At another time, in another place, Reuben Edmonds took his eyes off his computer screen for once in his life and rose from his chair. “If Randy gets back and goes wondering where I am, I went up to the old storage room to drop this box off,” he said to Bethany. “I should be back within five minutes, though.”
“That's a relief,” she teased. “I wouldn't know what to do if the U.N. called and I had to tell them to wait fifteen minutes.” Reuben worked summers as a secretary for a small company ten minutes from his home, and Bethany Morningstar, who was full of smiles and teasing, worked there as an inventory clerk. She was 21 years old and strikingly beautiful, and she and Reuben had been on a few dates in the past few weeks. Reuben, 22, enjoyed her a great deal—she was relentlessly nice—and was optimistic about where the relationship was headed. He would finish his degree in Business Administration the following spring and start his career somewhere; Bethany had taken a year off to gather money and was now in her second year studying English or Accounting; she hadn't yet really decided which. They'd known each other on vague terms since high school, being from the same town, and again at college, but hadn't really gotten to known each other until working in the same office every day this summer, and they had hit it off splendidly.
Reuben sneezed and his mind snapped out of its reverie. Sure is dusty up here, he thought to himself as he deliberately began to pick through piles of discarded, forgotten cardboard relics. I doubt anyone's touched any of these things for ten years or more. Presently he spied the door, which seemed much newer than everything surrounding it, no doubt recently replaced. The brazen knob still shone as it reflected the dim lights back toward him. This, he guessed, was the old, old office, which had once been the central office, twenty-five years long gone. Now it was where the box he was carrying was supposed to be stored, along with twenty years’ worth of invoices. It took him several tries to finally insert the key correctly, as if the key was of a different make or age from the lock, but finally he succeeded and opened the door.
The light switch was to his right. He threw it and looked around, not that there was much to see: Boxes piled everywhere and nothing else to behold besides a shelf here and some of the dirty hardwood floor. The door was new, but the room behind it certainly was not.
Just as Reuben set his box down atop a pile of similar boxes marked “BLA payments 1994” and such, he gave a slight start as the door slammed shut behind him. He realized the hinges must have been spring-loaded to keep the door shut. He took one more look around for remembrance’s sake and then reached out for the knob. He jingled it. It didn’t budge. He frowned and gave it a hard turn, then a hard pull and turn. Nothing. It was locked.
He frowned harder, looking down at the knob. The front was smooth, and there was no locking mechanism. His stomach sank as he realized his predicament: This door could be locked and unlocked only from the outside.
He stood upright in resignation. His mind started churning, mulling over the options available to him. He could bang hard on the door, shout, try to raise enough of a ruckus to be heard; but it was doubtful anyone below or outside could hear him. He could try his level best to break his way through the door, and perhaps he could succeed at it, but he would certainly have to answer to the boss for it – not something he wanted to do. His mind settled upon the least destructive option. He would simply stay where he was until someone came looking for him. It seemed a fair guess that once he’d been gone a half hour, someone would begin to question his whereabouts and come looking for him.
He sighed to himself as he turned away from the door. He would still be bawled out by his boss once he did get out, for being thoughtless and wasting company time and so on and so forth. He shook his head as that one-sided conversation played itself out in his mind. He looked around restlessly, eyeing the boxes and crates stacked all over the place around him. Since he was here and wouldn’t be leaving any time soon, curiosity was getting the best of him and he wanted to look around. No sense sitting around and dreading the boss.
His attention was drawn for whatever reason to a stack of large boxes in the corner to his right and away from him. There were seven boxes, three stacked rather carelessly on top of a neat foursquare, each box a two-and-a-half foot cube. As Reuben approached them, he could see a very thick layer of dust coating them; clearly they had sat here untouched for probably about as long as he'd been drawing breath. He lifted first one box, then two off the top and dropped them onto the floor behind himself. They were very heavy, probably full of very old papers. Now, in front of him, he leaned forward and hoisted up the box on the floor in front of him, placing it carefully down atop the box directly behind him. He stood and frowned at the floor. Here it was wooden like the rest of the floor, but the wood was old, faded, and discolored. Perhaps it was rotting. He stepped forward curiously and very tentatively put one foot down on this part of the floor. Nothing happened, so he put a little more weight on it. It seemed to give just a tad bit, but not too much, so, satisfied, he put his full weight on it, stepping toward the box further back. It was a mistake.
What happened next flashed by so quickly that it seemed over in the snap of a camera's lens. With a loud, dull crack! the boards beneath him shattered, sending him tumbling downward. As he fell, he desperately reached out to get hold of something, but instead slammed his left side and chest against the jagged floorboards at a very awkward angle and heard a second crack!, which, he could instantly tell, was at least one of his ribs. Just as this was happening, a large piece of the shattered floorboard caught him across that same side, from the front of his shoulder down over his armpit, gashing him. In a disorienting cloud of dust, dirt, wood and blood, he fell straight down, angled so his feet and rear end would strike first, whatever he struck.
