An Hour Awaiting by M. K. Dreysen

Dear reader: when you get done with this one, some of you might want to yell at me.

...yeah, it's more properly the opening to a longer work, isn't it? Than a short story, I mean. Still, beginnings have power. Especially in this little corner of the world of story, that first step is always a great portent of magic.

Come, for a little while this week, join me in remembering when you were 12. And when you just knew you had...

An Hour Awaiting by M. K. Dreysen

The spring day came sunny, sticky, too warm. As though last week's north breeze had decided it just wasn't worth the effort.

The older folks didn't mind. Winter had done her duty, she had, yeah, and those whose joints and backs and bladders kept company with nightmares and night-time trips to the outhouse didn't mind younger sister's early appearance.

Their children, the adults had a different view. They worried they'd missed a trick; plants should have been in the ground, maybe. The good ones, the kind they'd feed everyone with come late spring.

The kind that should bring a little cash money come fall. You knew, looking out the window at your man kicking the dirt, you knew that if you'd talked him into putting some of those tender mercies out last week, sure as hell the frost would have come instead. That was the way of it, most years.

And a week or two mightn't make a difference. Shouldn't, anyways, unless it was one of those summers. And if that case, well. He'd be out there watching the leaves die and the earth crack under the sun. And so will you, but there's no use borrowing trouble. Just a wish or two and get on with it.

The kids celebrated the warmth. They'd no mind yet for possibilities, only the agony of the indoors instead of the out of last week, and the glories of the reverse, this. It was a fine thing indeed to be on the green under the sun. Where the screams of the game of tag filled their ears. Where the day promised hours and hours with no parents calling for chores to be done.

Where the kid could spot the musician an hour before she made the final walk into town.

The kid sat under the willow; the tree had been an interloper when the green's walls had gone up. Now, it had given a spot for the inquisitive and the lazy for so long that all the town's living memories held at least a few hours beneath the tree's shade. He'd come to it today, had Mel, because he wasn't yet up to company. An in betweener, Mel. Two years to the next oldest, two years to the next youngest and that was his sister.

He spent more than enough time with Gri at home, thank you very much. She was old enough this year to mind her own business; even if Mom had told him to take care of her Gri would do just as well with the Miner sisters. And, since the Roberts twins had decided Mel was better a target than a friend, well. The willow's shade would make as good a spot as any to stay out of their path, until Mel found somewhere else to be. Fishing, maybe.

The lone figure making her way up the road gave Mel a different option. She came up out of the valley; the road drifted around down that way, where the hill and the cleared fields and the little river all shared some responsibility for the thing.

Mel wasn't exactly sure where the road went. He didn't think it went down into the valley, though. Maybe the person walking this way had gone into the shade, where some of the willow's sisters guarded the riverbank, for a cool drink? Or a piss? Mel giggled a little at himself. "Piss," he whispered.

Mom would have had something to say; Gri would have made sure Mom knew Mel was saying grownup words again. But Gri wasn't here, was she?

Mel watched the stranger make the walk; Papa called it a couple miles to where the forest took over. On the other side of the little valley. The road meandered around the fields between, so damned fools and drunks didn't walk through the oats and the wheat. Which is what they'd rotated into the town's western common fields this year.

Mel giggled again. Papa's phrase, damned fools and drunks. Papa said it sometimes like a prayer, something that came to his lips because he'd had so much practice voicing it. "Damned fools and drunks," Mel practiced. "Damned fools. Drunks."

When he'd wrung as much pleasure from the cursing rhythms as he could, Mel looked for the walker again. He shifted to do so from watching the birds. Grackles had started winging in from somewhere north. Masses of them, ten, twenty at a time. Headed somewhere south.

Mel was watching the birds because he didn't want the walker to disappear on him. Mel held a superstition. And that being: if you wanted something bad, real bad, the world had a way of taking it away from you. Long before you ever got a chance to decide for yourself whether that something was for you or not. Puppies. Horses; real horses not that old plow horse Becky. Swords and pistols.

