Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son by J B Cantwell Page A

doesn’t have that fear,” I mumbled. “Or Kiron.”
    He placed his hand on my arm. The look he gave me was stern.
    “You truly think that the man who lost the three in his life he loved the most, and because of the company he kept, does not doubt himself? Or that the ancient wizard who has waited for you for more than a century has done so blindly and without question or fear?”
    I didn’t respond.  
    “Interesting,” he said. Then he got to his feet.  
    Chapman, too, had changed. No longer was he the man I had once met, a bit silly, frightened of his own shadow despite his devotion to Almara. He was hardened. Still kind, but tough.
    “Zacharias,” Chapman said, taking a few deliberate steps away. “I think we are in need of a story.” He pointed to one of the men we had found beside the pot of chocolate in the square.  
    The man looked up from his place near the fire. Then, as he slowly realized what was being asked, he face came to life with excitement. He jumped to his feet and started pacing, smiling and rubbing his forehead as if searching for the right story with his fingertips. Every few steps he would stop, look up as if he had made a decision, but then resume his vibrant gait around and around the flames. Finally, he stopped for the last time, clapping his hands together with a snap.
    “Sacha and the Beast,” he said.  
    The men sat up to listen. Even Owyn roused himself from his rest to hear the tale. Only Kiron kept his nose down, scribbling notes from the Book of Leveling.
    Zacharias raised his arms, first out to the crowd, and then up to the sky.  
    “In the time of the First Realm, ten thousand years before Jared and his wizards walked these lands, the young boy Sacha lived in the foothills of the Taylan Mountains along the northern edges of Aria. As in so many other times, war had come to the lands of his people. Word of an approaching army had reached the village, and the men were a flurry of preparation. They trained the teenagers in what they knew of the arts of battle. They gathered food to store in case the enemy was able to trap them within their valley. And they plotted late into each night how they might defeat their foe when he arrived with his army.”
    “What were they fighting over?”  
    I looked over and saw that Owyn had been the one to ask the question. Zacharias laughed.
    “It matters not. All war is naught but a disagreement between two men. They are all, in this way, the same.” Zacharias resumed plodding along the circle of footsteps that was already beginning to cut into the dirt around the fire. “In any case, Sacha, being only seven years of age, had little to do. Too young to be of help to the warriors, and too old to be a babe in his mother’s arms, he found himself frequently underfoot. Finally, when the stick of his mother’s broom had whacked him on the backside for the fourth time in one day, Sacha left his family’s cottage in search of friendlier surroundings.
    “He wandered the hillsides, which were safe enough. The enemy was still quite far away, and there was little danger a young boy could have found himself in in that place while battle was still held at bay. He descended the hills along a path he knew well, a path he had learned in more peaceful times when his father’s focus was on family, not war, and his mother’s broomstick had little purpose but to push the straw across the hearth. For five days, each morning he would disappear down into the groves of pine. And each evening he returned, finding his presence not missed by his family.
    “In this manner he found his place in the war effort; he removed himself from being in the way of those with important tasks at hand. And in exchange his rear stayed free of bruises and the faces of his parents free of scowls.
    “One afternoon, as he swung along the lower of the branches, dreaming of nymphs and faeries and wishing for a companion to share in his games, he heard a strange sound beneath a