Quest

QUEST

By G.E Waldo

Quest

Genie Waldo

Copyright 2010 by Genie Waldo

Smashwords Edition

ISBN-978-0-557-37826-5

QUEST

CHAPTER 1

Miss. Old Joneth said, a large thick-limbed, red faced fellow with tired eyes. His mistress Noane, the daughter of his former master, did not hear him.

Miss, Miss! Finally she looked at him, her long black braids sprinkled with straw from the bundle she carried in her arms.

One great rough hand pointed to the darkening clouds beyond the hill behind her farm. There's a storm coming.

Noane's eyes followed his pointing finger, and she sucked in her breath. It was true. Huge dark clouds, stacked one on top of the other like the hay bales in the feed barn, rolled across the distant fields toward them. A dark, lumbering creature filled with fury was quickly swallowing the sky. She spoke quickly. Joneth, don't forget the sheep's feed. Noane raced toward the thatched roofed animal barn, her tanned hide shoes making little dust devils in her haste. Chores must be completed quickly now, and she hurried through the rest of the feeding and mucking out. Joneth himself finished with his tasks and then leaned on his rake, his face crinkled with humor. He had seen Noane like this many times.

Noane finished piling three heavy bags of corn as quickly as possible in the feed shed. The last rays of the evening sun shone on her licorice skin. A steadily blackening shroud slowly engulfed the heavenly orange disk.

Joneth watched her customary race to the little hill behind the farm with a shake of his head. There she goes.

Noane's heart beat faster. She hastily retrieved her long cape from the log and mud house and ran toward the hill, her faded blue and black striped dress flapping around her ankles.

A storm was coming. Noane ran to greet it.

She stopped at the top of the highest hill. When others would head indoors to some hot tea and biscuits, Noane would come here where a few stunted trees would stand stubbornly with her on the otherwise bare hump of granite. Wind blown rain struck her cheeks. Each droplet stung like the bite of an insect, but she did not mind. Her heart beat faster.

Noane looked down to the small house with the smoke rising from the chimney, but that frame of ordinary things did not intrude. It was not the time to think of tasks. Noane lifted her chin in the air, turned her nose to the approaching beast and closed her eyes.

That beast was close. Under its mysterious power, she would fly to a more wonderful place where, within the storm clouds and under the rain, trees would bow and sway, the sky would darken and become like an ocean above her, all movement and surge. Clouds, lined with gold from above, rolled over and over like when she and her father used to roll the bundled hay sheaves down the hills, would become her closest companions.

Thick arms of torrential rain swayed in the distance. When the thunder spoke, her heart - thrilled! - answered.

I'm here! She said.

On top, above the ordinary buzz of her simple world, Noane opened her heart. Her spirit rose in the storm and she became another being. I'm here! Do you see me?

She was part of the sky. The wind was her great wing and she felt as though her feet would lift off the earth if only the wind's twisting arms would gather her up. Raising her own arms, like a bird does when it takes off from the gripping world, in her heart Noane sailed up and up into a freer one.

The sky turned angry and the clouds became shapes of other places and things; kingdoms and wilds; creatures and mysteries never seen; the past and the future. Noane often thought that she was seeing, perhaps, her own future. No thoughts of sheep, farm and mundane things belonged here. All of that was rightly misted and blurred. The farm was a foreign place. Just for a time, such simpler things were whipped away in the will of the storm.

The sky was alive. Noane was sure of it. Though people believed her to be a silly girl, she felt like she was standing under a living thing, an ancient being that had something important to say if only people would listen.

With respect, she did. Speak to me! Noane shouted. Tell me! Teach me!

Noane was certain that, today as every day, the storm, in its ancient, mystical way, answered.

Later, with the oil lamps lit in the supper house, Noane (still dripping), joined the small group of men along with Joneth and his wife Manni. They had become her family after the death of her parents at the hands of murderous trail robbers. It was the fall, and shearing time would soon begin. Her herd was a large one, the sheep producing some of the best wool in the area, sought after by the tailors and weavers in Sandstone, the nearby town and center of commerce.

