The Dame

PART THREE

I met Jameston Sequin on a road east of Pryd Town. I had first been introduced to him on a winding trail in Alpinador, far, far away, when he had intervened to help me and my companions in a fight with trolls. His reputation preceded him by only a few sentences, mostly revealed in the wide-eyed admiration from that most unlikely source of such animation, Crazy Vaughna.

I had known Jameston Sequin for months and had spent many hours with him and many alone with him before I ever truly met him. There was always something about him and his unusual appearance and demeanor that had drawn me to him and had made me glad indeed (though I wouldn’t openly admit it) when he had unexpectedly joined me on my perilous road out of Chapel Abelle. So many extraordinary visual clues had revealed to me long before that this was no ordinary scout, with his huge mustache and amazingly long-legged strides and that distinctive hat he wore, named after him because its triangular design served him as a sight for his deadly bow. Truly Jameston seemed larger than life, a man, perhaps the first I had ever met, whose reputation was not diminished, indeed was enhanced, by familiarity.

So I had known him, had traveled with him, had battled beside him, but it wasn’t until one morning a week out of Pryd Town, the smell of recent battles heavy in the air, when I actually met Jameston Sequin, and all because the enigma that was this formidable scout finally forced me to ask him a simple question.

”Why?”

He looked at me, and I knew at once that he understood the context and the depth of my inquiry. Maybe it was my stance, or the tone I had used in asking, or the simple lack of context for such a question, uttered suddenly on a faraway road. Whatever the reason, Jameston knew. I could see it in his eyes and in that grin he often wore, a look that made anyone around him know for certain that he, Jameston, knew more than they knew or at least understood better.

“Where?” he flippantly replied. “When? Who?”

I wasn’t letting him get away. Not then. I needed to know. He had surprised me by deciding to stay with me even after I had learned of the presence of Jhesta Tu and had proclaimed that my journey was my own and not for Dame Gwydre. To understand his decision, I needed to know the truth of Jameston Sequin. “Why?” I responded.

“Any answer I gave would work, I suppose, since your word works for any question.” He grinned wider because he knew that I knew that he knew, if that makes any sense, and he was determined to play it out fully.

“Why are you who you are?” I clarified, though it certainly wasn’t necessary. “Why a scout? Why do you spend your days in solitude?”

“I’m here with you.”

My sigh made him grin all the wider.

“You are becoming predictable,” I told him.

“When people think that, it makes me more dangerous.”

“Or are you afraid to tell me? To tell anyone?”

Finally, I could see that I had hit his sensibilities, and hard. His expression changed, as if a cloud had passed overhead to darken the day. He moved off the road to a small grouping of rocks large enough to serve as seats, bidding me to follow. I saw weariness in his step that I had never before detected.

“You want to know why I went into the emptiness of Alpinador?” he asked me as he took a seat, still looking older than before.

“I want to know why you’re here with me.”

“That’s what I said,” he replied. Was he always one layer ahead of me in my thinking?

“Pride and money,” he said then, and his smile became self-deprecating. “I went to Vanguard as a young man, younger than yourself. I was a confident one, almost as much as you are, and I was good enough to back it up. Things that seemed so simple to me, like how to hide and how to find someone else who’s trying to hide, befuddled others. I understood animals-I don’t know why or how, but everything about them and the way they were likely to behave just seemed obvious to me.”

“And goblins and trolls and powries,” I remarked, and Jameston nodded.

“With all that behind me, with all the folk of Vanguard looking north for furs and timber and exotic items, the road seemed obvious. I wanted to make a name for myself, boy, and make a fair amount of coin at the same time.”

It all made sense to me, of course, but I knew, too, that the young man who had first gone out from civilization for those reasons was not the same person now sitting before me. As Jameston continued his tale of exploration and building his reputation and fame as a guide and hunter, one question became apparent: What had changed his mind?

“I had the coin. It came from the caribou moss, from leading teams to it, from protecting caravans, and from this hat!” He tipped his “sequin,” that triangular cap favored by archers across Vanguard and even in northern Honce proper. “All the coin in the world, and nothing I wanted to spend it on,” he answered, plainly and again with that self-deprecating chuckle, as if it had all been a bad joke he had inadvertently played upon himself. “The fame led to a line of the same questions being asked over and over again. To some I was a hero, but I wasn’t any such thing. To most I was a curiosity, something to gawk at.

“Aye, that’s what I was,” he said, sadness in his tone. “And there was no point to any of it, so I went on without any sense of purpose.”

“Even mocking those who claimed such purpose driving their own lives,” I dared remark. Jameston’s corresponding nod was more enthusiastic then, as if I had grasped exactly his point in telling me all this.

“My purpose was all for me when I was a young adventurer, looking to conquer the world,” he said. “Then I had no purpose at all, and for a long time.”

“And now?”

“Now? Dame Gwydre’s father cut a new trail in front of my wandering feet. I didn’t walk it, not far anyway, until I had to, many years later.” As he finished, he looked up at me, locked gazes with me, and I knew then, in that moment, that I had truly come to know Jameston Sequin.

“When you met my group in a fight on the trail,” I reasoned.

“That was part of it.”

“You walk with me to find purpose in the life of Jameston Sequin.”

My proclamation was met with a somewhat accepting and somewhat incredulous look. Finally, he shook his head. “You’re just on the trail Gwydre’s da cut for me.”

Part of the bigger whole, he meant. Part of the purpose that was not self-centered, as was the one that had driven Jameston Sequin to the wilds of northern Vanguard and Alpinador, the one that had brought him fame and false fortune. It wasn’t until he realized that his journey through this life wasn’t about him alone, but about a greater sense of brotherhood and community, that Jameston Sequin had found a trail worth walking.

As I pondered that unexpected conversation throughout that day, I knew, too, why Jameston had shared it with me.

Dame Gwydre, like her father before her, had cut a trail, but it was one I was reluctant to walk.

And so it was that even as I directed our journey, to the east and the Jhesta Tu and my greatest question and challenge, even as I led, so I was being led.

It was… comforting. -BRANSEN GARIBOND