Fire Emblem Fan Fiction ❯ Fire Emblem Tellius Saga: Book 1 ❯ CHAPTER 4: IKE ( Chapter 4 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Every day felt like an eternity to Soren. He tried to find his way out of the maddening forest but could not. Over the next few days, he saw subhumans often enough, sometimes in their animal forms and sometimes in their human forms, and he had to assume he had wandered into one of their residential areas. He couldn’t call it a town, or even a village, because it did not resemble any human settlement he’d ever seen. The small homes were scattered haphazardly, and their occupants appeared migratory.

But he was forced to stay close to these settlements if he wanted to survive. They were always built close to clean water, and by following the subhumans’ pawprints, he was able to find fruit trees, now ripe as summer’s end.

As for the subhumans themselves, every single one ignored him, and after a while, Soren wondered if the horror stories about them had been extremely exaggerated. Despite their ghastly appearances, they did not seem dangerous. That being said, Soren was not about to take any chances. He kept his distance and never strayed too close to one of their huts. He walked their paths out of necessity, but he made himself scarce if any subhuman came bounding along.

There were fish in the river, which Soren occasionally managed to catch and kill with a well-aimed wind spell. Unfortunately, he had to eat these raw. Sileas had taught Soren many skills, but he’d never bothered to teach him how to make a fire. The sage himself probably hadn’t known, because he’d always used magic. The simplest fire or thunder spell would make a spark, and a decent spell could burn even damp wood. Back at the house, Soren had used matches when necessary, but he had none now. As the nights grew cooler, he wondered what he would do when autumn came.

 

As the weeks wore on and his body waned, Soren’s frustration and hatred of the subhumans intensified. Their ignoring him could indicate nothing but the fact that they had judged him and deemed him worthless. They saw him as nothing, and Soren couldn’t stand it. The people in Nevassa and Sileas’s village had been cruel, but at least they’d acknowledged his existence.

Eventually his hate burned low, becoming dying embers rather than leaping flames. It was too exhausting to be angry, and he didn’t have much energy left. Now that it was truly autumn, the fruit trees were empty, and even the fish seemed to have moved elsewhere. He was always hungry; his stomach always hurt. The nights were getting colder, and he was getting weaker. He could hardly sleep at night, terrified that he would never wake up, and so he was constantly exhausted. He felt sick. His mind wandered, and he lost track of the days.

If he felt clearheaded and brave enough, he would attempt to make his way north, but he never made it out of Gallia. Part of Soren wondered if Crimea even existed. He wondered if he had imagined it and Daein. Perhaps Gallia was the whole world, and perhaps there’d never been any other humans at all.

The rational part of Soren’s mind new these were nothing but nightmares. He told himself to trust his memory and his senses. He tried to be logical, but logic only told him that he would not survive much longer. He needed help, real food, a roof to sleep under, and directions back to civilization. He would do anything for that—even walk straight into a subhuman village. Eventually he did. 

Soren stumbled past a cottage, coming down the path that led to the apple trees, to a place where the subhumans tended to gather for communal chores. He tried to walk cautiously, but he was swaying on his feet. There were no warning growls. None of the subhumans transformed, or even looked in his direction. But on closer inspection, Soren noticed that their tails flicked restlessly and their ears were pointed toward him even if their eyes were not. They were quieter than usual. A female ushered its child away. So, they do see me, Soren thought and then reminded himself that of course they could—he was not yet a ghost.

He walked up to a motherly-looking tiger subhuman. It was standing with its hands splayed on its large hips, arms akimbo. It had tawny skin and dark green hair, ears, and tail. It showed no acknowledgment of his approach. Soren’s heart pounded as he opened his mouth to speak. But then he came to a horrifying realization: he couldn’t.

He took a step back. He shook his head. He looked up at the subhuman. He tried again but still couldn’t formulate the sounds. His heart raced even faster. He began gesturing like a madman. He waved his arms around, making motions to his mouth for food. He pointed to the subhuman and to himself, but it never even glanced at him. In a blind panic, Soren spun around and ran out of the village.

 

Once safely in the woods, he collapsed behind a fallen log and hugged his knees. He couldn’t speak. He never had before, but he hadn’t thought it was because he was unable. It had been a choice. He’d never had anyone to talk to. He’d never had any reason to speak. Galina and Sileas had always done the talking.

Soren’s head swam. The forest had never seemed so silent. He wondered franticly what his own voice sounded like. He tried again and again to say something, but only disjointed sounds and syllables came out. He could understand the language of Tellius perfectly—he could read and write it with ease—but Soren could not speak it.

Tears collected along the rim of his eyes, blotting out his already blurred vision. He had not cried in years, but now tears and mucus surged out of his eyes, nose, and mouth. The sobs took his breath away, and soon he fell unconscious.

 

When he awoke, his eyes felt puffy and painful, but they were dry again. Getting to his feet, he told himself his energy was better spent walking than crying. Right now, all he wanted was to put as much distance as possible between himself and the subhuman village.

