Heart of the Tanglewood - Chapter One
Oct. 29th, 2011 07:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninedaysaqueenTitle: Heart of the Tanglewood
Author: ninedaysaqueen
Betas: openedlocket & earthstarmoon – Always a pleasure.
Rating: PG/K+
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings, nor of any characters, locations, and elephants contained within. All rights of the Queen's Thief series belong exclusively to Megan Whalen Turner and her respective publishers.
Summary: Forests are full of danger and deep at its roots, the Tanglewood hides many secrets. What happens to young boys who never learn to stay out of the woods?
Enjoy!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.
- Nicolo Machiavelli
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heart of the Tanglewood
Chapter One
His family called him Eugene.
He hated it.
“Eugene!”
Shifting back to his hiding position high in a tree, Eugenides crossed his arms and sighed. In contrast, he always been fond of his name's archaic equivalent—once held by desert princes and Byzantine advisors. Its crisp sound and elegant articulation was far more pleasing then-
“Eugene!”
That would be his cousin. One of his many cousins who lived in Eugenides's clan hamlet built to maintain this side of the northern sheep pastures. One of his many, many cousins who saw Eugenides as their personal stabbing dummy.
“Eugene! If you don't come out now, we'll tell the village headman!”
They always had to drag his father into this. Eugenides rolled his eyes and glared sourly in the voice's direction, wishing for his mother. She'd passed away last winter from red fever—a devastating sickness that swept through the mountain hamlets every fews years, often picking off the young and strong.
It had been her who'd taught him to climb trees of the Tanglewood and the sheer cliffs that jutted out of the slopping landscape. She'd step out of her shoes, peel off her slightly ragged stockings, and shimmy up the branches like one of the brown squirrels. Ladies weren't suppose to climb trees. His mother didn't care.
Gods, he missed her.
“Eugene!” called his cousin, followed by something nasty about Eugenides's family gods. Cleon, he decided it was. One of the big fellows who liked to practice his axe swinging on stray dogs, and part of the group of boys who showed the most promise to enter the Legion Army and support the clan in the wars along the southern border. Cleon was his least-favorite cousin, and that was saying something.
Pacing the edge of the Tanglewood, calling out insults and threats, Cleon, at last, hung his shoulders in defeat and shouted, “I hope the witch eats you!”
Eugenides watched him go.
“She doesn't eat people,” he muttered under his breath. Eugenides shifted to a more comfortable position in his pine tree, forty feet off the forest floor. The pines were the tallest in the forest and the most dominate species. Their brown spines and spiraling cones coated the dirt floor in a thick blanket. Many of the trees grew as high a sixty feet, swaying in strong breezes by their shallow roots.
Their thick branches made them easy climbs, yet Eugenides was the only one in the village to be found frequently perched amongst the needles, back leaned against a trunk; often with a book lifted from the magus's library. The magus would've let him borrow it, but not being the son of a scholar or an advisor, Eugenides was reluctant to admit his reading habits, even to those who already knew about it.
It was getting dark. The sun sank slowly behind the green hills, grass long with the yearly burning. He sighed and sniffed the air, wishing he could go home and get a bowl of the roast mutton he could smell on the wind. The mountain breeze only served to remind him of the approaching night and the bitter cold that always followed.
Eugenides rubbed his arms and shifted in his perch.
This was all his brother's fault, he decided. He just had to tell their cousins that Eugenides was late to sword practice, because he'd been reading in the magus's library again.
Reading was hardly a taboo in the village, but due to the ongoing thirty years war with Attolia, education for boys was largely focused on sword thumbing, axe swinging, horse riding, and sword thumbing and axe swinging while horse riding; rather than mathematics and literature.
Boys only focused on book learning when they were still too small to lift a practice weapon and not get stepped on by a war horse.
Eugenides was small (no one could argue with that), but he was plenty old enough to be learning the ways of battle. He was too little for an axe, and he balked at any horse larger than a shaggy mountain pony; but with a sword he was exceptional.
Many of the village elders described him as a natural–one who held an innate understanding of the path of the blade. Of how it connected with enemy flesh, striking down adversaries in a flawless pattern of speed and power. Too bad about about that size, the village elders often consolidated his father, and the book learning.
