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SONGS AND SHADOWS

TAHRIK

“... a nd not long after is when they decided to keep the sheep and goats separate.” Wren is smiling as I regale Kaden with the story of the Great Goat Escape, a well-known folktale in our village that has grown over the years with each telling.

Her face is so soft these days, even in the vibrant chaos around us, so bright and noisy it’s impossible to relax.

It’s difficult to look away from her tentative joy, from her newborn happiness, but it’s also strange to see her so open all of the time.

“What?” she asks, a curious tilt to her head, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s talking to me. “You have such an odd look on your face.”

“Odd! Well, I’ve been called worse I suppose!” I try to tease, but I’m sure she sees the effort in my smile, and I shrug. “It’s just— I don’t recognize you sometimes these days.”

She dims almost immediately into an awkward and uncertain anxiety, and I want to kick myself.

Tahrik, Tahrik. You don’t need to say every thought unfiltered.

Forcing a more natural cheerfulness into my voice, I continue as though I didn’t notice the light flicker and wane from her, as though I didn’t cause it.

“You glow, Wrenling. It’s nice to see.” And it is nice, I have to remind myself.

It’s nice to see her something other than shuttered and closed.

It’s just hard that it’s happening here, so far from our home, from where she and I had been building our dreams together.

Hard to have a smile that was once only for me directed toward the Trader and the Councilman.

Still, I was the first to see it, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to have so many that I laugh with and call friends and deny her the same.

Inhaling deeply, I let out a slow, controlled breath.

This is good. This is good. She’s finding herself, and when we return to the village, maybe they won’t be able to put her back into her small cottage.

They will appreciate her more, listen to her wants and desires because they’ll know that she can leave if necessary.

They’ll let her have a home, and a family.

And people will see what I’ve seen all along, the beautiful soul that fills her from within, the caring heart they have missed.

But she’ll be safe . Not like here, in the wilds and wilderness, where every step risks her life.

She’s still unsure; my compliment helped but I need to be more careful.

She’s going through enough. She doesn’t need my stupidity to add to her already full plate.

Kaden is quiet, watching the interplay between us, and I have to force myself to breathe evenly.

He sees quite a lot, hiding behind a shrugging, amiable facade.

I think it would be easy to discount him; he’s certainly trying hard enough to make himself seem as amicable and inoffensive as possible.

But no one who attends even the smallest of details with such casual meticulousness is a person you should let fade from your awareness. He is too alert.

“Is that when they changed the barns then?” Wren’s question startles me from my thoughts.

“It’s — you know the Great Goat Escape, Wren…?” Confusion is clear in my reply, I’m sure, but she knows this story. Every one in the village knows this story. A two-year old could recite the opening lines.

She’s smiling again, but it’s puzzled, hesitant. “No…”

Rannoch is startled too, but tries not to show it. “You haven’t heard it? Count yourself blessed, I suppose. They should call it the Fourth Lesson it’s told so often. I’m surprised they didn’t make you memorize it in school. ”

Her lips are twisted up, but pressed into a sad curve, though she’s trying to hide it. Kaden sees it, of course , and jumps in.

“The Fourth Lesson? You only have three? That must make your schooling short and easy. Ours is brutal. I can’t tell you how many times I had to sit in and copy lines for misbehaving.”

It works, mostly. Wren grins at him and shakes her head, distracted. “We have more than three lessons. He’s talking about the Three Lessons . And I have no doubt you wrote a book and then some of your wrongdoings. You seem like trouble was a constant companion.”

He gasps dramatically, pressing a hand to his chest, and even Rannoch laughs.

“You wound me, Flame. More was just expected of me than I was willing to give.” He stutters to a stop, Wren’s brow furrowing in curiosity at the strange way he phrased his reply, but he pushes through her unspoken question.

“So, obvious emphasis on the dreaded Three Lessons. What are they?”

Wren, Rannoch and myself exchange heavy looks, and, funnily enough, it’s Rannoch who replies. “It’s not that I won’t tell you, Kaden, but they’d bring clouds to a clear evening. So perhaps some other time?”

Kaden nods in easy understanding, and moves to the fire. “Not much tonight for food, friends, but let’s eat what we can. Were the goats ever caught?”

“Some must have been? The village still has plenty.” Wren is hesitant; I honestly don’t know how she’s never heard the story.

It makes me wonder, not for the first time, what the details of her life were before I met her; she doesn’t talk about them with me.

Or at all, as far as I know. Of course I know the outlines, that she was raised for many years in the Council House, that she didn’t go to school in any of the rings, that she was mostly on her own.

I just don’t know the shading and stippling.

She never wanted to ruin the few moments we had on memories, and I never wanted to press.

But she must have heard the tales that weave the fabric of our village, the legends from childhood, the lore that warms the heart of our home.

“How do you tend them during the Storms?”

“The goats? Or the animals in general?” I answer, moving next to him and helping ladle out the thin broth.

As verdant as the land is here, it’s unforgiving at the moment, not offering much to eat, which is clearly concerning Kaden.

The game is hiding, the trees are barren.