He had no food and his canteen quickly ran dry, but he kept walking anyway. Spots swam in front of his eyes. He wondered if he would soon be a corpse like Sileas. He wondered if he would soon give off that putrid scent. He wondered what death would be like, and what really lay beyond, if anything. He wondered if Ashera would hate him like everyone else did.

Deep in these thoughts, Soren didn’t hear the rustling ahead. If he’d cared to notice, he would have realized it was not the heavy, careful footsteps of a subhuman.

“Hey,” said a cheerful voice. Soren whipped his head toward the sound, and the motion made his vision spin. He wobbled and was about to fall when a small, soft, warm hand grabbed his arm. “Careful!” warned the voice.

Soren’s vision cleared enough to reveal a boy standing in front of him. The boy was probably around his age, and he wore an oblivious smile on his round cheeks. His had dark blue hair, and his eyes were blue too, but lighter. These eyes were wide and unguarded, and Soren was baffled by them.

 The boy released his arm, and Soren was surprised to feel a twinge of sadness at the loss. He couldn’t remember the last time another person had willingly touched him, and it certainly hadn’t been this gently.

“My name is Ike,” the boy said, “I was looking for a good sword, but this one isn’t that good.” Soren noticed he was carrying a stick in his right hand. “Wanna help me find one?”

Soren didn’t understand, but he knew he wanted to stay with this other human being. He nodded.

“Oh, good!” the boy beamed, “Maybe you can find one too, and then we can fight each other. It’ll be fun.”

Soren nodded again—anything to keep Ike from leaving him alone.

The boy started off through the woods, scanning the forest floor for worthy weapons and batting aside bushes left and right with his stick. Soren followed, concentrating hard on staying upright and not falling behind. Ike glanced back. “This is fun, isn’t it? Um, hey what’s your name anyway?”

Soren desperately wanted to answer. All he needed to do was say one word, the word that defined him: his name. Why can’t I just say my name? he lamented.

Ike waited. “Can’t you talk?” he asked, cocking his head.

“S-sh-so-sor-enn,” Soren strained.

“Sore end?” Ike laughed, “That’s a funny name.”

“So-ren,” Soren repeated, more smoothly this time.

“Oh, okay.” Ike smiled widely, showing off two gaps from missing teeth. “Well come on, Soren!” He set off once again in search of a good stick, and it did not take long this time. Ike held his chosen stick high in the air. “Yay! This one is perfect! Now I should probably go back. Momma told me not to wander off.” He made a devious-looking face. “She is going to be mad.” With a laugh, he started walking back toward the path.

Soren hesitated but then trailed after Ike again. He was wary of meeting another person, especially an adult who may not be as naively accepting of Soren’s presence as Ike.

“Come on!” Ike’s pace quickened when the road widened and the trees thinned. “We can find you a sword after lunch.”

Soren’s stomach groaned hollowly at the word.

Ike turned around and tilted his head. “Oh, you must be hungry,” he observed, as if the thought had just occurred to him. Setting down his chosen stick, he looped something off his back. It appeared to be a box made of thin wood and fastened with two cloth straps for his shoulders. Undoing a leather fastener, he lifted the top, and Soren was instantly overwhelmed by the smell of food. “Here, you can have my lunch right now if you want.”

Ike withdrew a handkerchief, and Soren stared as he placed each of the contents on it like a tiny picnic. Tightly packed in the box was a shiny red apple, a wedge of white cheese in wax paper, a heel of crunchy bread, a slice of smoked sausage, and a tin of marinated carrots. Lastly the boy removed a small glass bottle of what appeared to be creamy milk and a round pastry sticky with honey and wrapped in paper. All of these things had been so neatly packed into the box, Soren found himself wondering who had created such a microcosm of beauty for this blue-haired boy and why they had done it.

Ike watched Soren stare at the food. “It’s okay. You can have it. My momma will make me another one if I say I lost it.”

He still didn’t move.

“It’s okay,” Ike repeated. “If you’re hungry you should eat something. You don’t have your own food, do you?”

Soren shook his head.

“What’s the problem then? Do you not like carrots? You don’t have to eat them if you don’t like them. I don’t really like them, but Father makes me eat them anyway.”

Soren finally kneeled. He reached for the carrots first.

Ike grinned. “Father says that I have to eat them if I want to grow up to be big and strong like him. He’s really strong, you know. He can fight with a real sword, and it’s really sharp and really heavy.”

Ike continued to prattle away while Soren rapidly devoured the meal.

“Wow, you ate so fast!” Ike said when he finished. Soren licked the remnants of honey off his dirty hands. “Ew.” He made a face. “Maybe you shoulda washed your hands first. Momma’s always telling me to wash my hands before I eat, but sometimes I don’t.”

Soren lowered his hands, suddenly feeling self-conscious. He was covered in dirt from head to toe, and he had pine needles in his knotted hair.

Ike placed the tin, bottle, handkerchief, and spent paper to the box and donned it again. Soren considered the fact that his claim that he’d lost the box would not make sense if he returned with it and not the food, but he couldn’t point this out because he couldn’t speak.

“C’mon, let’s go back to town.” Ike stood again and retrieve his stick. “Momma’s sure gonna be mad I’ve been gone so long.”

