There Were 13 of Them

There Were 13 of Them

Index of Sections with word count

311Background on Birken, Durnst, Terkel

1569General background

2997Ordering the chest

1791Coming to get the chest

817Leaving Terkel's place

3985Travel to transformation

626Birken runs

526Message with cart

945Durnst meets Tam

652Birken comes to grips

1502Message second, Durnst on road

1753Durnst in Carmody at inn

746Durnst talks to Angie

1481Birken talks to Tam

1451Durnst meets Aune

787more talk with Aune

1171Rowella

907Durnst meets Horned Man

785Birken meets Rowella

1030Durnst talks with HM in room

958Birken and Rowella learn to talk

1212Durnst still talks with HM

1821Ashton

1019Ashton meets Birken and Rowella

764grey woman plots

1003tern games

1583Aldrea

1095Aldrea and the grey “man”

1370Durnst tells Angie

2275Angie dies

3160Durst goes to meet Birken

971plans and back

721Wilgrist

739Durnst and Terkel

1821Hausta

743dark and grey appointment

1144Durnst and dark plan

1054+ending of part I

Index of Names

Anders / fellow to help deliver cabinet
Angharrow / town in the lands of the Firstborn, where stories begin
Angie / Rowella’s mother
Ashton / the Traveler who became a tern
Aune / the wise woman herbalist
Bertran / man who ordered the cabinet
Birken / Terkel’s apprentice
Carmody / main market town of central Meldings
Celia / Terkel’s wife, Durnst’s mother
Danell / Aune the wise woman’s nephew
Dizen / port town on White Sea and Nee river
Durnst / Terkel’s son and apprentice
Earth Mother / main goddess
Elon / bay gelding
Firstborn / “land of the”, around Angharrow
Galinesh / “Galinesh taverns” frequented by fishermen, on Bay of Xilac
Grace / false name of the grey woman
Graesa / grey witch woman
Henley / town at ford on the Saer river
Lady of Waters / goddess of healers
Lawgiver / main god
Meldings / region
Montorey / coast town on the White Sea
Nee / small river, towns: Dizen
Recklet / last name of woman ordering cradle
Rowella / crane girl, Angie’s daughter
Saer / large river, towns: Henley, Tambren
Singer, the / god/goddess of bards and the Travelers
Sky Children / Pleiades type cluster of 9 stars
Straitmore / town far north of the Meldings
Tam / wood boy
Tambren / capital city
Terkel / master woodcrafter
Tissa / Celia’s sister, Durnst’s aunt
Travelers / gypsy folk
White Sea / to south and east of region
Williston / Terkel’s town
Xilac / “Bay of”, only place where green-finned sharks are found

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OAK AND BIRCH

The Prologue:

Once upon a time, there were three woodcrafters who lived on the outskirts of the small town of Williston, in the heart of the Meldings. There were two apprentices, Birken and Durnst, and their master, Terkel.

Birken was a tall, well-formed, slender, fair-skinned, straw-haired youth of about 19, too old to be called a boy and too unsettled yet in mind and body to fully called a man. His eyes were a warm brown, flecked with gold on a good day and shaded with grey when under the weather. Despite the leanness, he was strong enough to give Durnst a good battle whenever one was called for, which was often, but never other than in sport, the natural inclination of young males to find something or someone to butt heads against.

Durnst was as solid as a yearling bull, and what little he lacked in height to Birken was more than made up for by the half-again advantage in muscular weight. Birken’s quickness might land more blows per round but any single one of Durnst’s might flatten his opponent. He was a year older (20) and darker in general coloring, with easily tanned skin that didn’t fade as easily, dark brown and very unruly hair, and his eyes a dark brown, too, indeed nearly black. He might have seemed a brute but for the clear even temper of his spirit that shone in his features, which were made the clearer by a regretted and often grumbled-over inability to grow much in the way of facial hair, unlike his father’s thick bushy beard.

Terkel was an older man of about 50, and squarely built but no one would call him fat, not unless they were being deliberately insulting and even then probably not to his face. He had gingery reddish brown hair and a similar colored wiry beard with strands of grey in both, a florid face, a good sense of humor, a hearty laugh, a strong grip, and a heavy blow should it be needed. Occasional there was a melancholy in the hazel eyes that most would rightly put down to memories of his departed wife.

