can’t believe it…. You’re not pulling a prank on me, are you? No, of course you aren’t. That’s… that’s incredible, son. Incredible. H-how?”

So I told him all about it, from asking Nymet for her honey cake, getting the better stall location, making friends with Gufry, and selling to a multitude of marketgoers.

We talked for a long time after that, late into the night.

✣ ✣ ✣

Later, as I lay in bed, I thought about the events at the market.

I had sold fifteen litras of Regular Coarse Flour, six litras of Hand-Harvested Flour, and three litras of Fine-Fine Flour. It’d been a good day, even a little better than I’d expected.

Although I got lucky in the beginning with Taela, I could tell right away that my Fine-Fine flour wasn’t going to sell well. It just wasn’t the right customer base. The people there couldn’t afford fine flour like the customers at the merchant guild market could. These were everyday working folk. But my interesting names, lower prices, and samples brought in new customers that in the end bought the cheaper flour. Those who had a little more to spend went with the hand-harvested flour, which was still far cheaper than the Fine-Fine Flour.

It was a good day, and I was proud to be able to ease my parents’ struggles.

But the truth was, it still wasn’t nearly enough.

It’d taken me the whole day to get out there and sell. The twenty-five litras of flour I’d sold only amounted to around thirty-two litras of grain.

I’d still yet to finish threshing and harvesting the grain on our land, but I knew it would amount to roughly three thousand litras of grain for our total wheat harvest.

At the speed I was going, it’d take me more than three months just to sell through my family’s wheat harvest. And that would be time spent away from the farm.

I knew I had no intentions of being a farmer any longer, but the speed of sales was still an issue. I couldn’t spend more than three months to sell a single farm’s harvest. It was too slow if I had any intention of being a merchant in this world.

There was no issue on the margins of my product since there were no middlemen, but the speed of sales was far too slow. I needed to get more aggressive. Far more aggressive.

And I knew just the way to do it.