Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Jigsaw ❯ Tione Leaves Sheste ( Chapter 1 )

CHAPTER ONE
"There’s more than one way to skin a Gullas Sandcat… but none of them are highly recommended."
-Caslon Freermon, 101 More Things Not to Do on a Rainy Day

Once upon a time, a girl named Tione ran away from home.
Tione was a very ordinary girl who lived in the very ordinary village of Sheste in the magical, fully-interlocking land of Jigsaw, a magnificent place where very ordinary girls never stay ordinary for very long. However, it was true that Sheste was not among the most exciting of Jigsaw’s cities. In Urph Nilbottom’s “50 Places in Jigsaw to Avoid” it received an honorable mention, and the Jigsaw Chamber of Commerce amicably lists it in its guide to the kingdom’s smaller towns and villages as “a little burg on the east end of the kingdom to get away from it all.” It was far from any enchanted castles or haunted temples and even further from Sela, the capital city where all great magicians got their start. Even living in a crowded and chaotic place like the Inter-City or the crime-filled Analerna would be better than living in Sheste. This is what Tione Larion told everybody, even those who didn’t ask her, or for that matter didn’t seem to want to hear about it.
Every morning the sun rose over the distant Silver Mountain range to the west and sent warm rays of sunshine spilling out over the land and seemed to finally deliver light to Sheste as an afterthought. It was a local joke that perhaps one day that Iur’then, the god of light, may one day forget about Sheste. Tione didn’t find it at all funny.
She rubbed her eyes as she stumbled down the main street back from the market. She’d been up for a couple hours, sent out from her little hovel to buy potatoes and any cheap cuts of meat from the butcher, but there had been a gryphon or something outside all night. It had screeched and caterwauled and she had barely got any sleep. Now the gryphon had left and given way to a more familiar screeching sound.
"Tione!"
Tione moaned. The world seemed to be against her. Again. She cursed the gryphon, the bright sunlight, and as she did every morning, her family. Why couldn’t she have a nice, stable family instead of a family full wicked step-relatives? How she got so many, Tione didn’t know. And even worse, for her troubles Tione had never received footwear made of glass or carriages made of giant vegetables. And Tione’s family history was apparently very confusing, because any questions that she had about her familial ties that she dared to ask never got answered.
Tione’s family was actually two families, most of whom lived in Sheste: the Larions and the Dh’runs. Her own family were supportive as a poor family can be, but this was overshadowed by all of the wicked step-relatives. She had more wicked step-aunts and wicked step-uncles than she could count, and all of them wicked daughters and sons. Never, not even once, had Tione ever heard of a wicked step-cousin. But, just Tione’s luck, she had several. Even her fairy godmother was pretty nasty. Even that poor Cinderella girl in Juste only had three wicked step-sisters. Tione’s wicked step-grandmother, Jirae, was the worst of them.
"Tione! Get in here! Quick!" Jirae’s voice pierced the air like a broadsword. She didn’t bother to stick her head through the window of their little thatched roof home, just beckoned with her scrawny, wrinkled arm.
It was a horrible place to live, but what did she expect? The cracked windows, flimsy blankets, worm-infested furniture and uneven dirt floors were the trademark of the peasant–even in Jigsaw where all but the absolutely destitute had no real difficulty making ends meet. Jirae always would threaten her with magic, but Tione knew the threat was bogus; if Jirae could perform magic she would have used some to improve the state of the home. Tione would have loved to have learned magic, but the nearest school was in Cognito, and she’d never even gone beyond the overgrown fields surrounding the village. Tione supposed it wasn’t the worst life she could imagine, and she was seldom truly miserable, but rarely quite happy either.
“Happy?” many of her friends would say, usually over a large flagon of strong ale. “You wanna be happy? No one’s happy; happy’s reserved for shoemaker’s apprentices, youngest sons, long-lost princesses. We just live.”