Soren turned his gaze down the road. As expected, Ike was leading him to a human village, but Soren was suddenly unsure whether he wanted to go with him. He meekly followed the boy’s confident steps, but when the sounds and smells of the town reached him, he froze.

He heard distant voices chatting and calling, even though he could not isolate the exact words. It was the noise of a human town: regular people going about their regular lives. The voices were not angry, or fearful, or bent under the pressure of hatred, but Soren knew how voices could change when their owners set eyes on him. He had become used to it, but suddenly, he had trouble accepting it.

For the first time in his life, Soren had been shown nothing but kindness from another person. But if Soren entered this town with him, Ike would soon learn from his parents, neighbors, and peers that he’d been wrong to treat Soren so well. He would learn that Soren was not his equal, and he would never look at Soren with those unguarded eyes again.

“What’s the matter?” Ike asked, turning around in the middle of the road.

Soren hesitated and then shook his head.

“Aren’t you coming?”

Soren shook his head again.

“Oh, do you not live in town?” he asked, as if his were perfectly acceptable.

Soren nodded slowly.

“Where do you live then?” he asked curiously.

Soren hesitated, and then just pointed sideways, into the woods. It was the only answer he had.

Ike cocked his head. “That’s silly,” he admonished. “Why don’t you come with me instead?” He extended one hand, holding the palm up.

Soren imagined he could still feel its warm touch on his arm. He wanted to take it; his fingers twitched. But then he shook his head.

“Okay then,” Ike sighed, and Soren was surprised to see how sad the boy had become. “Can I come back and play tomorrow?” he asked hopefully—a ray of light in his sudden melancholy.

Soren nodded once, and Ike seemed to perk up. “I’ll bring more to eat next time,” he promised. “Meet me here at the same time as today.”

Soren nodded again.

Ike grinned widely, and a moment later, he was running back into town. Soren waited until Ike disappeared and then slunk into the woods. He didn’t want to be seen by anyone else.

 

Over the next few days, Soren circled the town, memorizing all of the paths that came to and from it. The north side of the village overlooked a small cliff, beyond which stretched fields and pastures surrounded by low stone walls. This was an agrarian town, unlike Sileas’s village, and perhaps this self-sufficiency was the reason this one survived when others had been abandoned. Soren avoided the people who lived here, only revealing himself to Ike in the same part of the woods every day or so.

 

At night he wandered in the town’s fields, although he avoided the pastures where shepherds kept their tired eyes on tree line. He was able to steal enough food to supplement what Ike gave him, and he gradually regained a little strength.

Meanwhile he devoted much of each day to practicing his speech. Upon pronouncing his name to Ike, he’d realized he was not unable to speak. In retrospect it was obvious—he’d been speaking the ancient language for years now. It was only the modern tongue he found difficult, and even when he managed to utter a sentence from beginning to end, he found it contained the wobbly vowels of the ancient language. Many of the consonants were slurred in order to sound more like the incantation of spells, and certain sounds that did not exist in the ancient language were particularly troublesome.

However, Soren was persistent. He told himself that if he perfected his ability to speak, perhaps he would be able to enter the village unafraid. Perhaps if he could utter the word ‘help,’ people would look on him with pity instead of disgust. He clung to this idea, even while he doubted it. And although he practiced many words, ‘help’ was not one of them. If he dared try to speak the word, he was transported back to the subhuman village. Terror would seize his throat, and he wouldn’t be able to make a sound.

After two weeks, Soren had grown quite used to his routine. His speech had become passable, and yet he still didn’t speak when Ike visited and still didn’t walk into town. He felt as if he were waiting for something, but he didn’t know what.

 

His routine was interrupted one day when Soren heard a child’s voice in the woods and quickened his pace to reach Ike, who seemed early today. But it was not Ike at all, and he realized this fact only when he’d revealed himself to the three young boys playing between the roots of an ancient tree. Their carousing stopped as soon as they saw Soren, and the one who had been speaking fell silent mid-sentence.

Soren stared at the boys, and the boys stared at Soren.

“Who the heck are you?” the biggest one asked incredulously.

“Careful, Hedwin, he might be a subhuman,” the smallest one whispered urgently.

“This pipsqueak? No way!” the big one—Hedwin—took three steps forward, and Soren took a cautious step back.

“He’s weird alright,” the third and final boy observed. “What’s that on his face?”

“Hey what’s that on your face?” the big one, Hedwin, demanded.

Soren’s heart was beating fast now that he had been discovered. Realizing he had no chance of fending off these children, he determined his best option was to lose them in the woods. So, without another second’s hesitation, Soren ran.

“Hey!” Hedwin cried, and the crunching footsteps behind Soren indicated the boy was giving chase.

“Get him!” called the smallest one’s voice, its breathlessness and nearness indicating that he was also in pursuit.

“Don’t let him get away!” shouted the third boy, also panting.

Soren did not get far before the big kid tackled him to the ground. Soren wriggled and kicked, but he was no match for the youngest in this group, let alone the oldest. He realized he had miscalculated, forgetting to take into account these boys’ longer legs. There’d never been any chance of escape.