Too bad... Eugenides scoffed. He didn't find it flattering to be complimented on an natural ability to kill people.
Despite his dislike of swords, Eugenides was talented with them, that he could not deny. Unfortunately for him, this generated jealousy amongst his cousins, causing them to target his most pronounced oddity, a love of reading.
Even so, Eugenides would admit that insulting half of his relation's taste, intelligence, and legitimate birth-status in the acerbic manner for which he was famous, had not been the best idea he'd ever had.
He wondered petulantly if he should just let Cleon cut off his tongue as he often threatened. It would save him a lot of grief, not to mention missed meals.
“Eugenides,” a voice called along the edge of shouting. Eugenides leaned forward and smiled.
Quickly scrambling down the branches, Eugenides ran to meet his only tolerable cousin out the dozens. Helen approached from down the hill, a bundle swinging by her skirts. She smiled, brightly when he emerged from the darkness of the Tanglewood and walked faster up the hill.
“Thought you might want this...” she held up the bundle as she reached the top, swinging it back and forth, “as you are keeping the trees company through the dinner hour.”
“Misery loves company,” he answered in false pity.
“Of course...” Helen drawled. “You missing dinner would have nothing to do with the scene in the training yard this morning.”
Eugenides narrowed his eyes. “That is a distant memory, and we will not ruin my dinner with any mention of it.” He took the bundle she offered and sat cross-legged in the grass to unwrap the gift. Helen adjusted her skirts and sat down beside him, stretching her feet in front of her.
Helen usually wore trousers, especially after starting her own sword training. Not a common education for women, but still one that a daughter of the late headman--his father's brother--might learn in hopes of becoming a village headwoman. He wondered which of their aunts had bullied her into a dress that morning.
Eugenides sighed happily digging his fork into the roast mutton and setting aside the bag of roast chestnuts and the side of yogurt. “Family gods bless you, Helen. You are a gem amongst women and the brightest in the clan.”
“Now... why can't you speak that way more often, and to the people to which it matters?” She eyed him thoughtfully.
He didn't stop chewing. Who cared about table manners when there was not a table in sight? “What?” he sounded shocked. “And tarnish my flawless reputation with lies?” He swallowed and shrugged, “Of course, with what I just said about you...”
She cuffed his shoulder, knocking him sideways. He fell, laughing, careful not to tip his food. It was a thinly veiled insult. Helen was certainly the loveliest of his cousins, but she was definitely not the most beautiful. “When you're done, we'll head back.” She was decisive and serious.
Eugenides groaned, straightening his back. “Do you always have to remind me of reality?”
“Someone's got to.”
He took another bite, pointedly glaring in her direction.
-X-X-X-
It was a staring contest.
Well... more like a glaring contest. He and his father had been caught in them often since his mother's death. Usually after arguments concerning Eugenides behavior, his manners, his habits, and pretty much everything he did, said, and happen to breath on.
The magus threw a flailing man a life-line. “Headman...” said the magus, garnering attention before clearing his throat. “If I may make a suggestion. There are always chores that require addressing in the library. This might make a fitting punishment for a few days?”
The magus had wandered by shortly after Eugenides's argument with his father became audible half-way across the village commons. Though Eugenides wasn't always fond of the magus's, dare he say, stuck-up manners, he couldn't deny the highly irregular, yet mutually respectful friendship the two shared.
His father sighed, knowing the magus was offering Eugenides a chance to spend more time in the one place he was content to be. To Eugenides's surprise, his father relented, nodding curtly. “That will suffice. I want him working for at least a week.”
“Of course,” the magus agreed, pleased. “Gen, come with me.” The magus saluted in an Eddisian manner. Eugenides's father nodded an equally respectful response.
Eugenides briskly followed the scholar out the thickly curtained doorway of the stout wooden lodge and came to walk beside him. They passed the braziers that kept the village warm and feed, passed the fenced training yards to the tallest building in the ham, the library.
The library was three stories high. The very top floor was the magus's living quarters, the middle was the study room and reference room, and the bottom held the bulk of the book collection--hundreds of volumes, collected by the ham for generations, packed in more than fifty shelves.
