Chapter 13: 12. Visiting Esterton

“Lio, we’re off now! Remember to watch the house. No sneaking off! Old Jeffrey will come by to make sure you’re home.”

Mother tightens the muffler around my neck, making sure not a single stray breeze can tickle my nose, then buttons up the wolf-fur cape around my shoulders. It was made out of what could be salvaged from the pelt of the Fanged Wolf from summer, or at least some of it. After much discussion, most of the harvestable parts were sold off to help stock the village coffers for winter.

It’s now the end of winter, but the cold hasn’t eased. But I feel excessively warm, I’m bundled up so thick. Whatever it takes! Because right now, it’s the moment I’ve been waiting for for months now! We are going to town!

There’s a small trade town a day’s walk from here, but much less if we take the village cart. It’s located on a trade crossroad, so although it’s not big, it gets a lot of really interesting imports. Moreover, it will be my first time seeing outside the village! Although we were originally going to go in the summer, in order to get measurements for winter clothing made as well as other things we can only get from town, the trip was delayed.

I was grounded for half a year!

Hah, not really. After the monster attack, although it ended well, it really put the village on edge. The fear was that it was a precursor to a migration, that maybe more monsters would come, and so the monthly cart that would travel around the surrounding areas to give people rides to town stopped coming. By the time the coast had cleared, the autumn harvest had arrived, and then the first winter snow. The roads had to be cleared, and then mother worried about me going out into the snow and getting sick, so wanted to wait until the end of winter.

I want to believe in god, I want to believe they gave me a strong and healthy body that is resilient to disease but I! Just! Don’t! The flags were so red you could use them for bullfighting. So I patiently waited. Patiently. Paaaatiently.

Aaaah, I’m going so stir-crazy I’m gonna bite someone if we don’t leave soon! I’m gonna gnaw on my father’s arm like it’s a block of wood, I swear to god!

“All right, we’re ready. Lio, did you hear me?” Mother straightens up, hollering into the house again.

“Yeah, yeah. Watch the house, no escaping.” My father comes out to see us off, kissing my mother on the cheek. “Do you have the knife I gave you?”

“Yes, yes. I won’t need it, you know, but I have it. The law and order in Esterton has always been good.” She brandishes a knife with a silvery blade, before hiding it again in her skirts.

“My pretty wife and ugly child might get kidnapped, I just want to feel reassured.”

“Your ugly child takes after you the most!” I snap, kicking him in the shin.

“Hey now, I don’t know where you get your looks but it’s not me! I’m handsome as can be, shorty!” My father fumes childishly.

Mother breaks up our bickering, pinching my father’s lips shut. “I plan to take the cart back, but I’m buying quite a lot this time since it’s been a while. If it’s too much, I’ll send everything ahead in the cart and stay overnight with the little one at the Sneezing Dog. Be ready at the village square to receive it all!”

“Huh, how much can you be buying? It’s just some fabric and salt and whatnot, right?” My father asks.

“Of course not! Our child is going to be turning four in the spring, I have to start getting ready for Naming Day. Have you picked out a list of names, by the way? Although I know how you feel, I think using mother’s name—”

“Phebious isn’t a name, it’s a medical condition.” My father complains. “Anyway, aren’t you getting hasty? I thought the tradition was to have the Naming Day when they were six?”

“It’s a big event! You remember Dorothy’s naming day two years ago, the entire village showed up to the Doorson’s. They even invited a priest to oversee things. No, if we want to do it properly, we need to start overseeing it all now!”

“Yes, but we won’t even know if there’ll be a Naming Day. We may not even be here in the next two years.” My father points out, and my mother goes deathly silent.

Somehow I feel like… there was something I forgot. Something important. Something integral to my future.

Ah, whatever, my parents seem to have it covered. So I tug on my mother’s hand, staring at her hopefully to try to get her mind back on track to more important things.

“Are we leaving now?”

“Oh! Yes, of course, little one. Are you wearing the special charm that Grandpa Carus sent you?” She crouches down, undoing the woollen muffler she so painstakingly arranged in order to quadruple check that I had the pendant hung around my neck.

I was more or less banned from ever even taking it off, no matter if I was bathing or sleeping, so I don’t know what she’s expecting me to say. “Actually I took it off and yeeted it into a field, just for funsies”?

Upon confirming it’s still there, she rearranges my muffler once again and then takes my hand. We head down to the village square in order to await the arrival of the morning cart, along with other village folk with things to trade or sell.

The cart ride to town was pretty exciting! It was actually just a regular old oxcart for hauling hay and produce, that one of the farmers used for extra income by going around to the villages once a month. It was a penny for adults and a farthing for children one way, and it would do three trips a day. Because it was simply a broad, open cart, many people who had experience would bring a little stool to sit on for the trip.

My mother is a cunning woman and naturally provided her own seating with a little fold-out stool made from wood and some sewing cabbage. She intended to have me sit on her lap, but I’m too busy standing on tip-toe to peer over the edge of the cart, staring at the road.