Hedwin got his knee on his stomach, and Soren scratched with both hands trying to get him off. In return, Hedwin laid one fat fist into his cheek. But Soren had been beaten by adults too many times for this meager punch to dissuade him from fighting, so he continued to scrabble, push, and pull to get away. Meanwhile Hedwin punched the side of his head and his eye twice.

The last one really hurt, and Soren stopped fighting in order to lay both his arms over his face. The other two boys were laughing, and one of them was doing a little dance while alternatingly trying to step on Soren’s kicking feet. Hedwin, meanwhile, was trying to prise away Soren’s skinny arms. It wasn’t hard, and the moment they were gone, he delivered a blow to the other side.

Soren tried to form a wind spell, aware that his tome was on the ground beside him, but he couldn’t get out more than a word.

“What’s he mumbling about?” one of the kids asked.

“Is he really trying to scare us with that mumbo-jumbo?” said the other.

“Well it ain’t scaring me,” Hedwin laughed.

Soren was ready to give up when he heard something the other boys hadn’t yet noticed: the high-pitched keen of a child’s battle cry. Looking past Hedwin, Soren could see Ike running and screaming from a long way off. The boy’s hands were outstretched all the while. A moment later, the boys realized what the sound was and turned to watch Ike run toward them. Hedwin shifted his weight so that it pressed down on the point of his knee, right into Soren’s kidney.

“Not that kid,” Hedwin spat.

“Well if it isn’t Ike the Dunce,” observed the middle-sized boy.

“What’s he doing here?” the youngest groaned.

Although they seemed unconcerned by his charge, Ike continued to holler, and he only ran faster as he approached.

“Shut up, kid, you’ll yell yourself hoarse!” Hedwin called.

Ike, however, did not stop screaming; nor did he slow down or change direction. He barreled right into the middle-sized kid, much to his surprise. “Hey, stop it!” he shouted when Ike was on top of him, hitting him and pulling his hair.

Ike never stopped yelling once. He was a furry of tiny blows even while the youngest boy tried to wrap his arms under Ike’s armpits and pull him off.

“Grab him!” Hedwin ordered and sprung off of Soren to help.

Soren immediately curled into a fetal position and willed the latent pain in his abdomen to go away. From his vantage point on the ground, he could see the two younger boys pinning Ike’s arms and legs to the ground while Hedwin started wailing on him in much the same way he had just assaulted Soren’s face.

His first thought was that Ike had been stupid to charge in here when he was clearly outmatched and especially stupid to be continuously yelling like that. It was accomplishing nothing except tiring him out. Ike had barreled into the situation with absolutely no plan, and now he was paying the price.

Those were Soren’s first thoughts, but as soon as they had flickered through his mind, they were replaced with one, more important thing: Ike needed his help. No one had ever needed Soren’s help before. On the other hand, no one had come to Soren’s rescue before either, no one but Ike.

Uncurling and getting to his knees, Soren seized his wind tome with shaking hands. Then getting to his feet, he started reciting the incantation with more fervor than ever before. He shouted the words at the top of his lungs, and a gust of wind blew Hedwin right off of Ike. The boy actually tumbled over Ike’s head and landed on his face. The other two boys loosened their grip in shock.

Ike immediately fought free and tackled the youngest to the ground. Now Ike was the one punching. Hedwin, meanwhile, was rounding on Soren. “What. Did. You. Just. Do!” He demanded as if each word were a threat. He stalked toward Soren while the middle-sized boy wacked Ike in the ear with a stick to get him off of the other one.

Soren stared Hedwin down and began incanting again. This time he spoke more quietly, but with as much focus as he could muster. He willed this spell to sharpen and sent is flying at Hedwin’s fat face.

The boy didn’t know to anticipate an attack, and he couldn’t see the gust coming. It set him flying into the dirt again, this time tearing four long scratches from his nose, across his cheek, and through his ear. He clamped his hands over the wound, suddenly sobbing and rocking back and forth.

The other two boys froze when they saw their leader crying like a baby. With one look at Soren, they both ran to Hedwin’s side. “I knew it,” squeaked the youngest. “I knew he there was something not right about that kid!”

“Let’s get out of here!” the middle-sized boy yelled. He grabbed Hedwin’s arm, yanking him up and pulling him along. All three boys were gone in an instant.

“You’d better run!” Ike called victoriously, fist in the air. His lip was split and he spat a glob of bloody saliva in the dirt, but he was smiling.

Soren stared as if seeing him for the first time.

 “What was that?” Ike turned to him. “That was amazing!”

Soren closed his tome and tucked it under his arm. “W-win mash-gic,” he said carefully.

“Hey, I thought you couldn’t talk?” Ike replied slyly, as if he were being tricked (but also as if he didn’t particular mind if he were).

“No-t well,” Soren answered.

Ike was still beaming about their victory. “We’re a pretty good team, aren’t we?”

Soren hesitated but then nodded. He had just noticed that Ike was missing an additional tooth. He pointed to his own mouth to signify this. “D-t-tooth,” he said.