“I've been thinking of reordering the entire reference room,” the magus said, speaking up suddenly. “Think you could see to that?” Eugenides glared, knowing he was being baited. “Gosh, with that mouth of yours I should be getting at least a few months of free labor; if not years.” The magus laughed.
“We'll see how clever you're feeling by the end of the week,” Eugenides threatened. “And I am not, under any circumstances, fetching your dinner and running your errands. Get a paige boy.”
The magus laughed even harder.
“Oh, no need for that. I actually have a visitor coming, the son of a friend.” Reaching the library, and the magus leaned backwards to coax open the heavy wooden door. “I need to make up a room for him. That will be your job.”
Eugenides groaned as they entered the main floor, not nearly as upset as he wanted to sound. He was always being coaxed into doing odds jobs for the magus, who declared it the consequence of getting underfoot during his studies.
“But as for tomorrow, we'll have an outing.” Eugenides looked back at the magus from the table, gaze curious.
“A trip in the Tanglewood to collect some fungi samples,” he clarified.
“You and your mushrooms,” replied Eugenides, rolling his eyes and sitting down. The magus took a seat across from him.
“One might think you were a witch yourself.”
“Warlock,” the magus corrected. “Witches are female.”
-X-X-X-
Eugenides spent the rest of the day dusting and sweeping up cobwebs, while the magus lectured and argued with him about mushroom classification from the study room. The reference room wasn't very large, but it was reserved for some of the oldest and most valuable books in the collection. Thus, its importance in the library.
After Eugenides was done cleaning, he and the magus took down the heavy books from the shelves and pushed the cases against the walls, creating a space where a small, single bed and perhaps a nightstand and a table might be set up. Eugenides put the books back in place, while the magus muttered something about borrowing furniture, and with that, Eugenides found he was done for the day, bidding goodbye to the magus as he left.
The ham was quiet this late at night. The only signs of life were the roaring braziers in the commons and the crickets that sang from the long grass. Eugenides found he enjoyed the quiet–-a contrast from the usual noise and ruckus that pervaded his life.
“You have dust in your hair,” he heard Helen chuckle from behind him.
He turned quickly, grinning devilishly at her. He hadn't seen her since she'd sent him off with a sympathetic pat on his shoulder to speak with his father.
“It's the magus's fault.” Eugenides walked backwards to face her as she approached. “It's this new form of torture he's testing. Locking people in rooms full of dust and expecting them to clean it all up with a messily bucket of water and a broom.”
He turned, and Helen settled into a slow walk beside him. “Stenides told me you'd been given your punishment work at the library. I'm glad you're working with the magus.”
She smiled shyly, and Eugenides wondered, as he often did, if she had a crush on the old scholar.
“He likes you.”
Eugenides huffed. “Yes, he likes me and all the free labor I provide. Tomorrow he's forcing me to pick mushrooms.” He waved a hand for emphasis. “Mushrooms.”
Helen laughed, but her eyes fell as she processed what he'd said. “In the Tanglewood?”
Eugenides sighed. “Oh, Helen... not you too. Even if there is a witch, I'm sure it's just some harmless old lady hiding from her fat, old husband.”
Helen stopped walking. “She's not old, Gen.”
Eugenides stopped as well, turning to stare at his cousin curiously. “What?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. It didn't feel right to speak of the witch in the same voice he used to call a friendly greeting. “Helen, have you seen her?”
Helen broke eye contact but nodded reluctantly. “I was playing with my sisters sometime last year. We had wandered into the woods a little ways by the clover fields...” Eugenides inclined his head, encouraging her to continue. “We were picking the clovers from where they grow along the edge of the field, and...” she lowered her voice, “...there was this woman. I only saw her for a moment, but she just stood there in the trees... watching us. She was young and beautiful, but something about her... just seemed so... so-”
“What, Helen?”
“Cold...” She met his eyes. “Like the glaciers of the northern lakes–hard, cold, and cruel.”
“Helen...” he started.
“Just be careful, Gen. I don't know if she's dangerous, but just promise me that you'll be careful.” She stepped closer. “The Tanglewood... it's not safe.”
