HISTORIAN'S NOTE
The events described in this account took place in the months and years prior to those in Haven Lost — The Dragon’s Brood Cycle, Vol. 1 and are concerned with individuals whose lives have been, or may one day be, touched by Emily Haven and her friends. Familiarity with Haven Lost is not expected or required to enjoy this tale.
The fiddler dashes around the cabin, pulling curtains closed over the porthole and bolting the door. It makes the tiny birth very dim and gloomy, but there’s nothing that can be done about it. I’m a stowaway, aren’t I? Without a holder to pay my passage. And I mustn’t be caught by the ship’s crew. From a street rat to a ship’s rat, that’s me. And if the fiddler is to help me, he can’t be caught either.
I’d tried to do as I was told; I’d tried to sneak aboard without being seen, and I’d almost made it, too. I’m good at sneaking around and not being noticed. If it hadn’t been for Morog scuttling away and the fiddler having to chase him, I’d have made it.
But it hadn’t worked out that way, and the fiddler had seen me. Better him than one of the sailors, though. At least he’d been kind to me once. Maybe he’d be kind to me again. He hasn’t thrown me overboard anyway, so there is hope.
I look around nervously, but all I see is his fiddle case, lying securely on the floor behind the bunk. The ship rolls gently beneath us, and after the rush through the streets to the ship, I find the motion comforting, but I don’t like the fact that I can’t see the fiddler’s pet, Morog, anywhere. It makes me nervous, and it makes my skin itch all over, even though nothing’s there. You’d feel the same way about a spider as big as a dog, too, believe me.
“Sit down, lad,” he tells me. “Sit down.” He points at the bunk, and I fall, more than sit, down onto it. It’s only then that I realize I’m still shaking.
“Calm yourself, lad,” he says, pulling open a small trunk in one corner and starting to rummage through it. “Deep breaths now. That’s the thing.”
I do it, filling my lungs with the stale, musty odors of the confined space. There’s salt in the air, too, but with that smell comes a flood of memories, each and every one featuring Harmony’s pretty face.
“Here, now. That’s a good lad. Drink this.” The fiddler hands me a tiny glass. It’s filled with an amber liquid, the smell of which burns my nose and makes my eyes water a little.
“It’ll calm yeh,” he says, and that’s all I need to hear. I need to be calm, or I won’t be any use to Harmony, and she needs me. I lift the glass to my lips and toss the whole thing back in one gulp.
Now it isn’t just my nose that’s burning. Everything inside of me seems to be on fire. I cough and splutter, and the fiddler looks toward the door nervously as I gasp, but no one comes. At last, I’ve caught my breath, eyes streaming, and he turns back to me.
“Tell me what’s happened to yeh, and where yer pretty little lass is,” he says, keeping his voice low. He sits beside me, leaning back against the wall and, lacing his fingers together, puts his hands behind his head. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen yeh two apart. And tell me how it is yeh come to be here.”
I try to speak, but nothing much comes out. I’m tired and scared, and I haven’t got a clue where to begin. There’s just so much—so much.
He looks at me kindly, and it strikes me as strange, the sorts of people who choose to be kind to one such as me. Plenty of folks far better off than this traveling minstrel, with far more to share, don’t even spare a thought for us street kids.
“A’right, lad. Tell yeh what. Let’s start with somethin’ easier. Start with how yeh met yer lass. There’s a story there, I’ll wager. Mayhap the tellin’ of it’ll calm yer nerves, eh?”
I nod. One … two … three blinks, and the tears are kept inside.
I take a deep breath and begin.
***
There were always too many kids like me. Least ways, I think so. Some were left on curbs or under the garbage in filthy alleys; a few ran away from home, but I’m not sure you can really call where they came from “home”. I’m just one of many. We’ve got flyers and satyrians and humans and all the rest, and we’ve got our peasants and our nobles, just like them other folks do, and we don’t fight nearly so much or so often—not with each other, anyway. The constable? Yeah, well, he’s another story.
I can’t remember how I wound up on the streets. None of the other kids could tell me, either. Sometimes I’d make up stories to myself to help pass the time on nights when sleep wouldn’t come. I’d dream—or maybe wish—that as a baby, I’d fallen out of a carriage or some such thing, and that my family had been looking for me ever since.
The story always ended with some finely dressed and faceless man and woman finding me, and not just taking me back in, but taking in all the other street rats, too.
But of course, that wasn’t the way it was; nor the way it’d ever be. I knew that. The other kids were my family—sort of. Jake was the leader, and he taught us younger ones how to steal bread or meat or cheese—and sometimes, if we were really lucky, even sweets! He showed us how to find safe places to sleep, and how to keep warm on winter nights when the wind and fog rolled in from the ocean, or cool on summer days when the sun made the cobbles hot enough to burn our bare and filthy feet. He told us how and when to be gentlemen—or warriors.
But out of all the other kids, the only one who really mattered, least ways to me, was Harmony. My eyes sting when I think of her, but I’m pretty good at keeping them dry. One … two … three blinks; it’s better—safer—if no one sees you cry.
The first time I saw her, she was hiding behind a big stack of crates that was going to be loaded onto a ship bound for Seven Skies or some such place that wasn’t here. She was crouched down behind them, hugging herself to stay warm and shivering like a leaf in the wind. She might as well have been naked for all the good the oversized blouse she was wearing like a dress was doing. It was cool but not yet cold down here by the water. It wouldn’t be long before Samhain would come, and the days were already getting shorter. She wouldn’t last a week without something warmer.
