I was nine and a half years old the autumn we left Veronaville on foot.
My Papa and I had been on the move from the onset of the war, diligently avoiding the vigilante militias that marched through the streets, handing out machetes to any man fit enough to carry one. Our government being what it was back then, boys were conscripted and old men like my Papa were pulled into the war by the scruff of their collars.
My mother died when I was much too young to remember. We had no other family that could care for me in the event that Papa was forced into battle. Our choices were nil.
We left Alderton as stowaways on a mining ship and disembarked at the first place we landed. For months, we laid low, shuffling our feet. It was in those days that I learned to sleep standing up.
Then one sunny afternoon in Lanceshire, we were finally picked up-- And not by the militia. Goodwife Landry was barely sixteen, a fine lady of the leisure class, widowed by a war that her husband had not been able to buy his way out of. She tucked us away in a hidden room beneath her scullery and there we crouched right up until the day that General Seriah Io Laocoon Zumerdrem was crowned king. Shortly after, my father began planning our migration. There were still portions of the continent where the Fae peoples held no reign. And we were meandering right through those portions, headed for the coast.
Goodwife Landry's neighbor was an inventor and alchemist by the name of Nigel Curious. He was a very bright man who hardly ever said much but who managed to speak volumes with no more than a raised eyebrow. I told my Papa that I thought Goodwife Landry was sweet on Mr. Curious but he told me that it was wrong to pry into other people's business. So I kept my mouth shut. In any case, Mr. Curious had his brush with new regime when General Seriah took the capital. Men of Mr. Curious's profession were being driven out or executed if they failed to leave. When I asked my father why, he said that it was because the Faes considered them heretics. Though I could not begin to imagine what that word meant, I did not ask for further explanation.
In Riverblossom, my father and Mr. Curious struck up a quick friendship with a stuttering thatcher called Wilhelm Ottomas. His home was torched at the Battle of Canton and his family had been traveling ever since.
They were joined by a family from Alpinloch that was not running for their lives but for their wallets. The patriarch of the family, Fritz Bjornsson was an innkeeper by trade who had a few unresolved debts to his name. His wife, Gia, was an exotic belle who had been a fine lady's maid. Their son was a creature of a different sort altogether.
Leif Fritzsson frightened me. He was twelve-years-old and had a leonine beauty that made no attempt to mask the predator at his core. I was certain that he was deranged. Mind you, I had no proof of that assertion but just the same, I was sure to never be left alone with the beast.
Mr. Ottomas's daughter was quite opposite. Olga was a jolly sort of girl, always quick with a joke or a quip. I was very fond of her. Of all those present, she became an unlikely paradigm of womanhood for my motherless self.
Her own mother was a very strict woman who always smelt of linseed oil and who could hunt rabbit better than any man. Mrs. Ottomas's father had been one of the wild men of the desert tribes. She herself had never set foot in the desert before now.
Lastly, there was my Papa, Kahlil Muenda. He was a warmhearted, fair and even-tempered man, liked by all, worshipped by his daughter. My universe began and ended with him as his universe did with me. Sometimes I wonder if things would have been different if we had not accepted Goodwife Landry's kindness and just kept running. But life is too short for what-ifs.
