The Young Knight, The Fey Maiden, and the Bridge Troll - Ch. 11 (Plus Estee funding request) · 2:25am June 19th
But first, a commercial. I'll make it short. Estee has a kidney stone and could use some fiscal assistance. On the other hand, I have a princess, and she shows up right below the break (once you're done giving Estee a few dollars and some well-needed sympathy).
Chapter Tracking
Chapter List of The Young Knight, the Fey Maiden, and the Bridge Troll
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11 (with funding request)
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The clearing felt oddly empty.
Three days of bridge-building by the citizens of Nadare had filled the area with laughter and activity, more food than Fetch had seen in ages, and a sense of working together that was quite familiar. It was a lot like being at home again, only with less chance of getting his feet stepped on.
Then the rope bridge had been heaved across the ravine, first with a thin rope for the pullers on the other side, which turned into a thicker rope, and then a massive cable of twined rope winched in on the other side as this side as this side cautiously released the anchoring lines. Seeing the heavy bridge sway in the breeze had left Fetch’s heart in his throat until each side had been secured and the dark ropes given their final wrapping. There was still maintenance to do because a second coat of tar and linseed oil would have to be applied in a week or two, along with sprinkles of sand on the wooden planks so they would not be as slippery underfoot in the wet. But for now, the Wizard’s Bridge was back up, the party was over, and even the Forselt knights across the river had vanished, probably escorting Nomor to their king and whatever behind the scenes scheme was being crafted against King Seiki.
That did not mean Fetch could sit back and prop up his feet in the relative silence. Missus Triana would not have liked that. There were no end of projects penciled out in thin black lines on Quartz’s growing map, both for the new rope bridge and the stone bridge that would replace it in a year or two of hard work. One of those projects was a search for just the right flavor of bridge-building granite, which Quartz had embarked upon with great vigor. Every morning before dawn, he was headed upstream or downstream with a hammer and a bag for his samples, and every evening came dragging back, happy as a troll and just about as muddy as could be.
Broom had started leaving out a half-dozen buckets of clean water in the evenings for his return.
Fetch’s job was more simple. He made wooden stakes. Lots of stakes. Following the lines on Quartz’s plans, he hammered them into the ground at regular intervals, marking out the boundaries of the gravel path leading up to the bridge, the campsite for travelers who did not want to spend the night out in the forest, the corral for their livestock, and the fence that would surround them all so boars would not interrupt their slumber. Oh, and the troll-washing area, with a carefully dug drainage channel to the nearby stream which cascaded down the walls of the ravine away from the bridge a good distance.
The stream was pretty, and Fetch stopped several times during the day just to watch the mist rise up from below. During spring rains, it would drain all of their worksite and more, so Quartz had laid out a careful elevation map with spots for two clay pipes to carry the water under the main unbuilt road and the new gravel path. The pipes would wait for later, of course. Fetch had cast pots and mugs before, but had never tried anything as big as a pipe so he was more than willing to let the potters in Nadare or Foreselt handle the task. After all, he was going to have to dig the channel and bury the pipe, so he was not getting out of it for free.
After a week or three, Fetch was really getting used to his job. He even had bagged a deer in the forest and brought it back to the stone house for cleaning, with Broom helping. It was ever so slightly unnerving to see the magical construct using a knife for proper dressing of the carcass. However, his fears were reassured significantly when Fetch had accidentally gotten slightly in the way of one of her slices. In a heartbeat, the broom had dropped the knife and began cleaning the minor injury with rapid wooden fingers, taking great care to get every speck of blood washed away in clean water before wrapping his finger completely in linen and finishing up with a tiny bow on top of the bandage.
“Thank you,” said Fetch into the broom’s eyeless gaze that made him think it was still apologizing. “It’s nothing. Only a minor cut.”
That seemed to calm Broom, but she did not return to trimming the carcass until he had gotten a bit further away, and then with much less speed.
“I don’t think we can eat all that before it spoils. Wish I had set up a smoker,” said Fetch instead of helping with the last few sections of deer that needed chopped up. “We have the lumber, but I need to build the rope shed first, and there’s all the gravel that needs hauled up from the riverbed—”
A flicker of movement above caught his eye and he glanced up, expecting to see Prince Svenson and Snowflake coming in for a landing like they had to great applause during the bridge-building. Instead, his mind really could not wrap itself around what he was seeing.
At first, he thought it was another pixie like he had seen flitting around the house recently. Then as he watched it descend, something that Princess Tula said soaked in.