What he did strike was even more surprising and confusing than the fall itself: He struck water. Not just a little water, but what seemed like a lake; he fell into it with a formidable sploosh and sank ten, fifteen feet straight down. Instantly, instinctively even though he was barely conscious from the shock and the injury, he struggled to get his bearings and get to the surface before he drowned. His lungs – his left lung was badly injured – were struggling and couldn’t hold out for long at all. Opening his eyes and trying to focus, he saw light above him and pushed toward it with everything he had. Just as his mouth opened and he began to take in water, he burst through the surface. He gobbled oxygen for a split second before bobbing back underneath, taking in more water, then he got back up. Quickly losing consciousness, he fought for his life. He remembered precious little of what was happening in those moments, but what he did remember was infinitely curious: Above him was blue sky; around him was green grass and trees, barely discernable in the whirling, desperate blur into which his world had disintegrated. And when he finally, somehow, reached the shore – shore? – he briefly understood he was lying on a sandy, grassy ground. Off in the distance he thought he could hear someone shouting, but perhaps it was only himself; and then he passed out.
“My Lubyan friends!” the Drifter called down the ridge where he had spotted Wilson and Williams below. “At last we meet again!”
Wilson looked up and squinted, making out the Drifter's form against the afternoon sun behind him. A full day it had been since the catastrophe at the Pit of Shada, but at least the demon-beasts appeared to be gone, run off to wherever in Arcoa they were going. As the smoke worsened and the monstrous two-headed Hellhounds and plump little shrieking flying critters and dragon-like beasts rushed out of the Pit by the thousands, tens of thousands perhaps, the four men had scattered in every direction, each running for his life, and quickly become separated. Williams found Wilson a few hours after, but that had been a full day before, and still no trace of Hokela. Wilson was hardly worried about Hokela. If any man in all Arcoa could be trusted to take care of himself, it was the assassin. Hokela would spend a day scouting the area around the Pit for the others, and then would make a beeline for their designated meeting place, which they had long ago agreed upon, should they become separated. No man in Arcoa was more reliable. That was what made him so blasted terrifying.
“So you're still alive?” Wilson shouted up to the Drifter. He still could not decide what to make of the man. He spoke like a madman, even looked a little like a madman, but the way he knew things was just eerie. Truthfully there was little doubt that this really was the Drifter reincarnate, the Carrier of the Legends, nigh unto being the voice of the Creator, or so Williams believed, and Williams believed nothing he hadn't studied and pondered at painstaking length. As for Wilson, he had a harder time assigning the kind of aweful respect to this quirky, offbeat little man that the very thought of the Creator demanded, but then, he was skeptical of everything.
“Somehow, I am,” said the Drifter as he approached. “We've really done it now,” he said with geniune sourness. “That must be why I rarely know the consequences of some of the things I'm compelled to do. I'd never do them if I did.”
“You sound glum,” said the giant. The bastard talks like there's three or four different men living in his head, Wilson thought.
“I am glum. What, you thought I'd be happy about this turn of events? Do you know the things a Hellhound is capable of? Hundreds of them must have come out of the Pit.”
“Let us hope not to meet one for a long time to come,” said Williams. “In the meantime, what will you do next, Drifter?”
“I'll do what I do best,” he said, and laughed. “Drift.”
“Do you know Hokela's whereabouts?” Williams asked.
“No,” he said. “I'm sorry about that. I'm sure he'll meet you in Laverch, according to your contingency.”
“You know that much, but you don't know where he is now?” Wilson said.
The Drifter shrugged. “Bizarre, isn't it?”
“Yes. Bizarre is precisely the word I have in mind every time I look at you.”
The Drifter gave a what-can-you-do? shrug.
“Do you care to drift with us as far as Dilfer, at least?” Williams said.
“No.” The Drifter shook his head. “I'm going south. You'll go east to find your assassin friend. I just came by to say so long for now, and to tell you one important thing. If you seek Ruuben, you'll find him among bandits.”
“Bandits?” the Lubyans exclaimed together.
The Drifter turned and began to walk away, and turned his head back toward them. “That's what I said. That's where you'll want to look. Later days.” And he vanished into the trees.
“That is one weird little man,” Wilson observed.
Williams shrugged. “At least we will have no difficulty locating bandits.”