Tione heard her step-grandmother calling her again, and wished Jirae could see her idly run a hand through her long brown hair and sweep it over one shoulder, count the gaps in the cobbled street or fidget with her brass necklace as if there were nothing in the world more important to do.
It was an odd thing, her necklace. It was one of the only things she owned that didn’t have some kind of practical use. It wasn’t especially pretty–it was about the size of a large coin and displayed a stylized “J” in the middle. It was worn and battered in ways that puzzled her. Dents covered its slightly tarnished surface, and part of it looked melted. Along the edges, tiny chunks of the metal had been chipped away in a few places, apparently by a sharp edge. She had no idea why, but she was told by her great-grandmother Elin to always keep it close to her.
She was suddenly aware of footsteps approaching her. Tione had always had an inexplicable awareness about her surroundings. “Looking at that thing again?”
Tione turned. Ladell, an older man living down the street, close to the library, was walking beside her.
“Jirae’s being a pain again,” Tione replied as if it were a logical reason.
Ladell chuckled. His brown hair that sat about his head in cheerful curls seemed to match his usual demeanor. “I see, I see.” Ladell took a deep breath. “Listen… Tione… you’ve been alone for your whole life… maybe things would look up if you… found someone?”
"Tione! Get in here now or I’ll turn you into a turtle and eat you for lunch!"
There she went with the threats. She’d realized they were emptier than an orc’s head when she was fourteen, and she was nineteen now. “She’s having an off day, Jirae,” Tione muttered, happy to change the subject. “Yesterday she said she’d give me to demons, and the day before that she’d turn me into a bottle of wine and drink me.”
“That is a good one,” Ladell agreed. “But Tione, about–”
“A boyfriend? Helping me over mud puddles, calling me inane pet names and making hyperbolic promises about the moon and the stars, all that?”
“Well…” Ladell coughed. “If that’s your type.”
Tione smiled. It didn’t sound too bad, but most of the guys Tione knew were the kinds of people she’d rather have a pint of ale with and tell crude jokes with. Hardly boyfriend material. “Maybe one day, Ladell.”
Ladell perked up. “Really?!”
Tione sighed. “Listen…”
“TIONE!”
"I’m coming!" Tione bade goodbye to her friend and poked her head through the window, tossing the potatoes onto the table at the center of the room. It, of course, was a single room with an area sectioned off for sleep by a dirty yellowed sheet. She winced as a couple potatoes rolled defiantly out of the sack, off the table, bounced off a chair and into the dirt. “What?!” It felt odd, her head in the dark, dingy house and the rest of her in the sun, caressed by the late morning breeze.
The face of Jirae appeared on the other side of the window, looking every bit like the caricaturish drawings of old hags, a dissatisfied frown set into her face like it was carved there, beady eyes thrown into shadow by a thick, wrinkled brow and a tall, narrow nose. “Pumpkin Seed, I found a few silvers under your mattress. Go buy some pork for the stew.”
Rage crept up Tione’s body and escaped through her mouth in a gasp. She should have known to better hide the coins she’d been saving. “I was saving for a new dress!” The one she had worn for years was once a soft lavender, but was now tattered, faded and stained. Paying a magician to magically restore it was out of the question, and now she was tired of the symbol of their poorness she was forced to drape over herself every day.
The old woman was unaffected. Instead, she handed Tione her own money with melancholy clinks against the old lady’s sharp nails. “Be sure to get one with a nice big bone in it. If you don’t hurry, it’ll be all gone, and I’ll have to turn you into–”
Tione dropped the coins into the big pocket at the front of her dress. “Okay, okay…” She emerged back out into the light and stomped back toward the marketplace. “…ugly old bag.”
Tione often wondered at what point the family had gone wrong. Once, she had endeavored to find out began asking around–her parents, aunt and uncle, cousins, even Jirae. It began with her great-grandmother Elin, was all she knew. No one would ever tell her anything about her ancestry beyond that–some reacted with careful secrecy like someone might be listening, and others with paranoia and guardedness. Of course, none of them blatantly refused to tell her anything, but maintained that they didn’t know themselves.