“You can make fairy wings,” he blurted out as she touched daintly to the ground inside the stone house corral. “I thought you were exaggerating.”
The glittering translucent insect wings on Tula’s back shimmered once and vanished, leaving the elven princess to sit down rather suddenly on a nearby chunk of wood that Fetch had been using as a stool. It caught him flat-footed as about anything, but Broom had no such hesitation. She was off like a shot into the stone house, to emerge a few moments later with an earthenware tankard full to the brim with cold, clear water.
“Thank— you?” Princess Tula obviously had taken the water before really understanding the manner in which it had been delivered, and she glanced briefly in Fetch’s direction with an obvious question that he thought was best to answer before any misconceptions crept in.
“Broom is a creation of the Wizard’s wife,” started Fetch carefully. “She’s the caretaker for the house, and has been letting us use the grounds outside while building the bridge. The stone bridge, now.”
“Lubomia made you?” asked Tula slowly to the nearby broom before taking a long drink. “I didn’t think… Well, Mother said she had considerable talent.”
“Obviously.” Fetch looked up into the sky, but there did not seem to be any more visitors headed for a landing in the corral. “Pardon me, Princess, but where are your guards?”
The minute he said it, Fetch knew he had made a mistake. The elven princess darkened, and sparks flashed in those dangerous green eyes.
“Father wanted to send me to Sienna,” she snapped. Mother objected, but only because she wanted me sent even further into the Elven lands.”
“So why are you here?” Fetch asked despite his best intentions.
“I…”
That seemed to be a question that the princess did not expect, despite how obvious it was. She certainly was not fleeing to Fetch’s protection as some sort of hero, but he had to make some sort of excuse in lieu of her indecision.
“You’re hiding from King Seiki’s greedy goons,” he started, “so you decided to hide in the one place that the usurper would not look. I mean I’m safe here from being recaptured because I don’t think Quartz would take very kindly to a guest being abducted. It doesn’t sound as if the Wizard would allow himself to be used as a kidnapper since he hasn’t done it before, so that leaves ordinary people as your greatest threat. I think I’ve seen four walking along the path since the bridge went up, and none of them stopped to chat.”
“Ahhh… Right,” said the princess without much enthusiasm, although she did seem to be cheering up. “Actually, that makes sense.” She gave him another look. “You’re remarkably astute for a servant.”
“Missus Triana and Ottao were more my family than employers,” said Fetch. “The whole village was like that. In fact, it was a lot like a school,” he could not help but add. “Each villager taught me a great amount of their craft in the hopes that I would find a place where I really fit in and thrived. I really didn’t. My talents really seemed to lie in helping people, both the people in the village and the travelers along the road. Some of the merchants like to call me Fix instead of Fetch.”
He took the empty tankard back from the princess and gestured to the stable. “Forgive me, but you look exhausted from your flight. If you want to lie down for a time, you can have my hammock. I’ve still got a number of—”
Broom was at his side in a flash, and seemed to bristle at the thought of a princess propping up her feet in the dusty stable, regardless of the way Fetch had been using it for the last few weeks. She took one elbow and boosted Tula up in an example of the unnatural strength that Fetch had experienced first-hand before, then escorted the princess into the stone home with all the grace of a highborn courier accompanying royalty.
Then the door closed behind them, giving a plain signal that Fetch was not to follow.
Twilight caught caught Fetch slogging up the river staircase again with a bucket of gravel in each hand. As frail as the woven vines and twigs seemed, the stairs shook only slightly when Quartz began his ascent below, singing quietly to himself. It would have been funny to see his face when presented with the unexpected Princess Tula, but since the troll had been washing off au natural by the edge of the ravine, he thought it more prudent to give fair warning.
So Fetch waited until he had finished spreading the gravel in the bathing area and Quartz was rinsing off with the second bucket of sun-warmed water before saying, “Princess Tula is in the house.”
“She is?” Quartz stopped half-way done peeling out of his tough pants and gave a sharp glance in the direction of the stone home. “An’ me without my suit.”
“I think she’s hiding out from her parents.” Putting some of their gentler lye soap on the boar’s hair brush, Fetch gave Quartz’s back a quick scrub in the area he could not reach from the front. “Broom took her inside to lie down since she looked so tired. She flew here,” he added.
“I’ve seen that before in some of the more magical folk. Nifty trick, but ah prefer walking.” Quartz wriggled his toes in the water and shook his big feet dry, or as dry as they were going to get. “Gravel’s a nice touch across this patch. In the early spring, the mud’d be about hip deep otherwise. T’finish it and the road too, you’ll prob’ly need to get a farmer with a wagon to haul some gravel from elsewhere or you’ll be dragging buckets up long after the bridge is done.”