The “departed” was unfortunately no euphemism. Durnst had been but a year and a half old when his mother had run off. Celia had been only 17 when she married Terkel She was the fourth of six children and the attentions of such a well-regarded man bestowed only on her had been so satisfying that she’d neglected to consider the difference of 12 years in age. Terkel himself had been overwhelmed by the idea that this dark-haired, dark-eyed, fiery-tempered girl seemed so responsive to his overtures that he had no qualms for their future together. The idea of marriage and running her own household was appealing to Celia; the reality of a near-solitary life with crying baby was less so. She was used to a bustling family all around her. Terkel had only one apprentice then (not such close family as Birken had become; though he took his meals with the family, this one slept in the shed), and the two spent most of the day in the workshop. There were arguments about getting in help (Terkel didn’t see the need in a small house with a single child), about interruptions at work (Celia didn’t see why she couldn’t make demands of Terkel all through the day), and for multiple other reasons. When, one evening, when too much ale had been downed in an attempt to mellow his mood, Terkel came flat out and said that another child might give her more incentive to arrange her time better, Celia’s temper exploded. Terkel had never hit a woman before, but one had never clawed at his face and he was more than half-drunk. There was weeping and wailing and many of the tears were his as he tried to apologize, but she shut herself in the other room with Durnst and would not open the door despite his pleas for forgiveness. He fell asleep in the chair by the fire. When he woke, the door was open and Celia was gone.

Durnst was sitting on the floor of the cottage wrapped in a blanket and sucking quietly on the sugar stick his mother had given him to keep his quiet as she left. A few days later, Terkel found out that Celia wasn’t the only one who had left Williston, that so had a boy that Celia had regularly been seen flirting with before she’d taken up with Terkel. After a few months, Terkel heard rumors of the two being seen in Dizen, but another said, no, they’d left. No word was ever sent directly. For a time, Terkel thought of telling Durnst that his mother had died, but the lie was too much with which to burden a small child, it would break the heart and soul if he ever found out else wise, and too many knew to keep it secret forever. So he simply said that Celia had “needed to leave for a time” and left the time uncertain but with indication that it would be a long one. Durnst grew up accepting it as so. One of Celia’s sisters had volunteered to come help out, to mitigate the family shame, and Terkel had accepted the offer, so Durnst had not been lacking for mothering from a blood relative, and he’d loved his aunt Tissa well, and she him, till she left to marry and raise her own family.

By then Durnst was 10 and Birken had arrived, a scrawny lad that Terkel had found by the simple expediency of Birken approaching him in town and asking if he had any work that Birken could do for him That, they soon found out, was Birken’s nature, always open and straightforward and never fearful that someone would take offense. No one knew Birken’s parentage. He’d been found sitting by the side of the road outside the eastern edge of town when but a toddler, they guessed two or three years old. Whether he’d wandered away from a Traveler family without their notice, or been left deliberately behind, none could tell. No one ever came looking for him. The chandler and his wife, a childless older couple who lived out that way, took him in and were kind enough, but kept it clear that he wasn’t their own. After the man died, the woman made plans to go live with other family but saw no need to bring Birken along with her. She took the boy into town to try to find a place for him. She was talking to the baker, a fat squinty-eyed man that Birken took an instant disliking to, when Birken spotted Terkel buying stores and asked if Terkel had a place for him instead. Terkel had noted the boy before, when doing business with those fostering him, and had always liked the look of him, and, frankly, had an equal degree of antipathy to the baker, whom he’d always suspected of doctoring goods and cheating his customers. The widow was uncertain which was the better position (she had enough kind feeling for Birken’s future to care that much) and the baker was reluctant to let free help slip out of his hands, but Terkel insisted and even offered a sort of “finder’s fee” to the widow that the baker was unwilling to match and certainly unwilling to top. So Birken came to live with Durnst and Terkel and began to learn how to craft anything of wood, from cooperage to cabinetmaking, and wood carving as well. None of the three had ever regretted the arrangement.

With the two boys helping him both in the workshop and around the house, Terkel had never felt need to bring in any additional help after Tissa’s leave-taking. As for another woman in the house who wasn’t mere hired help, as far as Terkel was concerned, he was still married, and he would have looked with disgust at anyone who suggested otherwise, or, gods forbid, suggested that he live with another woman without being blessed and hand fasted by the Earth Mother’s priest. The three lived simply, taking turns with simple meals, and once a week (or fortnight) Terkel, or one of the boys, dropped off a load of laundry with the farmwife who lived next to them and picked it up a day or two later. There were enough extra coins for that. Birken and Durnst each privately wondered where all the rest of the extra coins went, once they were old enough to realize that the meals, though hearty, and the other necessities of the house, though comfortable, were not as expensive as Terkel had sometimes led them to believe. As the boys grew older and their skills improved, some of the pieces went for a goodly sum of money, more than what they suspected was needed for their everyday life. But Terkel never volunteered the information, and Durnst would have felt it absurd to question his father’s running of the house, and Birken would have felt it ungrateful and far outside his place to do so.