At one time or another, Mel had conceived a hankering, a real desire, for each of these. A keep Mel up at night, dreaming of a puppy to share the bed with him, need. A horse to ride to the dawn, pistol and sword to greet what might wait there with, want. Mel had made himself into a boy of well-formed dreams.

Papa and Mom hadn't so much as dashed these dreams as they'd pointed out that a farmer's kid didn't have need of a riding horse. Nor pistols and swords.

"And if you can't be bothered to get up and milk Butter," the family cow, "How'm I to trust you with training a puppy to piddle outside?" Mom's phrase.

"Or not to shit on your pillow?" Papa's phrase. Mel thought his dad didn't have much business getting in the middle of that argument. Grandpop had given him a puppy. Granny said, "That boy was half dog. If your mother hadn't come along when she did, Tally," Mel's dad, "would have taken to sleeping in the woods and bringing home rabbits in his teeth."

But Papa had come down on Mom's side, which meant, like the other things, there was no use arguing about it now. Mel had taken himself a desire, and the town, family, the world had said, "No. This you shall not have."

So. He watched the walker for a few minutes. Then he looked at the birds. Or the few butterflies daring to believe today wasn't false warmth but the real thing. Or a lizard, winding its way through the roots a few feet to Mel's left, hunting sugar ants.

Anything but the walker. Which he returned to watching. He couldn't help it.

A stranger was interesting. And it had been a boring winter.

A few more minutes of watching, and Mel couldn't stand it anymore. So he took himself for the half mile or so between the willow and the stranger. "You're taking your own time about it," Mel told the musician, when he'd come close enough.

Musician she was. Well, she carried a lute on her back, anyway.

She didn't bother explaining the difference between guitar and lute to the boy. "It's warm enough, and I've time enough. What's your rush?" Then, she stopped, turned around, and held her hands out. "You have this view every day. Me, I might never come this way again. So, if you're wondering why on earth I'm taking so long to get to your village, well. There's your answer."

So saying, the musician put her hands on her hips and took the view in. Then she turned back to Mel.

He had meant to pass the time examining her. Not the view. That view, he'd had plenty of. Hadn't he just spent the last hour observing it himself, from the willow's embrace? Only, given the way the musician had pushed the idea at him, Mel wondered now... well. Since he was standing right there.

Not paying attention to her. Or the grackles or the lizard or the butterfly... Now that Mel gave it a chance, he found himself looking at the valley. The road to it. Where it turned, the road didn't really meander, did it? The hill gave that road something to do. A path to follow. One that didn't require climbing a steep grade to get anywhere.

"Huh," Mel said. His mind worked, absorbing a new idea.

The musician, having turned to her interlocutor, smiled. Just a little. And then, when the faraway look on Mel's face faded, she said, "Are you here to accompany me back to town? I'm not often given an escort."

The boy's face went blank. "Oh, well, I guess so." And now he took the chance to more fully examine the musician.

He noticed the sword, first. And a dagger on the other hip. Boots, pants, a heavy leather coat she'd opened against the warm day. Heavy gloves folded into the belt. And the instrument, sharing space on her back with a leather pack.

"Do I measure up?" she asked.

Now, Mel blushed. "I'm just a kid."

She let his words settle; then she started walking. "Let's see whether there's a place in your village for me. For a few nights, anyway."

That was the second time the musician had referred to the town as a village. Normally, and by normally Mel meant the two other occasions where he'd talked directly to someone who wasn't from his town, he'd have objected to this description.

They may have a habit of taking some dreams from him, but the town was a town, by Mel's lights, not a village, and he was sort of proud of that. At least they weren't like the crofts, the real villages. "Two houses and a barn, Mel, that's about all you'll see there," Papa had told him. When Mel had asked to go and see the villages for himself, the next time his Papa went trading. "No need to worry about going there just yet. You'll see enough of them when you're older."

Mel didn't have time to argue, with himself or the stranger, over mixed feelings and denied dreams. He'd become taken with curiosity. The musician's sword, and the dagger, those made sense. She wore clothes meant for the highway; she bore supplies in the pack on her back, all of her and these things were carried by good sturdy boots and protected by a coat warm against the weather.