“True,” admitted Fetch. “But the river gravel is smoother. We can use it near the bridge and the road building crews from Nadare and Forselt.can fill in up to there. Fairly sure we can’t gravel the whole length to each town, but some drainage in the low areas would help wagons quite a bit, and—”
“Hold on there, boy.” Quartz chuckled to himself while rinsing off with a bucket of water. “We’ve got a princess as a guest. Yew ain’t gonna give her a shovel and tell her to dig holes now, are ya?”
If Fetch had been honest with himself, he could have denied the accusation. The problem was he had grown up in a village where everybody helped everybody else, and there were no real class distinctions. The idea of Princess Tula sitting back while Fetch labored did not really fit in his mind.
It only confused his mind further when they walked to the stable and found the princess and Broom had laid out dinner for them on the drafting table, with earthenware bowls and pewter tableware setting off the single candle flickering in the center of the trim tablecloth.
“I should go back an’ wash up some more,” said Quartz.
Princess Tula gave him a stern look. “I wanted to do something to thank you for sheltering me from the Wizard. I owe you a debt.”
“Your father sent all them people to help putting up the little bridge,” countered Quartz. “If’n that debt needs repaying, I’ll have to stand at the bridge with my hand out for everybody who goes by, an’ that won’t help me build a real bridge.”
“You should charge something,” said the princess turned server. She took the lid off a tureen of venison stew and began to ladle out bowls as she talked. “If you permit people to travel over the bridge for nothing, they’ll expect it all the time. If you charge something trivial, like two iron nails or a brass ha’pence—”
“Or a brick,” said Quartz. “We’re gonna need some bricks for accent pieces around the walkways.”
“Or a brick,” said Tula. She poured her own bowl and sat down in a chair that had obviously been taken from inside the house. “Or a glass bottle. The dwarves in the Iron Mountain have begun shipping out bottles by the crate. It may not look like much at first, but it will save you trips into town if nothing else.”
It was worth some thought, and since Quartz was paying him to think, Fetch did so while eating. There was a thick loaf of bread on the table which provided thinking fuel, as did the raspberry jam. The women of the town had given Fetch a large glass jar of the stuff as thanks for letting them harvest while the menfolk were building. Or maybe several jars. It had been such a busy time and he had not even had a chance to ask about why they had been boiling green apples to make raspberry jam, but it was a definite contributor to the firm consistency and interesting taste. They had covered the top of the jars they were taking home with beeswax for storage, but there never were enough beehives to make covering for all the jars, so some had to be eaten quickly before it spoiled.
And with Quartz around, jam had no opportunity to spoil. By the end of the meal, he was running one thick grey finger around the bottom of the jar to get out the last of the jam, and if the princess had not been there, he probably would have been licking the inside of the jar clean.
* * *
The next day dawned.
It could scarcely do anything else.
A number of rumbling clouds were scurrying in from the west, giving a fair indication that the warm sunshine was going to be short-lived today. Quartz had already begun work by the time Fetch rolled out of his hammock, and the tick-tick-tick of his hammering brass tacks into the granite walls of the ravine echoed across the clearing like some odd woodpecker.
“Porridge,” said an unexpected princess from next to Fetch. Tula had a small kettle by the handle and was sitting it down on the table by the time he had his wits back. “We’ve got some powdered sugar beet if you want. Mother made sure to send some along because she knows how much I like it on porridge, but I’ll share. A little.”
“Thanks?” Also thankful that he had worn pants last night, Fetch seated himself on the other side of the small table and accepted the porridge bowl. “Uh… Did you have anything you wanted to do today?”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” Tula nudged some of her porridge around and began mixing a pinch of reddish powder into it. “Mother says that’s a bad habit.”
“Sometimes a little spontaneity is a good thing. If I hadn’t taken advantage of an opportunity to escape King Seiki’s soldiers, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Me neither,” admitted Tula. “I never would have approached a bridge troll by myself.”
She remained silent until they both reached the bottoms of their bowls, but spoke up before taking their breakfast dishes back inside. “Why don’t you two sleep inside?”
Broom appeared in the doorway as if summoned.
“Fairly sure she doesn’t want us to,” said Fetch, “and I’m not about to push it, even if we could. This is the Wizard’s home. And his family. Apparently, you’re family too since you’re related to Princess Lubonia.”
