Roger Taylor - Farnor

Was he like Rannick? Did he have in him those traits – evil traits – that would bring Gryss’s condemnation down on him? Some power beyond most people’s understanding? ‘Going from bad to worse… faster and faster.’

He found himself trembling and, for the first time in many years, he felt his throat tighten with the need to weep. He swallowed hard and forced the urge down though the effort involved left him drained and unhappy. The haven of his familiar room could not protect him from the desolation he began to feel.

For a long time he lay motionless, painfully wide awake and his heart and mind blacker than the surrounding darkness.

Then the memory of the creature’s evil came back to him. He would have to tell someone about it, somehow. Men would be sent out on night watches soon and they would be slaughtered as easily as the sheep if they came across it unprepared.

But how could he do that?

No answer came, but the comforting practicality of the problem took his mind away from his darker, less tangible anxieties and, as he pondered it, his young body, wiser than he, eased him gently into sleep.

He had no solution to his problem when he woke the following day, and it remained at the forefront of his mind as he pursued his early morning routine of jobs about the farm.

‘You look tired,’ his mother said when he eventually came into the kitchen.

‘I am,’ Farnor yawned ungraciously as he hung up his leather cape dripping from the fine drizzle that was misting the landscape outside.

‘Yesterday was a long one by all telling,’ his mother said. ‘Sit down. Eat your breakfast. Your father’s gone to Gryss’s to get something sorted out about the night watches.’

Untypically, food had not been dominating Farnor’s mind since he had awakened, and such appetite as he had shrank further at this news.

He was careful to keep his reluctance from his mother, however, and he watched her surreptitiously as she moved busily about the kitchen. Her greying hair was pulled back into a loose bun, setting off a round face that even he could see was still attractive. And small agile hands pursued long-familiar tasks with practised ease, pausing only now and then to smooth down her white apron.

It came to him that he had never really looked at her. Never seen her for what she was. He had looked at his father, particularly of late, and seen him slowly, almost imperceptibly, change. Change from being just a father to being also a friend; a respected, older and sometimes stern friend admittedly, but a friend nonetheless. Vaguely he could understand how such a thing could come about. His mother, though, was his mother. It was beyond him to imagine her as anything else. She couldn’t ever be just a friend. It wasn’t possible.

Perhaps it was a father and son thing. Perhaps mothers and daughters too became friends while fathers and daughters stayed always fathers and daughters.

The thought brought Marna, unbidden, to his mind, and as he watched his mother he felt guilty about the richness of his own good fortune. Marna had only her gentle, easy-going father, perhaps neither friend nor support to her. Was that why she was so strong, so belligerently independent? And one day he would have this farm, but what would she have? As far as he knew she had little, if any, of her father’s skill at the weaving, and it would be a rare one indeed that would take her on as a wife.

And yet she was a very whole, solid person, and she loved her father, and he her. You only had to see them together to realize that.

‘You’re not eating.’ His mother’s voice ended the voyage he had set forth on before he wandered into territories beyond charting. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Sorry. I was daydreaming.’

Better a confession to a lesser crime than to try to explain that he did not want to eat, could hardly eat, while his secret knowledge of the creature lay so heavy inside him.

Better, too, to force the food down with affected enthusiasm than to risk further inquiry.

‘I’m going down to Gryss’s,’ he said, rising to his feet the instant he had finished his first plate. ‘They might want some help with the arrangements.’

His mother looked at him enigmatically, but said nothing.

As he fastened his cape about him he returned her gaze. Suddenly he wanted to reach out and embrace her and say, ‘Thank you, mother. Thank you for everything. Thank you for my whole life and for being what you are.’ But instead he shrugged awkwardly and gave her his usual clumsy kiss on the forehead as he left.

Unusually she came to the kitchen door and watched him as he strode across the farmyard and clambered over the gate in preference to opening it. She watched him until he had disappeared from view.

Once out of sight of the farm, Farnor slowed. He was glad that his father had inadvertently given him this opportunity to be alone and to think. He was glad also to escape his mother’s perceptive eye; he would not have been able to keep his preoccupation from her for very long.

The cool, grey dampness of the day soothed him. It made everything wonderfully quiet and still.

Within minutes the fine drizzle had soaked his black hair and pressed it flat against his skull, and his face was shiny with rainwater. His leather cape had been well oiled and would protect most of him from a soaking, but it would be damp with condensation on the inside by the time he reached Gryss’s cottage and the rain would have leaked coldly down his neck.

He was unconcerned about such discomforts, how-ever, sensing that this journey to Gryss’s would perhaps be the last opportunity he would have to decide what he should do about the danger that he knew the creature offered to the night watchers. And know he did, he reaffirmed to himself. Despite his night’s sleep, the memory of the creature was as vivid as ever.

Carefully he rehearsed a number of explanations for Gryss and his father as to why the watchers should go out in larger groups than usual and why they should be better armed. It wasn’t going to be easy but he would have to say something. He’d just have to watch and listen until an opportunity presented itself for him to speak.

Arriving at Gryss’s cottage he was greeted first by his father, who opened the door and looked pleasantly surprised to see him, and then by a belated and indifferent bark from Gryss’s old dog.

‘It’s Farnor,’ Garren said, as he entered the back room with his son. Gryss, seated in a large wicker chair, smiled and raised a hand in greeting.

‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t stand, Farnor,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I did rather too much yesterday and my legs aren’t what they were.’ He motioned the new arrival to a chair facing him across the empty fireplace. Garren sat down at the long wooden table on which were some papers and an open box containing various writing materials. He picked up a long pen and carefully wiped the nib on a cloth. Then, to complete the ensemble, the old dog entered and lumbered over towards Gryss. It bumped heavily into Farnor on the way and then slumped to the floor noisily at Gryss’s feet. After settling itself wheezily, it let out a great sigh as if to declare that the meeting could now continue following this unwar-ranted interruption.

Gryss rooted down by the side of his chair busily, and retrieved a towel from somewhere. He threw it at Farnor. ‘Here, dry your hands and face. You look like a drowned rat.’

Gratefully, Farnor rubbed his damp hair into an untidy mass, then wiped his face. The smell of the towel was the smell of Gryss’s room. Welcome familiarity closed protectively around Farnor’s concerns.

‘Did your mother send you?’ Garren asked as Farnor completed his brisk toilet and handed the towel back to Gryss.