Companion of Eagles - Chapter II (excerpt)

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The Summer Book Club will run from August 1-31 and features fiction, non-fiction, and poetry books published right here in Saskatchewan.

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My book, Companion of Eagles book 3 in the fantasy series The Leather Book Tales is on the above list!

©copyright Regine Haensel

Conversations

It’s nearly mid-day when Ali and I have time to talk again. We sit tailor fashion on the riverbank near the old barracks. A slight breeze rustles the grasses and the leaves of the trees hinting at a tune I can almost catch. We haven’t had to work too hard this morning. I raked grass and twigs and dumped loads in carts to be taken away. Helped clear an area that’s going to be used as a garden.

Other than saying, “Finally, you’re here!” Papa hasn’t talked to me at all.

Ali bends forward stretching, her long fingers stained with green. They had her painting window frames. It’s not until she touches me that I realize I’ve been bouncing my leg up and down. I pull away from her and lean against the trunk of the tree that’s shading us.

“Why so jittery, Samel?”

Out of the corner of my left eye I see that she’s flipped her brown hair over her shoulder and is twisting it. I don’t answer right away, watch the dappled light under the alder tree play shadows across her face. She keeps looking at me.

“What do you mean?”

            “Bouncing your leg, tapping your fingers. And on the way here you kept cracking your knuckles.”

            I want to deny it, but realize I’ve just flicked my thumb across a clump of grass. “Music in my head, wind in the tree,” I excuse myself. Start clapping my hands gently, drum on my knees just to show her what I mean.

We’ve been best friends most of our lives, living across the street from each other, sharing our skills. My first memory of Ali is both of us scratching in dirt beside our houses. She paints, sketches, creates all kinds of art. I play flute and drums and compose a bit. We understand each other. And best friends know when you’re not telling the whole truth.

“No,” she shakes her head, sending hair flying out in dark crescendos. “This is different. It’s more like twitches than music in your body.”

I turn my back to her, pretend I’m watching the work not far from us. The renovations have been going on for weeks. In the beginning I was curious about everything, wanted to know how earth is cleared and dug, how mortar holds stones, how planks dovetail. Just because I’m a musician it doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in other things, too. But Papa rarely answers my questions these days. Says he doesn’t know or is too busy to talk. So, I’ve lost my enthusiasm. And right now I’d rather be anywhere else. I don’t say that to Ali, though.

“Samel?”

“What!” I turn to my friend and she moves away from me. Maybe I spoke too loudly, and I guess my face isn’t very friendly.

A grouchy face doesn’t stop Ali for long. “You haven’t been yourself for a while. Maybe since your sister left. Even when we walk, you’re glancing here, there and everywhere. And you forget things.” She pauses a moment, then continues in a rush of words. “Did that old sorcerer do something to you?”

 I wrap my arms around my knees and try to sit as still as a rock. I don’t want to remember the old man or the time in the castle. The way it ended.

But Ali won’t let it go. “Could he um, have cast a spell on you and um, for some reason it’s just coming out now?”

I sigh, and stop trying to hold back the memories. Papa, my sister Rowan and I were held prisoner in the mountains for several days over a year ago. We tried to reason with the old sorcerer who held us, but nothing worked. I think he was crazy. He wanted power and he thought my sister and I could help him get it. It was all about the silver bracelets we’d found. In the end Rowan used the magic of the bracelets to kill him and we escaped.

“Did you think I was different when we came back?” I can hear the challenge in my voice, but I don’t care.

Ali ignores my tone and shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. Lots was going on. Your sister upset and maybe sick. My sister’s wedding. You’d been through an awful time, of course it affected you. But I wasn’t with you at the castle and I never met the old man, so how can I know what he was like, what he might have done? I don’t have any ideas about how spells work. I just see you’re not like yourself.”

Over near the main barracks people are yelling, running here and there. Some problem again, always problems, small or large – a wall crumbling, an axe needing sharpening. The bang of hammers and the screech of saws adds to the discord. If I concentrate, could I find a tune in it?