Ike immediately touched the gap. His eyes widened. “We’ve got to find it!” he said excitedly. “I’ve been waiting ages for that one to come out!” He immediately began searching the forest floor.

Soren cocked his head in confusion. But Ike wasn’t looking at him, so he had to ask outright: “Why?”

“The tooth fairy, of course!” he said. “Don’t you know about the tooth fairy?”

Soren shook his head.

“It’s a magical spirit that gives you a coin or a piece of candy for your old teeth,” Ike explained. “But I can’t put it under my pillow if I don’t have it!” He seemed genuinely distressed, and although Soren realized this was one of those silly fairytales parents tell their children, he decided not to tell Ike this for fear of distressing him further. He owed Ike for saving him today, so he set his eyes on the ground and helped him search.

 

Upon finding the tooth, Ike placed it in his lunch box and the two boys divided the food as they normally did. Now that the adrenaline had left him, Ike was clearly feeling his injuries and kept touching his bruised face. Soren wasn’t feeling well either, but he refrained from touching the scratches and bruises because he knew that was only going to make them hurt more.

“Mom’s going to be mad at me for getting into a fight,” Ike moaned after a while. “And I just know stupid Heddy is just going to say we started it. He always says that, and because he says it first, the grown-ups believe him. He’s probably back telling stories and crying like a baby right now.” Ike angrily crumbled his piece of bread instead of eating it.

Soren could hardly stand to see the waste of food, but he had more important thoughts on his mind right. He turned his face toward town, suddenly afraid a troop of adults would come marching through the trees at any second. What will they do if they find me? he wondered. There had been a chance before that they would show him pity, but now that he’d maimed one of their own? He didn’t want to imagine what his punishment would be.

Perhaps Ike noticed the sudden panic consuming him, because he leaned forward as if concerned. “You okay?”

Soren didn’t answer.

“Are you worried about getting into trouble too?”

Soren nodded.

“It’s okay,” Ike consoled, patting his head in a way that made Soren go rigid. “I’ve been in trouble loads of time before. It’s not that bad.” Ike patted his head two more times before settling back down.

Soren felt like a spell had been broken and he could finally move. He stared at the little naïve boy and could hardly believe such a foolishly endearing child could possibly exist.

 

Ike returned to his people, and Soren set about erasing any sign of his presence. He didn’t know how long it would take the men of Ike’s village to set up a search party and seek out the perpetrator of their boys’ attack. But he doubted he would have more than an hour, and his time spent with Ike had already taken away from that window.

Not daring to wait a moment longer, Soren climbed a tree he’d previously selected for an event such as this, intending to curl himself into a hollow above two think branches. He had sought out a potential hiding place and marked this tree in his memory on one of his first days here. That being said, Soren now wished he’d practiced the climb more often in the past two weeks, because climbing was not his forte and he struggled to pull his small frame over limb after limb of the half-dead tree. The hollow was about twenty feet up, and he knew falling from this height would mean his death.

When he finally reached the depression of relative safety, he curled around his tome, wrapped his cloak around his body, and finally tested the wounds left by the other kids. He grimaced at the pain, but it was necessary to determine how serious the cuts and bruises might be. He’d just determined they were not too serious at all, when he heard men’s voices below.

“I’m telling you it’s subhumans! We can’t take ‘em with pitchforks and whatnot. We need real weapons.”

“That would be against the rules,” someone growled in a deep voice. “We must not incite violence.”

“Incite violence?” returned a third voice. “They started it by attacking one of us!”

“Well, we don’t know that for certain,” someone offered timidly.

“You saw those claw marks same as anyone!”

“Those weren’t claw marks—your stupid kid probably just got whacked in the face with a branch. Now he’s embarrassed and making up stories.”

“Hedwin wouldn’t do such a thing!”

“Ike was there too, wasn’t he, Greil? What did he say?”

“He claims to have bested young Hedwin on his own,” the deep, calm voice replied.

“That’s a laugh!”

“That boy lives in a daydream.”

“Perhaps,” the man—Greil—answered. “Or perhaps he is lying to protect someone.”

Soren peeked from his hiding place and finally saw the men whose conversation he was overhearing. There were six of them, all holding some sort of makeshift weapon ranging from a woodcutting ax to a field hoe. The man who had just been speaking was one of the tallest among them. He walked with the posture of a soldier, and yet he lazily carried his shovel over his shoulder as if he had no intention of using it. The other men gripped their tools tightly, even those trying to hide their nervousness. This was the first time Soren had seen a member of Ike’s family, and he watched the man closely.

“Who could be out here if not a subhuman?” asked one of the other men, shivering.

“Maybe someone from the other villages?”

“The villages are all but gone,” another shot back. “We shouldn’t even be here anymore.”

“Take yer family and go, then,” grumbled someone else. “Who needs ya.”

“Nobody’s leaving,” someone argued back. “Don’t let a little boy scare you with stories of ghouls in the woods.”

“He and the others really shouldn’t have been out here anyway,” someone asserted with the smug tone. “Maybe now they’ll think twice before wandering away from town.”

The voices became muffled and harder to pick out now that they’d passed Soren’s tree and moved on. Their conversation disappeared, and Soren breathed a sigh of relief.

