Some buildings looked like they were made of mud brick, others were half-timbered and white plastered German style homes, a Brutalist Soviet-era concrete and steel block of a building, low stone cottages with thatched roofs, a large wooden structure that looked like it had been woven out of living trees grown in place with a leafy crown for a roof, and a cluster of yurts with horses and camels grazing nearby. It was a mish-mash of styles, cultures, and time-periods, with a little high-fantasy thrown in to round it out.
It seemed like the only principle the inhabitants had been united on was keeping the road clear. The road itself seemed odd to Lanie. Two stripes of wheel-rutted, tightly fitted stone ran parallel with a narrow grass strip down the center. Aside from the grass strip, it resembled photos Lanie had seen of old Roman roads. The bridge was also of stone, held above the river by grand arches. The road cut through the valley and crossed the river at its narrowest point. It parted the pine forest in a straight line from the mountains on one side to the mountains on the other.
All of the village was on one side of the river. On the far side was a single small stone building pressed right up against the road. It had the look of a guard shack or a toll booth. A bar made from a log blocked the road. It was mounted and counterweighted in a way that would make it easy to swing up to allow travelers to pass, just like a modern toll gate, only on a larger scale.
The village began to wake up. Vendors set up awnings and tables in an open space where the road entered the town. People came out to do chores and stopped to chat with one another. Even at a distance far enough away that details were hard to make out, Lanie could tell that most of the people she was seeing weren’t human. Some were too large, some too small, some were shaped wrong, some had horns or too many limbs, or skin in shades of red, green, or blue.
As she watched, two blue-skinned figures climbed from the river on the near edge of the village. They paused on the bank to put on simple sun dresses that clung to their wet skin. They carried baskets, and they giggled and teased one another like any pair of teenage girls. One leaned in to whisper to the other, who flushed lavender and swatted her friend on the shoulder.
A young man lifting firewood from a pile paused in his work to watch them pass. He had small antlers growing from his brow. Lanie didn’t realize it until he moved, turning to watch the girls, that his back half was that of a deer. An older stag-man came out of the house, his head adorned with a much more impressive rack of antlers. His torso was that of a muscular man, but his back half was four-legged and tawny-furred. He swatted the distracted younger deer-man on the rump and motioned to the firewood stack. Lanie was sure from their body language that if she’d been closer, she would have seen the father trying to hide a smile at his son’s obvious infatuation. It was such an ordinary interaction, performed by such extraordinary people, that it left Lanie feeling disoriented.
Then, she smiled. They were foreign, strange, and alien creatures, but they were still just people. They had families and friends, needs and wants. She still had some new rules to learn and new tools to master, but she could handle this.
“OK, Nips. Let’s go find this Zoren Dalgo fellow. Anything I need to know before we hit town?” She slipped her sunglasses back on and made sure there were no stray pine needles in her hair. The green scarf was draped around her shoulders.
“I’ll have to do most of the talking,” he said, “They might speak some human tongues, but it’s unlikely many of them know English.”
“Basty spoke English.”
“He was more the exception than the rule. Folk who can get into other people’s heads have something of an advantage when it comes to learning languages.”
“Oh,” Lanie suppressed a shudder at the thought. She wiped her hand against her skirt to get rid of the remembered feeling of Basty’s clammy skin and directed the conversation back to the original point. “What language do they speak, then?”
“All the different races have their own languages, but millennia ago, when we started dealing with mortals, a sort of common pidgin developed. It’s called Trade. It’s based on some long-dead human language with a lot of loan words from different Fairy tongues.” He shrugged, “I guess it was just easier, since most of the races dealt with humans, in some cases more often than they dealt with other fae races. These days, the Folk are more integrated, less insular than they used to be, but Trade caught on and stuck around.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“And you speak it?”
“Fluently. I can teach you, if you want. It’s based on a human language, so there aren't as many growls and whistles and other difficult sounds.”
“Maybe later. What about rules? When I asked you about food, you said there were rules.” As she spoke, Lanie started making her way through the trees, circling wide around the cleared pasture. She thought it might be better to come into the village from the road.
“Well, you already know the most important one: the rule of balance. You caught on to the rule of three pretty quickly, too. The laws of hospitality also apply. Do you know about those? Some human cultures used to use them.”
“No. Not exactly the sort of thing they teach in public schools these days.”