But today would be different. Elin was not only full of age-old knowledge, but kind enough to give this information to Tione; she was sure of it. She knew for sure that Elin would know what everybody else had been hiding all this time, and even better, she knew that she would tell her.
Most people were awake, now, and going about their business. Tione would sleep until noon if she could help it. Hopefully she could run her errand in time to walk to Elin’s on the edge of town without raising any suspicion. Jirae had never directly forbidden Tione to go there, but the two never seemed to like each other much, Jirae referring to Elin as “an idealistic hermit” and Elin to Jirae as “a shriveled bat’s turd.”
Tione was snapped out of her thoughts by the sound of a mandolin being strummed. "Not another traveling minstrel," Tione moaned. Why couldn’t traveling minstrels just stay where they were rather than strive to annoy all of Jigsaw?
Some people around her stopped to listen to the minstrel’s song, but most of them kept going about their business. The air was filled with "good morning to you," "isn’t this nice weather we’re having," and "here let me help you because you’re carrying two of those," which was much better than what she put up with at home, but barely a step up, because it was the same thing she heard every day. Living in Sheste was a kind of state of living somewhere between lethargic and legally dead, and there probably wasn’t another person in Sheste who could identify with how she felt about the way it was to live there.
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“Don&# 8217;t you want… you know, adventure?”
“Hey! Hey hey! No! Don’t say that word!”
“Why, what’s wrong with it?”
“Ask for adventure, one thing turns into another. Before you know it you end up breaking into song or falling in love.”
Once there was a boy named Aleric who never stayed in the same place for very long. When asked why this was, he always said that one who stays in the same place his entire life can never see the entire world. Although he was just twenty-four, he would claim to have seen every one of the seven thousand wonders of Jigsaw. Anyone who asked him or was there to hear him brag about it would hear that Aleric had been to every city in Jigsaw over ten times and had countless ladies in every one that would beg him to spend a night with her. Of course, he never hesitated to accept. Of course, while he had never had and never would have a steady girlfriend, he had plenty of "girl friends."
"And that’s all you really need, right, Moz?" Aleric asked.
"I dunno, Al," Moz shrugged. "Is a girl really worth it if she doesn’t care that you’ll be with some other girl the next night?"
"That’s exactly what I mean! Hey, that kind of relationship just doesn’t suit my lifestyle anyway," Aleric replied, taking a bite of the grul he had swiped from a stall five minutes ago. He knew that statement was dragon droppings; it was more like his lifestyle didn’t suit any of the girls he’d met. He was a freelance hero. It was dangerous, dirty work.
"Markets like this are full of girls who’d do anything for a good time, especially the ones here in Sheste. They’re all bored out of their minds, nothing to do around here but count clouds." Aleric wiped the grul juice off his chin with his shirt and spat out a seed. Aleric scanned the cobbled streets, the warm sunlight blocked out along the sides and down the center by the tattered canopies of shop stalls. The wide street was full of adults shouting out orders for various merchandise over the crowds to booths, children chasing each other wielding sticks, and the occasional obvious traveler. He looked past a hanging basket of chicken’s eggs and spied a pretty girl with long brown hair. "Like that one," he grinned. After tossing the core of his half-eaten fruit over his shoulder, he put up his arm and waved. "Hey, you!"
The girl turned around. "Me?"
Aleric nodded and made a gesture. "Yeah, you. Come over here."
"You know her?" Moz asked.
"No. That ever stop me before?” Aleric said, keeping his eyes on the girl while tidying his blond hair with his hand. Aleric almost laughed at the thought of what his parents in Florda would think of him if they could see him now. He lived the good life. Wasn’t it everyone’s dream to go and do whatever he wanted and never have to answer to anyone?
