“I thought it was you who was supposed to save me.”
An hour further down the magical paths of the World Labyrinth and it was Anthony’s first statement to Wiste since they’d been reunited. Wiste turned, a sheepish look on his face.
“You saved my life more than a handful of times when you were younger.”
“And you saved mine at least as often.”
The satyr smiled weakly. “The thing of it is, I should have known this would happen; I should never have left you or gone off on my own.”
Anthony cocked his head. “How so?”
Wiste gestured for his friend to sit on a flat tree stump. He examined Anthony’s wounds and replaced a few bandages. Both men were traveling slowly and Wiste twitched, slightly, now and again as if remembering some tortured pain. He muttered under his breath about what herbs he would need to help Anthony more fully.
“You’re on a quest, Tony; you remember the rules.”
Anthony blinked. “I’m not on a quest. Neither are you. You came to visit me for the holidays and I’m just trying to go home.”
Wiste arched a brow. “And how is your journey any different from the one you followed during your first visit?” He smiled and patted Anthony’s shoulder. “The rules of balance dictate that any quest shall visit challenges along its course; encounters that will reveal the inner you and more truths about your place in the world.”
Anthony shook his head. “If so, this is an awfully lame quest,” he said. “A trip to the ‘rent’s place for Christmas? How’s that stack up with defeating the Umbral Knight?”
“Ah, your last adventure,” Wiste said. A tone of regret slipped into his voice. “If I’d known it was going to be the last time I’d see you, I’d have made it last longer.” He looked his friend in the eye. “The rules are not mine to make. NeverEarth is full of laws both mundane and magical. I should have realized it when we first encountered the wolves. But when I saw you come up to the pond and realized I needed your help, I saw the pattern.”
The tradition of travel, of going on a quest, was common in NeverEarth. Anthony had heard about the precepts of finding one’s self and facing impossible odds each time he’d come here. It was possible there was some sort of cosmic law at work or a powerful, arcane spell that ensured those taking long travels had certain life-changing encounters along the way, but he suspected it was more mundane than that. In many ways, it was like the aboriginal idea of the “walkabout”. He suspected there was more self-fulfilling prophesy to the tradition of quests than anything actually magical in this mystic world.
Still, he’d spent enough time here that he couldn’t deny it was possible.
They resumed tracing their route along the trails of the Laybrinth, stopping or diverting from their path only for rest or when Wiste spied one of the plants he needed for his healing magics. By sundown, although tired, he’d gathered what he needed. Melting snow in a small cup, he mixed the herbs and chanted over the concoction. Anthony drank it and started feeling better almost immediately. Unlike the naiad’s waters, though, his wounds actually began to heal. As they rested beneath an arbor of heavy evergreen branches for the night, his outlook improved. He’d spent a day and a half, here; back home that meant it was about Noon, Christmas Day. He was going to be late. Still, he felt strangely happy.
By dawn his aches and pains were only on the inside. The two set off, once more.
By Noon, they started seeing signs of civilization. Here and there amongst the trees they would see cottages and houses. They found a proper road and followed the Labyrinth path along its course. But house after house that they passed was empty. Doors stood open and, on several, hung signs with crudely painted lettering stating “FORECLOSED” or “NO TRESPASS”.
At a forest crossroads, a small sign on a tall post told them where they were: Veriden Towne.
“Veriden?” Anthony looked around in disbelief. “God, it’s so … different.”
“And where is everybody?” Wiste added.
Veriden was the first town he’d come to after meeting Wiste all those years ago. It had always served as his final landmark on the way to his childhood home. The only time he’d not come this way was during the adventure of the Andalrassian Jewels, which had taken place in a distant part of NeverEarth that he’d stumbled into while on vacation with his parents in Spain.
A sharp boom followed by a heavy crack interrupted their reverie. They turned as it was followed by a sound like that of a falling tree. Tremors shook the ground and leafless branches swayed overhead. Torrents of snow fell from the canopy as a lumbering shape rose up in the distance. Their eyes widened.
A giant stumbled into view.
Entirely non-human, it resembled a fox walking upright on half-human legs. His whole body was covered in a russet-red fur and it’s narrow, pointed muzzle was full of sharp teeth. It loomed overhead, heavy and fat for the winter, wearing only a loincloth made from the hides of at least three deer. As they backed away, its longer stride carried it closer until it came to stop only fifty feet away. It bent down and wrested a small tree out of the frozen ground, hefting it like a club.
“Who travels these roads without paying the tax?” the giant fox growled.
Anthony frowned. Wiste shot him a look as if to remind him they were still on a quest. Anthony was starting to feel annoyed. “And who are you to collect taxes on a free road?” he shouted.
Probably encouraged by Anthony’s example, Wiste added, “All ways in this wood are to be open and free, by royal order of the king!”
The fox chuckled, his huge belly shaking. “Haven’t you heard? Alimonde is dead. Long live the fox king!” He casually swung the tree over one shoulder, looking down at them from his eighty foot height. “And if you want to pass through these woods, you’ll have to pay the tax.”
“You are no king,” Wiste said. “These roads are free by order of the throne, no matter who sits on it!”
The giant scoffed. “Think you that I care one whit about what some tiny, far-off royal thinks or says?” He flexed his titanic muscles while shifting the tree from one shoulder to the other. He narrowed his eyes. “And you’re acting awfully uppity for such a little thing.”
Wiste blushed and seemed about to say something when Anthony stepped forward.
“What’s the tax?” he called out.
The giant looked confused for a moment. “What?”
“The tax,” Anthony repeated. “You say you’re collecting a tax but you don’t say what it is.”