“Well, it boils down to reciprocity between host and guest. If someone invites you into a place they control and they offer you food and drink, what they are really offering is Guest Right. If you accept the food and drink, you are agreeing to be a good guest and to follow the rules. The rules are: a host must not harm a guest nor allow them to be harmed through inaction. A guest must not harm nor steal from their host, and both must defend the other so long as guest-right is in effect. So, if you go into someone’s house and they offer you food, they are saying that you will be safe while you are there. If you refuse the food, you’re advertising your intent to do them harm. And vice-versa. If you go into someone’s home and they don’t offer you food, keep your guard up.”
“So, sharing food is sort of a shorthand for a temporary alliance?”
“More or less,” Nips affirmed. “But it can be, and has been, used to force an obligation. I’d have to give you a history lesson that would take all week to explain all the twists and nuances, so I’ll give you this warning instead: Be careful about whose hospitality you accept, and whose hospitality you turn down. The Folk have a lot of rules and compulsions we have to live under, and we’ve all become experts at twisting those rules to our advantage.”
Lanie raised an eyebrow and gave Nips a skeptical look, “Are you telling me that the Realms are full of lawyers?”
“More or less.”
“And you’re sure this isn’t hell?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Uh, huh.”
They weren’t far from the road now. Lanie slowed down, her mind picking away at the same problem she’d been worrying at since she’d questioned Basty. She needed a favor from this Zoren Dalgo guy, and the Fae didn’t do anything for free. According to Basty, Dalgo was a merchant. He would squeeze her for as much as he could get. The problem was, she didn’t have anything to trade. She didn’t have any ethical qualms about taking what she needed, but there were too many unknowns here. She could ask Nips, but these were his people. She liked the little guy, but she’d known him for less than a day. How would he feel about her ripping off an innocent shopkeeper?
She could play this straight, but what could she do if Dalgo wanted more for the info than she could pay? If she showed an interest in the compass, and then it went missing, she’d be the first suspect. On the other hand, if she went straight to the sketchy option, she might lose Nips as a guide, and his information and help had been invaluable so far. And… she was reluctant to admit it to herself, but it had been nice to have his company.
“Lanie, something wrong?” Nips asked, noticing that her pace had slowed to a crawl.
She shook her head, “Just nervous about walking into a strange town full of strange… well, the rules are different here. There’s a lot I don’t know. I guess I’m dithering a little.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” Nips said, patting her arm in reassurance.
Lanie wasn’t so sure. Standing in the woods wasn’t going to get her anywhere, though, so she squared up her shoulders and stepped out onto the road. From there, it was only a short walk into town.
The market at the edge of Crossing wasn’t very busy. The awnings were sewn from bright, ornate fabric. The tables were rough wood covered with more of the bright cloth, and the items on them were as varied as the people manning them. One table had piles of juicy fruits and vegetables that looked so inviting that they immediately reminded Lanie of the Goblin Market poem. Bolts of cloth on another table ranged from coarse homespun to ornate brocaded silk. Another held simple iron pots and pans interspersed with elegant vases, Turkish lamps, brass incense burners, and a large, intricately enameled Russian samovar. A fourth table had bins of spices and packets, and bundles of dried herbs. The scents of cinnamon, cloves, peppers, cardamom, rosemary, and others that Lanie couldn’t identify mingled with the aroma of fresh, strong coffee. Lanie’s stomach rumbled.
The two blue-skinned girls who’d climbed from the river earlier were poking at the fruit and whispering together, but other than them, there were no customers. The merchants manning the tables all perked up as Lanie approached, trying to hide the hopeful gleam in their eyes.
Nips tugged at her sleeve. Lanie glanced down at him. In a low voice, he said, “Lift me to your shoulder. It’ll make this easier if they can see me.”
Lanie boosted Nips up to sit on her left shoulder as she approached the table loaded with fruit. He settled in, grabbing onto her earlobe for balance. He weighed almost nothing, but his warm presence helped to settle her nerves a bit.
The woman behind the table had green skin that shimmered in the sunlight. As she moved, ripples of iridescence danced along her arms. Her features were angular and sharp, and her dark green-black eyes were large and segmented like an insect’s. Her hair was dark eggplant purple, and two delicate antennae poked from under her bangs. She was Lanie’s height, but stick thin. There was something in the way she moved that made Lanie think of a praying mantis.
She greeted them pleasantly in a language Lanie didn’t know. Nips answered back in the same tongue. There was something about the words that felt familiar to Lanie. She couldn’t understand what they were saying, but she felt like she should understand. It was an odd sort of deja vu. The sounds were familiar, and yet not familiar at all. It was like hearing a radio in the next room, knowing the speaker was using English, but not being able to make out what they were saying. The harder she tried to make the words make sense, the stranger she felt.
Then, a message popped up:
You have found a Karmic Link.
A Past Life is available to view.
Viewing now.