I truly feel like… a country bumpkin! No, but in a good way. There is something exciting and relaxing about taking joy out of the small things. For example, watching rabbits race across the road, kicking up snow—one, two, three, four of them! Or seeing the slowly changing landscape. Listening to the gossiping chatter of women. Although I don’t always know who they’re talking about, I’m learning all sorts of dirty laundry.

Who doesn’t keep a tidy house.

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Who ran up a tab they can’t pay at the pub.

Who was peeped sneaking out of the widow’s back window. Wow, salacious!

Mother clamps her hands over my ears and yells, “Gertrude!” at that last one, but heheh, I already heard it. And he’s married too!

We stop at two more villages along the way, and then it’s a straight shot to town. When it comes over the horizon, it really gives off the feel of a mediaeval town, with big wooden walls and a wooden portcullis style gate! Although there isn’t anything like a huge line of people entering, there is a little bit of traffic. People weren’t being stopped and checked though, they were pretty much waved through.

Although Esterton was said to have good law and order, I think it’s more like the town is small enough they don’t consider themselves likely to get any major trouble.

Although the gate only protects the town proper. There were fields of farmland and grazing land along the road, with milling sheep wandering unhindered in front of carts and travellers. Seems like they’re pretty acclimated to people, and totally rule the road. They do more to hem traffic than the town watch does.

When we enter the town proper we disembark, immediately getting jostled around. It’s bustling! Even my mother seems surprised, commenting, “Wow, it’s so busy!”

I guess it’s not normally like this.

As we pass through a market square, we see the reason for the bustle. It’s a monster! A dead one I mean. It looks like a large bear, but the back is covered in a segmented shell like an armadillo, with the cracked texture of stone. It’s lying dead on a huge cart being pulled by four oxen toward a public house, but it’s not making good progress. The bear is so heavy, the cart is creaking dangerously under its weight, but there are also so many people milling about to stare at it that they’re blocking the road.

Wow!

“Ah, a Boulder Bear! Don’t tell me another monster has been in the area?!” There’s an outcry from the village people around us. “First the Fanged Wolf, now this!”

Hmm, I guess that’s the normal response. For someone like me, it’s exciting to see something so obviously outside the norm, but for the villagers, it’s a sign that there may be trouble brewing on the horizon. But even so, I wanna go see the big monster, so I pull on my mother’s sleeve.

“What’s a Boulder Bear? Can I go see?” 

“Haah, okay, we’ll try and get a closer look. But that crowd looks big, so if it’s too dangerous we’re leaving.” My mother relents, picking me up to help squeeze me through the throng.

Although we don’t get way up close, we get close enough to get a good peek. The bear is even bigger up close! Although I’ve never seen a grizzly bear in person, I know they’re actually huge, but even so this thing feels bigger. Like the Fanged Wolf, it feels like an overgrown version of a regular animal. This bear is covered in all sorts of wounds, with singed fur too. It looks like it probably took a prolonged fight to bring it down. Yet that Fanged Wolf went down with just a little rough housing.

“Between this bear and dad, who would win?”

“Your father, of course!”

As the bear is dragged along, it drops black ichor behind it that gives off a rotten stench. It doesn’t stop the throngs of people from crowding around, trying to get a good look.

“Hey, careful!” A voice calls as a child that squeezed through the crowd stumbles under the wheels of the cart. The child is picked up by the scruff of her crying neck by a tall and dashing woman. The woman is dressed in thigh high boots and tight leather breeches, with a loose shirt. Her hair is a short, wavy bob and she’s wearing a feathered musketeer style hat. 

Wow! So cool!

She thrusts the little girl into the arms of a random adult, probably not her parent, chastising, “This isn’t a parade! Make way so we can turn this in before it rots!”

Wow! So commanding!

“Where are they turning it in?” I turn my head and ask my mother, font of all knowledge.

She points to the hanging sign of the pub, which is a dancing faun, but underneath it is a smaller hanging sign of two swords crossed over a goblet. “See that sign with the swords? That means there’s an Adventurers Station here. In small towns like this where there’s not much work, rather than pay the cost of building a whole Hall and pay land and business taxes, the Adventurers Union will send staff to simply rent space in places like these to operate out of.”

I see, it’s the kind of dead end downward promotion nobody wants. Oh, but there were a lot of terms there I wasn’t familiar with. Rather than Adventurers Guild, it’s a Union. I see, how interesting. Although I don’t know if it really makes any meaningful difference!

Then that lady was probably an Adventurer. When I look closely, there are other people that stand out—a woman in a deep blue stiff-collar long coat that comes up to her nose with silver threaded embroidery decorating it, her long strawberry blond hair flowing free down her back, and even a pointed hat that curves forward slightly. A typical mage!

There’s also a man with pointed ears, wow! He has dusky grey brown skin and salt and pepper hair tied back in a half-braid that comes to his shoulders. He’s wearing stiff leather armour, but has a huge heavy warhammer slung on his back.

Yeah, actually, they really stand out. They’re totally flashy compared to everyone else. It’s only a three man party, but they managed to take down such a big monster; I wonder if that means they’re strong?

“Okay, let’s go.” My mother says after seeing how concerningly interested I am in the bear, dragging me away.

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