Silent Symphony

Chapter Eighteen: Secrets

You're only as sick as your secrets.

-Rick Warren

[[]]

The man let us pass without anymore fuss. Once we had made it through the one obstacle, Taurus appeared to calm down some -- enough to laugh at the rabid cow remark, at least. The three of us were walking down the path toward the inn when the elf's head snapped sharply to one direction the way a predator's might when it senses prey.

"Something wrong?" Aldyth asked when he raised a hand for us to stop.

Taurus's hands disappeared into the back of his worn cloak. "Get us a room at the inn then go around the local stores. You both need warmer wear -- Aldyth."

"Yes?" She asked as he pulled out a pouch full of coins and threw it in my direction.

"Invest in a pair of good leather gloves, preferably of a breathable material around the palm. You want ones with the tips of the fingers cut off, but if they don't have those then you can cut them yourself."

"Why?" Her face crinkled as I peeked inside the pouch to see glimmers of gold and silver.

"A hunch," he replied wearily. "I'll meet you both later at the inn for super, there are some things I must do first."

"Alright," we whispered as the elf turned on his heel and disappeared into a small crowd of civilians.

"What do you reckon that was about?" I asked as we started off toward the inn. Once we were alone with the street, Hbéakut started to remind me painfully of Gris. The small, rundown shops appeared as did the ones that I often searched through in my spare time. The little fenced in houses, and shacks, and farms could have very well been home. But on the other hand, it wasn't. No children ran in the streets, and the people who did go out hid the guarded suspicion of readily hunted prey.

"I don't know," Aldyth lowered her voice as she shoved her hands under the crooks of her arms to keep warm. "But you know how people are about elves. It appears that whispers of rumors are coming true. What's to say that whispers of monsters aren't as well?"

"Taurus...he's not a monster."

"Of course he's not. We know that, but you can't convince everyone, can you? You know how legends tend to stick with people..."

"Those teeth definitely aren't helping the situation," I murmured. "But he doesn't mean anyone any harm, they'll see that eventually." A wooden sign hung over the door of the inn, reading 'the Hollowed Trunk' in roughly burned characters. The door creaked open under the weight of my shoulder, then swung back quickly at Aldyth who had to catch it before she struck full on in the face.

A old withered man sat crinked over a desk, barely noticing as the two of us as moved clumsily to his side, tripping over split logs and obscure items the entire way. "Can I help you?" He asked without looking up from his work. A stylus of birch bark flew across his sheets of paper, filling out words more quickly than my eyes could read them.

"We need a room for the night," I whispered in a vain attempt to preserve the inn's silence. "There's three in our party."

"Name?"

I gave him our names and slid a few coins across the counter. The man snatched them up quickly before scribbling down our date and information in a large book. His hand disappeared under the desk and returned later with a large iron key that weighed heavily in my hand. "Up the stairs, the second room on your left. The bellboy disappeared into the woods four days ago, so you'll have to stock the fire yourself." He turned back to his papers with a clearly dismissive tone.

I nodded and was just turning to leave, when Aldyth caught my shoulder. "What do you mean your bellboy disappeared into the forest?" She asked the innkeeper.

"What's it to you, girl?" He asked without looking up.

"Nothing really," she replied kindly. "It's just that we've seen...and heard...some strange things in our travels. We haven't news from the outside world in quite a while."

"This news is hardly yours to hear," the innkeeper grumbled almost to himself. "Where you kids come from, that girls ask such questions?"

"And it hardly matters from where I was," she replied stiffly, as I shot her a look of warning. It would do none of us any good to get thrown out of the town before we could shut our eyes for a spell. "For where I was, can no longer be."

The man raised his head slowly, the creases on his face deepening as a much younger pair of eyes peered at us with cautioned curiosity. "What mean you?"

"What mean you? And we may yet learn the art of conversation," Aldyth bit crudely. I followed her hand as it traveled down to her hip and under her cloak to where she was still carrying the dagger I had given her.

The man's eyes flashed upward for the briefest of seconds before they disappeared back down to his work. "You would fare well learning to hold your tongue, child. The world grows crueler with every passing day."

I dropped my hand down on Aldyth's shoulder and shook my head. With a large out breath, her muscles relaxed and she offered me a faint nod. "Alright," she breathed and turned with her head bowed. "I suppose we did not come here to pry away other people's secrets."

"Sometimes a man finds," I whispered in a voice so low toneless, it was doubtful that even Aldyth could hear me. "that secrets are the only things he can keep." The worn, wooden stairs creaked loudly under our feet as we made our way to the second floor.

Her eyes flashed from under her hair in a way that almost seemed elf-like. "Do you speak from experience then, Eli?"

I shook my head as the last of the stairs faded behind us. "No, I find that I tend to lose my secrets as well as everything else. In fact, I've lost almost everything."

I went to one of the doors, but found that the key wouldn't turn in the socket. "Over there," Aldyth said softly and pointed to the door next to it.

"I grow weary in our travels," I chortled under my breath. Sure enough, the key turned smoothly in its lock. The room was damp and chill with the coming winter. There was one bed at a far corner away from the window, and a pile of chopped woods laid waiting next to the fireplace, ready to be burned. The worn oak floor splintered and creaked under my weight, as I made my way over to the hearth.

"So..." Aldyth mused as she dropped her pack down onto the bed. "What didn't you lose then?"

"Excuse me?" I asked and glanced over my shoulder to find her peering at me curiously.

"You said you lost almost everything, well then what didn't you lose?"

I turned back to the hearth and started loading wood onto the iron rack. "Maybe I'll tell you someday, alright?"