The girl approached Aleric and put a hand on her hip. The girl wasn’t especially pretty, but she wasn’t ugly either. She was more scrawny than thin, and the barb-shaped tufts on the inside ends of her eyebrows reminded him of fish hooks. "Yeah? What do you want?" She sighed with a half-smile. “Listen, I’m in a hurry.”
Not the reaction I was hoping for, Aleric thought. Ah well. "Hey, beautiful," he smiled. "I was just wondering… oh… you know…”
The girl seemed puzzled. “What?”
“You’ve got something on your face.” Aleric gave a quick point at his own forehead. “Might want to, you know…”
The girl looked up with a cute little frown at the brown blotch on her forehead and left cheek, and then at the young man. “That is my face!” In the same fluid motion, she slapped Aleric’s still pointing hand and whirled around to leave.
Aleric got the feeling that he was not doing well. “Listen! Uh… I’m sorry. Would you be looking for someone to spend the night with?" He gave the girl his best playboy smirk. Not as if he ever gave less than his best, except when profoundly drunk.
The girl looked surprised. Then, she scoffed. "You’re asking me? You blew your chance."
"Better give it a rest, Al," Moz whispered, nudging Aleric’s side. "I think she’d sooner step on your head than look at you… much less sleep with you."
"Sleep with me!" the girl cried. She began to laugh. "Who the hell would want to sleep with you?”
Aleric made an impassioned fist. "Half the girls in Jigsaw, that’s who!" he boasted, ignoring the fact that his buddy Moz was resting his face in his hands. "After all, I happen to be a hero!"
The girl had begun to step away, but suddenly froze and turned around. “Really!” She actually looked genuinely interested! Perhaps she’d realized she’d misjudged him. “And… what are your heroic qualifications?”
This was the time to make up for everything. To reel her in with something romantic. One seldom gets a second chance, and when they do, must use it wisely. “Well… I have a big sword.”
Everyone nearby whirled around to watch as Aleric winced from a stinging sensation on his cheek.
"Don’t waste my time!" the girl said, and stormed off.
Aleric sat down on a bench and rested his aching cheek in his palm. "I hate this town."
Having received a bit of unexpected entertainment, and it now having come to an end, everyone in the market went back to their business.
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Ti one finally approached the door to Elin’s house. The house was a small one that looked as if it had been there for at least a hundred years. The wood of the walls was splintering and looked like it might fall over any day, but the color spell on the walls still colored the house a bright sky blue. The grass was a healthy bright green, but hadn’t been trimmed in years. However, the flowers that were growing in front of the porch looked taken care of and looked up hopefully to the sky. An army of creeping vines crept up the trees on either side of the old house and onto the thatched roof, covering it in a blanket of rich green and draping over the sides like a leafy curtain. Tione stepped up onto the porch and winced at the creaking moan the steps let out. She knocked gently on the door.
"Yeah?" a warm, elderly voice called from inside. Just the sound of Elin’s soft voice made Tione feel happy inside. The old lady never was forced into flowery, polite language in her old age, and aside from its aged tone, was every bit as youthful as hers.
"It’s me…" Tione said. "Tione, your great-granddaughter?" Tione was sure that Elin would remember her, but still, she was probably almost one hundred years old. If senility had set in, would she be able to remember her?
"Yes, I remember who you are. I may be old –gods am I old!–, but I remember my own great-granddaughter. Come in, I’ve been expecting you."
Could Elin really have been expecting her? She thought that only wise men and elderly magicians said things like that. Tione shrugged it off and entered, the door creaking in a soft baritone that sounded like a reassured sigh.