He did not see the men nor hear their voices again for the rest of the day or night, but he remained in his hiding place until the next morning anyway. He was exhausted, having not slept for fear of falling, and he was parched with thirst. His body ached from the beating, and his stomach was empty again.

 Ike did not reappear that day, and Soren wondered, not for the first time, why he was still here. He knew Crimea lay to the north. He needed only to keep to the right paths this time and he would eventually find his way to the human world. Ike had demonstrated that people were capable of being kind, even if he was only one boy.

Soren found himself hoping for something more than pity; Ike had made him dream of acceptance. Perhaps it was for that reason Soren did not want to leave without saying goodbye. Or perhaps it was because Ike had lied to try to protect him from the adults, and he wanted to understand why.

 

Two more days passed, and Soren survived by stealing from the town’s fields and storehouses. There was no increased security, and the search party never returned to the woods. It seemed the townspeople did not believe Hedwin’s injury was due to either a bloodthirsty subhuman or a strange boy-mage living in the woods, and Soren was glad for their skepticism.

On the third day, Soren finally saw Ike again, but the boy was not in the part of the forest where they usually met. Soren was on his way there after trying to catch crawfish by turning over rocks in the stream. His hands and feet were numb from the cold water, and he was stumbling with his fists in his armpits when he heard the boy humming nearby.

Soren had learned caution after the brawl, and he approached as quietly as he could on his numb, clumsy feet. Luckily it truly was Ike. The boy was swatting away ferns with a new stick he undoubtedly imagined was a mighty blade. 

Soren was struck by how relieved he was to see him again, and he silently observed the yellow tinge the bruises on his face had taken as they healed. Soren had no doubt he looked the same way, and the fact that they shared such a quality filled him with a strange warmth.

“Oh, hey!” Ike called when he saw him. “I was looking for you!”

Soren cocked his head. “Amon the fe-rns?”

Ike grinned. “Well, I never know where you are, silly-head.”

Soren noticed the boy wasn’t wearing his lunch box today, and he was a little disappointed. “You’re fah-far from t-town,” he observed. He did not know if it was his chilled limbs or his usual difficulty with the language that caused him to stutter, but he was embarrassed nonetheless. He surprised himself by wanting Ike not to think he was stupid or nervous.

Ike, however, didn’t seem to care. “Oh, I didn’t come from town today,” he said brightly. “Momma and Mist and me are having a picnic!”

Soren became tense when he realized there may be other people around. He wasn’t worried about Mist, who he knew from Ike’s stories was his four-year-old sister. But if Ike’s mother was nearby, she would undoubtedly put the pieces together and understand Soren was the one who had scratched that bully’s face. She may even blame him for her son’s own injuries. People tended to blame Soren for everything, and she had probable cause.

“What’s wrong?” Ike asked, noticing the change that had overcome him.

He just shook his head. He couldn’t explain. 

“Are you hungry again?” the boy asked. “You should have lunch with us!”

Soren’s widening eyes were his only response.

“Don’t worry,” Ike laughed, “My momma is the nicest in the whole world. She won’t mind at all.”

Soren shook his head.

“Please?” Ike surprised Soren by dropping the stick in order to intertwine his fingers beseechingly. “It would be fun! And you can meet my momma and Mist—though I don’t know why you’d want to meet Mist. She’s just a pain.”

Soren shook his head again.

Now Ike appeared sad. “Why don’t you want to?” He picked up his stick again and halfhearted whacked another fern. “Don’t you get lonely out here? My momma is really, really nice, and I know she would wanna help you too. And then you won’t have to be hungry and dirty and all alone anymore.” Soren glanced down at his matted clothes and grit-encrusted skin. The dip in the stream had only moved the dirt around rather than washing it off. “Isn’t that better?” Ike finished earnestly.

Soren was struck by Ike’s words, just as he was by so much of what the boy had to say. He truly was unlike anyone he’d ever met. No one had ever cared if Soren was hungry or dirty, let alone cared if he felt lonely. In fact, he had never even thought about it himself.

The fact of the matter was that Soren did not know how long he would be able to survive by himself, especially with winter coming. He probably would have died already if not for Ike bringing him food regularly. If there was a chance his mother was anything like her son, Soren knew he should take the risk. He finally gave one slow nod.

Ike stared at him incredulously. “Are you changing your mind?”

Soren nodded again.

“You’re really gonna come on the picnic!”

He nodded a final time, and in his excitement, Ike seized his arm and began pulling him through the sea of ferns. “This is great! Momma’s gonna love you, I know it.”

Soren let Ike lead him to a meadow he had not even known was around here. In some places it grew tall and wild with leaning stalks of goldenrod and feathery fountain grass. Soren could already hear the bees buzzing over the heavy tufts of yellow flowers. But where the grass was shorter, chrysanthemums bloomed profusely, and this was where a woman was kneeling on a large red blanket. She had blue hair and eyes just like Ike’s, and her expression was serene as she set out the items she withdrew from her basket and cast occasional glances toward her daughter, who was picking the chrysanthemums into a bouquet. The little girl had the same sandy brown hair Soren had seen on her father’s head. Her tiny hands couldn’t hold all the flowers she endeavored to pluck, and they fell out of her grasp even as she attempted to collect more.