Where there were miles there were bandits to rove them. Mel knew his stories. The ones his Mom had told him when he'd started asking whether he could go on the next wagon trading trip, and the ones he'd sought out for himself. Which were much more entertaining. Mel had a taste for bloody adventure.

So the sword, Mel could understand. But, if there was a sword. Then, "Shouldn't you have a pistol, too?" he asked.

The musician gave the other half of her smile. On the left side of her face; Mel walked at her right shoulder, so he didn't see this. "Are you and I buddies, young one? Are we friends?"

Mel considered it. Strangers were not supposed to be friends. Not that anyone had really told him this. The knowledge, or at least the habit, had come to him the same way air or water did.

As part of the pulse of the village. Town, Mel absently reminded himself. That said, kind of like when he'd taken himself to the edge of the village, and found an observation he hadn't quite known he was ready for, here and now when he dragged that habit out under examination, Mel found that he wasn't quite ready to go down the automatic route his family had prepared for him.

"I hope we might become friends," he murmured. If it had been one of the villagers, family members, they'd have misunderstood him. Mel had recently begun to mumble; when a thought came to mind that he understood would probably get him in trouble, Mel had found that voicing it, quietly, gave him some of what he needed without the backlash.

The musician wouldn't have been who she was if she had not learned to listen. The murmurs of a child finding himself were not out of her reach. She turned, so that Mel could see the half-smile. "Well, I find that a wonderful thing to discover, here at the end of my walk and the end of a fine spring morning. Still, at the moment, you are a child of the village, and I am a stranger."

She stopped. So Mel stopped to listen to the musician finish. "And, for now, you should simply wonder about the following. If I did have a pistol, speaking purely hypothetically, would it be safe for me to discuss it with a stranger?"

Given that view of things, Mel had to admit she was right. Thinking it all the way through, he had further to admit that, were he to be surrounded by strangers, then having some means they knew not just might be a saving grace. "Well, then how about I ask your name?"

"And what's yours then?" she returned.

He told her. And in exchange, "Alex. My name is Alex."

The adults monopolized Alex, from almost the moment she and Mel entered the village. "Run along, Mel," they told him. "Find a moment here in the spring sun."

He'd had a moment, he mumbled. But he said it where the town adults didn't hear him. If the musician did, she gave no sign. So Mel went to find a moment, something of his own to substitute for what had been taken from him.

The warm day turned to cool, still muggy, night. Mel had spent the afternoon in his fishing spot. This was on the other side of the village, the northwest side. Where the small river came close behind his house. Later in the spring, as the work became more pressing, that Mel's favorite fishing hole lay within his mother's call would become a problem.

Today, she didn't call. When she started to, she walked out into her dooryard and found her son already closing the gate. "Dinner's ready. Go help Gri pull out the dishes."

Mom and Papa discussed the musician over dinner. Among other topics; while it wasn't quite yet time for a spring festival, the adults had decided that a little fling made some sense. "Since she's here, and all. And you never do know if we'll get another passing through before summer."

Mel didn't tell his parents of his morning. And Gri, who, if she'd have known of it, would have been happy to tell them of Mel's encounter, instead had spent the day at the Miner home. So that was the topic she interjected, whenever their parents ran quiet.

Mel picked up his plate and utensils. And his mother's, so she wouldn't scowl at him. Since he was doing work, neither of the adults bugged him about whether he should have asked to be excused. To make sure of that, once he'd filled the dish pan and cleaned his share, he kissed his mother on the side of her head as he went up to his room.

A little nest, basically, up in the rafters and tucked beneath the eaves. He wondered, climbing up the ladder, whether he'd stare at the ceiling, listening for something, maybe the faint hint of music on the wind. Maybe his parents' voices as they whispered to each other in their bed below.

Whatever it was he listened after, Mel fell asleep before he heard it. Head hit pillow, and the next things Mel was sure of was that the sun was peeking over the horizon and his mother was stirring up the fire.