Since the time she was little, her father had taught her about hard work and responsibility. But Noane was determined that this year, she would take her month long wilderness trip. Her father had read to her from books about wonderful places and fantastic machines. When she grew up, after her parent's died, Noane continued to read them over and over.

Once, when Noane was twelve years old, her father said, Noane, I have a surprise for you. From his oil and wax-polished chest, the grain of its Burl wood twisting in blue spirals, shaking old man fingers retrieved some papers, spreading them on the supper table. They were hand drawn plans. This is a house, Noane. Your house.

He smiled proudly, his stained teeth missing one of its members. Breath whistled through that small gap.

Mine?

Yes. He smiled through sun-baked lips, his dark brow bunched into many hills and valleys. A sharp nose in a long, thin face bobbed as he nodded. This old log cabin was fine for your mother and me, but you'll be a young woman soon and a young lady should have a proper house. Besides someday you'll want to marry and- He sat himself back down at the table, his heavy body causing the chair's brave but much-used legs to creak in protest.

But, father, the money.

He waved away her concerns. We have the money put aside, never mind about that. It's just the time involved in building that is the problem, and my brother convincing his stubborn wife. But that doesn't matter. We're ahead now, well ahead and I thought we'd start on it next spring.

It would be wonderful. Noane spoke with kindness, but little enthusiasm. She worried far more over her aging father's health. He worked too hard and, though she would not say it, she did not want a house.

Don't worry, I'm old but I've a good ten working years in me yet. Besides, we'll hire an extra hand or two.

Noane knew that having her own house meant she would soon be taking a greater share in the running of the farm, and that meant staying home, standing still in life. Staying put for a long time. Love for her father kept her silent, but her heart protested. It yearned for other, wilder things.

Later that evening, Noane again placed the meticulous hand drawn plans in the chest with her other treasures from her father. The chest carried embroidered sleeping gowns and table cloths from her mother along with other keepsakes. But mostly it was filled with books upon books about numbers and animal medicine, about healing herbs and travels to far places. It was a chest of possibilities.

Noane pulled out two of her favorite books. One was filled with machines of every sort and their functions; water wheels and clocks, threshers and other animal power machines. But the book that fired her imagination was the book about flying machines. She had never seen one, but her father had helped her build a working one once, a small one not much more than a toy. It was still in her trunk, the cloth wings now torn, its frame work broken.

Noane had kept it, though, and sometimes would pull it out of her trunk where she kept it wrapped carefully in a head scarf, and look at it again. As a child, she had spent many slumbers dreaming of flights across the heavens.

Joneth, I want to talk to you about my trip.

Yes, Miss, your trip, I guess you'll be going soon?

Well, it would make all practical sense to go this fall. Most of the shearing will be done by then, and you have enough help with the harvest you said.

Well, perhaps you'd better go then, Miss. I'll look after things 'till you're back.

Then I'll leave after tomorrow and return before the bad season.

And don't worry if you delay, I've plenty of men to help me if there are any lightening fires this year. The clouds had been good to them this year. Hardly a jagged light in the sky, despite all those hot storms.

Already Noane was thinking of the trip. I'll need my maps and things. And don't let my Auntie Moon give you any trouble. Accounts are not due until the end of harvest, after the wool is sold.

I won't, Miss, but you know how insistent she can be.

Oh, yes. Noane dismissed the shrill Auntie Moon with a wave of her hand. Tell her she can speak to me after I've returned.

Yes'M.

Goodbye Joneth. Goodbye Manni.

Noane tied her food bag onto the wooden frame on the back of Mummsy, her black and white donkey, and wrapped her long wool coat around the thick skirt of her cotton dress. Noane wore her best walking shoes and left in high spirits, turning around once to wave to Joneth.