I thought she must be a street kid—probably a new one, judging by the flimsy thing she was wearing and the lost look on her face—and I made my way down the sand to where she stood by the pier. She never even heard me coming. She was shivering and rocking back and forth and watching the men as they slowly loaded the crates onto the big ship. And anyway, I can get around without being noticed. I’ve had a lot of practice. I’d have starved to death long ago if I wasn’t good at it. And believe me, I’m good at it.
I snuck up right behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. She jerked away and opened her mouth to scream. I leapt toward her and put one arm around her shoulders and a hand over her mouth. The scream turned into a muffled sort of whimper that didn’t sound much different from the cry of a seagull, so that was all right.
“Shhh!” I told her. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Her eyes got real big, like those of kids in Katy’s stolen picture books after they’ve seen a monster under the bed, and she started to struggle.
“It’s okay! Really!” I whispered frantically. “I just want to help you.” I let her go, figuring she would either run or stay, but if she kept flailing like that, a misplaced kick was going to bring the whole lot of crates down on our heads.
I took a step back from her, bowed the way Jake had told us was the way boys should do with ladies, and tried to look as harmless as I could. That, by the way, is something I’m not as good at.
“My name’s Daniel,” I told her, keeping my voice low, and then I waited to see what she would say.
For a long time, she didn’t say—or do—anything at all. She just stared at me with those same blue eyes that, I noticed, were pretty big even when she wasn’t writhing in terror. Her hair was a deep rich brown, like the color of the man’s booth on market day who sells little cups of coffee, and there were a few feathers caught in her locks—red and green and blue. Her face, though, was very pale, with a spray of freckles across her cheeks and nose, and it made me wonder if she’d been outside much in her life. I stole a look down at her feet, and though they were bare like mine, they were not rough and calloused like mine. In fact, they were rather bloody. Yep, she had to be a new one, poor kid, and hardly more than skin and bone—not that I was much more than that myself, but I’d nicked some fried potatoes from a sailor’s bag when he’d been distracted and was therefore feeling generous.
“Are you a satyrian?” she blurted out suddenly.
I blinked at her.
“Of course I am,” I said a little indignantly, reaching up and tapping the horn on the right side of my head where it spiraled out over my ear. “Got these, don’t I?”
The words were hardly out of my mouth when I realized I had forgotten to keep my voice down. There was a shout from the other side of the crates, and two big sailor men came barreling around them, bellowing and brandishing thick heavy rods at us.
“Run!” I screamed, and without looking to see if she followed my advice, I took to my heels and sprinted off down the beach.
It wasn’t long before I realized the sailors weren’t following. All they’d really wanted to do was scare us off. I looked behind me, and saw the girl running after me, her bushy hair streaming out behind her and whipping this way and that in the ocean breeze.
I stopped and let her catch up.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped when she reached me, clutching at a stitch in her side. “I’m so sorry.”
I frowned down at her. “Sorry for what? I was the one who forgot to be quiet.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just … I never saw a satyrian before.”
“Well, that’s funny,” I said, “because we ain’t exactly rare.”
She blushed, the color of her face changing from a frosty white to alarmingly red so fast that it looked like someone was burning the flesh right off her skull with an invisible poker. Now that I thought of it, that’d make a great story to tell the other kids, and I promised myself to remember to do so on some dark night before Samhain.
I went over to the girl.
“What’s your name?” I asked her, wanting to make her feel a little more at ease.
“Harmony,” she mumbled, but she wouldn’t look at me.
“Well, Harmony,” I said, “I’m not upset. Not even a little. Just surprised is all. You never met a satyrian before, and I never met someone who never met a satyrian before. So, now we’re even.”
I put an arm around her shoulders again, moving very slowly so as not to frighten her away, and I guided her gently down the sandy slope toward the water.
“The first thing we should do is wash the blood off your feet,” I told her. “Jake says seawater keeps wounds from festering. You don’t want your feet to swell up and turn black and fall off, do you?”
If it was possible, her eyes got even bigger—so big, actually, that I worried a little that they were going to fall out of her head and just hang there bouncing on her cheeks, the way I’d seen some animal’s do. That didn’t happen though, which was good, because her eyes were pretty things, and ought to have stayed right where they were.
We sat down on the wet sand, just above the tide, and let the waves roll in over our feet for a minute. It was cold, and the cuts on her feet stung and made her wince, but I made her wait until all the blood was gone.
“There,” I told her, helping her stand up again. “Now you’ll be all right.”
“Is that the ocean?” she asked tentatively, staring out over the waves. The sun was sinking down past the horizon, and it was making the sky go all pink and orange and red.
“What?” I asked, bemused. “Of course it’s the ocean. What else would it be?”
She turned red again and didn’t say anything. I hadn’t noticed the first time, but the shade of her blush went very nicely with the blue of her eyes. Come to think of it, the blue of her eyes matched the blue feather that still lay nestled in her hair, just over one temple.
“You haven’t seen the ocean before, either, have you?”
She shook her head slowly.
“But it’s very pretty,” she said, as if that made up for it.
“Nah,” I told her. “It’s just the ocean. You’re the pretty one.”
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