But Ali’s words echo in my mind, whirling like a sandstorm, shutting out other sounds and thoughts. I’m not who I was. Does anyone stay the same? I’ve been realizing a lot of things lately that maybe I ignored before.

The silver bracelet on my left wrist glints as a stray sunbeam penetrates the leafy canopy of the tree. I focus on the circlet, trying to calm my thoughts. Usually I wear the bracelet in a soft leather pouch around my neck hidden under my tunic because Papa doesn’t like to see it, doesn’t want to be reminded of its magic.

My sister was really upset when the old sorcerer died, which only partly makes sense to me. I understand that she didn’t want to be a killer, but when someone threatens you and won’t listen to reason, sometimes you have no choice. Besides, he boasted he was responsible for our mother’s death. Rowan lost her temper, sure, but she did what she had to. Afterwards she stopped wearing her bracelet, though I’m pretty sure she took it on her journey. I haven’t found it anywhere in the house.

I put my bracelet on my wrist after I finished working a little while ago. I was looking for a quiet place to try again to connect with Rowan. But then Ali joined me. She noticed the silver circlet and asked if I was going to practise making breezes using it and Papa’s soprano wooden flute. The two of us did that once not long after I first found the bracelet. I could always make wind blow, but Ali couldn’t do it at all. I run a finger along the linked ivy leaves. The silver feels slightly warm. Everything started to change after I found it, some good, some not so good. I take the bracelet off and tuck it into its pouch.

Ali has given up trying to get me to talk. She’s watching one of the great guardian eagles of Aquila soar over the river. The Captain of Eagles had to negotiate with the birds so that they’d let the construction go ahead here. This is one of the birds’ nesting and fishing areas after all.

Ali picks up a stick and starts scratching in the dirt, leaning over so I can’t see what she’s drawing. Probably sketching the eagle or something else that’s got her attention, could be anything. Alizarine is her full name. The rise and fall and flow of it is like a fragment of song that keeps nudging at me. I haven’t been able to find the rest of the notes to complete the music. Her parents, Mère and Père, named all three of their daughters after colours. Lots of people think Ali was named after a shade of crimson that comes from the madder plant. Actually, Ali’s mother picked the name because she’d been given a quilt in shades of navy, also known as alizarin blue. They make that colour from madder as well, though I don’t understand the process. It fascinates me that one plant can be used to produce two different colours.

Ali turns back to me. “Her name’s Kasma.”

“Who?” But then I remember. “Tamtan’s new apprentice. How’d you find out?”

“Asked one of the other apprentices working near me earlier. Is Kasma good? On the drums I mean. And why did you forget her name?”

I shrug. “She just started. I didn’t pay much attention to her. She was so giggly.”

“Girls like you,” Ali says.

“What?!”
            “Come on, you must have noticed! The baker’s helper in the market is always making eyes at you. And one of the fruit seller’s daughters gives you a cut rate. Kasma’s probably sweet on you.”

“I don’t have time for girls.”

Ali shrugs, closing her mouth on whatever she was going to say next. I lean back and gaze up into the rustling leaves. Don’t want to think about Ali talking to one of the apprentices or Kasma giggling with another one. The apprentices have never been my friends, or not for a long time. They change periodically, one or two dropping out, new ones starting, but the new ones always join the group that hates Samel. I never thought about it much, just accepted it. After all I had Ali and her sisters as friends, and lots of other people like the drum master, the camel seller, the harpist, and people at the market where I shop. After Rowan left, though it hit me that I didn’t have many friends my own age. And I don’t want girls giggling at me. Ali and her sisters don’t giggle.

Green leaves and dappled sunlight, clouds drifting above.  I glimpse a speck in the blue, another eagle. Wish I could be way up there away from all my problems, soaring on the wind, listening to the music of clouds. What do they whisper to each other up there?

“Samel, tell me what’s really wrong.”

Ali’s voice brings me back to the ground and I sigh because I hoped she’d forget about questioning me, but Ali is stubborn. I turn the corners of my lips up in a smile to suggest that everything’s fine, but it’s not real and Ali knows that because she thumps me in the left shoulder with a fist. I rub my arm and take a deep breath, trying to decide what to tell her.