Her mother laughed and pulled the girl into a giggling embrace. “Mist, my darling, despite your determination, I’m afraid you won’t be able to pick the entire meadow!” She tickled her daughter, and the flowers fell all around her lap, spilling onto the edge of the blanket. Mist giggled uncontrollably.

Ike drew nearer, and the woman let her daughter roll away to give her son a disapproving frown. “Ike, I told you not-” Her reprimand caught in her throat when she saw Soren.

He hesitated, noting the surprise in her eyes, which turned to wariness when her gaze lingered on his forehead. But Ike grasped his hand and pulled him the rest of the way.

“Hello, child,” the woman said kindly, hiding whatever caution had filled her eyes a moment ago. When Soren did not reply, she turned to her son. “Ike, honey, who is this?”

“This is Soren,” Ike answered. “He’s my friend from the woods!”

This was clearly difficult for the woman to grasp. “Your friend from the woods is not imaginary?” she wondered aloud, and then seeming to realize something, she exclaimed, “Wait, you really have been wandering into the woods this whole time?”

Ike looked appropriately contrite. He dropped Soren’s hand into order the rub his fingers together. “Well, I did say…” he wiled.

“I thought it was one of your games!” the woman scolded, pushing her hair out of her face with the palm of her hand. “That’s very dangerous, Ike!”

“It wasn’t dangerous until stupid Heddy copied me,” he grumbled.

“There are bears in the woods,” his mother continued. “You must promise to stop wondering away from town on your own!”

“But Soren lives in the woods, and he’s okay.”

The woman turned her full attention to him now, and her eyes searched his before continuing. “I am sorry for my rudeness, Soren. My name is Elena. I’m Ike’s mother. It’s nice to meet you.” She held out her hand, but Soren was too afraid to take it. People refrained from touching him whenever possible, and no adult had ever offered him a handshake before. Even though she had instigated the pleasantry, Soren could not stand to see her recoil from his touch, not with Ike watching. Eventually Elena dropped her hand.

“Why don’t you boys take a seat.” She patted the blanket where Mist had just been rolling around. Now that the little girl’s bout of giggles had subsided, she was standing behind her mother, staring at Soren shyly.

Ike sat cross-legged and pulled Soren down beside him. He then leaned curiously over the array of food, but his mother tapped his hand discouragingly before he could touch one of the pastries. “We’ll have lunch after we sort this out,” she declared, and Ike pouted. “Now, Soren, are you parents around? I’d love to speak with them.”

He shook his head.

“Where are they then?” she continued pleasantly.

Soren realized he would have to speak. This was what he’d been practicing for after all. He took a steadying breath and began: “I don have parens.” He managed the full sentence, but the pronunciation and intonation were still off. He glanced down, embarrassed. 

But Elena misunderstood the reason for his sudden downcast eyes. “Oh, honey, it’s okay,” she crooned, reaching out.

Now it was Soren who recoiled, perhaps irrationally afraid of her touch.

Elena withdrew her hand, and her expression became more thoughtful. “I’ve changed my mind,” she announced. “You look hungry, so let’s eat first and talk later.”

“Yippee, lunch time!” Mist wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck in a morbid-looking hug.

Elena merely prised off her arms to kiss her hands and then twisted around to sweep her into her lap. “This is Ike’s friend Soren, Mist,” she said. “Won’t you say hello?”

“Hello,” Mist said obediently, albeit shyly. She waved and then scrambled out of her mother’s lap to take her place by the picnic basket. Elena leaned over and finished extracting the last of its contents.

When she was done, a feast was laid on the red blanket: half-wheels of two different cheeses, a jar of sugared cranberries, a canvas bag full of fresh persimmons, five links of sausage, a tin of salty fish, a long stick of yeasty-smelling bread, and of course the apple-filled pastries Ike had been eyeing since he sat down. Last to emerge was a large bottle of milk and a bladder of fresh water.

Ike and Mist dug right in, and Soren’s empty stomach urged him to do the same. Elena ate sparingly, and he knew her eyes were on him. “Not so fast,” she whispered, “I know you’re hungry, child, but you can make yourself sick eating too quickly. Here, drink more water. Slowly now.”

Soren was confused by her ministrations, but he obeyed her gentle orders.

For the first time in a long time, Soren was able to eat until his stomach was full, and just as Elena had cautioned, he did feel queasy. He sat on the blanket and wished he could go to sleep. But the woman was still watching him, and he knew she would want answers now. Mist was playing with the flowers at the edge of the blanket, and Ike was watching her, looking ready to dose off himself.

“Soren,” Elena began, but then catching herself she asked, “It is Soren right?”

He nodded.

Elena scooted closer and curled her legs so she was comfortable. “Did you have enough to eat?”

He nodded again. 

“That’s good.” She smiled. “Now, Soren, I need you to tell me what you’re doing here. Are you lost?”