Dear, good Joneth! Noane looked on her home fondly. Joneth would look after it. She would not be gone that long.

Noane turned back to the road ahead and set her pace steady.

*

The road from her farm and the only home she ever knew snaked around through the gentle hills of Sandcastile. Crops of yellow topped grass waved like the sea. A sea she had never seen, for Noane had never been anywhere other than the small village of Sandstone. Her father once told her that he had taken her by ship up the coast to Ballury where he had partaken of some sort of meeting where all the farmers in the southern provinces met each year. But Noane did not remember that trip other than vague recollections of a crowded room and booming men’s voices. The sea was a mystery.

After just a few miles Noane entered Sandstone. She had twenty Grunees to buy food and other needs.

The General Shop was busy for this was the beginning of the week and many farmers came to town to buy or barter. In addition there were the townsfolk themselves who lived and worked in the town or who gathered to trade gossip.

Noane noticed Auntie Moon, her late father's sister, was also there arguing with the merchant about the garden greens she had brought in for sale.

We, my dear sir, do not have Mud Mites. She thrust her basket of fresh shoots under his nose. See? Nothing but the very best from our farm. I'm sure your competitor down the way will be happy to accept these. He appreciates that we're the only growers in the area who can produce two crops a year of Bitter Spice.

The Merchant, cowed by his shrill customer, relented and handed over the price she'd demanded, counting out the coins into her outstretched hand.

Thank you - Noane. Missus Moon noticed her niece standing there and, as was her habit, pronounced her name as if it were two syllables - No-anne - instead of as one, as though she disapproved of her dead brother's choice of a name for their only daughter. Now then No-anne, I see you're off - after all my good counsel.

Yes Auntie Moon. Noane wondered how the nosy woman had managed to learn of her trip so quickly. I've come to buy a few things first.

Well, you know I like you very much, but I must speak my mind and say that I wish you'd buy a good dose of common sense. A young lady like you, running off to who knows where to see who knows what? Your father's farm needs you, especially now when it is so dry. How is the rent to be paid to Mr. Moon if the crops do not come in this year?

"Haven't we managed to pay the rent every year? And it's my farm now." Noane was used to Auntie Moon's constant reminders that she owed Mister Moon a debt of gratitude for being allowed to rent the best farm land, the land her father had worked on for twenty years, for a comparatively low price. A generosity disapproved of by Auntie Moon.

Yes, well they say this year the light storms are going to be the worst ever for fifty years. You should be at home tending to your duties at such a time.

Joneth and I agreed that I'd be back by the time the biggest storms begin, so you see, Auntie Moon, there is nothing to worry about.

There'll be a storm tomorrow I hear. Auntie Moon stated, paying no attention to Noane's reasonable argument. And one day, you'll be old enough to understand that responsibility, and not fun, comes first.

Despite the heat the crops are green Auntie Moon, and we hired an extra worker this year. Everything is fine.

"Oh - fine! She dismissed such facts. If we all shirked our duties so easily, we'd all be in the poor house." Noane bristled under the term shirked.

Auntie Moon was fond of pointing out the worst possible scenarios. Noane didn't like Auntie Moon. Underneath her community-minded exterior, Noane sensed something very insincere, as though Auntie Moon were the town cat and the other residents, many of whom were renters from her and her husband, little brown mice.

The heavy rains come right after the storms. The weather watchers also say we're going to have plenty of rain this year. Noane pointed out.

The Watchers always say that, they're paid by the members of the town Council I believe.

Auntie Moon had a dire warning for every word spoken, Noane thought. Well, I have to be going now. I'll see you when I get back. She said and quickly moved away to the other side of the shop.

Don't say I didn't warn you. Auntie Moon said after her.

As Noane traveled north, she paced herself at ten miles a day. It wasn't too strenuous for herself or Mummsy and allowed her time to stop now and then and take in the new surroundings and for Mummsy to graze. Every mile there was something new. Over every hill appeared a new vista for her eyes, a new smell or sensation.

