Ellen Severson - Hederick the Theocrat

Then trees loomed. Hederick dove into Ancilla's Copse as though it were a church and Hederick a penitent-as though whatever tracked him dared not enter such a holy place.

His lungs burned. His ribs ached. The boy landed facedown in soft dampness and tensed for the cry that would tell him the creature was upon him. But there was silence; only an intermittent popping sound broke the hush of the glade.

Hederick sat up warily and peered around in the flickering light. Large trees with rough bark towered over him, interspersed with saplings that thrust upward through the ferns. The rich smell of hickory mingled with the odors of fragrant moss and moist soil. Surrounded by dark shapes that seemed to dance in the wind of the approaching storm, the boy fearfully scanned one shadow after another.

The yellow eyes of a gigantic lynx glared at him.

The dappled brown beast was easily ten feet from nose to bobbed tail. The great cat crouched fifteen feet above him, wedged in the crotch of a tree. Its eyes were enormous, forelegs heavy, padded feet huge.

Thunder shattered.

The lynx and Hederick screamed at the same instant.

"Begone!" A sword appeared above the boy, interposed between his crouching body and the giant predator. Red light played on the weapon's edge. A gauntleted hand grasped the hilt; an arm corded with muscular sinew held the blade steady. Hederick sat, powerless with fear.

The lynx screamed again, and the hand tightened on the hilt. "Leave us, cat!" came that same booming voice. The lynx tensed to spring, and the man swore fervently, invoking gods Hederick had never heard of. Just as the giant feline leaped, the man's other hand swept up, raising a flaming torch.

Light exploded. Red and yellow sparks burned pinpricks into the ferns. The lynx twisted away in midleap and crashed through a maple sapling and onto the ground off to one side. The man dropped the torch and whirled to meet the cat, sword ready, his body between the boy and the lynx.

Then Hederick was up. His left hand caught up the sputtering torch from the wet moss, and he ran to the man's side, bellowing a battle cry. Hederick threw anything and everything his right hand could grasp. Rocks, branches, leaves, mud, moss-all were hurtled toward the snarling lynx.

His tall rescuer remained poised with his sword. "By the New Gods, the boy's feisty!" the man said.

The only thing left was the torch; Hederick prepared to throw that as well. The man swore again, fumbled at his belt, and tossed something at the cat just as the boy released the fiery brand.

Another explosion of scarlet and topaz flashed through the trees. Bigger and louder than the last, it knocked Hederick flat on his back. When the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the lynx.

"Did we kill it?" Hederick could barely get the words out. His tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The man sheathed his sword and laughed uproariously, then shook his head. "By the New Gods, that pussycat must be halfway to the Garnet Mountains by now! If her feet touch the ground every six furlongs, if 11 be a miracle."

Hederick shook uncontrollably. Blood streamed into his eyes from a cut on his forehead. "It's still out there?" he wailed. "It's not dead?"

"Not dead, lad, but she won't be coming back here soon." The man extended a hand to help the boy up. Hed-erick's knees shook so that he could barely stand. "I can't imagine what the she-cat was doing so far from the Garnets," the man mused, "but who knows how great a distance the creatures travel to hunt? Perhaps she sought food for kits."

"But it was hunting me!" Hederick shrieked. The man shrugged. "You escaped."

Wordless, Hederick studied his rescuer. The man couldn't have been much more than twenty. His face was long, with a dark beard neatly trimmed to a point and gray eyes that seemed both humorous and kind. A rough brown robe stretched to cover powerful shoulders.

The man submitted to Hederick's frank inspection without embarrassment. "By Ferae, you're a small one! How old are you? Eight? Nine?"

"Twelve," Hederick muttered.

"Your name, son?"

"Hederick."

"I'm Tarscenian," the man said. "Let me invite you to supper, young Hederick." Tarscenian placed a strong arm about the boy's still trembling shoulders and guided him deeper into the grove, where a small campfire blazed cheerily. The fire popped as they approached, the sound Hederick had heard as he entered the copse. Tarscenian urged the boy to sit against a fallen log and handed him a wooden trencher. Three pieces of meat swam in greasy juice.

"You can dine like a theocrat on fresh roast rabbit," Tarscenian said, "and then tell me how in the name of the Lesser Pantheon you ended up alone in the middle of nowhere."

Soon Hederick had all but licked the trencher clean. The hare's picked bones blackened in the fire. Tarscenian lounged on a blanket across from the boy, watching with amazement. "Whatever you take on, lad, whether it's lynxes or supper, you certainly do it wholeheartedly," he commented.

Hederick bristled. The man had offered him dinner. What was he supposed to do-admire it until it congealed? The man laughed and held up his hand. "Calm down, lad. I mean you no insult. You showed more spirit in facing that she-lynx than many full-grown men would have."

Mollified, Hederick leaned back against the log, regarding his rescuer with awe. Tarscenian was a far cry from the men of Hederick's isolated home village of Garlund. The young man's eyes glittered with life, his gaze was direct, and his movements vigorous. If the god Tiolanthe ever took human form, he would look like Tarscenian, Hederick decided.

"So, Hederick, what were you doing alone on the prairie in the dark of night?" the stranger asked. "Assuming that you weren't hunting lynxes, that is."

Tarscenian listened with growing astonishment to the boy's story. Hederick told him about his mother and father, Venessi and Con, who, after walking for weeks due east from their home city of Caergoth, had founded the village of Garlund just south of Ancilla's Copse. Their purpose was to provide a place where they and their followers could worship Tiolanthe, the god that regularly appeared to Venessi and Con, but only to them. Then Hederick had been born, the first baby delivered in the new village.

Two years later, when Con disagreed with Venessi over some matter of Tiolanthean doctrine, Hederick's mother had ordered the people of the village to kill her husband. Hederick's sister Ancilla, fifteen years his senior, had fled Garlund moments after Con's death.

"She promised to return for me, but she never did," Hederick said simply.

Tarscenian interrupted only once-when the storm broke and the pair took shelter under oiled canvas stretched from tree to tree. Each sat wrapped in a gray woolen blanket that smelled of incense and horsehair. Hederick talked until he could barely put words together, he was so sleepy. "And now I've been banished," Hederick said, "by Venessi."

"Your mother sent a twelve-year-old into the prairie alone at night?" Tarscenian demanded with a frown.

"I must learn humility, she said," Hederick explained, his words slurring. "And then the lynx came after me, and I ran to the only place I could think of-Ancilla's Copse. This is where Ancilla hid when she left Garlund, when I was two."

"You must not remember very much about this sister," Tarscenian said sympathetically.

"Oh, no!" Hederick exclaimed, shaking himself awake. "I remember her well. She had eyes as green as grass, and she was pretty-oh, so pretty, Tarscenian. She knew all about plants and herbs and things, and when Con beat me for sinning, she would give me things to take away the pain. Ancilla was wonderful."

"But then she left."

Hederick's face fell, and he nodded. "She was afraid the villagers would kill her as they had killed our father. So she left. And then she forgot all about me. I… I guess I was too sinful to come back for."