The Exiles

3. A Lovely Dinner

As his family busied themselves with the cake and the hot cacao, Amer trudged through the empty fields he'd trudged through many times before. Uneven ground, tilled and toiled, dipped and rose beneath his feet, bound in old leather boots. The jacket bulked around his figure as if he were a fully grown man, and the only warmth came from the pot of soup he hugged to his torso inside the jacket.

The wind whistled past his frozen ears, and he sniffled as the golden glow of the village square came into view. The sign on the large oak tree before the village swung on its rusty chain, squeaking against the wind. "Elsevier".

As he came to it, he stared up at it with distaste. He'd never grown fond of that name, and he very much missed home. Not the one he had walked away from just now because Granny was about to tell a tale he most hated, but the one he and his family had fled when he'd been five.

The far away toll of the clock above the old Police station/Post office rang eight times. Amer wove his way through the quiet streets, with their doors sealed from the frosty night, their windows glowing faintly of warm fires, and the aroma of baked goods and meat and stews floated out of perfect looking chimneys upon perfect-looking homes. Some laughter trilled out of the one and only pub at one corner of the small village square. He eyed the little bench where his father would sit through the night, warming his frozen limbs against the fire in a drum. But tonight the fire didn't burn yet and his father was nowhere in sight.

"Papa?" Amer approached the bench, peering at side streets and such, to see if he could spot his father somewhere huddled against the wind. "Papa? I bring dinner."

But only the wind howled at him in response.

Amer shivered, wondering where he should check when a door to a house opened down one road and light and laughter filled out. He could recognise his father's voice and laughter anywhere. What was he doing in someone's house? Most of the village stayed a distance away from them.

"Amer?" Mr Silvertongue—though his name was really Ovek—said, wiping the laughter from his voice.

"Mama sent dinner," Amer said, though mama had said no such thing to him. He'd volunteered.

"Ah!" Ovek's voice weakened as he eyed the clay pot Amer held outside his jacket.

Amer watched the old man with the bald head stepping out of the house behind his father. The man waved. "Is that your oldest, Ovek? My, he's grown since I last saw him."

Amer barely recognised the man. All he saw was a silhouette.

"Yes, Mr Sinta, that's my Amer. He used to help clean out your chimneys when he was wee."

"Ah!" The old man shivered against the wind howling through the streets.

With that, Amer's father send the old man in, telling him to lock up well tonight, before the duo walked back to his post at the village square. Where a couple of drunks had spilled out into the fresh air, chatting louder than advised.

"He wanted help with his fire," his father was saying when Amer handed the man his dinner and went about grabbing some firewood from the pile outside the pub meant for public use. As his father ate, he set about breathing the fire to life, enchanting words amid flourishing hands. His father, too busy to notice the boy hadn't exactly used the human way to light it.

Once the fire roared and his limbs thawed a little, Amer watched his father dip the third piece of bread into his soup and slurp. "Nessie is sick, Papa."

Mr Silvertongue stopped eating, his hand lingered over his pot, his eyes awkwardly skimmed the snowy ground. "It's just a cough—"

"It's not." Amer folded his arms. "Granny is telling the tale of the Ferry boy tonight."

Ovek looked up to his son briefly, surprised, but unable to say anything. He dipped his remaining bread into his now-cold soup, though his appetite was gone.

"She's sick like Ori—"

"We don't talk about—" Ovek began.

"Oria?" Amer questioned defiantly. "Maybe you and mama don't, but Granny and I? We do. And now she's telling Maan's story, Papa, just like she did back when Ori—"

"Stop!" Ovek begged, barely able to get the word out as his voice choked in his throat.

"Why is she sick, Papa?" Amer pressed, his voice low and steady. "Why's she Nessie sick? She's human."

Ovek suddenly coughed, unable to meet his son's eyes.

Before he knew it, Amer stood before him. "Nessie is human, isn't she, Papa? You said she was the day someone left her outside our door. If anyone of us should be safe from this, it's her. She should be safe. So why is she sick with the weaving?"

"It was hard for us" — what was left of his food, Mr Silvertongue set aside, unable to eat —"to be here at the beginning..."

The crackle of the fire in the drum behind them and the drunk's hollers were loud enough to drown out the father-son.

Amer closed his eyes tight and balled his fists before he asked, "Does mother know?"

Ovek nodded. "When Nessie started showing signs of weaving..."

"That's why she's barely spoken a word to you in months." Amer stared at the fire, a new one burning in his chest. Tears bloomed in his eyes then as he remembered what exactly took Oria—his older sister—from them. The weaving. Nessie's showing the same signs. Coughs. Gauntness. Pale, cold skin. "The same thing is going to happen to Nessie too, isn't it?"

Ovek sighed. "Weaving is a rare and costly magic... not all get it can use it—"

"We do!" Amer retorted. "If you let us, we can all weave, 'cause it's the price of being us, isn't it? Price of being your heirs?"

Ovek met Amer's gaze then, with glistening eyes. "Even then, not everybody can handle the weave."

Amer swiped at his eyes with the back of his sleeve. "I could try—"

"No! You can't." Ovek gripped his son. "Promise me, Amer. You cannot ever do that weave again."

"Nessie will die, Papa." Amer pushed his father away. "I cannot watch her die."

"Neither can I boy! She's my daughter." Ovek's lips trembled as he bellowed in pain.

"Who's your daughter?" a drunk yelled.

Ovek ignored them. "I cannot watch it either, son, but we must. A weave that big leaves a signature—"

"You'd rather hide us than get caught?"

"I'd rather hide you all for a few moments longer and lose one of you, as much as it pains me, than to send us all to our deaths in an instance. We're not welcome in our world."

"So we let her go, just like that?"

Ovek didn't answer. He couldn't. Instead, he turned away, sniffling. "Go check on your master's horses, son, then head home. The weather's turning."

He pulled a torch off the wall behind him, scooped his hood up over his head, and turned into the closest street to him. "And tell your mother, the dinner was lovely and I'll see you in the morning."