Faithful Pebble

Part Ninety-Three

Slightly uneasy, the wanderer gathered what he had and ambled back to the cabin. His thoughts wandered as he did so. They stayed not on the rabbits swinging from his shoulders, not on the meadow of light he waded through but on Pebble's words, on the fawn he'd left alone and on the thousands of lurking traps scattered hidden throughout the forest. His thoughts drifted, the wanderer. They hovered and then settled, landing mournfully on a boy lost somewhere in the dark. He let the child chase him. Through the woods, unaware of the dangers, unaware of what lay buried beneath his feet, he'd let him run abandoned, alone and blind. The wanderer sighed lamenting his neglect.

He thought back to that melody of broken branches, that curious interruption that shattered his time with the ill-fated fawn. He wondered if it was him. The sound seemed all too deliberate, its timing curious. At first, the wanderer thought it was the girl's tentative approach but then he paused. But then, he questioned wondering about the direction. The sound came from above him, not behind, the direction of the girl's arrival. High in the trees, the distinct sharp snap crackled suddenly and then vanished just as suddenly. Pebble couldn't climb trees. He remembered, she hadn't the strength required to climb his rope. If she could, he needn't have ventured into her well. Could the boy? Could he climb trees?

Maybe…

Maybe not...

The wanderer wondered.

Clouded so, he barely felt the time pass while his green and stout and steady fingers cooked the meat and served his guest who quietly joined him. They were well into fixing up the house when she started to speak. She was fixing the door; him, the windows. Just enough, he figured. They had just enough time to make her cottage habitable again, at least for a night or two. Buried as he was, distracted as he was, he wasn't expecting the narrative, but it was more than welcome. It was a well appreciated disruption from his paranoid musings, at least in the beginning. He had waited so long for it, the reason for her fall. He hadn't expected it to come in such a mundane way, but it did. It came accompanied by birds singing and the soft staccato of a worn out hammer tick, tick, ticking in the afternoon sun.

"They made him do it," that's what the girl had said, Iris, the maiden lost in a well, left to rot, left to whither alone somewhere in the dark. She murmured this quietly to the man hammering inside her home working and listening at the same time. She screwed a hinge, chewed her lip softly, silently, uncertainly.

"Who?" The wanderer asked.

He pulled his thoughts away from the boy and the trees, from the deer and the pit, but not completely from his hammer, his nails and decided task. "What did they make your father do? That's who you're talking about, am I correct?"

"My father?" Pebble asked and then she nodded. "The huntsmen, yes," she said. "The town, they told him since he didn't slay the beast, the dragon trapped within the mines buried beneath our feet, his punishment would be to guard it. Until someone came who was strong enough to kill it, the forest would be his prison. In spite this insult, my father willingly obeyed, if only to protect the boy, the boy trapped in the body of a dragon buried beneath our feet.

"My father hoped," Pebble whispered. "He wished that someone would come to break the spell and heal the child. In spite everything, my father always had that hope. He was very cunning, my father!"

"What do you mean?" the wanderer asked. His eyebrow lifted.

"Like I said," Pebble smiled. "He never intended to keep his oath and he never did unless he had to. Here let me show you."

I am throwing a party when I hit chapter 100! - Calla