In the Deep Woods Gwynda padded wildly through the dark with only starlight to show her the way. It was the darkest part of the night - the Hag's Hour - and her heart trembled as she thought about all of the superstitions that surrounded the lonely shadows of old-growth forests. For her, this was a spiritual experience. She could feel it in the way the cold light of distant stars crowned the branches of the trees and their vernal buds; the way those trees grew unique from each other, no root or trunk twisting in the same way as its neighbor; and the way the air kept the faintest hint of the winter chill that still threatened frost in the planting season. These things all took on a primal air and made her imagine the world when it was young and full of heroes. And it reminded her of when she was young. She knew, in the nagging rational corners of her mind not yet drowned divine ecstasy, that she must have looked like a fool. Gwynda was a woman in the wisdom of her middle years, having seen thirty eight winters on this earth, but she was acting like a little girl. Auburn hair whipped around her head, no braids or buns to hold it back. She was only wearing her undergarments - a white undershirt and flappy bloomers, now all brown and green with earthly stains. Her feet were bare, and her skin -ghastly pale and freckled - was soiled by the wet springtime mud. She was darting through the forest like a child, smiling and cantering from outcrop to glade, and stopping in her tracks when she struck a particularly shadowy part of the woods, where she would creep by, staring awestruck at the brooding shadows of old oaks and moss covered cypresses. In those dark places, colored by the shrill song of insects and the low croaking of toads, she imagined terrible things. Banshee's screaming in haunted graveyards, Batghouls descending from a dank highland cave in search of fresh buried corpses, like the stories she heard as a child in the old world, at the home of her Father's people in Tembree. But she also imagined stranger things - the stories of the new world. She thought of savage natives dancing naked around fire pits in the deep woods, painting themselves with the blood of murdered infants. And she thought of the terrible Sea-People that explorers claimed to see in the coastal swamps, their limbs replaced with eldritch tentacles and their skin covered in terrible scales. When she was in one of her dolorous fits, she feared these things and tried to hide herself from this world, but when her Goddess was with her and her spirit was lifted into religious ecstasy, this place took on a horrible beauty. The religious ecstasy did not come from nowhere. It was born in her devotion to Athdara - the Goddess-Queen of Strength, Courage, and Honor. Athdara had been a living woman in the distant past. She had been the daughter of Preavic, the legendary first High King of the Sorsetii who's Kingdom became Sorset. The story of Athdara was a heroic one - she had been the only child of Preavic, and she was only fourteen when her father died and left her the crown. The Kingdom, by all rights, should have perished with its first king, but Athdara kept it thriving. She bested her warriors in feats of strength, and showed a capacity to rule that rivaled her heroic father's. Under her command, the Sorsetii expanded and conquered their neighbors, and when Athdara died, she was given a place in the center of the heavens. As in life, the Goddess Athdara had no equals. She was Athdara of the Ten Thousand Glories, the master of the heavens. The forests south of Uponhill hugged the Adair farm, Gwynda's home in exil. The forests grew thicker as you went further south, until they closed in around each other to form a vaulted ceiling of branches and leaves that closed off the sky in some places. Patches of wet, marshy soil came together to form a natural barrier against the sea, which they met with reeded salt marshes and unnavigable lagoons. Gwynda knew nothing of warfare, but she had been told that the harshness of this wet woodland protected the colony of Uponhill from southerly attack, and Gwynda agreed. She agreed for different reasons though. She was but one woman, and she could navigate this place with ease, but there were other things in the forest that held more power than swampy ground or dense treelines. There was an ancient power, one that drew her to it, and she had absolute faith that it would protect her and her own. This forest held a relic, and it strummed at something deep in Gwynda's soul. She had learned the path to its place, and the place of every tree and glade and rock that lead to it. The forest seemed to grow thicker as she continued her late-night pilgrimage. She stopped at times, scrapping the bark from the trees and watching it dirty her fingernails. The smells in this place were the earthy scents of damp vegetation and living rot. She began to think of herself as a woodland nymph, or a faerie blessing the ground that she passed over. She almost fell entirely to her imagination, but an unnatural marking jerked her back into reality. It was a symbol carved into the jagged bark of a leaning Cyprus tree - a circle, crossed with a deep-cut V. And owl sign. She knew it immediately. Brodric, her steward, liked to hunt these woods. She knew he had belonged to the Society of Owls, one of the old martial Fraternities of Tirna-Sorset. When it was first reported to her that someone had been making odd markings in the woods near their farm, Brodric confessed. He claimed these markings to be an "Owl sign" and promised that they were little more that markings he made to remind himself where he brought down prey while hunting. Brodric loved to hunt, and the idea that he would mark trees to create a map of his successes was not in the least surprising. It bothered her, though, to imagine an animal being skinned and slaughtered along the path of her sacred pilgrimage. She skipped away, trying to forget about it. She entered the clearing, where the trees parted around an outcropping of thick limestone rock jutting out from the ground like ships sinking into the earth. Moonlight cast a blue hue over the land here, and the distant granite face of Mons Aen glimmered above the treeline. She glided into a furrow below, where a slick, mossy slab of rock jutted out of the soft ground. In front of that was a small pond, and in its center was a natural pillar of speckled black granite carved with an unnatural face. The features of the face were simple - two closed eyes, a simple nose, a mouth carved as a straight line, and the slim lines of a female face. Wild rifts in the stone squirmed like snakes along its top and gave the appearance of untamed hair. Gwynda could feel the power of the thing, and