Free At the Edge of the World by Avi Page A

first night after our visit to the small village, we stopped in a clump of small trees near the top of a hill. For food, we ate some bread and cheese we had purchased.
    “What will we find in that place called Rye?” I asked.
    “I’ve never been,” he said. “I know it only as a port.”
    “Is it safe there?”
    He shrugged. “As always, we must watch, listen, and beyond all else, pray.”
    “To whom?”
    “Whoever hears you best.”
    “Bear,” I asked, “why are there so many saints?”
    “I suppose,” said Bear, “this wretched world has so many woes, even God almighty needs help.”
    Indeed, that night he chose to drill us—both Troth and me—in using a pike (a tree branch) and a dagger (a stick) to defend ourselves.
    “Do you think we’re being followed?” Troth asked.
    “Alas,” he said, “we all have our enemies. A soldier I once knew used to say, ‘He who thinks his enemies are fools is the bigger fool.’”
    Avoiding villages for a few days, we continued south. To pass the time I tried to get Bear to talk about some of the places he had visited.
    Once I said, “Tell us what your soldiering days were like.”
    He shook his great head. “I’d rather not talk of those things.”
    “Why?” I demanded.
    “Some things are too awful to want a second seeing.”
    “You’re only telling.”
    “A good telling is a good seeing,” he returned. “And it was war.”
    “What is war?” asked Troth.
    “Dear Troth, may God grant it never touches you,” said a grim-faced Bear.
    “Then tell us,” I said, “about that place you never saw—the one which has no kings, armies or wars—that land of ice.”
    “Iceland?” he said, with a broad grin. “I don’t even know if it exists.”
    “Then,” I suggested, “you can make it even better.”
    “I suppose—from its name—it’s all ice.” That said, he spun some marvelous tales—stories of giants, of trolls and dragons, of great deeds by ice-draped warriors.
    Troth and I listened, enthralled.
    To earn our necessary bread we performed three times, always heading south. Though these villages were pitiful places, we gathered enough thin coins to eat.
    The second time we performed, Troth joined in on her own. Taking Bear’s hat, she shook it rhythmically, adding to our sound. What pleased her most, I think, was that few paid her any mind. All eyes were set on Bear, his dancing and juggling.
    By night, Bear told us more fabulous tales, of holy saints and their miracles, of beasts and the great acts of the ancients. It was as if we traveled more by night—not moving, just listening—than we did all day by foot.
    Those were nights of joy: the cloaking darkness our guardian, the spread of stars above, each star a promise of God’s infinite grace, a blessed eye upon our little family. Oh, how I adored that feeling of us, the embrace of star-blessed love! If we could have been that way forever—a family below that overarching heaven which flowed on so gracefully—I would have been much content.
    But as we pressed on I began to notice something: when we were in the villages to perform, Bear made a point of going off to speak alone to some of the menfolk. It was as he’d done before in Great Wexly—though at the time I did not know it—when he was gathering information for John Ball’s brotherhood. Now, when he did this, he seemed glum, and as we moved farther south, increasingly so.
    “Is it news about the new king you’re seeking?” I asked when he came back one such time.
    “There is no news of him,” was his curt reply.
    “Are you hearing word of the brotherhood, then?”
    He made a face. “Let’s pray we never see their like again.”
    “But something is troubling you,” I persisted.
    “We shall have to see,” was all the answer he allowed.
    Avoiding common roads, and, for a time, even villages, we approached the port of Rye from the north. Thus we followed footpaths of which there were increasing numbers, often wending our