Reuben didn’t, or couldn’t, open his eyes at first. His first perception of consciousness was through sound: There was some kind of faint sound somewhere nearby, although at first he couldn’t have any idea where it was coming from, or what it was or how loud it was or where he was. At first it was just the sound. Very gradually his awareness of himself began to return. He realized he was lying flat on his back, his legs stretched out, his right arm at his side and his left lying folded across his chest. His head was resting on an abundant, soft pillow, tilted slightly forward. The sound, a small sound, continued; it was to his left and seemed close by. Still he moved no muscle and his eyes remained closed. He sensed, before he was able to open them, that there was another person there, and that was the source of the sound. The next thing he noticed was his own body: He was sore, very sore, and felt stiff. He began to try to move his left arm, to straighten it, but was surprised when, not only did it not move, but the effort reverberated pain through his shoulder, neck and side. Then, and only then, did he remember: The fall. The water. The struggle. Had it been a dream? It felt like it was a dream.
Now, with some effort, he began to open his eyes. He opened them halfway for just a brief moment and then immediately squeezed them shut, blinded and pained by the sunlight. Again, slowly, he began to open them (still not really seeing anything) and then he closed them again, unable to abide the light. On the third try he succeeded in holding his eyes open—slitted, but open—and began to focus them. The ceiling above him was of unpainted wood, and beams ran across it, flat, but like a barn’s ceiling, and not terribly high. The sun’s light flowed in through a large window to his right. He tried to turn his neck to see the window, but it was so stiff that he could but barely move.
“Oh…!” He was startled by the voice although he had already known there was another person in the room. The voice he heard was female, but he couldn’t place exactly whose voice it was. His mother’s, perhaps? No; a nurse’s? This didn’t look like a hospital, but, remembering his fall, he supposed that’s what it had to be, somehow.
The mystery person materialized now at his side, to his left. Her voice preceded her. “You’re finally awake!” He blinked a couple of times, his eyes still struggling to function properly, and gingerly turned his head so far as he could, which wasn't very far, to see who it was.
He had never, to his knowledge, seen this young woman before. She stood smiling a happy smile, looking carefully at him. She couldn’t have been twenty years old, he thought to himself, but she was beautiful, with long, flowing blonde hair and deep, intelligent brown eyes punctuating a perfectly symmetrical, smallish face. She was wearing some sort of white gown, loose and very modest, with long sleeves and covering her to her neck. He was sure he had no idea who she was.
The first thing he said was exactly that which he had just been thinking he shouldn’t say, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Where am I?” The word “Where” came out almost inaudibly, and his voice still cracked on “am”, but “I” came out clearly. That was progress.
“This is fifteen mamoyres north of the village of Aster, in the kingdom of Gerson,” the girl replied. Ma-what? Aster? Kingdom? He blinked again.
“The kingdom of Gerson…” he repeated slowly. “Forgive my asking, but… what country is this?”
“Country?” she said. “Gerson is the name of our country. Are you a traveler from afar? Whence do you come?”
That last question, the way she phrased it, sounded so odd to Reuben that he almost chuckled. “I’m from Elsrum, Virginia. Do you know where that is?”
“Elsrum, Virginia” she said, although in her mind it was more like “Elsrumvirginia”. “That’s a long name. I’m afraid I’ve not heard of this place. And you’ve not heard of this place. You must have traveled a very long way to come here.”
Reuben had become so confused that he decided to just let the issue of where exactly he was drop for now. “How did I get here?” he asked.
“My father and brother found you on the shores of the little pond in the southerly wood,” the girl replied. “They said you were nigh to death, but they brought you back here. That was four days ago.”
“Four days?” Reuben started. He had no idea it had been that long. He struggled to move his neck enough to look down at himself. Ah – that’s why his left arm wouldn’t move. It was heavily bandaged and held by a sling to his bare chest. The bandages ran from the wrist all the way up past his shoulder, and they were also tightly wound around his chest and upper abdomen, with some kind of packing on the left side, where, he remembered, he’d been injured in his fall. His injuries must have been worse than he thought.
And now, he realized, he still felt very weak. He let his head fall back on his pillow. Most troubling was the thought of where am I?
The girl leaned forward, letting her very pretty face come into his line of sight again. “May I ask your name?”
He had closed his eyes, but now he opened them again. “Reuben,” he said. “My name’s Reuben.”
“Reuben,” she repeated the name. “I’ve not heard that name before. It is a noble name. I am Lari.” She smiled a tender smile again, saying nothing more.
“Lari,” Reuben now repeated. “Have you… you’ve put these bandages on me? You’ve been tending to my wounds?”
“Yes,” she said with one quick accompanying nod. “My father has been out hunting. He left you in my care when he brought you back here, for he needed to return to the wood.”