she had no doubt in her mind. This was the image of her Goddess. Athdara of the Manifold Spears. Gwynda fell onto her knees at the edge of the pond, squelching mud soaking through her cotton bloomers. She could hear dozens of prayers racing through her head at once. Athdara who keeps us well. Athdara who mastered the sky. Be good to those who are good to you, and keep your truths so that we shall know them. Gwynda's mind was inundated with memories of temples, and incense, and priests dressed in the finest fur-lined robes. She could remember her first fits of ecstasy when she was a child, and how it had lead her to boast that she could read the entire Athdaric Edda in a fortnight. She had succeeded. When her mind filled with this ecstatic energy, she could do things that scared others. It was like she had the willpower of a Goddess, but her mortality could not sustain her ecstatic fits and she always sunk into deep melancholia afterwards. Those she called her dolorous fits. They were, like the swinging of a pendulum, the two states of mind that had defined her life. She had married Riordan Adair in fit of ecstasy, which had caused her to insist on consummating their marriage three separate times their first night. She had also been in an ecstatic fit when they arrived in the new world, and she ordered the Adair Farm to be built on the far side of the river from the rest of the colony. Her spiritual excitements felt like patches on an uneven quilt that came together to tell her story despite the grey, depressed wool beneath them. She remembered her ecstatic moments vividly, and her dolorous moods almost always became vague mists in her memory. As she kneeled in the cold mud, a frog chanced by her. It became victim to her fancy. She grabbed it, and crushed its head in her fist. Blood and entrails oozed between her fingers, and she lifted the animal up as an offering. "Athdara" she crooned. It was foolish to be so loud in the wild, where the savages patrolled for victims to rape and kill, but she could hardly care. "I renew my service to you. Keep my children well." she felt unfinished, and scrambled for new additions to her prayer. "Keep our town safe from the savage, and show the savage how to behave. Remember the corn!" she thought of the horrible winter and shivered. "Yes! Remember the Corn." She dropped the mangled corpse of the sacrificial frog into Athdara's alter pond. "I am yours, Goddess!" she pulled open the buttons of her undershirt and bared the center of her freckled chest as if her present her heart for sacrifice. She beat on her sternum like a drum. "I will serve you in this new land! I will do whatever you wish me to!" --- By the next day, Gwynda's night-time pilgrimage had passed into memory. She stood in the warm spring sun, a neatly kept patterned turquoise tea gown covering her entirety from neck to ankle. Her hair, far from the wild mess that had followed her through the woods the night before, was done in twin braids that twisted back and forth to form a symmetrical bun with two ends hanging from its center. The Adair farm was a tamed meadow in the middle of the marshy southern woodlands. It was ringed with a waist-high stockade wall, the wall's logs whittled to points as sharp as spears. Most of the property was tilled earth, neighbored by smaller gardens, animal pens, simple outbuildings, and rows of log cabins for their attendants. The farmhouse dominated at the center of the property. It consisted of two floors, with raw, unpainted clapboard siding and small glassless shuttered windows. A river stone chimney rose from one side. Gwynda fiercely desired glass windows, and the lively painted walls that she had known in the old world. She wanted to see intricate scroll-work, and walkways lined with marble balustrades, and flower-gardens dotted with fountains, and shrines, and those deftly sculpted small statues that perfected any garden. This place was far from all of that. Her new home in exile was plain. It's grounds smelled of cow shit instead of roses, and the well-dressed maids and butlers had been replaced by sweaty farmers and their rag-clad children. They were looking out across the fields, where the farmers were tending plowed ridges of fetid black-green mud. Insects fizzed endlessly in the trees beyond, and their timbre became the base for dozens of other sounds. There were the caws of nearby crows resting in the bare, twisted treetops overlooking the farm. On occasion the chatter of squirrels, or the shrill goatish bleet of the tiny bog deer overcame the dull human sounds that filled day to day life. During the day, these natural noises easy to forget about, but at night they could be overwhelming. The bugs were their loudest at sunset. At that time, you couldn't hear somebody talk unless they were nearby. After sunset, when she was trying to sleep, their droning was joined by the croaking song of toads. Sometimes, it kept her awake until passed midnight, or even until the Hag's Hour. They had been working desperately to make certain a good crop of corn came up from the ground, memories of the hungry winter still fresh in their minds, and all of the Adair Farm's attendants were spending time working in the muck. There work was amounting to little. They had emptied latrines and chamberpots into the field, spreading it as equally and carefully as they could. The stench of that had been near unbearable. As Gwynda watched them working, she could see the mud caking onto their bare feet. It made her feel ill to think about. "The Savages plant their corn with fish." Oifa said. She was the matron of the Adair servants. Old age was coming upon her, and she was in her early fifties by now. Her years had caused her skin to go loose, and her breasts were beginning to sway when she moved. She was of peasant stock, brought into the household after a plague of Pockmouth killed her mother and sent her father to asylum after his mind had been boiled by fever. This had happened long before Gwynda married into the Adair line, and Oifa had been as much a part of the clan its estates had been. "With fish." Gwynda scoffed. She held a sea-green sachet to her nose. It smelled like rosewater and anise. The scent soothed her, and made her forget about the awful thought of a field filled with moist, rotting fish. "Mistress scoffs, but it is true." Oifa went on. "I've never been one to set a lot on foreign superstition, but those savages do know these parts, and we have hardly a sprout to show for our time." "It is early yet." Gwynda insisted. "How silly would it be for us to buy a barrel of fish to plant in the ground? I don't want to worry about that right now. But I do have other thoughts." "Other thoughts." Oifa repeated. She gave Gwynda a suspicious