Some of it she had seen before, when young, on short trips with her father, but this time, it felt all new again. And this time, her venture would take her farther than she had ever before, leaving the Sandcastile hills behind.

Another sensation arose as well, the feeling of adventure. Along with it grew a feeling she had rarely ever experienced and that was loneliness.

Not loneliness, she decided, not yet. But she was alone and the world was indeed large and she had never been away from the farm - not this far, alone - before in her life. Thought's of the farm and Joneth caused a small pang of home-sickness but Noane quickly shook it off. It had only been a few days. There was still so much to see, so much to learn, and no place inside her for thinking of home yet.

A small fire, some bread and cheese and her warm blanket gave Noane another good night's sleep. The night birds chirped, their soft meep-meeps lulled her into a slumber as the fire ate its raw fuel and then entered its own sleep in the glowing embers.

Mummsy snickered and shook his shaggy head, then settled down for a night of grazing and dozing.

A few miles away, the wet nose of a shaggy-backed Gorga smelled the burning and knew a meal was within reach. He and his pack had suffered poorly over the dry season and their gray fur coats lay rough and lifeless on protruding ribs and sharp back bones.

Human flesh, they had come to learn, was tasty - and easy if one of them smaller ones could be caught alone and exposed. Gorgas were small and never attacked a whole human herd, which were creatures far more dangerous than they looked. Humans carried long sharp gleaming sticks and balls of sticky black pain whipped from leather straps that burned fur and scorched flesh.

But the Gorga leader smelled the pungent stink of donkey sweat as well as the more subtle and tender meat of a human. One was a swift but stupid prey. The other was slow moving though intelligent and elusive. Both were thus far unmoving and unaware of the pack's proximity.

The Gorga leader halted from his steady trot and raised a black snout, snorting. The tantalizing odors filled his predatory mind with images of food, and so a ravenous hunger satisfied. Knowing without looking back that its pack would follow, the leader changed direction toward the source of the delightful odor on the wind. Each beast ran gracefully on the toes of six paws. Tails whipping out behind, they followed their leader in a tight group, their snouts low, with appetites rising.

Noane did not know at first what had awakened her. But she sat up in the dark trying to see beyond the feeble glow of her campfire coals. How black the night was so far from any town. A small splinter moon hung low in the horizon and the quilt of stars above did little to illuminate her surroundings.

Noane felt for and grasped her knife. She'd brought it, she told herself, for digging fire pits, for cutting rope or for any other imagined use, but also for protection. Just in case.

Noane heard a snort she thought. A snort? Mummsy? She wasn't sure but Mummsy's eyes were open and he was sniffing the air, moving his nose this way and that, trying to get a smell of...what? Something told her to gather up her bedroll and other things into her bag. Kicking dirt over the coals to smother them, Noane lead Mummsy over to some brush and made her kneel down on her knobby legs. Noane crouched down behind the shrubs also, her heart racing. The bushes did little to conceal Mummsy, whose shoulder muscles twitched against her cheek.

Down the slight incline before her, she could hear the swiftly moving Bane river far away in the night, cold and fast, which earlier she'd been following. Behind her, the hill rose several hundred feet, crowned with gnarled bush. Beyond it were more hills rolling ever more gently until they leveled out into the wide plains of the farm belts in the south. Joneth and home.

Noane was scared.

Another snort came, followed by another. She didn't know what was making the sounds, but she had heard of Gorgas. They usually didn't hunt in the hills and they never attacked people. Noane wasn't going to wait around to find out one way or another but where to run to?

When their snorts turned to growls, Noane realized that whatever beasts they were, her ears told her they were coming closer.

Noane dashed down the hill toward the river, pulling hard on Mummsy's lead, urging him on. She was a good donkey but was slow and protested mightily this midnight trek when all donkey's of good sense were slumbering. He brayed loudly. Then his nostrils caught the scent of the Gorgas and he lurched to a trot after her. Then he started to gallop, and Noane could hardly keep up with him. Suddenly his lead slipped from her hand.