Both were silent, and after a moment of standing pensive, Helen bit her lip and returned to her family lodge.
Eugenides barely heard her goodbye.
Author: ninedaysaqueen
Betas: openedlocket & earthstarmoon – Always a pleasure.
Rating: PG/K+
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings, nor of any characters, locations, and elephants contained within. All rights of the Queen's Thief series belong exclusively to Megan Whalen Turner and her respective publishers.
Summary: Forests are full of danger and deep at its roots, the Tanglewood hides many secrets. What happens to young boys who never learn to stay out of the woods?
Enjoy!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.
- Nicolo Machiavelli
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heart of the Tanglewood
Chapter One
His family called him Eugene.
He hated it.
“Eugene!”
Shifting back to his hiding position high in a tree, Eugenides crossed his arms and sighed. In contrast, he always been fond of his name's archaic equivalent—once held by desert princes and Byzantine advisors. Its crisp sound and elegant articulation was far more pleasing then-
“Eugene!”
That would be his cousin. One of his many cousins who lived in Eugenides's clan hamlet built to maintain this side of the northern sheep pastures. One of his many, many cousins who saw Eugenides as their personal stabbing dummy.
“Eugene! If you don't come out now, we'll tell the village headman!”
They always had to drag his father into this. Eugenides rolled his eyes and glared sourly in the voice's direction, wishing for his mother. She'd passed away last winter from red fever—a devastating sickness that swept through the mountain hamlets every fews years, often picking off the young and strong.
It had been her who'd taught him to climb trees of the Tanglewood and the sheer cliffs that jutted out of the slopping landscape. She'd step out of her shoes, peel off her slightly ragged stockings, and shimmy up the branches like one of the brown squirrels. Ladies weren't suppose to climb trees. His mother didn't care.
Gods, he missed her.
“Eugene!” called his cousin, followed by something nasty about Eugenides's family gods. Cleon, he decided it was. One of the big fellows who liked to practice his axe swinging on stray dogs, and part of the group of boys who showed the most promise to enter the Legion Army and support the clan in the wars along the southern border. Cleon was his least-favorite cousin, and that was saying something.
Pacing the edge of the Tanglewood, calling out insults and threats, Cleon, at last, hung his shoulders in defeat and shouted, “I hope the witch eats you!”
Eugenides watched him go.
“She doesn't eat people,” he muttered under his breath. Eugenides shifted to a more comfortable position in his pine tree, forty feet off the forest floor. The pines were the tallest in the forest and the most dominate species. Their brown spines and spiraling cones coated the dirt floor in a thick blanket. Many of the trees grew as high a sixty feet, swaying in strong breezes by their shallow roots.
Their thick branches made them easy climbs, yet Eugenides was the only one in the village to be found frequently perched amongst the needles, back leaned against a trunk; often with a book lifted from the magus's library. The magus would've let him borrow it, but not being the son of a scholar or an advisor, Eugenides was reluctant to admit his reading habits, even to those who already knew about it.
It was getting dark. The sun sank slowly behind the green hills, grass long with the yearly burning. He sighed and sniffed the air, wishing he could go home and get a bowl of the roast mutton he could smell on the wind. The mountain breeze only served to remind him of the approaching night and the bitter cold that always followed.
Eugenides rubbed his arms and shifted in his perch.
This was all his brother's fault, he decided. He just had to tell their cousins that Eugenides was late to sword practice, because he'd been reading in the magus's library again.
Reading was hardly a taboo in the village, but due to the ongoing thirty years war with Attolia, education for boys was largely focused on sword thumbing, axe swinging, horse riding, and sword thumbing and axe swinging while horse riding; rather than mathematics and literature.
Boys only focused on book learning when they were still too small to lift a practice weapon and not get stepped on by a war horse.
Eugenides was small (no one could argue with that), but he was plenty old enough to be learning the ways of battle. He was too little for an axe, and he balked at any horse larger than a shaggy mountain pony; but with a sword he was exceptional.
Many of the village elders described him as a natural–one who held an innate understanding of the path of the blade. Of how it connected with enemy flesh, striking down adversaries in a flawless pattern of speed and power. Too bad about about that size, the village elders often consolidated his father, and the book learning.