look. Oifa knew about the spiritual ecstasy that had sent her mistress into the dangerous wild at night. Gwynda suspected that Oifa knew more about her pilgrimage that she let on. She had been confronted that morning by the green-eyed matron, who brought a pair of stained bloomers as evidence. "What in the name of Billy Blind have you been doing?" she had scolded. Gwynda had lied. "I went out last night to check on the corn. I was worried a frost was on." Oifa hadn't questioned her further than that, only babbling about how difficult grass stains were to rub out. But for the rest of the day, Gwynda couldn't help but see knowing in the aged servant's eyes. "I want to double our crop of bloodcorn." Gwynda ordered. "Set up trellises nearer to the ditches." "Bloodcorn." Oifa grumped. Whatever she knew about what her mistress had been doing that night, Gwynda knew that the aged matron was aware of the ideas her spiritual ecstasies gave her, and she was always skeptical of those ideas. "Bloodcorn is a waste of time, and mistress knows that. We shouldn't be putting hours on those fruits." Gwynda knew what Oifa meant. Bloodcorn was a hard plant to grow, but it was one of the few things about the new world that she liked. Though it had a menacing name, the fruit itself was a pleasure. It grew on vines, and when it came to maturation it looked like a cob of corn swollen with blood. A mature bloodcorn was thick, shaped more like a gourd or a squash than corn. When it took on a juicy crimson color, and began to shimmer wetly in the sunlight, then it was ripe enough to eat. The kernels burst with an acidic juice that stained the teeth red, and it left behind a spicy aftertaste that reminded one faintly of peppers. When they first arrived, they had traded with the savages for a few bloodcorn fruits, and someone had baked a cake out of them to celebrate their new home. That cake had been the best thing Gwynda had ever tasted. The problem with Bloodcorn was a simple one - it was hard to tend, as servants had to prune and tease a vine up its trellis. Worse then that, one vine rarely produced more than two fruits in a year. They were a stubborn, indolent crop that some people thought to be native to some other land rather than this one. But Gwynda was persistent, and her spiritual ecstasy pulsed through her head like thirsty tendril, driving her to obsess on the issue. "I would have a few bloodfruits for the harvest festival this year. The servants are not so taxed that they cannot watch a few rare fruits, now are they?" she sniffed, taking in satchet's scents. She hoped that would be the end if it, so she changed the subject. "Where is Brodric? I would like to speak with him." "Brodric is out hunting." Oifa replied. "He went out this morning, before the sun had time to rise." Hunting. She questioned why she kept him on as steward. He did well enough at his job, but it seemed as if he spent too much time on his own affairs. He hunted, and visited nearby savages to trade. When he was at home, he read well into the night, and when he went to town he spent his time trading books and pamphlets, and chatting with educated men like the radical Doctor Browning. When he found time for balancing their books or attending to their stores she did not know. An Owl, she thought. Who can trust those? She looked up at the sun, and an old youthful worry crept up on her like a wraith from a long-dead life. That sun will do horrors to my skin. I should get indoors. Life on the edge of the world was guaranteed to sap at a person's vitality, but the she still dreaded the red, painful skin that a sun-scorching would promise her. Summer will be here sooner than I like. "I hope you have this work... in order, Oifa?" she said allowed. "I will be retiring to the house now."

At first one might wonder, Why the hell would you live on a ship? And at first, Pilsky had thought the same thing. After a month or two travelling on the dreadful cramped space, he would've been glad to never see a ship ever again. Of course, he also said the same thing about the hard labor that came with construction. So after several monumental failures with his place of living, Pilsky decided to say 'fuck it all'. After a bit of sleuthing around, he had managed to find an abandoned caravel worthy of his presence. Sure, it needed a lot of work. Boards had been torn off for building material, the sails ripped apart for cloth, hell, even the rats had decided to abandon ship when all the supplies had been scavenged for, not even leaving a speck of grain or hard tack to munch on. Even so, it was worth the effort required to get it back into commission. The captain of the ship had left behind a spacey little cabin for Pilsky to occupy, and it had a nice port in the back that gave a beautiful view of the bay. He had also managed to install what could be called a furnace if he had any skill about him. It worked, but barely. Already there had been at least four fire scares that had awoken Pilsky in his sleep, coughing violently from the smoke that billowed about in the confines of the cabin. It was better than nothing, he supposed. The thick hull kept out most of the cold and the inward winds from the sea, and his pitiful excuse of a heater did the rest. He scoffed whenever he landed on the shore and saw the inhabitants hastily constructed cabins. Pilsky was surprised he was the only one who had thought to live on the water. Though, he did keep it out of sight from the town of Uponhill. Hidden behind a hill on the other side of the entrance to their bay, it kept a good deal of secrecy to his castle on water. The trip guiding the boat out to where it anchors now was hell. Pilsky's subpar naval skills sure didn't help, and the lack of sails forced him to stealing bits of cloth wherever he could now and then. Eventually, after a week or two of stitching he had enough to move the boat. Progress only came when Ethahn decided to grace his presence with gusts of wind. Those who knew of his plight thought we was mad, but Pilsky had proved them all wrong. It was a great alternative to destroying his hands lugging around lumber and trying to build a homestead. He had been surprised how quickly he took to life on the sea. His experience in the vertical streets of his home contributed to the also vertical life of a ship. Now, he could climb the rats nest in a minute flat. He often retreated there before it became too cold to do so. The open expanse of the sky was welcoming, and the salty air reminded him of his home near the docks. Less fish, of course. Another thing that came quickly to him was fishing. During his early months in the colony, he had managed to 'come across' a few rods and nets. Without them, he would've definitely starved. At first, the