“Most homes have short hallways to small barns. It’s not the most pleasant for the animals?—”

“Or the people,” Rannoch interjects with a wry smile. “The smells can be…overwhelming.”

“And if the people don’t have a barn?” Kaden is always full of questions, but is so interested and respectful of the answers most of the time that it’s hard to begrudge him information.

It helps that he’s generous with his own knowledge, never hesitating to share with us, despite it being three to one.

“The Council has large enclosures, and many, if not most, of the animals are housed there. The Protectors, the Renders and Reapers — they have nothing but time during the storm months, and take care of much of the village’s livestock.”

“For a price,” I mutter unintentionally, but it catches Rannoch’s eye. He presses his lips together, trying to hide his disgust, which surprises me. I would have thought he’d support the tax.

“For a price,” he agrees, and huffs. “Originally something reasonable, I’m told.

One choice animal. That’s it. And paid randomly.

Now it’s five choice animals, and not always taken as…

haphazardly. Some of the Council also takes the tax, despite not helping care for the animals. ‘For use of the House’ they say.”

Kaden does quick math in his head, whistling through his teeth in shock.

“You have…what is it Wren told me? Six Renders, six Reapers. Twelve Protectors? Twelve Councilmen? Then the Father and the Justice? If you have one…” he says, shooting a secret glance at Wren, who smiles at him in obvious appreciation, sending tiny daggers of jealousy through my heart. “That’s 190 animals!”

“ If we all took the tax, yes. Not everyone does.” Rannoch pauses, then adds reluctantly, “Though, to be fair, more and more do every year. Which affects the breeding stocks; you can’t remove a hundred of the best blood and not expect it to change the breed.

So the Council stock, over time, has become the most desired. ”

“ And they charge for breeding their animals.” It’s one of the few areas the village has pushed back against the Council lately, real discontent growing from the changes.

“Is that not normal?”

“No,” I reply. “The betterment of our livestock benefits everyone, so breeding rights have never been for payment, not as such anyway. You ask, of course, and are free to refuse, but it only harms the village as a whole if the herds are thinned or weakened. It does no good to the Council to keep the heartiest and strongest to themselves while the Third Ring’s livestock grow spindly and scrawny, year after year.

If it continues this way, they’ll lose their herds altogether, and then the Storms will be a dire event. ”

“Are…are most of the chosen animals from the Third Ring?” Kaden is thoughtful, and Rannoch nods in response.

“Lately, yes. Though we’re trying to change things. Some of us choose our five, and then just return them to the farmers. But it’s a losing game — ten, fifteen, twenty from two hundred.”

“Hmm. And do you get five as well, Wren?” Kaden surprises a bark of hard laughter from her, bitter as yarrow.

“I don’t even get village folktales, Kaden. You think they’d give me an animal to love?”

“Would you want a pet?” Rannoch is curious, gentle in a way I’m not used to hearing from him.

Some of the arrogance that cloaked him in the village has fallen away, and it makes him frustratingly likable at times.

It will be hard to remind myself that we are not friends when we return to the village; easier to keep him at a distance now so I don’t have to unlearn bad habits.

I’ll have to caution Wren later to do the same.

“She wants chickens,” I reply for her, and she grins at me. “Many, many chickens.”

“And then some,” she adds, sending electric starlight through me when she laughs at my pained expression.

“Just how many is many?” I groan, and she almost giggles, a girlish, bubbling sound I’ve never heard her make. It’s happiness distilled into a single moment, filling all of my empty spaces with nothing but pure, unfiltered joy.

“ Many is many,” Wren laughs, and I shake my head, burying my face in my hands in mock despair.

“The winter barn I’ll have to build you?—”

Her eyes are drops of moonlight, and because she’s staring at me, she misses the way Kaden and Rannoch’s faces darken, the looks they exchange when they think we can’t see them.

I fight to keep a smug smile from my face; it’s uncharitable, but I’m suddenly and fiercely exultant they’re hearing pieces of our secret plans.

“Perhaps we won’t need a winter barn, if we settle somewhere outside the walls…

” Her voice is quiet, wistful now, and I have to ignore the worry tugging at my heart.

She’s mentioned this before, leaving the village, but…

our people need her. Especially now. I shudder to think of how many souls have gone unguided since we left, how many are lost forever to the emptiness of the Void.

Dreams are drifting across her face, though, delicate longing sketched in every line; now is not the time to take them from her, to try and urge her down a different path.

So I leave it, and just bring her a scant bowl of broth.

“Alright. Enough with you and your army of chickens,” I tease her. She squinches up her face in adorable protest, and laugh helplessly. “Eat something,” I urge her more seriously, and she sighs.

“You’re a mother hen, you know that, Tahrik?” She’s smiling, but in a strange way that I’m unused to. Still, her happiness is mine; grinning down at her, I shrug.

“You wanted chickens, Keeper. Careful what you wish for.”

Rannoch and Kaden laugh from the firepit at the expression on her face, continuing their own quiet conversation as we settle into our evening meal.

And if it takes everything in me to ignore the fear that gnaws at my stomach, growing bigger every day we are away from our home, then it’s a small effort for these moments of dreaming together.