One of the other Hobs spoke up. He was a rough-looking sort, dressed in hunting clothes. “Help? How? I do not know what we can do that would not bring unwanted eyes.”
“We have little ones to think of,” said another, older woman. She shook her head and muttered.
A general murmur of discontent went running through those gathered in the room.
But the old Hob was curt. “It is a thing I will think on.” They all fell silent. He got to his unsteady feet, and took his daughter’s arm, saying, “Good night and thank you.” He then left the room with her help.
As the door opened to let the old man out, the boy caught a glimpse of the room beyond. It was dimly lit, with low burning tapers, but he saw clearly enough several more Hobs with serious looks on their faces. Among them were two grim-eyed and narrow-lipped fellows who were dressed all in browns and greys and had curved horn bows slung at their sides. Even as the door was shutting, it was clear from the angry, worried expressions that an argument was about to happen. The hunter-looking Hob who had just now spoken, waited for a few seconds–got up–paced a little–apparently debating something in his own head. Then he too went to the door and disappeared through it. A few other hobs followed, one-by-one.
Small snatches and mutterings of conversation drifted around the pleasant warm room. About a minute after the old Hob had left, those who had been left behind in the room began to talk in earnest, quietly, and among themselves. It was clear that the two strangers were not welcome in this conversation. So much so, that much of it was undertaken in a lilting, purring language that the boy had never heard before, and which he assumed must be the Hob-Houlard’s native tongue.
He was poking at the remains of his chestnut shells, wondering if it would be rude to ask for more, when the young hob, Fleat, came softly back over to him. Fleat looked around, sat down cross-legged and said in a whisper, “I do not know if old grandfather owl will give an order to help you, but even if he does not I will help you. I’ve seen the Sorthemen going this way and that with their glinting spears and ugly grey hauberks of steel. They have cruel faces and are mean and petty to one-another. They would not be kind to us, no, no. I do not wish to see one of their princes get hold of a great power.”
“Thank you,” said the boy, also in a whisper. He felt conspiratorial, and he hoped no-one could overhear. “We will need help. Trying to steal the broken spell seems more and more like madness every passing day. What with magic giants and dragon-things. But we must try. We must. Caewen thinks so, and Dapplegrim too.”
“Do you trust them?” asked Fleat.
“I do. They know stuff. All sorts of secrets. And they have good hearts.” After a longer moment of reflection he added. “And a war would be terrible. I don’t much like fighting.”
Fleat nodded and looked around sadly. “Right terrible. I hope they do not find us here. This little town in the trees has been here hundreds of years, safe and tucked away. Empires have come and gone. The war of the Sorrowful Lady swept all about us. Armies fought back and forth, like tides and we held fast. We hold fast, we Hob-Houlards. Like the roots of the cliff-oaks, we hold fast.”
The boy nodded and blinked. “But then, surely… if your town survived other wars…”
Fleat shook his head. “There were no flying beasts-of-war then. The Lady of Sorrows had spies, great fat grey ravens that flew here and there and hunted out all the things they could find, but a raven can be brought down by a big owl. Not a one of those birds ever made it back to its mistress with news of this place. Leastways, so I’m told. It was well and long before my time. I’m not much older that you I think–” and here he grinned “–though I’m near enough to half your size. It must be frustrating being one of the big folk, so clumsy and stumbly.” He made a goofy face and flailed his hands as if he couldn’t control them. “Look at me. I’m a plodding human,” he said, laughing. There was no venom in the barb. The joke was good natured.
The boy laughed too, but maybe not for the same reason as Fleat. No one had ever called him big. He was scrawny, runtish, ill-fed: near a skeleton during the bad winters, when his father had been unable or unwilling to put food on the table. To have someone call him ‘big’ did seem like a joke, though he knew it was meant in earnest. “I don’t– um,” he said, “It’s alright. Being big and clumsy. You have to live with it I guess.”
Fleat shrugged. “A folk would have to. Now, you look like you’ve finished up that plate of nuts. There’s plenty more where that came from. Come on!” He jumped up, waved a hand to follow, and then sought a path across the room. He was quickly going in and out of knots of his relatives and the furniture alike. The boy followed with his bowl in one hand and the near-empty mug of black ale in the other. This was such a lovely place, really. The glowing light. The russet colours and polished wood. The thick and nestly warmth. He felt a tangle of sadness and even a prickling of jealousy when he thought about his own father in contrast, but he pushed it aside. He wanted to dwell on feeling happy and safe, here and now. He didn’t want to think about the miseries of the past. Or for that matter, the terrifying prospects of the future.
As the boy was thinking his thoughts, a bit lost in his own head, he happened to glance to the left and stopped. They were passing a tall case of books from floor to ceiling. He looked at them wonderingly and moved closer, almost breathless, and almost afraid that just looking at them might damage them somehow. Fleat poked his head back around the corner of a doorway and said, “What’s keeping you?”
“You have a whole shelf of books? Are all of these full of words and stories?”
“Yes. I guess. Don’t be too excited though, no, no. Most are quite boring.” He scratched his nose. “Dull histories of the families and tracings of family lines and stuff. And some herbals. And some other stuff too.”
“And stories?”
“A few. Yes. Why?”
“Our headman in the village had one book, and the village cunningman had two. They had wonderful stories in them–though I only heard bits and pieces when I could manage it. Do the words stay in the books until they are ciphered? The headman said that is how it works. The words are frozen… like if you were to say something on a very cold day and the words would come out frozen and fall to the ground. Can you cipher?”
“I can read. Yes. Cannot you? I thought everyone can read a bit, more or less. Didn’t your parents teach you?”
The boy shook his head. “Only three people in my village could cipher, and not well, neither. And if you ever met my father, you’d not ask such a question. Even if he could read–which he never could–he’d not spare a jot of time for me. Except to clap me around the ears, or lay a punch to my shoulders for doing something wrong.”
“Do you want to learn to read?” asked Fleat.
He looked at the books, in their strangely coloured covers lining the wall from floor to ceiling. “More than anything.”
Fleat nodded and said, “Well, it’d take a long time, cause it always takes a long time to learn, but I could learn you how to read, I ‘spect. After the job is done getting the great spell, yeah? Assuming the village is still here. You know.” He forced a smile through a momentary cloud of worry. “If everything works out all right. Which of course, it will.”
He shook his head. He was used to not being the sort of person who was any much good at anything. Reading seemed to him akin to summoning fire from the sky, or making apples ripen on a tree by magic, or conjuring snakes out of the very Clay-o-the-Green itself. It was all magic to him. “Maybe one day. Maybe.” He sighed softly, and followed Fleat through to the kitchen without another backward glance.