nets never caught anything, and the fish avoided his rod. Experience came quickly, and the painful and annoying task of undoing any tie ups in the net became a lot easier. The small rowboat that had came with the caravel was his favorite mode of travel. Every morning, if it wasn't too damn cold, he rowed out into the center of the bay to cast his rod and bring up some good ones. Usually it was trout that swam down up Miller's creak. Shad wasn't too bad either. He had even grown to appreciate even the perches and roaches that hogged up his line. Hell, he even sacrificed some of his catches to Ethahn. Pilsky wasn't much of a worshiper, and he somehow doubted that Ethahn was a god of fish, but it just felt right. He was sure the Gods appreciated it, whoever they were. At this current time, Pilsky found himself cramped up inside of his own cabin, installing what should have been a shelf, but was only half of a log, nailed in haphazardly. The spring air felt good, sure. The warmth even forced him to not use his heater, but the air itself was intoxicating. His constant time on the ship had given him something worse than he had faced going down to this land. Land-sickness, he called it. Pilsky had grown used to the rocking and swaying of the boat, so for him it was incredibly sickening to be on land for more than a few minutes. It was another thing he cursed the winter for. Being cooped up in his little home forced him to stay off land, and in doing so had doomed him to copious amounts of retching and headaches whenever he needed to go ashore. And since spring was just starting, he needed to go ashore. Even with his lack of wisdom, he knew he wasn't gonna make it another winter through eating fish alone. He had what, maybe half a sack of grain left? A few dried tomatoes? A single carrot he had been saving for a rainy day? Now came the prospect of learning how to farm. He had some tools, but not the knowledge about them. Most of the people in this damn colony came from farming families, so they knew exactly what to do to eke out a living. But him? He hadn't even been beyond his home city. Pilsky sighed as he applied the finishing touches to his 'shelf'. As he transferred a few baubles, mostly strange shells and rocks he had found on the beach to the shelf, he looked outside, wondering if perhaps diving for pearls could be a good option. Hell, he doubted even the wives in town would barter for such a trivial thing. Those natives, with their rumors of baby-murdering and ritualistic orgies, maybe. He stepped out onto the salty air of his deck, noting that he would need to scrub again. Things got dirty fast on a ship, and without a constant cleaning, the boards would start to rot and go bad. He stepped over the poop deck, noting the sunshine that filled the air. Today would be the day he went into town. He couldn't say what he was looking for, maybe the loneliness was finally getting to him, maybe he just wanted to steal something. All he knew is that he would have to kill those damn birds who kept shitting on his boat.

There was a freshness in the air. A cool collective nature in it. It came through the open windows, driving out the bitterness of winter where ever it went. All corners had to swept clean of the coldness of the snow and the frost. Rejuvenating life to come again and to bring in a wiser year. With the grueling torture of the winter season over, there was much to do. Upponhill must look in at itself and know what needed to be done to prevent another season of suffering. It must seek allies in the outwards world. The natives of this land may not be so kind again. But Hugh knew he needed to make sure they would continue the compassion. For the salvation from death that they had given them, he will trade them salvation in the afterlife. There was no greater cruelty than ignorance. And as softly as they had to come he would go to them, like an old friend. But for now, the exiled monk had immediate work to do. He could not do more than think ahead to what he had to accomplish over the spring thaw and into the summer sun. And what needed to be done by Autumn. Not just for himself, but for everyone. For Upponhill, and for the family he roomed with. Hugh had no tools or skills of his own to build. His trade was the spoken and written word. He was of little actual use in the ways of establishing the rough colony. But he had looked to try to learn in as short a time as there was. His quest to aid the colony was assisted by the family he roomed with in their small cabin in the center of town. It was strategic, just across the narrow dirt track roads that wound through Upponhill stood the modest chapel the townsfolk built. It was Hugh's house of worship and practice, as well as everyone else's. They were a busy country family, cast out of their home because they were by all accounts Antoinnese. Their relation to Tirna's former enemy being of too much concern to its new king. In the collective suffering of the rest they united with their foreign neighbors and invited one into their home. The patriarch of the family was a carpenter in the height of his mid years, still strong but wisened. His wife a homely girl, several years over half his age. The two already had children, twins. Neither them or their children were home this afternoon. The father left to do work elsewhere in the village. Over the winter a quickly built had collapsed under the weight of the snow. One person had died, Hugh had administered her last rights. The other - the husband - had survived with broken bones and sorrow in his breast. Hugh's broom glided along the floor as he swept. Brushing the winter's dust to the center of the room. Working for something or someone felt right to him. Winter was rough in more than the physical sense. It was rough in the psychological and spiritual being. He had found shelter in his God and he thanked him for that. But to not continue to act, or serve charitably in any way bothered him. It gnawed deep at his bones and made him restless. But now in the spring cleaning, it gave him a sense of purpose. Something to do. To sweep, to clean, to earn his place under this roof. The spring cleaning had more value in it than to simply feel he was earning his rights under the couple's roof. It helped to bring spiritual peace and balance. Long had it been taught from the distant east to the near west that a clean house was a good house. It brought fortune and bolstered one's endeavors. It showed the forces of heaven and the Providence of Ethahn that they were observant, diligent, and careful. To him, it was another small step to the quest of purity by making something pure. More so it was for someone else over him; this home was not his, after all. Hugh's kindness helped the couple