From Prince Roderick's Travel Journals
3 days counting, before April, in the year 217 - Evening
There has been an incident. We might be stuck here longer than we thought. I do not quite know when it happened. It occurred sometime after our visit to the village matriarch.
"Grandmother is resting. You'll have to wait Strangers." The matriarch's granddaughter said, but allowed us to come in to wait. She kept her face turned wore a simple veil over her head, so we only saw her left side in profile. I could see only shadows on the right half. She led us to chairs by the hearth and fetched mugs of something warm and strangely spicey. She said Blind Thomas was allowed to stay only if he didn't play with his lute. Blind Thomas soon left, clutching the lute under his arm, saying he'd be at his usual spot by the well, practicing if we needed anything.
The home of the matriarch was the largest I'd seen in the village of Lost Hope, with a covered porch around three sides of it, while inside was a large stone hearth, and two other rooms besides the main room and kitchen. One room was where the matriarch slept. There was a bed also in the main room. It was occupied by a girl who appeared soundly asleep. We kept our voices low, to not disturb her, until the granddaughter told us, "Don't mind her. She'd can't hear us, or even if she does she won't wake up. She has to sleep during the day and is awake only at night."
"A curse?"
The granddaughter snorted. "You think she likes it that way? Of course, it's a curse. In this village we all have our reasons to be here. Not because we want to. Most of us don't have anywhere else to go."
"Even you?" I asked.
Leric gave me a warning look.
The granddaughter pulled off her veil. On her forehead was a large protruding bump, almost like a stubby horn. It stretched her skin, making her right eye bulbous and her ear only half formed like a small bumpy turnip. The rest of her face was quite lovely.
"I was born this way, if there was a curse it came from my parents. They abandoned me in the forest. Yes, within the Fire Woods. If Grandmother hadn't found me when she did. . ." the girl shuddered.
There was a knock from the other room and she left us. She fetched water and a small tray of food, ignoring us for the time. She didn't put her veil back on.
When she finally came back she told us the matriarch wasn't feeling well today and we'd have to come back later.
We checked on the boat and our supplies. Blind Thomas shared his simple lunch with us, mushroom soup and fish. Then Leric and I walked from house to house trying to speak to the villagers. Many houses were abandoned, one overrun with mushrooms. We learned later the man who'd lived there was cursed. Mushrooms grew on anything he touched, even himself. A kindly woman invited us in for tea, and shortbread that was actually edible. She was a cook once at a large manor, then she introduced her husband. He was the large mulberry tree whose branches we'd seen poking from the roof.
The politest tree I've ever met! He spoke very little.
Few others spoke to us at all. We saw the woman without hands again. She told us her father had chopped them off. One man peered out his door, refusing to open it more than a thin crack. He grunted in response to Leric's questions. I saw a glimpse of his prickly face. Blind Thomas said the man was born as a hedgehog.
No one knew anything about Leric's family, or had heard of anyone like them. We We spoke to the matriarch just before sunset. She was unable to leave her bed. She looked at least a hundred years old. Her skin like onion paper. Her hands shook. "What happened to them? Well, speak up. I'm only deaf in one ear."
Leric explained once again, keeping his story as short as possible.
"Turned into swans eh? It can happen. Not one of mine. Sorry. I don't know anything about them. There are a lot of curses floating around out there, can't catch them as easily as I used to. Some are easier to break than others. You'll have to keep looking elsewhere. I'm sorry."
It wasn't too surprising that the old woman didn't know, but it was a shock when her granddaughter told us. "Grandmother isn't cursed. She was a cursemaker, a witch you might say. She can't do magicking anymore. No one in the village touches it." The girl spat.
"I suspected something about the old woman," Leric told me. "She's harmless. However, it's not true about the villagers. Someone here uses magic. There are wards around the village to keep the forest at bay."
Then we discovered our boat was missing. Either the rope torn, or slipped loose, perhaps gnawed at. The boat itself did not just drift off. It was no where along the tributary. Both Leric and I found it hard to believe that it could have floated all the way back to the Trade River without getting stuck along the roots and dense riverbank. We poked around in the mud without finding anything, so it didn't sink either.
We told Blind Thomas our misfortune and he generously said we could stay with him as long as we needed. Then he asked if we had any luck speaking to the villagers. We told him who we spoke to and who we couldn't find. We learned the family who lives next door to Blind Thomas don't just keep a pack of dogs, they actually turn into wolves!
It seems everyone in the village is cursed somehow, except for me and Leric.
I am still uneasy.
2nd day counting - Morning
Leric is gone this morning. Blind Thomas says he didn't see him leave, his little joke, but he heard Leric go out early. I didn't hear him, even though I slept poorly. Straw makes such an unbearable bed, but complaining would be rude to Blind Thomas. He doesn't know I was born a Prince. He whistles cheerfully as he makes breakfast, porridge and mushrooms. My appetite has gone south since I learned where the mushrooms came from.
I wait for Leric. We can't stay here. Perhaps we can build raft, or else brave the Fire Woods.
Later
They sent the wolves upon us. Blind Thomas is dead. Leric gone, still.
Where are you?
Damn. There's no time.
Leric, I can only hope you find these pages. It was the granddaughter Olena, and the one who sleeps by day. I know not her name. They have . . .
Damn. Leric, I hope you are still alive when you find this, as I am for now.
There is . . .
no time.
to be continued . . .
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