The Gates to Ardesburg

I soon learned that we didn’t combine carriages with someone else after Tiana’s death because Merlum explicitly asked to be alone. Neither Lotus nor I knew the first thing about horses, which meant that Merlum was the only one who could drive. It also meant that he could blame all his tears on the wind.

I wasn’t used to the way Merlum mourned. Back home in Apple Valley, we tried to bury everyone in the same graveyard, and give them a proper funeral. Bury, eulogize, pray. That was the process.

But the real tradition, the actual meat of the event, didn’t begin until the funeral service was over. That’s when the friends and relatives of the deceased would start heaping gifts onto the graves, each gift more elaborate than the last. It became a matter of pride if your grandmother’s grave had fewer drinks and fewer bouquets than your neighbor’s. Once, someone gifted my friend’s late dad seven whole roast boars. They could’ve prevented seven families from starving, but instead they went to the dead. As if competing for accolades and fame weren’t enough.

Compared to the frenzy of all that, Merlum’s meditative contemplation at first felt empty to me. But then, as I kept mulling over everything that happened myself, I couldn’t help but notice that I was doing the exact same thing. Part of it was still the uneasiness of it all. I was still a human, unable to run, unable to even hold something in both hands while using a crutch. I still had no idea what I’d do after this phase of my life was over. But I also somehow also knew that, on my own, in less pressuring circumstances, I’d probably do the same thing.

The day after I talked to Caramine, I tried putting some weight on my fractured leg. I felt my body sink into the buttery, attenuated flesh, and I jolted back onto my good leg. I caught my breath, then tried again, this time maybe holding some ten percent of my weight for five seconds, before I fell back against the carriage wall soaked in sweat.

“Do you want to try this outside?” Lotus offered.

“I’m gonna trip and never get up,” I complained, bumping my head into the wooden frame of the carriage as I tried to stand up straight.

“So you’re going to knock your brains out instead?”

“I don’t have much of one to begin with,” I joked. Then I realized I got sawdust in my hair.

I spent a good part of the rest of that day and the next morning mindlessly clawing at my skull, both because of the wood, and to keep distracting myself from the deceased. Eventually, Lotus couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed both of my hands. She handed me a knife and an apple, and told me to peel.

A little over a week and some twenty peeled apples later, we reached the Caelus Mesa a few days ahead of our arranged meeting with Ardesburg. That night, we set up camp just beyond the edge of the mountains, in the chaparral. For the first time since I got here, Moonlight would spend the night resting instead of racing across the desert.

Merlum tapped my shoulder. “Want to go hunting?”

“What?” I replied, scooting to the entrance to the carriage. “I still can’t walk.”

Merlum laughed. “Your hunter experience more than makes up for the physical handicap around these parts. I have been to Caelus Mesa many times. Nothing to be afraid of in these parts. But if Gaia wants to surprise us, Lotus here has demonstrated that she can rescue you from anything!”

“I haven’t actually walked in two weeks,” Lotus whined, twirling her knife between her fingers. “You’re on your own this time, Ray.”

Merlum cackled. “So, what do you say?”

We walked into the tall grass, while the desert wind beat against our backs, and then Lotus and Merlum got onto their stomachs while I stood behind a tree. It was quiet, then suddenly, I felt rustling in the grass. With a flick, Merlum launched a tiny arrow of wind into the grass, leaving a gash in the dusty soil. I heard a thunk, then a second thud when the creature’s body collapsed.

I heard Caramine’s voice skewering some kind of folk tune as we returned from our hunting trip with several hares, their legs each nearly as long as my forearm. The rest of the band had set up three folding wooden tables at the edge of the plains, as well as a fire pit, all in the center of our carriages. Merlum plopped the hares down next to a few newly foraged ingredients in a bucket on one of the tables.

“Caramine, dear leader, I pray to Gaia that one day you develop a semblance of pitch,” Merlum joked.

“There are many rules we must follow, but pitch is not one of them. What is song, but an expression of the heart? I am appalled that you would treat my expression in such a way,” Caramine shot back.

“You’re not exactly a better singer, wind mage,” someone else added as he washed berries in a bucket of water.

“Yes, Aleare, but at least I’m aware,” Merlum replied. “Or are you saying you’d prefer me to this caterwauling?”

That night, we had food. We had safety. We cracked jokes and slathered grassland berry sauce onto freshly roasted hare seasoned with dried herbs. Other typhins laid in the sand on patterned cotton blankets staring at the stars in the clear desert night. Lotus performed a few magic tricks by the fire, revealing my hair brush from an empty bag.

“Hey! I thought I told you not to take that without asking,” I complained.

“Geez Ray, I wasn’t gonna use it,” she said. “You act like this brush is more important than the sword you dropped with the demon.”

I felt my face get hot as Caramine looked at me quizzically. “The demon?”

Right, we never actually told her. “I’m injured because I tried and failed to slay the demon of Hyacinth.”

Caramine’s eyes widened. “Oh! I didn’t know he was—oh!”

“Is there something weird about that?” Lotus asked.

The typhin blinked and paused before replying. “No, not really. You have my apologies for my reaction.”

Eventually, in the middle of the night, Lotus and I got tired. Merlum noticed us start heading back to our carriage, and instead grabbed us and led us out in the other direction, to a pair of makeshift sleeping bags he made in the sand. He seemed almost giddy to show them off. I slowly slid myself into it with his aid, watching my leg, but I hadn’t even made it all the way in before I felt my eyelids get heavy. Right. This is what a bed felt like. Before I went on this adventure…

I awoke to Razzel shaking me awake. “We need you and Lotus at the carriages,” Razzel whispered, before slithering away into the ruddy dawn.