Notice of the little spring fling burned through the town that morning. The wind carried it, from farm to farm, down the paths between each and back up the one main road. The green would host a cookout; the Roberts family gave a lamb and the Miners a piglet.

Mom and Papa gave three chickens, and a basket full of root vegetables. "We'd just end up throwing them away, otherwise. And that rooster's a little ahead of his game this spring, we've got the extra hens." Other families gave salad greens, or bread or jam or whatever there was. Much of it, Mel thought, like their potatoes and carrots, a way to use something they'd otherwise have fed to the pigs.

But all of it would be used and eaten in good health and good cheer. They set the tables for the food just inside the entrance to the green, an opening in the low wall surround that only the adults respected.

Alex, the musician, set herself beneath the willow, on the other side of the green. "I'll play to entertain while everyone eats. And then when they're finished, I'll play so that everyone can dance."

Quiet, instrumental music for the feast. Some of it fast, some of it slow, all of it quiet background for the town and the munching. After folks had begun bringing their plates to scrape and clean, Alex set aside her guitar in favor of the full plate Mel's mom had set aside.

Sunset came. The chairs were set aside, the plates and dishes cleared away in favor of beer and a small bonfire. Not the larger one that would come in May, but a fair sight yet, with sparks reaching for the stars. Alex's songs, voice, music raised the spirits and sent them chasing along after the fire's ghosts.

Mel didn't partake of the beer or the dancing. "Not yet," Mom said to the beer; she'd allowed him watered beer for dinner, same as the rest of the kids, but that had been the end of it.

And dancing would definitely have to wait. Especially since Alex's stories, the ones she sung and the ones she told when her hands needed a break, caught him as surely as he caught perch in the river.

Noble, romantic stories, of Arthur, Percival, Guinevere and Lancelot. Horrific stories, the Green Knight and his head; Beowulf. Sea stories and dragons in caves, Seelie folk. Robin Hood.

There were others. Alex played the sun down, and the full moon, too. She sung for the kids, first, and then when they'd all been sent to bed she played for the adults. Here before moonset were the darker tunes, the ones that sang of old rebellions and the gallows, of what happened when the Bishop lost his head and the actress her hands.

Mel listened to these songs and stories as well. When Papa laid Gri in her bed, Mel waved at his father from his loft. Waited until the older man had had time to walk most of the way back to the green.

And then Mel climbed down and snuck back to where he could hear Alex's voice. Just; Mel wanted to make sure he had plenty of time to make it back to the house before his parents did. Alex's voice was clear and loud, this wouldn't be a problem, Mel told himself, as long he didn't fall asleep.

There was no fear of that. Alex wove the tales and Mel chased the threads, from Guy and Othello through to the Lady Macbeth and her bloody daggers. And when Alex at last threw her guitar over her shoulder, stood, stretched, and said "We've lost the light," Mel took himself at last to bed.

Faint woodsmoke and the muffled noises from his parents coming home accompanied Mel's dreams. He pulled sword and ran the pirate through. The pirate fired the pistol, retaliation in hot smoke hotter flame and the whiff of burnt powder.

Mel let sleep drag him down finally; he might have had a couple hours of real sleep before the sun and his parents dragged him from bed again. Sunday morning, so the quiet of breakfast and doings were limited to what prep could be done before Mom went to the services.

She came back with news. "The musician shot Jeff Roberts last night." The twins' older brother, he was sixteen. And if the twins were aiming for growing into brutes, Mel figured it was because Jeff had cut the trail they would follow. "He might lose his leg."

"Why'd she shoot him, then?" Papa asked.

Mom went white. Glanced from Gri to Mel. "You two. Gri, run yesterday's butter over to Gran, and then you can go to the Miner's if you want. Mel..."

"I'll clear the chicken coop."

"And then you're free 'til dinner. Don't make me come calling for you."

Mel gave some thought to it. But the coop wasn't close enough to the kitchen window to listen. And Mom was right there, watching. So he took rake and shovel and bucket and set to. He'd hear, eventually. Whether it was the truth or not, the story would burn through the village soon enough.