The area of the country they were in was called the Meldings. To the south and east was the White Sea. To the west, it was bound by a wide river called the Saer, which was navigatable for miles far inland, all the way to the country’s capital city of Tambren. To the north the way was wilder, with woods and hills changing to broken rocks and mountains. The area around Williston itself still kept lot of its forests, so wood was easy to come by for their business, but it was on the edge of flatter land and there were many farms as well, though not as many as around Carmody. The road to Carmody let west and a bit south. The road to Dizen, a harbor town on the small river Nee, let off to the northeast. There was another road that led south to join the cliffs road that bordered the sea, and on to Montorey, but not many traveled that. To the north were only trails for hunters to take, that led deep into the woods, and the paths that ran along the outskirts of the forest for loggers and charcoal burners to push back its hold on the land.

The Meldings were far enough away from the capital, and far enough away from any borders with foreign lands, that there was little concern for its doings other than the collection of taxes at the appropriate time of the year, which was, of course, halfway between the fall equinox and the winter solstice. By than, nearly all of the harvests had been gathered, and people were preparing themselves for the quieter days of winter, laying up stores according to their needs and funds. That some of those funds should go to support the king and the king’s men during that same winter (and for most of the year following) was only right. Few argued with this logic, though as always even fewer were completely honest in giving what they should have given. Terkel was no paragon in this regard either, but he was honest enough that he’d never suffered the indignity of a public fine (which included a notice posted at the town center), nor even the private version of the tax assessor’s quiet solicitation of funds to help avoid the necessity of researching what was really such a minor discrepancy, surely a mere mistake in calculating the figures.
The Story:

It was one of the best things he’d done. Birken wasn’t a stolid, unemotional fellow to begin with, but now he was clearly grinning as he polished the carved surface, fully aware of his achievement. Durnst shifted his attention from his own work and looked over with a more critical eye.

“You sure about those flowers?”

“They’re great flowers! You’re just jealous you never thought of them.” Birken’s voice was as light as his touch on the smooth wood. “A baby likes flowers. Boy or girl. And they’re not simpering rose buds, anyway; they’re nice, sturdy flowers, daisies and, uh, buttercups.”

So what if he hadn’t carved the designs from life but only from remembered flower shapes in his mind’s eye? “Buttercups” was a good enough name for them, close enough. Life was too short to obsess over every detail. The shapes didn’t matter nearly as much as the whole effect was wonderful. If flowers like that didn’t exist, they should. And the polishing, that mattered too, to be certain that never a splinter would prick babe nor the mother laying her treasure gently to rest.

Durnst snorted. “I’ve better thoughts in my head. And you daren’t say I can’t do fancy work!” He straightened up from the planing, flexing massive shoulders and arms, head dropping as he turned fully to Birken with a pugilistic glower from under the lowered brow. “Or are you saying that?”

Birken threw his arms in front of the cradle protectively, “Hey, no! Wait…” He scrambled to his feet and sidled away from the piece, towards the sunlit open door of the shed. “I didn’t say you weren’t clever, Durnst, not a bit of it!” Almost there. “After all, it takes cleverness to realize who’s the best, and copy all your patterns off MY sketches!”

“You bastard!” The expected roar was followed by the equally expected charge. The speed, though, was always surprising. This time Birken made it nearly halfway across the yard before being tackled. Likely the laughter helped his opponent, slowing Birken down and adding extra incentive to Durnst’s attack. A cloud of sawdust and wood chips and dry dirt rose in the air as the two tumbled across the yard, laughing and roaring, respectively.

“Durnst! Birken!” A louder, deeper roar broke through their noisemaking. “Enough!” The thrashing pile of limbs broke apart into two figures prone on the ground and now equal in choking back snickers as they both tried hard to stand and show proper abashed responses to their master’s outcry.

“Sorry, sir!” “Won’t happen again!” “We didn’t mean to… “ “At least we were out of the workroom…?” “… this time?”

Master Terkel raised his hands and his eyes to the heavens. “So I’m to be grateful we don’t have ten weeks of work to redo because you lunks have smashed it to pieces?! Thank the Lawgiver for such favors! I should sacrifice a goat to him! Maybe one of the two before me, hey? Will you do the honors and pick one, mistress? Or maybe I’ll send both off!”