Cozy Fantasy Series, Story 1 - The Unlikely Hero of Clover Meadow

The Unwilling Hero of Clover Meadow

When the great war of the sorcerers sucked all the magic out of the land a thousand years ago, suddenly lizards were just lizards and not dragons, and horses were just horses and not unicorns, and humans were just humans and never fairies. The ordinary was just that and frankly, after a thousand years, most of us had stopped thinking about magic at all.

So, when the magic returned, it caused quite a hubbub.

And on a Tuesday, of all days.

Maren had been calling her son for the better part of ten minutes before she stepped off the porch.

"Darien."

Her voice floated out over the meadow. Maren had never had a soft voice. Her mother had called it a gift, and it was a gift. Particularly when calling children who didn't want to answer.

Darien didn't move.

"Darien."

She projected her voice toward the heap of logs at the far edge of the meadow which Darien had been calling a fort since spring. It looked less like a fort and more like something a very enthusiastic dog had assembled, but if Darien wanted to call it a fort, Maren wasn’t going to argue. It usually kept him out of trouble.

Usually.

She shielded her eyes against the afternoon light. She could just make out the top of Darien’s head above the logs. He was sitting very still.

Darien had never, in his whole eight years, sat still for any reason.

Maren dropped her hand and frowned. She paused while she weighed her options. The bread wasn't going to bake itself. Her sister's family was arriving for supper, and she still had three things to do that required two hands and her full attention. She was not, she told herself firmly, going to walk across that meadow.

She ground her teeth and pushed her hands into fists and willed herself not to walk across the meadow.

She walked across the meadow.

The grass was long and still damp from last night's rain and it soaked the hem of her skirt. She muttered to herself as she walked, a low running commentary that grew more pointed the further she went, cataloguing the various tasks that were not being done, along with all the faults of the boy she was retrieving, who clearly had ears only when it suited him.

She was halfway across the meadow when she stopped.

There was something on the log beside Darien.

She'd seen strange things lately. Everyone had. The word was that magic had come back — that was what people were saying down at the market and in the baker's queue and over fences at every hour of the day. Magic, back after a thousand years. Maren was a practical woman. She’d said, “I’ll believe it when I see it” and recently she’d seen quite a few things that suggested she should believe it. The cat that had briefly been something else entirely before thinking better of it. Her roses blooming in the dark of the night after not ever blooming before.

Maren didn’t have much of a green thumb.

But Maren hadn't seen anything like this.

The creature was thin and angular, perched on the log with long, hooked talons that dug into the old bark. Its chin came to a point. Its nose curved like the bill of a wading bird, long and hooked at the end. Its eyes were round, yellow-ringed, and enormous, taking up fully half of it’s face. Its hair fell in dark waves about its face and down its back, and when the breeze moved through it, Maren suddenly knew it was feathers, not hair.

It spread its arms and Maren saw its arms becoming wings, or something that looked like wings, but not quite. They were too straight, and the feathers that weren’t feathers… but it was all too black for her to see clearly.

Maren's mind kept sliding off the image, unable to get traction. Instead, she gripped the nearest thought she had and held on, which was this: Darien was sitting six feet from that thing, and he hadn't moved a muscle.

She started to run.

The creature immediately took notice of her for the first time. Its head spun, its eyes catching hers and suddenly Maren felt like she was in quicksand.

Her body moved as if the air around her was suddenly a solid wall. So very slowly one foot came down, toes first, onto the grass. The other foot pushed up, her knee coming forward. The opposite arm pumped forward, the other back.

The only part of her that was free to move as usual were her eyes, which darted here and there, taking in the whole meadow. Beside the fort, Darien sat completely motionless, his eyes fixed on the creature with an expression she couldn't read from there. The creatures’ wide eyes, trying somehow to keep her in place.

A small boy, standing just beyond the hedge beside the meadow, looking up into the clouds. Maren didn’t have the presence of mind to follow where the boy looked. Later, she would wish she had. She would remember the boy, but of course, he would be gone by then.