When the chickens leavings were deposited on the compost heap, fresh straw thrown in to catch the next round, and Mel had cleaned his hands, he lifted fishing pole and basket for the creek. The sun seemed bent on driving the day toward summer, even more than yesterday, so Mel greeted the shade around his favorite pool with relief.

Followed by shock. "What are you still doing here?" he asked Alex.

She'd come to his pool because she'd paid attention to the boy's coming and going. She'd stayed because the willows and brambles had built a thicket well grown enough for hiding in. "How much work did you do to make this space?" she returned. "I'm impressed."

Mel blushed. He'd cut and hacked for days, making a path and clearing the pool's bank enough to reach all around. Crossings, up and down creek from the pool, so he could reach each bank. All while still leaving more than enough of the undergrowth to hide away in. Where the other kids, and the adults, couldn't find him.

He was proud of the work he'd done. "Why'd you shoot him? And why haven't you run?" But he wasn't distracted by her compliment.

Alex shifted; she'd set herself and her gear at the base of an ancient crabapple that was battling for sun and life with a blackberry. Mel had cleared enough of the blackberry's canes for this to be possible.

Just. If you were a kid. Or a small adult. Alex waited until Mel found a spot to sit, close enough to reason with, but not so close he'd feel threatened. "He came for me after everyone else had settled to sleep."

Alex had taken a spot in the Roberts' hayloft. The Roberts kept the village's plow horse, old Becky, and the barn's second level for the old maid's winter forage. There being no inn, and no offers of a bed, Alex had taken the hay as the most comfortable option. "If I'd known what kind of son those folks have raised, I'd have come to your place," she told Mel.

Mel considered what "Came for me" meant. Could mean. The physical act, that much was no secret to a farm kid raised in what wasn't much more than a one room house. And if she'd shot Jeff, that meant he wasn't taking no for an answer. "Why not just kill him?" he said, once he'd absorbed what Alex hinted at. "You had the right of it."

She pointed over his shoulder. Mel turned to look. But there was just the village there. People going about their business of a Sunday afternoon. Farming, gossiping. Napping, too, probably. "How'd they react to it? Are they chasing me? Or what?"

They'd send a man to the sheriff, Mel knew. Tomorrow, probably. The village knew what Jeff had done to get shot. But they'd still do what they felt was the right thing. Let the sheriff know who needed to stand trial, Alex's description. Maybe not in a big hurry. It was enough to let the sheriff post a warrant.

"And if I'd killed him?"

The dogs would be leashed and they'd be hunting for her. Mel could see it in his mind's theater; not that he'd ever seen it in real life. But he'd heard the stories, and could place familiar faces in the roles.

"Maybe they'd even let me live long enough to find out the truth..." Alex said. "There's no guarantees, once people get that kind of set to their minds."

"You've seen it?"

"I've lived it, Mel. You learn a thing or two when the torches burn and the hounds bay."

"So why are you still here?"

She chuckled. "I've a thing or two discuss with you, young man." She reached, slowly, to her belt, and plucked something from it. Whatever it was, she didn't show it to him. Yet. "In a couple years, maybe three or four, you're going to find yourself questioning your position here, young Mel."

He considered her statement. Not the whole of it, that was too big yet. But he'd glimpsed enough of where life was taking him to understand what she meant. "Papa doesn't like it when I ask about the future." About an apprenticeship, the army. Space with that trader, the one Papa sold their wheat crop to, when the years were kind. Trader Ryan had asked, just last year, whether Papa had found a place for Mel, yet.

"He's with me for a while," Papa had replied. "There's good work here for him." And there was, Mel admitted. They'd space enough for Mel to work as long he wanted. "The farm yields well enough."

"Will it, when the girl and the boy want to start families of their own?" the trader had replied.

That stuck with Mel. And more: the thought of getting up, every day for the rest of his life, to do nothing but wait for the two, maybe three times a year when Alex or one of her colleagues came to town, to pass on the same stories and songs over and over again? It weighed on him, that thought.