who were his landlords better use their time. The wife could go forth and assist other wives in the gardens. The husband could ply his trade for the benefit of the men. And the twins could play about the colony and be children, for as long as they had it. And while Hugh cleaned he could meditate. The timely and practiced sweeps of the wicker broom being one monotonous pass over the plane of the physical world. Life was like a house, it must be kept swept and cleaned. Cleared of excess to be filled with holiness. The idolatry of pagan pollution, like the season of tracked dust and ash and the detritus that naturally fell from one's body must be removed. And at any point possible it should be cleaned from one's life. This was the belief Hugh felt as he went about the task. Moving the simple furniture strung together by notches and swatches of rope and bark twine. Piles of dirt, ash, and sawdust now sat piled in the center of the room. Hugh leaned back, satisfied at his work. Once again the wood shone bare and clean as it had when the home was built. And now he had only to remove it. “M' child, you do great work.” he said to himself, smiling wide. The sight of a task – or ritual – well executed was a sign of relief. He walked to the back door, throwing open the wooden latch and pushing it aside. It groaned heavily on its hinges, like grinding bones. The disposal of dust as well as the spiritual disposal of the unwanted was a surgical affair. He could not be burned out, as the contemporaries in Tirna-Sorset believed. Burning it would only leave behind the ugly residue of a fire. And grinding and pounding it would only leave it caked and stubbornly ground into the stone and wood work. You may scatter much of it, but in the cracks it would remain, packed to the consistency of stone as a whole. And it would be a blemish of creation. When throwing it out, it must not go to anyone else. One's sins mustn't be passed to another man, it would only continue the cycle. As such, one's dust must not be case into the street, it only passed one's issues on. Instead, it must go out the back, where it will keep everything clean. With a heft kick from the broom Hugh cast out into the spring-time sun a cloud of dust. The thick rolling plume rolled about itself as it was caught by the calm easterly wind, gently pushing it away and along the house's side. The air was fresh, and smelled sweetly of the sea. The sounds of birds was strong and beautiful. It was natural song, Ethahn's song. Again the priest swept out the door more dust, cleaning it out the backdoor and into the sandy space of the master's work yard. Here outside the house the discolored dirt lay down among the sawdust of his trade. Watching it go Hugh could not help but feel that these people he was with – his new kin – were the dust and the ash of Tirna-Sorset to dismiss. The propaganda aligned scarily to doctrine and tradition. They were not burned, they were not exiled to Antoinne, and they were not repressed into the Earth. They were not a stain, a blemish, or a ashed scar. They would not become a host set on returning home by armed force, or a regiment to bolster the ranks of Aenda's enemies with anger lit in their eyes. They were thrown to the backyard of the his new Empire. Into the new world. The idea caused Hugh to shudder and an unnatural cold shock slithered down his spine. “Never you mind, Hugh m' child.” he whispered dismissively, wrapping his arms around himself. There was work to do still. Sweeping for the spring was not the only practice in this lengthy ritual.

Peadar suppressed a wet, hacking cough into his handkerchief. He looked down at the greenish phlegm tinged with yellow chunks and wrinkled his brow. At least there was no longer any blood in it, he thought with an acute awareness of how sadly thoughts like that passed as optimism these days. Peadar tossed the rag off to the side of his work table and stood up from the desk on shaky legs. He had never had what could be considered a strong constitution, but here in Uponhill he was constantly on death’s door. Fever and chills one week, bowel emptying shits the next, then consumption a week after that. It was a bit of a running joke in the community that while Peadar Browning was a fair doctor, he was a piss poor patient. “Physician, heal thyself,” he mumbled under his breath while he shuffled through the cabin. Medicine was never his calling. His father was a doctor and pushed him into the field. Peadar, never one to make a fuss, followed his father’s wishes and passed his studies with ease. In the realm of academia everything came easy to him, especially words. The sculpting of words was his true trade, something nobody here on Uponhill knew. Plenty of them had read the Bowrocker, he had once spotted some of the boys sneaking off into the woods withTales of a Country Wench, and old man Miller had a copy of A Kinsman’s Journey in the small library he had managed to cultivate in his time here. Yes there were many E.G. Rathais fans in the colony, but they had no idea the author and the sickly doctor were one and the same. The same thing went for Publius, the dashing radical of the all too brief civil war. That name, Publius, was forbidden from being mentioned or written in TIrna-Sorset and the lands under its domain. Peadar stared into the cracked and stained mirror above his dresser while thoughts turned to the night before his exile. Aenda, with all his noble and benevolent grace, had decided not to execute the good doctor after letting him languish in a dungeon for six months. Instead, guards forced him to the keep’s courtyard and placed him on a wooden stool. They held him in place, forced his eyes open when it became unbearable to watch and he had to close them, and made him watch as they took every single political pamphlet he had written as Publius, and it looked to be all of them from his vantage and burned them all in a great heap while they danced around the fire like he had seen the savages here do. They hadn’t killed him but they had killed his ideas. He was so close to the fire, the heat had dried his eyes out and made him unable to form tears even as he wept harder than he had his entire life. “Doctor Browning.” A voice at his door, followed by the pounding of fists on wood snapped him out of his daze. He opened the door and found young Blaine, the son of a smith. Even though he was a boy of twelve, he was already a hand taller than Peadar and a good two stones heavier. “It’s my papa. There’s been an accident, he’s hurt.” All thoughts of self-pity and sadness disappeared. While Peadar did not consider himself a doctor first, but he had taken an oath to heal those in need. Regardless of his lot in life, he had a duty. “Take me to him, son.”