“Distantly.” Tula took some time to look the broom over, from bristles to handle. “My cousin does fine work. This is so far beyond me. I thought I knew about everything I needed to know about magic, and now I feel like I’m starting all over again.”
“Likewise.” Fetch took the dishes out of her hands and passed them to Broom, who promptly scurried off and closed the door behind her. “Would you like me to show you around the area now that the crowds are gone?”
* * *
It was… different over the next few days. And dirty.
Since Tula had only brought the clothes on her back, and Broom could not modify the few leftover clothes that the Wizard’s family had left behind, he found his own pants being ‘borrowed’ from time to time. Princess Tula had to cinch up his belt to the last notch and roll the cuffs up, but they made due far better than the collection of rags his previous pants had turned into. Broom took the transformation with far less acceptance than Fetch. She paced whenever they were together, and fairly radiated a desire to wisk the princess into the stone house for a full dressing, with ornate dresses she did not have.
It was a good thing the broom did not follow Fetch and Tula out into the woods or she would have worried her bristles off. Quartz had picked up a crosscut saw during their last trip into Nadare, which Fetch had considered impractical since the use of it would have been a great mismatch, pitting a mere human against a troll. Tula had far more strength than Fetch expected, and threw herself into the work of sawing firewood with a great deal of enthusiasm.
At least on their first day in the woods.
Their second day, Tula brought the bow and kept her bandaged hands off any other wood. She moved slightly slower than she admitted to, but Fetch did not tease her about it, and within a few days she was right back on the other side of the saw, turning fallen logs into chunks ready to be split for winter.
She even carried buckets of gravel or sand from the stream when the mud started to get thicker, and engaged in a fascinating conversation about wading, crayfish, and turtles. It seemed that being a princess got in the way of being a proper child, much like Fetch’s jobs and lack of a youthful peer group had kept him out of most childish games. It gave them something to talk about at work, and later when they got ready for their evening meal.
Every evening they would bring back a bushel or so of apples or pears for Broom, who would rush Tula inside and ensure she was scrubbed clean while Fetch went to the gravel-covered section of the compound for a lye soap rub and vigilant bucket or two of clean water to rinse it off.
Dinner was served by the illumination of fey lanterns scattered around the stable, casting colorful hints of light into all the dark corners and making Quartz look festive instead of plain grey all of the time. It was a clever trick of magic quite dissimilar to what Fetch was used to at home, but he kept his mouth closed and did not ask about it because he did not want to be pushy around the princess, who was quite proud of her work.
Broom… Well, she could cook, although Fetch kept comparing her food to Missus Triana’s recipes and coming up a little short. Then again, if Quartz and himself had been depending on their own cooking, they would have eventually run out of fish in the river and resorted to eating rocks.
Evenings were just a little like a family, only Fetch could not get his mind wrapped around how to regard Princess Tula because she most certainly was not acting like a sister, and not acting like a romantic interest either. The books that Fetch had read about royalty made him think they were some sort of odd creature which did not poop or do their own laundry, but instead just pined romantically for other royals or engaged in noble battles for their kingdoms against impossible odds. Poetry was involved in far too many of the books, and to his surprise, Tula agreed with his opinion.
Admittedly, Quartz and himself learned far more about royal life and troll life than Fetch had expected, and he did not get to talk much about his own dull village by comparison. He really had an uninteresting life before King Seiki’s army brought some unwelcome excitement, and Tula’s lessons on How To Behave Around Royals were welcome all around, due to the number of royalty that Fetch and Quartz had been exposed to rather abruptly.
And in return, Quartz taught them both a lot about building bridges. Since the troll had grown up in a harbor town, he knew far more about rope than expected, and not just for lifting stone blocks into place for his bridge. A second coat of tar with sand for traction was needed on Little Bridge, as Quartz had started to call it, and Tula volunteered to help most probably before she realized how dirty a job it was going to be.
Buckets of sand, a pot of bubbling tar, a rope around his waist so he would not be able to fall far, a brush that gummed up the more it was used, and considerable Royal education followed. By the time Quartz declared the job complete, both human and elf were practically indistinguishable from each other, and even the troll was dark up to his elbows.
It was the worst time to receive a guest.
That did not stop the dragon.
This is another example of character introductions: You don't have to show a character all at once. I did a bit of sampling with Princess Tula in earlier chapters to frame her out, and now I've dropped her into the main story line where she's going to stay until the end. Feel free to do a little mental shipping. You should have a good idea of her full characterization now, and how well she's going to fit.
And a dragon.