Free The Legend of El Shashi by Marc Secchia Page A

peasant smock, wooden clogs upon her feet, and her iron-grey hair tied back in a careless bundle. I could have been anywhere in the Fiefdoms.
    The old woman dipped a ladle into the pot and drew out a portion for herself. Without turning, she called, “Stop gawping and eat. I’ll not have a stickman in my house –better I plant you in the garden to scare off the crows.”
    This made me smile. The odd, unremembered sensation around my mouth made me reach up to touch an explosion of beard that beggared belief. I drew out a leafy twig and gaped at it.
    “Well you’ve been living rough for some anna, mark my words,” she remarked, setting her bowl aside. Reaching to a shelf, she drew forth a pakari flatbread and broke it in half. “Bread you can have when I’ve seen that broth safely down. No telling what you’ve been eating. Found you running with some speckled deer, my daughter did. Telia lured you here. In all my anna, never have I seen a sight more peculiar. A man deer.”
    Broth! My tongue howled its delight. Had it not been so hot I would have gulped it down and the bowl too.
    “Starving?” She had not turned around, but still seemed to know my every thought. “There’s more.”
    I tried my voice. “I … grateful.”
    “Rusty as an old tine!” cackled my hostess. “I’ll wager ten brass terls to a tinker’s boot you haven’t spoken in anna. Now you can thank me by finishing your sup.”
    “What anna is it?”
    She squinted at the ceiling. “It must be … don’t think I rightly know. All’s a-muddle in my head. It must be Summer’s Richness. Harvest season’s a ways off and the Glooming farther still.”
    “It’ s the twenty-fourth anna of Gracious Albora’s reign, and today is Sayth, the day of rest,” piped a new voice. “Is he awake, mother?”
    I automatically tugged the covers over my nakedness. Mata’s name, I had not a stitch of clothing upon my body! Fancy … and as the rush doorway fell to again, I beheld the merry eyes of the old woman’s daughter, and grew flustered at her frankly appraising stare.
    “He is nought but washboard bones and a shaggy mane!” She pecked the old woman on top of her head, set her basket besid e the table, and smiled at me. “Doubtless she hasn’t introduced herself?”
    “She? Who’s she–the cat’s mother? Huh! Who’s been swanning off to the village all morning whilst I sweat buckets tending this poor puppy?”
    “I am Telia, and this is Agria, my mother. You have to understand she’s –”
    “Go on, say it, you ungrateful wretch!”
    “Forgetful.”
    “The anna I wasted teaching you your manners. Huh!”
    Telia was taller than most women, with a face that was characterful rather than comely, but I sensed a wholesomeness about her manner that I warmed to. She was not yet a matron, but maturing towards that station, being perhaps fifteen anna older than I.
    “What’s the standard anna?” I inquired.
    “One thousand, three hundreds, fifty and six,” Telia replied. By this mode of counting I knew her at once for an Elbarath–courtesy of Janos’ teaching–from a Fiefdom which lies a hundred or more leagues south of Roymere. Mata’s name, I was far from home!
    By her reply and the season, I calculated I must have spent some three and a half anna in the wilderness, in madness. And that was when I began to remember what had been.
    *  *  *  *
    I lived with Telia and Agria until full Harvest, turning my hands daily to the tasks that governed life in the deep backwoods. I split wood to store against the coming cold seasons of Rains, Alldark Week, and Thawing. The walls I chinked with winterbrush and brown sponghum moss. As the days grew short I gathered the last berries and edible tubers from the forest surrounding their home, went hunting several times, and traded in the village for supplies. Ay, my fresh-shorn locks set tongues a-wagging there!
    My hands were kept busy, but not busy enough to prevent my mind from dwelling upon the