It felt like an entirely different world inside Elin’s house. Her sitting room was dimly lit, and the air was full of dust. A scant few rays of light shone through the filth that was unevenly caked onto a window next to a bookshelf that was full of dusty leather and clothbound books (though a couple of them looked like they’d been pulled out recently). In fact, the entire room was filled with shelves and tables that were in turn filled with books and strange-looking objects that looked like they might be keepsakes, or perhaps souvenirs from some bold adventure many years ago. A few looked like they might even be enchanted. The entire place had a mystical aura about it, and Tione was sure she heard incomprehensible whispers from the corners of the room. Aside from that, it was exactly how Tione expected an old person’s house to look. On a creaky old rocking chair sat Elin, looking expectantly up at her with a wrinkled smile on her wrinkled face. The light breeze that came in through the open door blew a wisp of gossamer white out of the loose bun she had set into her hair.
"Tione," Elin said softly, "I am glad you’ve come to see me at last. There’s a lot to talk about. I’m sure you came to ask me your questions about the Larion family."
Tione nodded. Could Elin have possessed mind-reading magic and been hiding it all this time? Perhaps she was just so old and wise that she could deduce things like that. "Elin? Why doesn’t the family tree go beyond you? Why won’t anyone tell me anything, and…" Tione held up the brass amulet. “And why did you give me this? The chain itches my neck, and…”
Elin laughed, reminding Tione of trees rustling in a light breeze. "All right, calm down, Tione." She put up a wrinkled index finger. "I really wish I had more time to visit with you, and I wish I were able to answer your questions so easily, but I can’t. Or rather, I shouldn’t."
Tione was stunned. "You mean… you mean you won’t tell me?"
Elin smiled pleasantly. “I said, shouldn’t. Now, I know it’s cliché, but it’s for your own good, Tione. I want you to find your answers for yourself, like I did. But to do this, you’ve got to leave Sheste. I’m sure you’ll like that idea. An old-fashioned quest would do you well. Quests always build character." She nodded, then added, “I think I got more than I’d ever cared for.”
Tione wasn’t just stunned, she was shocked. "You mean you want me to run away?" She supposed she’d contemplated it before in moments of extreme frustration, but now, the concept of running away seemed so final. What would she do? Where would she go? Did Elin really know what she was saying? Maybe Elin was just kidding and would tell her everything she needed to know after all.
"Yes. And you have to hurry. You should visit Sela, the capital of Jigsaw. That is where you should find your answers. Nice place. Good food. Bit crowded in summer though."
"But…"
"But," Elin continued, raising her index finger again. "It is likely that these answers will bring about more questions that will need to be answered, and some that even the gods have not divined the answers to. Are you prepared for this?"
Tione suddenly realized that this was no joke. Elin really wanted Tione to run away from Sheste. What’s more, she was acting gravely serious about it. She was eager to know everything about her family and her own past, but did she really have to leave Sheste and go on a quest to find out? Did she really have to hurry? Maybe she could still get Elin to divulge a bit of info for her.
"But…" There were so many questions she needed to ask! "You want me to set out, all alone?" There were lots of dangerous people and things in Jigsaw. Demons, bandits, insurance salesmen! But of course, Elin knew this. What kind of response would Elin have to this?
"When one is on a quest, one can’t help but make friends,” Elin smiled knowingly. “Destinies are sticky little things and intertwine quite eagerly.”
"But, Elin… Gramma…"
"But beware," Elin said with a stern face. "There are good things and there are bad things about having traveling companions." Elin stared at Tione for a second, then said, "That is all the advice that I have. Now, just wait here while I get you something."
Elin stood up, allowing the rocking chair to creak back and forth behind her as if begging her to return. She stumbled over to one of the shelves and began looking through everything on one shelf, as if they had been placed there in a particular order. Finally, she removed a dusty old book and a long, thin piece of metal that was sitting just next to it. She handed them over with graceful ceremony to Tione. Tione couldn’t help smiling. Elin never did anything without at least some ceremony, as if she were acting in a play.
"Always keep these with you. And…" Elin put her hand to her chest and held up the pendant she was wearing. "Never sell, lose or give away your pendant."