Too bad... Eugenides scoffed. He didn't find it flattering to be complimented on an natural ability to kill people.
Despite his dislike of swords, Eugenides was talented with them, that he could not deny. Unfortunately for him, this generated jealousy amongst his cousins, causing them to target his most pronounced oddity, a love of reading.
Even so, Eugenides would admit that insulting half of his relation's taste, intelligence, and legitimate birth-status in the acerbic manner for which he was famous, had not been the best idea he'd ever had.
He wondered petulantly if he should just let Cleon cut off his tongue as he often threatened. It would save him a lot of grief, not to mention missed meals.
“Eugenides,” a voice called along the edge of shouting. Eugenides leaned forward and smiled.
Quickly scrambling down the branches, Eugenides ran to meet his only tolerable cousin out the dozens. Helen approached from down the hill, a bundle swinging by her skirts. She smiled, brightly when he emerged from the darkness of the Tanglewood and walked faster up the hill.
“Thought you might want this...” she held up the bundle as she reached the top, swinging it back and forth, “as you are keeping the trees company through the dinner hour.”
“Misery loves company,” he answered in false pity.
“Of course...” Helen drawled. “You missing dinner would have nothing to do with the scene in the training yard this morning.”
Eugenides narrowed his eyes. “That is a distant memory, and we will not ruin my dinner with any mention of it.” He took the bundle she offered and sat cross-legged in the grass to unwrap the gift. Helen adjusted her skirts and sat down beside him, stretching her feet in front of her.
Helen usually wore trousers, especially after starting her own sword training. Not a common education for women, but still one that a daughter of the late headman--his father's brother--might learn in hopes of becoming a village headwoman. He wondered which of their aunts had bullied her into a dress that morning.
Eugenides sighed happily digging his fork into the roast mutton and setting aside the bag of roast chestnuts and the side of yogurt. “Family gods bless you, Helen. You are a gem amongst women and the brightest in the clan.”
“Now... why can't you speak that way more often, and to the people to which it matters?” She eyed him thoughtfully.
He didn't stop chewing. Who cared about table manners when there was not a table in sight? “What?” he sounded shocked. “And tarnish my flawless reputation with lies?” He swallowed and shrugged, “Of course, with what I just said about you...”
She cuffed his shoulder, knocking him sideways. He fell, laughing, careful not to tip his food. It was a thinly veiled insult. Helen was certainly the loveliest of his cousins, but she was definitely not the most beautiful. “When you're done, we'll head back.” She was decisive and serious.
Eugenides groaned, straightening his back. “Do you always have to remind me of reality?”
“Someone's got to.”
He took another bite, pointedly glaring in her direction.
It was a staring contest.
Well... more like a glaring contest. He and his father had been caught in them often since his mother's death. Usually after arguments concerning Eugenides behavior, his manners, his habits, and pretty much everything he did, said, and happen to breath on.
The magus threw a flailing man a life-line. “Headman...” said the magus, garnering attention before clearing his throat. “If I may make a suggestion. There are always chores that require addressing in the library. This might make a fitting punishment for a few days?”
The magus had wandered by shortly after Eugenides's argument with his father became audible half-way across the village commons. Though Eugenides wasn't always fond of the magus's, dare he say, stuck-up manners, he couldn't deny the highly irregular, yet mutually respectful friendship the two shared.
His father sighed, knowing the magus was offering Eugenides a chance to spend more time in the one place he was content to be. To Eugenides's surprise, his father relented, nodding curtly. “That will suffice. I want him working for at least a week.”
“Of course,” the magus agreed, pleased. “Gen, come with me.” The magus saluted in an Eddisian manner. Eugenides's father nodded an equally respectful response.
Eugenides briskly followed the scholar out the thickly curtained doorway of the stout wooden lodge and came to walk beside him. They passed the braziers that kept the village warm and feed, passed the fenced training yards to the tallest building in the ham, the library.
The library was three stories high. The very top floor was the magus's living quarters, the middle was the study room and reference room, and the bottom held the bulk of the book collection--hundreds of volumes, collected by the ham for generations, packed in more than fifty shelves.
