Faithful Pebble

Part Ninety-Six

"Iris," The wanderer whispered. Her name caught her off guard. The girl froze a moment, her feet on the porch, her face to the door, her back to the dying sun. She picked up the screwdriver and then went back to fixing the door, kneeling until her cloak painted the floor boards. The wanderer sighed. He eyed it, her cloak. "Is the poison the reason why you wear your hood? Is it what killed your mother? She was wearing one too."

Pebble didn't answer. Her silence admitted what her words could not.

The wanderer heard it and crossed his arms. "What happened to your father? You must have loved him. He's all you talk about. Did he…"

"He disappeared," Pebble whispered.

"My father came home one day frazzled and dirty and scared. You could see it in his eyes, you know. He said we had to stay in the house, but that day he'd caught me wandering past his boundaries. He scolded me pretty harshly because of it." Pebble's fingers tightened around the screwdriver's handle. She dropped it to her lap, but didn't turn towards her listener. She just stared at the door, or appeared to, the wanderer observed. "Mother had to pry me from him. She locked me in my room while he stormed through the house gathering his things, muttering the entire time. I could hear him. Even through the door, I could hear him. Mother too. She tried to get him to talk, to tell her what was wrong, but he refused to say anything. He eventually left slamming the door behind him. It was the last of him we ever saw."

The wanderer tilted his head. "That sounds very uncharacteristic. He refused to slay a dragon because it was once a boy."

"He'd changed long before then. Mother used to say it was the killings that turned him. Like I said, sometimes he didn't have a choice. In spite his farce, whenever the officials came through the forest, which was often in those days, he had to. He couldn't always rely on traps and poison to cover his tracks, our lives were on the line."

"They threatened you."

"And mother," Pebble answered. "Particularly mother. She was the main reason he did it for so long, to protect her… and me."

The wanderer nodded thinking back to the string of violets circling the house, the meadow out back. Each ring was probably layered with pits and arrows. The man was very protective, still… "You don't think the town officials got to him, do you?"

Pebble didn't answer.

"What did your mother do?" The wanderer tried again. He spoked into the silence, her silence. "After she realized your father wasn't coming back, how did you survive?"

Here, Pebble leaned forward until her head touched the door. Her world crumpled in on itself like her hood cloaking her heart, the fabric her mind, the dirt her soul. "What she had to. She was afraid the officials would come for us and she said running was a risky option. It was a sure death sentence if they caught us."

"How so?" the wanderer asked. Slowly, he sat down on the porch, his gaze locked on the girl shaking before him. "You knew too much," he guessed.

Pebble nodded. "She figured maybe they would leave us alone if we continued to do father's job, make it look like nothing happened. Besides, we weren't even certain if they had killed him or not, or if he fell in a fight or if he just fled. We had a home, food, a life. We would be happy, she thought. Something we'd never be if we left. We would make it work." For a moment, Pebble trailed off. She crumpled further. "Father had taught her everything like he did me. She knew how to dig a pit, knew how to hunt and set up the arrows. She even knew how to harvest the poison and dip them into it. And she knew, just like I did, to always be careful, to never get any of it in you. That's how the poison works. You have to ingest it or get it in a cut under the skin.

The wanderer nodded. The girl continued. "But she wasn't father, you know. She wasn't practiced like him, nor as sure footed in his trade." Pebble's head turned just enough that the wanderer could tell she was watching him, gaging his reaction. He wandered how much she could see through that hood of hers, how much she could read. "She dropped a vile of the poison and cut her finger. She was a sleep in moments and I was alone for weeks while the poison coursed through her. It tore her hair out, blistered her skin, humped her back and soiled her pride. She was a different person when she finally woke up."

- Calla