The Hickory Staff

THE HOUSE OF ALEN JASPER

Alen Jasper’s house was deceptively small from the outside. As Hannah walked from room to room she thought that the strange mystic had somehow forced a much larger dwelling under the nondescript shingle roof. There was a veritable maze of narrow halls, twisting stairs and curiously placed chambers, several of which had stone fireplaces, although she could only see one chimney outside. The four companions spent most of their time in these rooms as the nights were cool no matter how hot Middle Fork got during the day. It reminded Hannah of early autumn in Colorado, when beautifully warm days were followed by cold nights heralding the coming winter.

Then there were Alen’s books, printed in secret or preserved since Prince Marek first took the Eldarni throne more than nine hundred Twinmoons earlier. The illegal collection, thousands of volumes, was the size of a small town library, but the books were arranged in no order Hannah could discern. Gardening books were stacked near physiology treatises; stories of great Eldarni athletes were thrown in a wooden crate with studies on nutrition; legends of man-eating fish and sea creatures were lost among a treasury of books on Eldarn’s stained-glass windows. But no matter the peculiar filing system, Alen, the suicidal drunkard, appeared to be able to find any volume he wanted, regardless of whether he was searching for an obscure reference to cheese or a mathematical algorithm governing motion in Twinmoon tides, within a few minutes.

He had not spoken again of suicide, but Hannah knew he was still drinking heavily in secret. She often heard him in the hallway maze at night, and in the morning she would find the empty bottles or flagons. One night she heard him stumble past her chamber door, then pause and retrace his steps. As he stood outside her room, Hannah fought the desire to throw open the door and ask what he wanted. He didn’t knock, or try to force his way in, but after a long while, he whispered, ‘We shall both get what we want, Hannah Sorenson.’

She heard him later that night as he rounded a corner somewhere near the front of the house and cried out, ‘Jer.’ The muffled cry was filled with such pain it almost broke her heart. It reminded her of Branag and his lonely vigil at the leather shop: Children are as close as we are allowed to come to feeling as though we have, for just a moment, been singled out by the gods. That was what Branag had told her. Hannah realised suddenly this struggle was real, this strange land, with all its peculiarities, was made up of ordinary people who were wrapped up in their desperate fight for freedom from an all-powerful dictator with legions of soldiers to deploy at his whim. They did commonplace things, like caring for their families, and adoring their children above everything.

Commonplace normal things, she thought. Things I would expect from- Hannah paused before admitting – from people back home, from people like me. The walls of her bedchamber seemed to close in on her. Nothing was different. ‘Children are as close as we are allowed to come to feeling as though we have, for just a moment, been singled out by the gods,’ she whispered to herself. It was love, compassion, and a genuine desire for all the things Hannah had once believed unique to the narrow world from which she came that fuelled this revolution.

Before drifting off, she heard Alen again. ‘We shall both get what we want, Hannah Sorenson.’