Mummsy!

But at the river, Mummsy turned left and ran along the bank straight away from her.

Noane was glad she'd camped close to the river. Maybe she could swim across and they wouldn't follow? Maybe they couldn't swim? How foolish she'd been not to bring a better weapon. Her father's old scaling knife was little comfort in her hand.

What was following her? Noane had no time to wonder long. She could hear the beat of their many paws on the ground, and their ragged breaths through the darkness. There was a pungent odor of wet fur. Noane felt terrors tighten its cold fist around her heart. The air stunk with their saliva.

Noane stumbled but got up quickly. She'd lost precious seconds of her lead and the Gorgas closed the gap. One got its teeth around the strap of her cloak and clamped down. She screamed and yanked it free and, somehow making her legs move faster.

Noane screamed again as another jaw bit into her cloak, tearing at it. Noane shrugged it off, struggling not to fall. She gathered her skirt up with one hand and ran faster than she'd ever run.

There, ahead, sparking in the small light of a wedged moon, was the river Bane. It was wide and cold and deep, but Noane leaped as far as she could from the muddy edge.

The icy cold struck her chest like a fist. It was far colder than she had expected, and faster than it had looked.

She fought the current and gasped at the harsh power of the water. It was a swift river - stronger than she'd anticipated as it swept her along in its freezing grip. The snarls of the Gorgas faded and were left behind as they tore her belongings apart. Noane struggled against the current, stroke by stroke trying to bring herself closer to the far edge.

In the darkness she could hear the Gorgas frustrated, fading snorts as they lost interest by what by now must be her torn bag and clothing. But they sniffed and snorted in the air, and Noane realized they were after Mummsy.

The preservation of her own life in the icy and powerful river quickly swallowed up thoughts of Mummsy. Noane was overcome by the torrent once or twice but fought to keep her head above the water and kicked away with her strong farmers legs whenever she was thrown against a large rock. But getting to the other side was taking a long time and the cold and the constant fight of the undertow sapped her strength.

But finally, freezing and exhausted, Noane's feet felt the rocky bottom again and her hands reached out in the dark to find roots along the river's edge. She managed to grip both hands around a thick stalk and pull herself from the water.

Noane dragged her frozen legs onto the muddy bank. In the dark and cold she heard Mummsy's terrified donkey bray pierce the distant darkness.

No-o-o She whispered helplessly, but there was nothing she could do. Her beloved donkey would be torn apart. On her face hot tears mixed with cold river water as she fought the night chill, thrusting her mind from the horrible images of Mummsy's last painful struggles.

Noane sat down on the river's edge, exhausted and wrapped her arms around her legs. A burnt morning sky had already appeared, enough light to see that she'd floated quite a long way, a few miles at least, down the river. Far enough that the land around her had changed. It was flatter here, but dotted with groves of tangled brush and spindly trees. The land had a wild, unforgiving face.

When the sun rose higher, it warmed Noane enough that she started walking along the river's edge. She didn't know where exactly she was going. She supposed she should turn around and go home. But going back the way she'd come meant she might run into the Gorgas again. Besides she didn't have any food, blanket or extra clothes. Her money was gone as well, back where the Gorgas had scattered her belongings in the dirt. Getting home would mean days of walking without provisions of any kind.

Unless she asked someone for help, she was stuck. Noane knew that a small village called Kefinley lay about ten miles north of the fork of the river's Newkeld and Bane. Noane kept her pace steady beside the Bane, hoping to reach the fork by nightfall. From memory of her fathers map, she guessed the fork was five or six miles ahead. There she would spend a cold, uncomfortable night, but she would reach Kefinley by noon the day after.

Where Bane River could be a cross-able enough in parts, Newkeld River lay before her a mocking torrent. It was not the tiny line she'd studied on her