Free Challenge by Montgomery Mahaffey

desolate without her things to
fill it up. The only trace of her was the iron mesh resting over
the pit. On top was his skillet filled with the meat, herbs, and
mushrooms she had cooked for him. The fire was nearly dead, the
embers spitting their last flares. Next to the pit, she’d staked a
pole where the carcasses of two squirrels dangled. They were
skinned from their necks to their hind feet, the meat of their
bodies still fresh, their eyes filmy and unseeing.
    Too weak to forage, the Wanderer couldn’t
ignore the meal she prepared for him. But he tasted nothing as he
ate, knowing emptiness would consume him later.

Chapter Four
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Once he left No Man’s Land, the Wanderer
didn’t stop moving. He found irony in the strangers who smiled at
him, looked him in the eye, and called him citizen. After he sold
his mare to a farmer who needed a gentle horse for his daughter to
ride, he lived more like a vagabond than ever. He only took on
labor he could finish in a day and declined anything more. But
hospitality was accepted with gratitude, because he wouldn’t have
to go back into the woods.
    He couldn’t get the girl out of his mind. In
his dreams, he could remember her under his fingers, those cold
blue eyes staring through him. Sometimes he’d wake up with his
flesh tingling from the memory of her touch, the smell of her
lingering in his nostrils. He’d open his eyes and see she was gone,
the numbness crushing him just like the day she had left.
    The Wanderer hated the girl, but ached for
her in his bones and sinews. He was a fool, as the girl had said.
He knew he should go home to the people who loved him. For two
weeks, he kept moving until he drifted into the port town where his
journey started.
    He didn’t recognize where he was until he
saw the ship. He blinked and had to look again. Except for the name
on the stern, the vessel was just like the one he had been on five
and a half years before. When the horn blew, he started, suddenly
aware he was on the wharf, immersed in a mass of people swarming
around him. The crowd blew kisses to the passengers on deck, while
they leaned over the railings, waving to their loved ones who were
sending them off as the crew hoisted ropes from the dock.
    His heart squeezed from the joy and sadness
around him. But the sight of an old man crying and shouting
good-bye to a youth on the ship stopped him in his tracks. In that
moment, he saw his grandfather as he had been on the day he’d left.
Their Patron and Patroness had stood on either side of him. The
gnarled hand had been at the level of his heart and the Bard had
never stopped waving, growing smaller from the Wanderer sailing
away. But he had remained on the deck, waving back long after his
grandfather was gone.
    A swell rose from the depths of his belly
and returned the Wanderer to the moment the Bard’s soul passed. The
tears streaming down his face flooded his vision, making him blind
to the stranger drawing him close. There was warmth and strength in
that embrace, and he sobbed into the unknown shoulder. After a
time, the other pulled back and the Wanderer looked into the
whiskey brown eyes of the old man.
    “ Son,” he said. “It always
hurts to lose someone. But the pain is worse if you hold on when
it’s time to let go.”
    Before the Wanderer could say anything, the
horn bleated farewell. The old man touched his face and slipped
away. He turned back to the boy on deck, waving with one hand and
blowing kisses with the other. The youth’s face was filled with the
bittersweet of excitement and sorrow, and the Wanderer couldn’t
stop crying. He left the crowd behind for a lone stump down the
wharf. There he faced the sea and surrendered to mourning.
    His heart throbbed in the same manner
whenever the girl had angered him. But this time, he was thinking
of the last time he saw his grandfather. Shocked, the Wanderer
tried to push it away, but the sentiment wouldn’t be denied.
Breathing