Soren hesitated but then nodded. Elena waited for more, so Soren tried to explain. “I came from an- a villi-villa-village.” He gestured vaguely toward the east. “I was tryin t-to go toh- to Curi-Cri-Crimi-Crimea.” He dropped his head in his hands, embarrassed and just about ready to give up on saying anything ever again.

“Do you have family in Crimea?” Elena asked hopefully.

He shook his head.

“What about your village? Why did you leave?”

Soren shook his head again, but he knew that wouldn’t suffice. He prepared for the torture of failed communication once more. “My win mashgic mash-mas-masterr diud-died.”

Elena’s mouth made a small o-shape as if she suddenly understood something. “Do you know wind magic, Soren?”

He nodded and looped the satchel off his shoulder. Showing her the cover of the book, he was relieved when she didn’t try to take it from him.

Instead she asked, “Did a boy named Hedwin do that to your face?”

Soren nodded slowly. As much trouble as he may be, he had a feeling lying would make it worse.

Elena’s expression, however, was more sympathetic than accusing. “That little tyrant got you and Ike both,” she sighed. “Did you scratch him with wind magic?”

Soren nodded again, and to his surprise, she said, “You must be a good shot. That’s impressive at your age.” Then she shook her head. “However, you must know magic is not a weapon to be used lightly. I don’t know what your late master taught you, but those are dangerous spells you carry. Hedwin could have lost his eye. I know he is a bully, but he is a child still.”

Soren refused to nod contritely. Instead he frowned and said, “He was hur-ing Ike.”

Elena glanced over her shoulder at where her son was lazily piling flowers on Mist’s head. The little girl was already asleep. “Then I suppose I understand,” she said quietly. Turning back to Soren, she said, “And thank you. You’ve been a true friend to Ike, and he doesn’t have many of those.”

Soren said nothing. He did not know if he qualified as a ‘true friend,’ having not known Ike for very long. The basis of their relationship was that Soren bummed food from the boy in return for listening to his prattle and saying nothing. He did not think that constituted ‘true friendship,’ and yet he couldn’t help but like the sound of it. Soren had never had a friend before.

 “I want to help you,” Elena continued, rubbing a hand against her chin as if in thought. “But I’m not sure how. What were you planning to do when you got to Crimea?”

Soren just shrugged. In truth, he had no real plan.

Elena’s mouth twitched in concern. “How long ago did your master die?”

Soren had not been counting the days since leaving Sileas’s village, so he shrugged again.

“Days?” she asked hopefully.

Soren shook his head.

“Weeks?” she asked in disbelief.

Soren hesitated but then shook his head again. He was not fond of guessing games, so he said simply, “May-be two mu-months.”

Elena’s eyes widened. “It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long,” she said, her voice heavy with gratitude and fear.

Soren didn’t know how to reply, so he said and did nothing.

“You mustn’t stay on your own anymore,” she continued firmly. “Why didn’t you come into the village? We could have helped you.”

Soren hesitated but then answered honestly: “B-p-peop-ul ha-e- hate me.” Hearing the words aloud hurt more than he’d expected. Despite the pain, he found himself saying it again, clearer this time: “People ha-e me.”

To Soren’s astonishment, tears budded in Elena’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Soren,” she said, raising a hand to wipe away the moisture. “I truly am sorry you’ve had to suffer so much.”

Soren could hardly believe what he was seeing. No one had every cried over him before. He didn’t even know this woman, and she certainly didn’t know him. He wondered if he was dreaming or imagining things. He wracked his brain to try to find some detail he was missing. Perhaps there was something obvious he had misunderstood or overlooked. But he could find no explanation. Finally, he had to admit this woman was just like Ike, or rather Ike as an he would be as adult. She wasn’t a naïve child, but she had the same open heart. Soren had never seen anything like it before.

“I know you’re afraid,” she finally said, “But I would very much like you to come back to town with me and Ike. I want to introduce you to my husband, Ike’s father. Together, we’ll find a way to help you. Could you…accept that from us?”

Soren did not answer right away, as he was busy weighing the risks. If this woman was as honest and well-intentioned as she seemed, going with her could be the right decision. It was unlikely the other villagers would be as accepting or forgiving of his attack on the Hedwin boy, but it was possible she could protect him from the others. Possible, but not certain. If her husband was like her, then the odds of safety were higher. Soren thought back to what he had heard Greil say in the woods the other day. He’d been calmer than the rest. He’d sounded reasonable: “That would be against the rules. We must not incite violence,” he had said. “He claims to have bested young Hedwin on his own… Perhaps he is lying to protect someone.” Recalling that voice, Soren dared to hope Ike’s father would be as patient and welcoming as his wife and son.

On the other hand, there was a possibility that Elena was not as honest or as well-intentioned as she seemed. Soren searched for explanations ranging from purely baiting him to force him to enter the town and pay for his crime, to the possibility that this town may provide subsidies to families who have more mouths to feed. Perhaps she wanted to pocket the money at his expense. However, he knew the likelihood of such a policy was extremely low. The chances that she intended to sell him as slave labor or use him for his skills as a wind mage were also minimal. In the end, he decided to air on the side of hope. “Okay,” he finally answered.