True Deceit

CHAPTER THREE

Under the I

Truth can carry nothing without belief held by at least those exchanging it. Give a man his normal day, and he will believe all to be well. Give him an extra length of crop or draft of ale and all will seem splendid. Give him less than he expects and he’ll push on to make the next day better. Truth is only seen when discovered and believed.

The owl of the tree was gone an hour when Annika decided waiting couldn’t help anyone. Seth usually came trudging up the hill a full hour before the sun had traveled its length down the same, but he had yet to break the horizon. Either his back had chosen today to give up amidst his journeying, or an interest had kept him at a spot on the road. Both circumstances kept where he could be found, so Annika loaded up the cart and began down the road.

The sun’s descent had taken what little heat it had offered with it. But a gleam of light held above the bottom of the hill to light the road for the old mule. A poor brute and old, but the creature was gentle and didn’t ask for much to feed her. Annika had tried to keep her coat clean of mats and pests, and what she wouldn’t accomplish, winter soon would, when she was either tramping in the cold or settling under the shed roof. At the moment, a particular school of flies tried to rest upon her flank, and she chose to have none of it.

“Enough, Tabitha,” Annika cried. “They won’t stay away because you swat at them. They don’t bite, so give then rest, and me too from smelling your end.” Her patience, so cultivated for waiting, had shriveled over the hours she had expected Seth to appear at the door. Internally, she chided herself for chiding the mule, when the boy would be the one to chide in the end. Her annoyance couldn’t last too long, though, and soon her fretting became predominant.

Afore long the shivers lacing her frame were solely from the air’s grip. Annika wondered at this weather, at the climate itself holding any bearing on this day. So bundled, so trusting in the mule’s directed foot, she kept as warm as able with her face buried in her shawl. When the cart jolted steady behind the halted beast, she first jostled the reigns to reconcile their progress. Still, the girl stood. Annika looked to the road to find it gone, and the school house itself before her sight.

Panic took her first, for fear they had passed him lying on the road. Yet, Tabitha would never have left his side had she seen him, for his charm extended to all the creatures they kept around. The buildings she faced and those she didn’t were all locked tight, all cold and lightless from an outside view. Something rustled on the door of the school house, the only movement anywhere. Annika launched herself over the edge of the cart, battling the wind to advance towards that movement.

The piece was of parchment, folded as a letter and tacked to the door. Aeolus had favored fun over kindness, attempting to dislodge the paper from the tack. A rectangular slit had formed around the pin, though the piece still held. On the visible fold was a mane that Annika had never been called, yet she saw it was for her. Without notice to the cold, her hand shook as she grasped the paper, letting the pin fall to the dirt and disappear with the torrents.

She would that she had come but an hour later, that the piece had been taken with the tack. She would that she hadn’t even grasped a corner of the paper. Though she would unfold the sheet to find what words must be writ, she needed not to see them to know the truth. She would that she didn’t have to believe, that she could think that Seth was somewhere he could come back from. With that name that none called her by, she knew the truth. Oh, what a cold day that the wind tried to cover.