The fat fox’s face broke into a wide, crafty grin. “Gold,” he rumbled. “Half the gold you have on your person!” He paused and shot a glance at Wiste. “Twice that amount for him.”
“That’s absurd!” Wiste cried. “This is extortion—”
“Wiste,” Anthony hissed.
The satyr looked at the human, frowning. “Anthony,” he whispered, “we can’t. This beast—”
“Sir tax collector,” Anthony resumed, “you drive a hard bargain, but I concede. If you will swear by all your strength and power that we may pass for half my gold and twice that amount from my friend, we shall agree.”
The giant laughed. “Done!”
Anthony smiled and began to walk forward “That said, sir fox, we shall take our leave and pass.” He rubbed his hands together for warmth in the snowy wood and started to walk on. “Thank you.”
The fox looked confused for a moment. Then, with a thunderous boom he swung the tree-club into the ground blocking Anthony’s path.
“You,” he rumbled, “will not pass; you will pay me, or—”
“I already have,” Anthony said. He sounded calm and cool as he stared up from his ankle-height position by the giant’s paws. “You agreed to take in payment half the gold I have and twice that of my friend. Since I have no gold and twice nothing is still nothing, I’m afraid you made a bad bargain.”
The giant’s brow furrowed as he considered.
“What?”
Anthony sighed. This sort o
f trickery was rudimentary at best but, still, that’s what he was dealing with, here: a rudimentary threat by a rudimentary mind.
“You agreed—swore, even, by all your strength and might—to let us pass in return for the gold I offered. I’d have asked you to swear on your honor but, frankly, I wasn’t sure you had any.”
The insult seemed to go beneath the giant’s notice. The outright refusal to pay even a single coin, however, made him snarl. He lifted his club once more.
“You will give me what you have,” he growled. “You will give me all you own and, if I’m feeling generous, maybe I won’t eat you as well!”
The giant loomed over the two like a fur-covered, blubbery cliff.
Anthony stood back and crossed his arms. “No,” he said, “I do not agree to your terms. Our deal is struck. Do you now try to get around it?”
The giant fox narrowed his eyes. “I do.”
No sooner than the words escaped the titanic creature’s lips than a strange expression came over his face. He stumbled back and looked momentarily dizzy. Then, before their eyes, the giant began to dwindle. Only a little bit at first, the massive fox suddenly began to shrink, getting smaller and smaller. He staggered to one side, disoriented, and dropped the tree as it became too big to hold. Anthony and Wiste watched as the formerly gigantic tax collector shrank past their own height down to the considerably smaller size of an actual fox standing on its hind legs. The former giant fell back into a snow bank with a yelp.
Anthony smiled and began to walk forward past the diminished threat.
Wiste, after kicking some snow on the tax collector, followed.
“What … what have you done?” yelped the fox. He fumbled about in the snow, trying to stand.
“Me? I did nothing,” Anthony said. “The rules of the throne say this is a free road and the laws of the land enforce oaths freely given. Do you know nothing?”
“But my size; my strength...”
“Were forfeit as soon as you reneged on your agreement,” Anthony said. “I doubt it will last forever but by the time the enchantment of the land falls from your form, the queen will have sent her guard into these woods to secure the paths.” He narrowed his eyes. “Who knows? Maybe, by that time, you’ll have learned that all your power and authority mean nothing if you don’t respect those who are smart enough to actually earn their gold.”
With that, he and Wiste walked past the two-foot high giant and, passing between the snowy trees, resumed the final leg of their trek.
The doorway to Anthony’s childhood closet stood weathered and wreathed in forest snow. Squeezed between two towering, twisting trees, it looked smaller than he remembered. Carvings he’d made in it with a pen-knife were still visible even after all the intervening years.
“I remember your second adventure,” Wiste said. “You thought it was monsters knocking on the door when I came to tell you the Amber Witch had kidnapped the king.”
Anthony smiled, nodding. “I remember,” he said.
The snow drifted around them within the silence of the deep wood.
“I suppose this is it,” Anthony said.
“I suppose it is,” Wiste agreed. “I don’t suppose,” he asked, “that your parents would want a satyr visiting for Christmas dinner?”
Anthony laughed. “Trust me: the last thing you need is for them to start asking you questions after their son tells them he’s gay. I think that would make this Christmas even more awkward than it’s already going to be.”
Wiste shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “You could always talk to them on a day that isn’t so special.”
“I could,” he agreed. “And I probably should. It would be better that way, honestly. But, really, after all this, I’d best go through with it, now, while its all fresh in my mind.” He leaned down and hugged Wiste, tightly. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you again.”
Wiste embraced Anthony and buried his face in the young man’s winter coat.
“Promise?”
Anthony pulled back and crossed his heart. “By all the magic in NeverEarth, I swear,” he said. “Just don’t let it be so long next time, Ok?”
The satyr nodded. “Next time, I’ll plan it a bit better,” he said.
They embraced once more.
Anthony turned away and gave the handle of door a twist in the wrong direction and knocked four times. It opened up to reveal his childhood bedroom. Before he could re-think his decision, he stepped through.
As the door closed behind him, smells of cinnamon and apples filled his nostrils. He heard favorite Christmas carols playing somewhere in the house and, downstairs, the sounds of his mother and father preparing Christmas dinner. He’d have to come up with an explanation for how he’d managed to get here and why he’d not called but he suspected they’d just be too glad to see him to question it too much.
He was home.
Casually, he slung his pack onto his bed and, without a second thought, went downstairs to greet his family.
The End
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