I've had glimpses of another of Pikka's adventures floating at the edge of my mind for a few weeks now. A knife, an unwelcome knock at the door, a flute carved from memory and remorse. There are stories that you capture in the moment, others that come and go and wait for another day.
This one refused to let go. And thus, for this week's story dear reader, let us once more return to Pikka The Wizard.
Resolution To Dominance - a tale of Pikka the Unsure by M. K. Dreysen
When the musician set his fire, he had only thoughts of the camp. A ring of stones, a passable collection of leaves, a tarp hung carefully over a likely limb. Visitors weren't much on his mind.
So when the wizard stepped from her shadows, the musician had to catch his surprise before it got away from him. "An unexpected honor," he said while pausing his hand above the ancient bone flute that always rested within his reach.
"I don't mean to intrude," she replied. "Do you?"
"Of course. Please, please," he said, the hand that had reached for the instrument now gesturing a true-meant welcome. "You've come far?"
As the wizard settled, she pulled dried meat, a wrinkled carrot and similarly wizened bundle of wild onions, and other tidbits from her pack. The musician, hiding his discomfort at offering only the tools to cook with, began working on the soup.
The only sounds then, until after the little pot had settled into its bubbling work, were those of the fire and the comfort of the pairs of hands moving in concert. With the occasional grunt or sniff or mumble over whether the mix needed a pinch of salt or pepper.
"I've been hunting plants this year," Pikka eventually answered. "You know of Yhunnara's theory?"
The musician moved his head side to side, neither yes nor no. "I've only heard summaries. She's..."
"Reluctant to put her ideas into writing until they've been fully realized," the wizard agreed. "What I have heard, though, sent me in a new direction." Pikka raised her eyebrow in question.
The musician smiled. "Please continue."
Pikka shrugged, almost embarrassed; asking before running full tilt into her latest theory had been a difficult habit to learn. "I've been considering the physical systems by which various plants pull nutrients into their..."
The musician nodded along, the faint smile always tugging at his lips. When Pikka eventually ran down, he bowed his head to her. "You're going to discover something, I think."
"You flatter me."
"No, truly. We all of us want grand gestures. You humble me with your focus on the fundamentals."
Pikka tilted her head to the side, then whistled the first few bars of a tune. Around the pair, the fire danced a little higher, the shadows piroutted in response, and the wind paused to listen.
The musician stiffened at the melody, then relaxed and allowed his smile to come again, though wistfully. "I almost forget, sometimes..."
Pikka raised an eyebrow.
The musician sighed, and all around the wind, the shadows, the fire, and more than a few animals that would have denied it to the end of days settled in to listen. "The town I just left. They were, are, troubled." He reached automatically for the flute, running his fingers over the holes and the faint hints of carving. "I almost lost something there."
Pikka assumed. "Your flute?"
"No," he snorted. "That will never leave me. No, something I hold truly dear. My sense of hope."
****
Pikka later wondered if she should have passed the town of Daenlis by.
It would have been easy. Daenlis sat between lake and trails; mine to the north, lake and fur trade and always those passing from one to another. The musician had warned her of Daenlis Town's view of the world.
That those who passed through were valued only for what gold they could provide.
Thus, the sheriff and his minions. "I've been hired to insure the peace and prosperity of Daenlis Town," the sheriff often said.
Those same things for travelers, of course, being entirely unsaid and unmeant.
Pikka resigned herself, on entering the town's borders, to carving on the oak pieces she'd picked up and keeping her business to herself. "Just passing through." Knowing that the weight of something to occur built above her head.
"I'm a deputy of Daenlis, you'll open in the name of the law." He may have been a deputy, but when he eventually tried to shoulder the door open, he died just as readily as though he'd still been the road brigand he'd begun as. Pikka left his body nailed to the sheriff's steps.
With certain bits dangling from his mouth. Pikka did admit that might have been what led to the confrontation with the other deputies. Pikka allowed them to encircle her, the four of them, while she tested the balance of a freshly carven oak rod.
It was incomplete; it would serve. "You'll defend an attempted rapist, then?"
"He worked for the town. You, on the other hand, are no one. Just another road bum waiting to meet your just end."
Pikka smirked. Then she concentrated and thrust, full balanced weight, just so. The confrontational one gasped, once. The rod had never come within feet of the man's solar plexus. But nonetheless its highly sharpened point was now decorated with his blood.
And that of the others. Four bodies, wounded identically, drifted down to the dust while Pikka walked to the sheriff's office. "You've four more you'll need to account for," she told the smirking bastard on the other side of the desk.
"You did for them? I'll believe it when I see it." He moved, except he didn't.
What he moved was the force of storm and fire, lightning and fire aura dancing from the Nowhere to the here that he'd bound.
"No wonder," Pikka muttered. And then she began her walk. A step as a flame consumed the space behind, a stutter between lightning arcs, another stutter, and then one long stride between beats.
The rod... something had made her put aside her thoughts of Plants for one particular type of oak sapling. One that had been uprooted by the fall of an older cousin, struck by lightning and finding its last rest among a thicket of wrist's width saplings. The one that she needed, for whatever reason, had been uprooted; it had sat there for a year and a bit, aging, drying.
Waiting for the knife's edge that cut it down to a good handle, and a strong point, a point that pierced the sheriff's brain stem and left a bit less than six feet of lever for Pikka to pin the magician's body in place while his contingeny spells sparked.
Years and years agone, a much younger Pikka had struggled through a half-year's training with an old battle wizard, a king's former guard who'd come to the University for a place to rest his oft-broken bones in something like peace and quiet.
"You need to concentrate on the metal of the arrowhead. Reject it utterly from your mind, and then from your body." Old Urx's training was more than painful. "You'll need to do it even when you're unconscious. When you can do that, you'll always have a chance to recover before they can finish you."
"Why just the metal and not the wood?" Pikka had asked.
Urx had shrugged. "What kind of damned fool attacks a wizard with nothing but a wooden stick? Concentrate your efforts on the most likely case."
Pikka didn't think the sheriff-magician had had the benefit of Old Urx's wisdom; on the other hand, the oak sapling had been calling her name for some reason. She pondered the ways of plants for the long minutes it took for the magician's spells to wind themselves down to nothing but a scorched outline on the floor.
The worst part was the way the town watched her as she walked away. Bitter stares weighted with something Pikka didn't want to understand.
A lonely little house sat at the edge of the town, separate from the other buildings, half in the boundary and half without. A kid ran down from the steps just as Pikka crossed that unmarked line. "You can't... can't you stay and help us?"
Pikka looked back. A handful of the people of the town had started poking around the bodies in the dirt. None had yet dared the sheriff's office. "You mean, can I stay and help you?"
The kid followed her gaze. Then he turned to his house. "Will it come for mom?"
Pikka sighed. Then she reached into a pocket and pulled out a bag of coin.
From the other pocket, she pulled a book, and a flute. Not so old as the musician's, she'd used the taproot of the old lightning struck oak. It would bear her signature to those who knew of such things. "The book's a start. The coins are a gateway to somewhere else."
"What's the flute for?"
Pikka shrugged. "Tell you the truth, kid? I'm not really all that sure. There are people on your journey who can help you see the world in a new way. When you meet them, show them the flute."
"How will I know who they are?"
"Listen to the wind." And then the wizard left that place.