The Adair Estate Nevin sat where he always sat. He spent most of the time in his rocking chair, so much that the caned seat had molded to the shape of his buttocks. His room had the air of a place that was well occupied. It smelled like dust, and sweat, and piss - though the piss could not be helped. After he was cut, his bladder lost its resiliency. The quilts on his bed were draped over the side, failing to touch the floor only because several stacks of books on the ground managed to prop them up like tent canvas resting on poles. A stained blanket was draped over his legs. A small table stood next to him, where he kept an inkwell, quill, and a half-melted candle. He held a wooden plate of food in his lap. He took his dinner in his room most of the time, preferring the comfort and solitude of his own company. It wasn't much - a dried heal of cornbread, a slop of fish chowder, and a brace of pickled sausages from the old world to supplement the bland New World fare. Ships came in from the old world occasionally, delivering supplies that the colony could not produce and new souls to live in exile with them. The Usurper King expected goods in return, but all Uponhill had been able to give him were a few tons of clapboard. The food did not taste like much. He ate it lethargically, half consumed by philosophical ponderings, and the memories of a happy childhood he still pined for. Life had not been good to Nevin Adair, and memories were sometimes his best refuge. His self-imposed exile from the world had began to wear on him, and at nineteen his body had atrophied. He was thin, his flesh flabby with baby fat. His face was long and jowled, his copper-colored hair was a stringy mess, and he wore the wisp of a mustache that he managed to grow despite what had been done to him. After dinner, he spent the remainder of the afternoon watching the sunset over the farm. He could see the rough wooden spire of the newly built Ethahnist temple poking over the treeline. That was where Uponhill was, only a few miles away. They had spent the winter there, and he had hated it. Their apartments had been cramped and smokey, and the illness that burned through the new colony had worsened their misery. It had hit his Aunt Maude the worst. She had been in the room next door, a violent cough torturing her and she weakened and worsened. Hearing her cough all night and day had worn at his nerves. They knew she wasn't go to make it when that cough cave way to slow, rasping rattle. He could still remember that sound, and the dread it had instilled in him. She went silent, and then she died. No more than the temple spires could be seen from the Adair farm though. From his window, the rest of civilization was the small farm framed by miles of tree-thick wetland. What he preferred to watch was the farm itself, and the people who lived on it. The late afternoon was when all the work was done for the day, and everybody settled into doing what they enjoyed doing. He watched his cousin Desmond leave the farm. He would walk to Uponhill, where he would drink and tell war stories as he liked to do. He watched his sister Braithe, five years younger than he was, teasing the farm-boys she always consorted with. She had always enjoyed the company of boys over girls, even when she was a child, but adolescence had came with new games. She liked to brag that she was better with a musket then most of her friends, though her mother never let her hunt so she only practiced on targets painted on trees. She also drank with the boys, and shared crude jokes. She liked to play another game, one that only a few knew of and kept secret for her sake. When it got closer to dark, and their mother retired for the evening, she would take a boy far enough into the woods that they were out of eyesight, and they would play dice for forfeits. The winner was rewarded with the right to leave the way they came, and the loser lost their clothes. At least, that was the way it was in theory. Nevin only knew because he had heard rumors, and because he was often awake to hear the loser return. It had always been the boys - running nervous, trying not to be seen, and searching for the place she had hidden their clothes. Always behind the woodshed. Nevin supposed that, when his sister did manage to lose, she must have been allowed to dress before she returned. How would it have looked, after all, if the daughter of the Gwynda Adair came rushing out of the woods, naked and bedraggled, after people had seen her walking into those same woods with a farm boy? Maybe she would receive a tongue lashing, but what sort of punishment would the boy get? She had that unfair advantage, and it seemed she didn't mind using it. The others settled into their same routines. They started bonfires, and opened clay jugs of corn whiskey, which they mixed with water to make their little supply last. They talked, and told stories, and laughed. If their meager drink had any effect, they might dance or sing. And Nevin would sit in his room, staring out the window and watching. He didn't mind too much. This was the way things had to be, and he knew how to keep himself occupied. The thinking arts were his game now. It was at this time that he truly appreciated to new world. During the day, their new home brought them illness, meager rations of tasteless food, and a general lack of everything. At twilight though, when the sun was dipping past the horizon, he felt as if he was peaking into the utopian days of the legendary past. The air became chilly and wet. It smelled of smoke, and trees and mud. The forests became dark and shadowed, but the western half of the sky lit up as if it were on fire. It glowed red and orange, fading into pink, before flagging its decent with bruised purple. When the sun had disappeared entirely, the stars came out to dominate their cosmos. The stars! Nevin had not known so many stars existed until they were out to sea. At home, everything was lit up with gas lamps, so much that their light dampened the stars. Out here though, in the frontier wilderness, there was nothing to hide the starlight. Sometimes, Nevin thought about rejoining the outside world. He had tried before, but those times had only left him bitter. He had, in some ways, lost his life the day they stole him from his prison cell and announced his sentence in that dank prison infirmary room as the surgeon prepared his scalpels. The horror he had felt in that moment had been strong enough that he could still feel its echoes when thought back to those days. It had been a feeling of arriving at the gate of infernal hell preparing for your eternity. It had frozen him, and when they began to cut, he had lost consciousness. Those dark days after his father's execution had been nothing but terror. Nevin had been lucky in some ways. He had been allowed to keep his life. Even in being cut, he hadn't suffered the worst. The first few punitive castrations had been conducted out in the open, on the steps of the National Palace where the executions were taking place. Several had been done this way, until a nine year old boy bled to death from his wounds. That must have been too much for the loyalists, and they decided to move the maiming of innocents to the hidden recesses of dungeon infirmities. Infection had followed. He nearly died, suffering first in the dungeon cells and then in the cabin of the ship that would deliver them to their new home. His sickness kept him from laboring in the construction of the colony, and when they moved to the farm his mother insisted he avoid work. That did not mean avoid everything, though. That detail was his addition. People looked at him like a victim now. He was a cripple, of course. A cripple of the worst kind. And when he tried to forget it, or when he thought that he might be able to overcome the pity of others, his bladder would give out and his breeches would soak with his own stinking water, and the pity and shame came flooding back. Solitude was easier, and he had his books and his thoughts to keep him company. Fretting about old wounds was an easy way to lose a night. He pulled a match from the silver tray on his table, struck it, and lit the candle. It was time to read. His reading this week was the Codes of Breno. Breno the Assizer had been the third King of the Wensee Dynasty that ruled Tirnu before they absorbed Sorset. Breno had spent his reign in a political the strong-minded Cal's of the hinterlands over the right of the crown to pass laws that would effect the entire realm. It had