Miradey

The Main Street

Morning arrived, overcast and heavy, the skies stuffed in fluffs of raw gray wool-like clouds. The smell of smoke and char lingered in the air coming down from the mountains.

The Pewter Pub was an up and coming kind of place. Welcoming, warm beds, and granite flagstone. Ben thoroughly enjoyed its roaring fires, delicious teas, and skewered meats. Baber was partial to the bottomless ale tankards. As for the warm beds, they had all slept downstairs in the bar, sprawled on the floors and chairs, having celebrated all night.

Ben's shoulders tightened the moment he stepped outside of the pub's warm haven and onto the boardwalk.

A pale faced woman gasped and halted in an instant as she almost walked into him. Stooping in the pool of her emerald and silver skirts, she grasped her small son's shoulders and stirred him in wide berth around Ben and the party emerging from inside the Pewter Pub. The witch glared nastily at him as she went on her way, child in tow, and he was almost shocked, not only because of the look on her face but by her white skin because very few white European wizards lived in Assata. Then he remembered what he was and where he was. Even well-dressed and bearing the emblem of the Neighbours & Knights Association, a protector to the village, he was greeted with violent disdain, as if both beneath her and ready to spring an attack upon her at any moment. Ben ground his teeth and looked out onto the street.

Two segregated streams of witches came and went down the Main Street. Scarcely and strictly intermingling only where necessary. They did not speak or acknowledge each other, surging along as if the other didn't exist.

Something had to have changed in the past twenty or thirty years. Of course it had. Black witches walked on the Main Street, about their daily errands, and that was a triumph surely. But they kept their eyes trained ahead. Didn't linger. Moved with purpose and directness. A wrinkled crunch apple from the barrel of produce was examined and, if unpurchased, promptly put back in its place in the bunch. Graying meat from the butcher's was eyed from a distance since they weren't allowed near the fresher meat meant for silvings lest the butcher lose his more valuable and esteemed clientele, who gasp in shock and disgust and were unlikely to return until the butcher discarded the offending items a kin had dare breathe or even look upon. What was offered to kin was grossly overpriced but it was all that could be offered under Green law which restricted and largely prohibited the trade of Draconian gold for goods and services. And most goods and services were still largely owned and offered by wizards loyal to Serpenten House. Literally, the money of kin witches was all but no good in the founding village.

Ben saw no small children among them. Most of the kin youth out and about this morning were old enough to know how to behave in the presence of white wizards. They knew not to draw attention to themselves. Not to speak or move to loudly. They surreptitiously watched th pale faces watching them.

In Assata, their children played in the streets. The people walked among each other like equals. Owned businesses. Took holidays. Went to school. Traded with other lands. How he loathed this place well. Shire Nyte Village was not his home.

But it was the home of many of their people. Ben was doing what he could to keep it safe.

While he didn't like the state of affairs he was witnessing once again for the first time in a long time, Ben's feelings, thoughts, and opinions couldn't be showing on his face as strongly as Baber's was.

"You must truly hate this place."

"Oh the place for which our people were ripped from Afric shores and brought in chains as slaves to have magic beaten and worked out of them?" He shook his head. "I suppose I've a dislike of it, yea. Now Assata and Raintree—those are true and steady places. Homes of the heart."

Ben couldn't disagree.

"How do you know these library books my mother spoke of are real?" Ben asked Keery and Hunt for want of something less bleak and upsetting to discuss. The books had been on his mind since waking.

"You wouldn't be the first witch to go in search of them," Keery said, taking a bite out of the fowl leg wrapped in brown paper that she'd brought with her from breakfast at the pub. "I have neighbors who swear by the books."

"Swear by it," Hunt nodded his agreement. "Credit the books for their marriages."

Keery nudged his him in the ribs. "Thinking of having a peek to figure out your lot in love?"

Ben shrugged, feigning casual interest. Nothing had ever happened. Companionship had come and gone for Ben over the years. No one stuck. There was no need to be overly sentimental. Ben would accept a nudge in the right direction though.