Only just now did Tione realize that her cousins always tried to steal her belongings, but never touched her brass pendant. Still, she couldn’t figure out what could be so important about the old thing that she should never part with it. "All right. I won’t."
“You won’t?” Elin reiterated.
“I won’t!” Who would want it anyway?
"Good. That’s all," Elin said, "that I need to tell you. Now it’s time for you and I to leave."
"You’re coming with me?"
"No. I have to… go elsewhere. I am afraid that I may never see you again."
These words hit Tione hard. "What? Never? Where are you going?"
"Tione, I’m old. Much older than you probably think I am." Elin smiled for a moment, then chuckled, regarding Tione with a soft sparkle in her eyes. “Tione… I wonder if you can fill my shoes.”
What did that mean? “… what?”
“My shoes, dear. They’re over there, by the door. Be sure you take them with you.”
Something in Tione’s brain itched, like there were a nest of baneburrow bugs inside, accompanied by an icy chill in her heart. Like she was at the edge of a pit the depth of which she couldn’t hope to comprehend. “Elin… who are you, really?”
“I can’t tell you, not now. It would be too dangerous for the both of us. Please understand, Tione and know that there are people who will be able to tell you everything you need to know once the time is right.” She laughed. “And, knowing them, they’ll seek you out. Now, I must go.”
Without another word, she turned and walked through a doorway set in a corner of the room. Tione hesitated, then panicked. "Wait! There are still questions that I need to ask you!" she cried as Elin closed the door behind her, leaving Tione in the sitting room.
Tione debated with herself whether she should enter or not. Finally, she decided that if she wanted to ask any more questions, she should do so quickly. She braced herself, and opened the door. "Elin? Gramma?”
The room was apparently Elin’s bedroom. There was a bed with a night stand in one corner and a wardrobe across from it. Another dusty window prevented most of the light from getting in, but Tione could still see her reflection in the full-length mirror that was on the wall across from her. However, Elin was nowhere to be seen.
Tione looked at the two objects she held in her hands. The title of the book, stamped in faded gold leaf on a blue cloth cover, read How to Turn a Spoon into a Weapon of Mass Destruction. It was an unusual book, but Elin was always a slightly unusual person anyway. Tione turned the book over to the back cover.

"What the hells…?" Tione muttered. She turned it around to its front cover again and saw that it was written by Trotho Noma… whoever that was. The metal object Elin had given her was a long pewter spoon. "Why a spoon?" Tione wondered. Of course, there was no one there to answer her question. Now that Elin had gone to wherever she had gone to, what could Tione do but do exactly what she had been told to?
Tione turned around to look around Elin's foyer to see if there was anything else that might turn out to be important. Now that Elin was gone, most of the life seemed gone from the room. The old, dusty foyer was no longer vibrant with magical energy, but had become dormant almost immediately with Elin's absence. She wondered if any of the various books and objects would be helpful on her travels, but then decided that she couldn’t bring herself to disturb anything on the shelves, leaving Elin Larion’s house exactly as it was when she disappeared.
Tione got as far as the front door before a nagging presence tugged at her mind. Somehow knowing exactly where to look, she looked down to the floor to her left, where the dilapidated pair of old white leather boots Elin had talked about was leaning against a shelf; they were so worn out, they looked as if they would no longer stand up on their own.
Tione stood up straight again. The old ugly boots combined with her old ugly dress, despite the traits they obviously had in common, would be the worst fashion mistake since that one emperor decided to become a nudist. But she didn't want to leave them if she was supposed to take them. She picked them up and examined them carefully. They didn't look as if they were magical in any way, but they did look like they would be a bit more durable than the shoes she was wearing. Shrugging, she kicked off her own shoes and replaced them with Elin's old boots, fastening the battered, tarnished buckles at the tops. Before she left, she arranged her shoes neatly on the floor where the boots had been.