“I've been thinking of reordering the entire reference room,” the magus said, speaking up suddenly. “Think you could see to that?” Eugenides glared, knowing he was being baited. “Gosh, with that mouth of yours I should be getting at least a few months of free labor; if not years.” The magus laughed.
“We'll see how clever you're feeling by the end of the week,” Eugenides threatened. “And I am not, under any circumstances, fetching your dinner and running your errands. Get a paige boy.”
The magus laughed even harder.
“Oh, no need for that. I actually have a visitor coming, the son of a friend.” Reaching the library, and the magus leaned backwards to coax open the heavy wooden door. “I need to make up a room for him. That will be your job.”
Eugenides groaned as they entered the main floor, not nearly as upset as he wanted to sound. He was always being coaxed into doing odds jobs for the magus, who declared it the consequence of getting underfoot during his studies.
“But as for tomorrow, we'll have an outing.” Eugenides looked back at the magus from the table, gaze curious.
“A trip in the Tanglewood to collect some fungi samples,” he clarified.
“You and your mushrooms,” replied Eugenides, rolling his eyes and sitting down. The magus took a seat across from him.
“One might think you were a witch yourself.”
“Warlock,” the magus corrected. “Witches are female.”
Eugenides spent the rest of the day dusting and sweeping up cobwebs, while the magus lectured and argued with him about mushroom classification from the study room. The reference room wasn't very large, but it was reserved for some of the oldest and most valuable books in the collection. Thus, its importance in the library.
After Eugenides was done cleaning, he and the magus took down the heavy books from the shelves and pushed the cases against the walls, creating a space where a small, single bed and perhaps a nightstand and a table might be set up. Eugenides put the books back in place, while the magus muttered something about borrowing furniture, and with that, Eugenides found he was done for the day, bidding goodbye to the magus as he left.
The ham was quiet this late at night. The only signs of life were the roaring braziers in the commons and the crickets that sang from the long grass. Eugenides found he enjoyed the quiet–-a contrast from the usual noise and ruckus that pervaded his life.
“You have dust in your hair,” he heard Helen chuckle from behind him.
He turned quickly, grinning devilishly at her. He hadn't seen her since she'd sent him off with a sympathetic pat on his shoulder to speak with his father.
“It's the magus's fault.” Eugenides walked backwards to face her as she approached. “It's this new form of torture he's testing. Locking people in rooms full of dust and expecting them to clean it all up with a messily bucket of water and a broom.”
He turned, and Helen settled into a slow walk beside him. “Stenides told me you'd been given your punishment work at the library. I'm glad you're working with the magus.”
She smiled shyly, and Eugenides wondered, as he often did, if she had a crush on the old scholar.
“He likes you.”
Eugenides huffed. “Yes, he likes me and all the free labor I provide. Tomorrow he's forcing me to pick mushrooms.” He waved a hand for emphasis. “Mushrooms.”
Helen laughed, but her eyes fell as she processed what he'd said. “In the Tanglewood?”
Eugenides sighed. “Oh, Helen... not you too. Even if there is a witch, I'm sure it's just some harmless old lady hiding from her fat, old husband.”
Helen stopped walking. “She's not old, Gen.”
Eugenides stopped as well, turning to stare at his cousin curiously. “What?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. It didn't feel right to speak of the witch in the same voice he used to call a friendly greeting. “Helen, have you seen her?”
Helen broke eye contact but nodded reluctantly. “I was playing with my sisters sometime last year. We had wandered into the woods a little ways by the clover fields...” Eugenides inclined his head, encouraging her to continue. “We were picking the clovers from where they grow along the edge of the field, and...” she lowered her voice, “...there was this woman. I only saw her for a moment, but she just stood there in the trees... watching us. She was young and beautiful, but something about her... just seemed so... so-”
“What, Helen?”
“Cold...” She met his eyes. “Like the glaciers of the northern lakes–hard, cold, and cruel.”
“Helen...” he started.
“Just be careful, Gen. I don't know if she's dangerous, but just promise me that you'll be careful.” She stepped closer. “The Tanglewood... it's not safe.”
Both were silent, and after a moment of standing pensive, Helen bit her lip and returned to her family lodge.
Eugenides barely heard her goodbye.