been tradition until that time for local Cal's pass their own laws, their loyalty to be shown by tribute and arms rather than jurisprudence. Breno succeeded, and his unified Codes of Law had been a tool in that victory. It was ponderous reading. The details it covered included nearly every imaginable scenario. If a farmer seeks recompense from another farmer who's cattle has damaged his crops, an Assizer would assess the worth of the damaged crop and offending farmer would be required to repay that amount in product by the end of harvest, whether that be in milk, cheese, beef, or living animal. If a man was caught sodomizing an animal, he was required to pay the worth of the unclean animal to its owner. The animal would then be hogtied and tossed into a lake or river, while the man who had sullied it would be flogged in public. Theft was nearly always punished by hanging, as was murder, but maiming was to be responded to with maiming. And not, like with most cultures, with the criminal receiving the same wound as the man he maimed. In Tirnu law, the victim chose what his assailant lost. There was a knock on the door. It seemed late for that, and he looked out his window to make sure that it was as late as he thought it was. The sun had set a long time ago, and the farm was covered in pitch black. The song of toads and insects had long taken the place of the people, who had all went to bed. "Yes?" he said timidly. He marked his place with a ribbon and delicately closed his book. "It is Brodric." a voice answered. Of course. The Steward was his own man, and he hardly kept normal hours. "Come in." Nevin replied. Brodric was the type of person who had been born to live on the frontier. In his late forties, his age was only shown by the pepper of white in his mousy brown hair. He had a bushy chinstrap beard, uncut hair sticking out under his hat, and simple buckskin clothes. His hat was made from the pelt of one of the tiny deer that lived in the bogs of the New World. It was grey-brown fur, trimmed to fit his head. The thin, rough strips of pelt that had been the animals legs were crossed and pinned to the front and back of the hat. For Brodric, the pins that held these legs in place were in the shape of brass owls. "I was unsure if you would be asleep." Brodric said. He spoke quietly. He already had a soft, deep voice, so that when he whispered it was almost impossible to hear him. "I don't sleep that well." Nevin replied. "Or early. My mother was looking for you earlier. She thought that I might know where you had gone." Brodric smiled. "I was hunting. Brought down five pheasant, went in to town to trade three of them." he said. "I think that, by now, she can do for a while without my advice." "She doesn't like what she doesn't control." Nevin replied. Brodric nodded. He began to recite. "There are that we command upon. Most of all, there are that upon we are restrained. Wisdom is knowing and abiding by these laws." It had not been a question, but Brodric looked at Nevin for an answer. "Clevacus" Nevin replied. "His third address to the philosophers in Croton." Crotonese history was one of his favorites. Croton had been an ancient city state on a swampy peninsula in the southern part of what was now Antoinne. Their borders had never grown far beyond their city, but their vast trade network and the advances they had made in mathematics and rhetoric had made a mark history that could not be forgotten. Clevacus, Publius, Porfavorica, all sat on the pantheon of the world's intellectual heroes. "Very good." Brodric nodded. "The works of ancient Croton are becoming rare now that Aenda's lackeys think they are subversive. Republicans and Plutocrats scare them, I am afraid. However..." he reached into his coat and pulled out a book. "I was able to get you this." Nevin's fingers looked like translucent spider legs as he grasped the book. "Wude's Collected Histories of the Folkmoot." he said. "This is a rare tome. You bought this in Uponhill?" "You would be surprised what exists in the New World. A lot of embarrassed intellectuals have ended up here." Brodric replied. "I have my own copy, as it happens to be. This one is yours." "Thank you." Nevin said. "Thank you much." Wude was said to be the first true historian, compiling his work nearly one thousand years ago, collecting every small detail he could find about the open-air style of government that had been so common in ancient times. What he had ended with was a book detailing every meeting he had attended, every interview he conducted with the officers of those meetings, and the minutes of those who had taken the habit of recording their meetings. The complete version was a series of twelves volumes that was hard to find, but the condensed version explored the most indicative details. It was an excellent gift.

The sharp bitter smell of wood spirits filled the air. Even with the windows open the heavy smell of pine oil was considerably strong in the cool spring breeze. The floor had been swept, and the dishes cleaned. All the windows were thrown open for the spring air. Even the ragged thread-worn carpets and bed sheets hung outside on wooden racks to air in the cleanliness of spring. The only thing of note was to refinish the furniture. Of the few things Hugh had managed to learn in the sprint to prepare for spring was the preparation of wood spirits. Outside of Village walls within the hills to the north the village men had dug a great pit, lined with rocks. Here while clearing the land they had dumped the trunks and the saplings of their work. Having covered the clearing with moss and peat from the river-side they set it ablaze, smoldering the wood for its oils to drip down along the channel in the hillside until it dripped out the far end for it to be collected. For the several old farmers this was a regular practice, it had for them merely been a way to make extra money. But for the future it was decided it would be necessary for their survival. This was the simple trade of tar making. The patriarch of the house had taught him where and how to use use it. In finishing furniture to give it a protected sheen. Or on boats to prevent the wood from water logging. If men were to fish they would need tar, else the wood would become soaked and they would sink. And now he stood leaning over the table, applying with a filthy rag a fresh coat of varnish onto the rough ax and knife carved furniture. A mask of burlap wrapped around his face sealed his nose to the offensive odor as he vigorously applied the crude varnish besides the window. He'd gotten through the chairs, it was the table's turn. He ran the rag over the scratches. Filling the knots, the cuts, and the gouges with the watery oil. The wood soaked it in, going dark as he went. When the door opened he stopped. He looked up to the front door to see the wife of the family standing in the doorway. A simple gray and white dress hid her wide figure. Splotches of clay and dirt caked the front and bottom, a sign she had been working. “Hello.” she said nervously, stepping inside. She was a gentle woman in her homeliness. A round youthful face watched the monk, her apprehensive blue eyes darting from he to the varnish. “Good morn'.” Hugh politely greeted, lowering his head to continue refinishing the table. “You know, my husband would normally do that outside...” she whispered, dismayed. Hugh looked up, shocked. “Oh, I'm terribly sorry,” he stuttered, “Ms. Valouis. You see, I would have if I could carry it out the door...” he explained timidly, stepping back and nervously wringing the cloth between his hands. “No, no.” she sighed, “I guess it's alright.” she sighed, putting down her purse of gardening equipment down by the door. She looked over the house floor, and its over all cleanliness. “You really did a good job.” Ms. Valouis complimented. But her fervor was subdued, still shy. “Thank you, I had a good day to myself to do it.” “I'm sure, your honor. Have you seen my children?” she asked. Hugh shook his head, “I imagined they might still be out playing.” “Oh it's fair.” she answered with a soft breath, “Mr. McTrenkel, you've done some good work. Should you take the rest of the day off to catch your breath?” “I would m'lady. But I'm hardly done.” he said defensively, “Though if I could finish the table at least.” “I suppose you should.” the wife obliged, “You've done good, I don't want you exhausting yourself.” “Don't worry, if I haven't died yet then it has not been my time.” Hugh humbly replied, turning back to his work.