She starts talking before I can. “You seemed so happy when you first got back from the castle. You found your sister and escaped. Remember all of us in our garden? Cooking the meal, eating, laughing.”

I shake my head. “Except Rowan was so quiet. Too quiet probably.” My voice rises and squeaks the way it does now and again. Embarrassing. Papa says it happens as boys grow. Dismissed it, didn’t ask how I felt. Typical these days. I take a breath to settle my voice. “Papa and I should have paid more attention to how Rowan felt. Maybe that’s why she took off again.”

Ali taps my knee. “Maybe your sister is just a quieter person. Some people are like that. She and her mother did live alone in the forest for most of her life. Rowan’s probably not used to a lot of people around.”

A lump forms in my throat. “That was my mother, too, who died.” I turn my head away so that Ali won’t see the wetness in my eyes. “I never knew her.” I clamp my lips to stop them quivering. I’m too old to cry over something that’s been over and done with for a year or more.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s been really hard for you.” She clears her throat. “Maybe you haven’t had enough time to get over it.”

A few workers are cutting grass and brush near the old guard tower. Papa is somewhere there. I was really hoping that today he’d find work we could share, make time to talk. I’m not sure what he’s doing – not cutting grass. I saw him chatting to a couple of men I didn’t recognize. They were pointing here and there and waving their arms. Maybe discussing the building of an addition.

I don’t know why Papa insists that he needs me here. Maybe he just wants me under his eyes. Yes, I can haul rocks or run errands, but there’s enough other people to do those things. Am I just a chore boy to him? If he really wants me here, why can’t he let me have more responsibility? He could show me the plans for the school, talk over problems, ask for suggestions. Once he would have.

Ali lets out a huge sigh and I realize I’m ignoring her. I’m as bad as Papa. At least Ali talks to me and listens.

“Papa just goes on every day as if nothing has changed even though Rowan’s gone,” I say as a sort of apology. “I miss her. He must miss her, too, but he doesn’t say anything about it.”

“Parents get like that at times,” Ali offers. “I said before that it’s not the first time your Papa got absorbed in his work.”

“Yes, but you’ve got two parents and two sisters. It’s always been different with Papa and me. I grew up without a mother. I thought it was no one’s fault, and it seemed normal. I still had my Papa and we were close, understood each other. But he’s different now. Since Rowan came? Or maybe it’s me. I really wanted to go with Rowan and he wouldn’t even consider it. I’m fourteen! Old enough to know what I want. Doesn’t he see that? Some days I can hardly stand to be in the same room with him. Can’t he see how angry I am that he wouldn’t let me go and does he even care?”

Light and shadows dance across Ali’s blue tunic like notes made visible. I can almost hear the tune. She leans through the music and grasps my left wrist. “If you don’t like what’s happening, why don’t you change it?” she snaps. The music stops with the clash of her voice. “Explain to your father or do something else. It isn’t like you to be so unhappy all the time. And it’s hard on your friends.”

I glare at her. “Rowan’s had two journeys and I’ve had none. Well, I did come with Papa to Aquila, but that’s when I was a baby and too young to remember.”

Ali stands, puts her hands on her hips and frowns down at me. “Aquila is an amazing city – music and art, crafts and traders, the palace, the river, the desert, the eagles.”

“I know that!”

She interrupts, “But if you really want to get away that badly, just do it.”

“Why don’t you go?” I shout, my voice cracking. I leap up to face her head on.

She takes a step away. “I’m not the one with the travelling itch!” she yells.

“No, you’re an old tree, roots curling around rocks deep in the ground.”

“Even trees change with the seasons.”

“Oh, I can’t talk to you anymore.”

I’ve turned my back when she says, “Fine.” And I hear her steps thumping off. I don’t try to stop her, fling myself to the ground under the tree.

For a chapter I excerpt from this novel, see the January 2020 post on this blog.

My books are available through SaskBooks, Amazon, local bookstores (McNally Robinson, Indigo) and booksserimuse@gmail.com as well as the Saskatchewan Library System.