The creature jumped off and paced the length of the log with long, swaying steps, its arms still half spread, its face turned up to the sky. Maren found that once the creature stopped looking at her, she was able to push quicker through the quicksand-like air. Her right leg came down and pushed forward. Her left hand reached for Darien.

The creature was humming to itself. The hum had no tune that Maren recognized, but it made her think of rivers and then hills and valleys. She had the sensation of frigid air and open sky, and everything spread below like a map. There was a longing in her chest that she couldn't understand, and something that said, "Remember."

Maren shook her head. Darien was the most important thing, and she didn't need to remember him. Instead, Maren pushed. The resistance held for one more moment and then, with a sensation she would later describe to her sister as like having a window opened in a very stuffy room, she was moving again.

Her legs stampeded, as if the steps had all come together at one time. Her arms windmilled and her breath huffed out of her.

The creature heard her coming. Or it felt her or smelled her. Whatever, it turned. Its eyes tried to catch hers again, but she kept her gaze away from them, trying to keep her mind away from the memory of the great yellow rings around the irises the same colour as the bark on the log.

Maren did not slow down.

She was reaching for Darien, eyes fixed on her son, when her foot found a stone in the grass. Her arms flailed, her legs tangled, and she went down hard. Her hand shot out instinctively, grabbing the nearest thing to break her fall.

The nearest thing was the creature's cloak.

There was a great swishing sound, like a curtain coming down, and then Maren was sitting in the wet grass with a double fistful of fabric and feathers. In front of her was a wire frame peeking out from under a pile of dark silk and cloth. Beyond that stood a small man no taller than her knee.

He was bald. He was furious. He was, there was absolutely no way around this, entirely without clothing.

The man noticed his nakedness at the same moment that Maren did. His frown turned to a grimace. Maren turned her glance away, her cheeks blazing and the little man grabbed a dandelion, the large yellow flower just the right size to cover his… ahem, privates.

"Aw, lady," the little man said. "Why'd you have to go and do that?" His voice, which Maren had expected to be high and squeaky, was unexpectedly deep for someone standing so small.

Darien, released from whatever had been holding him, toppled sideways off the log and lay in the grass looking up at the sky with unfocused eyes.

"My son," Maren said, gesturing at the boy.

"He’ll be fine," the creature said. He was looking at his costume, spread across the grass between him and Maren, as if trying to decide whether to gather it up. "The freezing wears off."

“Did you do that to us?” Maren asked.

The little man nodded. "There was something coming through." He said it matter-of-factly, with a slightly irritated tone, as if he didn’t relish having to explain it. "Through from there to there. This was just the crossroads.” He finally looked at her. Maren noted that the little man’s eyes were the same yellow as the bird-creature he’d impersonated, more golden than the dandelion behind which he still hid. “You should have stayed still.”

Maren looked at the dandelion. She looked at the wire and silk scattered across her wet skirt. She looked at this very small, very naked, very put-upon creature standing in her meadow on a Tuesday afternoon, and she thought about asking a number of things. About the wings that weren't wings. About the memory of flying. About the something coming through, what it had been, whether it was gone.

She opened her mouth.

The little man took off across the meadow at a rate that Maren would have had trouble matching had she had the wits to try. Instead, she reached out, as if she could stop him with just the force of her will.

"Wait," Maren said. "What's your—"

He was gone, through the hedge at the edge of the field with a rustling of leaves. A flock of small birds burst from the hedge, disturbed by the little man’s passage.

Maren lowered her arm. Darien sat up slowly. He had grass in his hair and the look of someone awakening from a long sleep.

"Mum," he said.

"Yes."

"Did that just—"

"Yes."

He looked at the dandelion which still swayed back and forth and the patch of matted grass upon which the little man had stood.

"Oh," said Darien.

The bread, Maren remembered. Her sister's family. Three things that needed two hands.

She stood up, brushed the grass from her skirt, and picked up the scattered costume. Evidence, she thought vaguely. If only for herself.

"Come inside," she said. "We have things to do."