“What’s happening?” I asked, concerned.

Lotus was already awake, but barely. “Standoff,” she muttered. “Hunters?”

Right. Caramine told us that the humans in the Caelus Mesa distrusted typhins. They must’ve seen us. But weren’t they expecting us? Was this another village?

I rolled onto my left side, keeping my right leg away from the ground, and eventually stood with Lotus’s help. Lotus handed me my single-legged crutch as I spat sand from my mouth, and we headed towards the grass.

“For all we know, you could be a totally different group of typhins!” I heard someone spit.

“Yeah, you could’ve lied your whole way here!” Someone else added.

“We aren’t going to be fooled by your fine print again, parasites,” a third bellowed. “Antares, Moonlight, you’re all just more of the same!”

“We have already set up a meeting with your leader,” Caramine explained. I could feel the rage simmering beneath her words. “We will be in and out of the Caelus Mesa within three days. We will not overstep any territorial claims, nor violate any established rule of the people. You have my word, and soon my blood, ensuring my people’s integrity. We have marked our shoulderblades with the crest of Moonlight, and I guarantee you that no one bearing our mark will engage in anything short of the highest chivalry.”

I stepped into the group, still groggy from sleep. I heard the third voice from the townspeople again, belonging to a pudgy man with twenty rings on his fingers. “Well, we don’t agree with our leader. We don’t want you to meet any of us. And what’s stopping you from not marking a few of your members, typhin?!”

The human villagers clamored in agreement, brandishing spears and bows.

“We do not play by twisted rules. It is on our reputation and our history that we have earned an audience with your leader. If she wishes to inspect each of our backs, then she will do so, and she will find all of us marked as I said. Until then, I wish for peace, but we will not cede our ground.”

“You won’t get peace until you leave!” The second person from earlier screamed, followed by another swell of agreement.

Suddenly, Lotus walked out directly towards Caramine, no, past Caramine. She was walking towards the townsfolk. What was she doing?

“You guys sound like a whole bunch of prudes!” she announced.

Silence. No one knew who she was talking to.

“Caramine! What did we talk about earlier?” Lotus continued.

“What are you talking about, Lotus?” Caramine asked. I was just as confused as she was.

“Gah! I can’t believe it. I told you, and everyone else, to stop explaining yourselves to people who don’t care. Just say no, and if you’re pressed further, just say you’re gonna talk to the leader. Why are you trying to explain things to these people?” Lotus cried.

What in the world was happening? It looked like the villagers were just as confused as I was. One by one, I saw them lower their weapons and begin muttering amongst themselves. Meanwhile, I saw Razzel begin snickering in the corner.

“I understand, Lotus, but I feel that—” Caramine began.

“I feel this, I feel that, if I’m telling you what to do I don’t care about how you feel. All of you can hear me, right? Right? Good.”

The murmurs from the town got louder. Finally, one hunter cried, “Who are you?!”

“My name is Lotus Sugarleaf, and I am the princess of Moonlight,” she said.

Razzel choked on her laughter, interrupting Lotus’s bizarre speech with a hacking cough.

“Yes she is, our princess!” Merlum added. He was clearly having fun with this.

Lotus’s lip quivered as she tried to stifle her own laughter. “They may be clueless,” she continued, “but dishonest they are not. They couldn’t lie to kill a fly. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’d like to sleep before meeting your leader tomorrow afternoon?”

So that’s what Lotus was doing. I watched as the townspeople clustered together, trying to make sense of the scene before them. Then the man with the rings stepped out from the group.

“Alright, seeing the girl can vouch for ya, we’ll let you sleep. But we’ll be watching. The whole lot of us never agreed to this deal, so the second you try anything funny, we’ll be on you from the trees. You’re on our territory now.”

The others nodded, but I could see that most of them looked relieved. Slowly, they turned back and away into the grass, until they all disappeared into the distance.

“Princess!” Merlum gasped, rushing towards Lotus. “You did absolutely amazing!”

“Stunning use of subversion!” Razzel cheered, slapping the back of another typhin as he walked by.

Caramine still seemed confused as she joined us. “Why did that work?”

“Because they were scared,” Lotus said. “So all I had to do was show them that we’re not scared.”

I was still trying to wrap my head around the strategy when Caramine asked her next question. “And however did you come up with that?”

“When someone’s absolutely convinced of something, anything that you tell them to try to convince them otherwise is just evidence of a deeper conspiracy. You don’t reason with those people. Facts don’t work.”

“How’d you learn that?” I asked.

“My family had to run from a bunch of these kinds of assholes when I was I kid,” Lotus explained as she plopped back onto the sand, legs criss-crossed. “When you’re in this situation, there are only two ways to win. The first is by reputation. If someone feels like they gotta respect you or agree with what you say to maintain their social standing, they’ll fall in line. We don’t have that. So the other way is to shock them. They have to see something so unexpected, so unexplainable by what they believe, they start challenging their own views out of bewilderment.”

Caramine sat down next to Lotus. “Fascinating,” she drawled. “I can’t imagine believing in something to the degree that demonstrated facts to the contrary would appear as…a conspiracy to me. And how would you identify these people, in order to distinguish them from the more rational folk?”

“I wish I knew,” Lotus said. “My dad told me to assume everyone’s like that. I guess it must’ve worked. If it didn’t, he and my mom wouldn’t have managed to build a pub right inside the most popular inn in Gaurang."

Caramine traced an arcane symbol in the sand with her finger. Then she stood up. “I will think about that,” she said.