Tione walked back out of the house through the sitting room. As she left the house in a daze, she dropped the spoon into the large pocket at the front of her dress. All of Jigsaw was spread out in front of her… and she was supposed to go to Sela! She suddenly felt dizzy. Sela was quite a distance away, wasn’t it? Not quite knowing what to do, she began to walk toward the edge of town. After a few minutes, she opened up the book. She barely caught a piece of paper that fell out of it. Upon unfolding it, she saw that it was a large map of the kingdom. She had never seen a map of Jigsaw before.
The entire country was shaped like a puzzle piece, with her home village of Sheste in the duchy of Marchen near the eastern border of Jigsaw and the kingdom of Byrin. The northern border faced the Garro Sea, the west border faded from grasslands to the deserts of Icyl, and the southern border faced the country of Two Tomes. It took her a minute to locate Sela on the old, yellowed map, but found that it was clear across Jigsaw, in the far west just east of the Silver Mountains. There were forests, rivers, and mountains between Sheste and Sela, but plenty of cities.
Tione stopped walking long enough to put away the map in the pages of her book. As she did, she noticed something written on the inside of the cover: the name “Tione.”
“Did she mean to give this to me all along?” Tione wondered to herself, running her index finger across the faded, smeared black writing. The writing had been there so long that the ink would no longer smear, so long that the writing looked as if it had bonded with the paper from age. Underneath “Tione” were scrawled two boxes, each with a set of names in them. The first box had an “X” drawn through it, and the second had a “?” drawn next to it. Puzzled and intrigued, she turned to the first page. Apparently, the art of combat with spoons was created about forty years ago by Trotho Noma, the author of the book. His name also appeared in the second list of names. Tione wondered why Elin had given her a spoon along with the book. Spoons were common enough, weren’t they? Intrigued by the concept, she read on as she walked out of the village. She read that special spoons were required for the art of spoon combat, which involved using a spoon as a focus for raw magical energy to perform various tasks, and that theoretically a similar system could be devised for any object.
She was just getting to the part about the physics of using a spoon to break the back of one’s opponent when she heard the clash of steel. It sounded like a sword! She lowered the book and stuck it into her pocket; things were picking up already! She ran off the cobbled road onto the dirt trail that led into the grassy fields where she’d used to play. The long browned grass waved like gold strands whipped up by a soft wind that whistled beckoningly through it. Above, a sparsely-clouded sky spread out welcomingly, the cool wind blowing encouragingly at her back. She whirled around as the resounding sword strikes continued, and followed it to a familiar sight: the old tree she used to climb as a child. It split two ways close to the ground, where two large limbs reached lazily to the sky and branched out into big, broad leaves. Its bark was missing in several places, but it still turned green every spring.
Tione gasped; someone was striking her favorite tree with a sword, shouting like it was an opponent. The guy must have been drunk, or crazy.
“Ha! And, ha! Take that!” He ran around to the other side of the tree and pointed accusingly with a well-built arm. “Unhand the princess and cease your wicked deeds!”
“Hey!” Sure, she was leaving Sheste behind, but she wouldn’t tolerate this! Tione marched over through the tall grass. Little bits of wood flew off the branches as the young man dodged imaginary attacks. “Hey, stop that!”
In the middle of parrying a nonexistent blow, the attacker almost fell over in surprise, glancing over his shoulder. “Whoa! What?” As he lowered the sword and his bright blue eyes met hers, she saw that it was the guy who’d tried to pick her up in the market! And mistook the birthmark on her face for dirt! She'd always been sensitive about that. Well, he wasn’t kidding when he said he had a sword. But it was tarnished, and the grip at the hilt was tattered and beginning to come off.
“Ack!” Tione stepped back cautiously and-- “Ack!” --suddenly found herself lying on her back, having tripped on a rock hidden by the grass.
“Whoa! Hey, are you all right? Swords are dangerous, you know!” The sword-wielding figure whirled around to gaze at her with a silly smile, and through the tall waving grass saw a bright flash as the sun’s light reflected off a brass amulet around his neck.