Alex waited, until Mel stopped looking at his shoes, and met her gaze again. Not steady, yet, but Mel made a good effort. "When you reach that point, you'll have this in your pocket." And she opened her hand now to show Mel what she'd hidden there.

A pennny. "A Roman penny, an old one," Alex told him. "They used to be common. But the crown stopped accepting them, years and years ago. So now they're hiding in the bottoms of drawers."

She let the coin rest for a moment. Then she pinched it up between thumb and finger, and then set it to tumbling between her knuckles.

Mel watched, rapt. The coin's motion, tumbling between the musician's fingers, soothed him.

Alex let the coin dance for a few moments without comment. Then, she climbed it up so that it balanced, on edge, on the tip of her forefinger. Where it stood, balanced on a breath.

And then, without movement from the musician, the coin began to spin. "Oh..." Mel breathed.

Alex reached for Mel's right hand, gently pulled his fingers straight and tall, and then transferred the coin to the tip of Mel's middle finger. "Ah..." Mel responded.

"Just watch. Good. Now, flatten your hand."

Mel let his hand settle, expecting at any time for what should have happened. What should have, but didn't. Instead of falling to the dirt, as he flattened his hand, the coin spun its way to the middle of his palm. Then, when he'd held it there long enough to prove a point to itself, the coin quit its spinning and settled flat. Old Caesar looked across Mel's hand to something, maybe Hadrian's wall, maybe the ocean beyond the horizon. Maybe just time itself.

Alex closed Mel's hand on the coin. "Hide it away. And if, when, you reach the point where you just can't stand the idea of staying here any longer, walk to your little pool here. Take the coin out again."

"And then?"

"Follow wherever it takes you." She stood, then, settled her gear around her, and made her way to the edge of the copse.

"Where? You have to know."

She smiled her peculiar half-smile. "I know a girl who chased her penny around the world and back. In her case, the path lead to a little school in Edinburgh. These days, assuming nothing else changes, your penny should lead you to a place in the City."

London, Mel told himself.

"When you get there, show the person at the door your penny. Let them see how you make it dance."

"And then?"

"I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to discover what happens then, Mel. Good fortune." And then she was gone.

****

Alex made her way from Mel's village to the City, and the building she'd set Mel's foot on the path to finding. Unlike what the prospective apprentices went through when they arrived, Alex entered without challenge.

Her purposes were twofold. To divest herself of the Alex persona, in favor of a new position. One that wouldn't attract the attention of any sheriff's warrants.

And to replace the penny she'd given to Mel. "If I'd stumbled onto him a year or two from now, I'd have just taken him with me."

"He's that close?" her colleague, the treasurer, asked.

"Very much so. As is, this way, he'll be much less disruptive when the discontent sets in."

"Good," the treasurer replied, before handing Alex a new old penny. "All of our future apprentices should be so lucky."

****

Just as Alex foretold, two years and three days after she left him with the penny, Mel made his way to his favorite fishing spot. This time, on a blustery spring day. Winter wasn't having it this year. Snowflakes and the north wind fought Mel as he crossed the field; he almost began to regret the weight of his gear.

Coat, wool shirt and pants, gloves, scarf and hat. The heavy boots he'd saved his pennies to buy just this year. A bedroll, an old knife, his few extra clothes. Mel had prepared himself for it.

Because the geese flying overhead this fall had dragged a piece of him to the sky. Because Papa and Mom, God love them both, refused still to allow him to breathe a dream of his own to life.

He'd hidden the penny away in his loft. Every time he'd thought of it, burned to take it out and hold the promise of it again, he'd held back. "Don't wish too hard, yet," he'd told himself. "That way, when I need it..."

Mel pinched the penny from his belt. Held it up between thumb and forefinger. Unlike Alex, he didn't trust himself to tumble the penny between his knuckles. But he didn't need to.

All he needed to do was hold it aloft. On edge, the penny balanced itself on the tip of Mel's finger. And then...

The penny began to spin.