"Bite down on this." Peadar passed a wooden spoon to Amsley Thatcher, who slid the smooth stick into his mouth and clamped down onto it with his teeth. Thatcher's huge frame was sprawled out on the rickety bed he shared with his wife. Peadar ran a hand over the blacksmith's bulging right knee that was off kilter with the rest of his leg, swollen and purple with bruises. He winced and whined, the noises coming from his throat betrayed his size and showed exactly how much pain this man was in. According to Amsley himself he was hard at work on a piece when his smithing hammer had slipped from his hand and crashed against his leg. The impact was tremendous and painful. The man who was over a foot taller than Peadar collapsed to the ground and had to drag himself into his house next door to his workshop. "You have a dislocation of the knee," Peadar said slowly so that Thatcher in all his pain could understand what he was saying. He removed his spectacles and placed them into his coat pocket. "That place where upper leg and lower leg are in confluence is out of line. I am going to pop it back into place very quickly. Now, this will be immensely painful but your pain will begin to recede upon it all being put back into place. Are you ready?" "Yes," he grunted through the spoon. "For the love all that is holy, just do it!" "Okay," the doctor said softly, placing both hands on the knee joint. "At the count of three: One... three!" He jerked the kneecap to the right. A loud pop sounded through the small room, followed by Thatcher's howling. Pulling his spectacles back out, Peadar examined is handiwork and was satisfied that all appeared to be straight. Thatcher moaned and pulled the spoon from his mouth. He sighed and examined his knee while a coughing attacked seized Peadar. He covered his mouth with his jacket sleeve and frowned at the collection of mucus now on his sleeve. "It hurts," said Thatcher. "But... not as bad." "As I said," Peadar said, wiping his sleeve on his pant leg. "Give it a day or two and the swelling will be down. The tendons in that leg will be incredibly tight until you work them out. I suggest staying off of it for at least a day." "I don't..., I don't know if I can pay you, doctor." Thatcher sat up in the bed and looked nervously at him. "I just..." "It's fine," he said with an easy smile. "I do not do this for the money, as you might be able to tell from my dress. Tell you what, the next time someone dies I will need help burying them." "Say no more, doctor. Me and my boys will be happy to help." "Good," he said. "It's a deal. One more thing? No more smithing while drinking." After declining the Thatcher's offer to stay for dinner, Peadar packed his bag and said his goodbyes before leaving their small house and heading towards the middle of town.

It took about half an hour for the land to stop spinning rapidly. The remnants of that morn's breakfast were thrown up in the dirt, grilled trout with a side of grilled trout and for desert? More grilled trout. Enjoying the taste of fish as he might be, Pilsky couldn't help but wish he had a bit more variety to his diet. He stood up slowly from the log he had taken as a seat. The corners of his vision still wobbled, but he was getting better as time passed. He bent over to pick up a small crate, the contents of which being a huge load of shellfish he intended to sell at the market. Their meats would be certainly worth something right? That was, if there still was a town. Pilsky really had no idea what things were like in Uponhill. The whole place could just be a burning wreckage ransacked by natives and he hadn't known for weeks. That, or the place could be a thriving industrial town, complete with giant factories and roving fields of food. You never know. Along with the box, he tucked the strap of a small leather sack that held various fancy looking shells. Those he would sell to anyone foolish enough to want to make it into jewelry or a necklace. He had spent the last night scrubbing them up and making them shine, so they had better be worth the effort. Along with those was a small lunch of grilled trout... and a bit of carrots! His feet stamped down onto the earth as he made his way through the forest towards the town. Pilsky had made sure his rowboat was tied up, quadruple knotted, so he had no worry of someone stealing it. It was only after twenty minutes of walking did he make his first discovery. A dandy little cabin with a fast growing field. A man standing in it waved to him, and he waved back. It felt weird seeing a person for the first time in oh, say... two months? It was surprising how quickly the time had passed and how he hadn't gone mad at being alone for so long. Other than brief trips to the land to gather up water, and maybe a bit of scavenging for berries and what not, he had been on the ship alone for the major of his stay at the colony. After he had passed out of sight of the cabin, he stopped and stood still, not knowing what to do. He shook his head and slapped himself on the wrist for stopping. Things were very different as he reached the actual town. It was extremely different from the first months. It actually looked like... a town. People walked around doing their daily chores and he was shocked by the sound that emanated from it all. He was used to the relative silence of the waves and the seagulls that haunted his deck. There was some semblance of an inn, that or it was a boarding house. There were more things as well, from a tanner to a seamstress, to even a blacksmith that had a interesting man walking away from it. The doctor. Pilsky barely remembered the man, but he knew one thing, and that the man was a doctor. He looked around for a moment, wondering if he should tell the man. For the past few weeks, things had been going south for his teeth. His gums had been growing red and bled slightly from time to time, that and his teeth, though not in amazing shape to begin with, had begun to rot slightly. "Oi, doc! Doc, over here!" He called as he jogged over.