Darien got up and followed her across the meadow without another word, which was, she reflected, the strangest thing that had happened all afternoon.

She told her sister while they finished making supper. Her sister told her she needed more sleep. Her sister's husband told her the bread was incredibly good. Maren’s husband ignored her, as usual. Darien ate his whole dinner, also as usual. Maren drank two glasses of wine and tried to forget.

Later, washing up, she found herself at the kitchen window looking out at the meadow in the dark. She could just make out what she thought was the lone dandelion in a bare patch of grass near the dark splotch that was Darien’s ‘fort’.

Maren thought about rivers and valleys and the cold rush of the open sky.

She pressed her fingertips against the windowsill and wondered if the world would ever be the same.

Across town, in the last light of that same Tuesday, a boy returned from the bathroom to find the table where he and his group had eaten was now empty. While he looked around, wondering where his people had gone, the barkeep chose that moment to arrive with the bill.

The barkeep arrived at the answer before the boy did.

“Hold him,” the man roared. Before the boy could respond, another man caught the boys’ arms behind his back, while the barkeep dashed out into the night. A few minutes later, the barkeep returned, empty-handed and growling.

"Your friends have left you," the barkeep said. He flicked his fingers, and the man released the boys’ arms. The barkeep looked to boy up and down with a scowl “What’s your name, boy?” he asked.

“Tam,” the boy said. Inside, he wanted to run and hide, but he’d learned that rarely helped. Standing up straight, looking people in the eye and taking your lumps didn’t necessarily help, but it made you feel better.

“Do you have any skills?” the man asked. His tone suggested that he wasn’t expecting much.

“I’m good with animals,” Tam replied.

The barkeep crossed his arms. “We’ll see.” He gestured to the other man. “Patrick will show you to the stables. I’ll let you know when you’ve worked off your debt.”

That didn’t sound like a fair shake to Tam, but it was better than a beating and at least he knew where he would be sleeping tonight, which was more than he’d expected when he first returned to the empty table and realized his people had left him stranded.

What had he ever done to them?

He didn’t have time to follow that train of thought. Patrick showed him to the shed at the back of the tavern where Tam could hear horses, sheep, and pigs. Even chickens, but he couldn’t be sure.

Patrick returned to the tavern, leaving Tam to tour the stables on his own.

There were four horses, only one of which belonged to the tavern. People staying at the tavern stabled the others, but Tam couldn’t tell you how he knew that. He also knew that someone bartered the sheep, the pigs were destined for the slaughterhouse and the chickens were sleepy.

Tam found the brushes for cleaning the horses, along with the saddles and other tack. A bin at the far end, near the water trough, stored the feed. Tam heard the mice grumble that they couldn’t get into the feed bin, no matter what they’d tried.

After introducing himself to the animals, Tam found a clean pile of hay and bedded down for the night. He’d better get some sleep while he could. He had the impression that his new boss drove a hard schedule. Still, warm and surrounded by animals was a good place to find himself.

Tam fell asleep with a smile.

At the inn on Market Street, a small, rumpled man with thick glasses sat at the corner table with three notebooks open simultaneously, holding a large quill. He’d just dipped it into a bottle of ink and sat with unfocused eyes as the quill dripped on the table top. A glass of beer by his elbow had gone warm and stale while the man thought.

The notebooks were full. He'd need more by the end of the week if things kept moving at this rate, and from everything he'd observed so far, things were going to start moving faster than that.

His name was Professor Phineas Mole, and he'd been following the reports for six months, tracing convergence points which finally led him to this town. His gaze returned to the books. He underlined a phrase in the leftmost notebook and then drew an arrow to a notation that mentioned a passage in the middle book with a small icon in the margin that was either a star or a hedgehog.

Professor Mole knew something was coming, he just didn’t know what and he wasn’t a man used to not knowing.

He took a sip of warm beer. Made a face. Dipped his quill in the ink bottle again.

He had a great deal of work to do if he was to figure it out, whatever it was, before it was too late.