“You and your father have saved my life,” Reuben said. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” she said with a wider smile. The idea had suddenly hit Reuben during this conversation, looking at this very beautiful girl dressed all in white – perhaps he was in fact dead and had found himself in heaven, or paradise, or some such holding place of the dead. But he needed no more than to try to move his savaged body to know this wasn’t the case. No, he was alive; the pain reminded him of that.
“I wonder,” said Lari presently, “Do you happen to be a refugee of Lubyland?”
“Lubyland?” Reuben frowned. “I’m sorry, but I have never heard of Lubyland.”
Lari was unable to stifle a giggle. “You’ve never heard of Lubyland? From what strange country do you come?”
“The United States,” Reuben said, assuming this to be a rather tongue-in-cheek comment.
“The United… States?” Lari said. “Where is that?”
“Earth,” he replied, again presuming this was a somewhat good-naturedly sarcastic stating of the obvious. But now, to his surprise, there came a very long silence, perhaps two minutes or perhaps twenty; Reuben could not truthfully tell, but it was for a long time. He looked up; Lari was now looking at him with the oddest curiosity he’d ever beheld. She was gently biting her lower lip, looking at him the way one might look at a strange carving recovered from an Egyptian tomb, and then stopped that and straightened her face. Her eyes widened a bit.
“Are you telling the truth?” she said in something of a quieter tone. “You are really a man of Earth?”
“Yeah,” Reuben said, himself now perplexed, his mind struggling greatly to accept what was now becoming plain – that he wasn’t anywhere he’d ever been before, that something bizarre and otherworldly had happened when he fell. His mind rejected this ridiculous folly and instead he became completely aware that this was all a dream. Still, though, as you so often do in a dream even when you know it’s a dream, he continued to play along as if reading from some script. “If…. This isn’t Earth? If it’s not, what is it?”
“Our world is called Arcoa,” said Lari with a softer smile. “We have always heard many tales and rumors of a realm called Earth, but I have never heard of any proof that it exists. But now I know.”
Reuben lay in silence, trying to absorb what she was saying, and what he was realizing.
Lari straightened and smiled again. “You are so tired,” she said. “Soon I will change these bandages. For now, you need to rest.” Reuben closed his eyes, indeed simply wanting to rest for now. Lari then did a very curious thing. She leaned close to him and kissed him on the lips – not just a small peck, but she let her lips linger there a moment or two before gently peeling them away. Reuben was startled by this but, being already convinced he was dreaming, held his eyes closed and almost instantly fell asleep.
It was nearly three full weeks before Reuben was finally capable of moving his body in something approaching a normal fashion, and even then he still was terribly sore and, doubtless, would remain so for some time. But at least he could move with no hindrance of motion. Through the entire duration Lari had faithfully and tirelessly tended to his wounds, brought him food and drink, and provided company, and her father and younger brother also spent no small length of time in his company, especially after that first week when he was able to make it downstairs to join the family for supper.
The family's name was Molivny, and Lari's father's name was Alam, and his son Alavom. Alam Molivny was a man Reuben would describe as jolly, with a ready smile and uproarious laugh that Reuben incurred seemingly every time he opened his mouth, to display his ignorance or to speak of some thing of earth that struck Molivny as so absurd as to be hilarious. Alavom likewise enjoyed a good joke or needle, but at the same time he was much more serious and responsible about his day's work than any boy his age (fifteen, perhaps, Reuben thought) that Reuben knew.
“I was sure you weren't going to make it, young man,” Alam Molivny had boomed by way of introducing himself the second evening after he had awakened. “Your days haven't all been counted yet, it seems.” He approached and held up his right palm toward Reuben. “Peace to you, sir. Lari tells me your name's Reuben. My name's Molivny. I'm happy you're recovering.” He stroked his full beard, dark blond with streaks of white. They talked on for a few minutes, mostly Reuben trying to explain where he was from and Molivny trying to explain where they now were, neither with any success. After that they hit on something to talk about.
“How many winters have you seen, Reuben?” Molivny asked him. By this time all the Molivnys were gathered in the room.
“Twenty-two,” Reuben responded, struck by the oddity of Molivny's phrasing.
Molivny, much to Reuben's shock, threw back his head and laughed loudly enough to be heard half a mile away, Reuben thought, and he continued to laugh for five seconds. Young Alavom was laughing, too, or chuckling, and Lari was giggling.
“Twenty-two winters!” Molivny roared. “By the Stars, what do they feed boys where you're from? I think you'd be nearly a match for me in a test of strength once you heal up, and that's no light thing!”
Reuben couldn't hide his consternation. “What about that strikes you as so funny?”
“Reuben,” Lari said, “why, Alavom's seen thirty-one winters.”
“And you say you've seen only twenty-two?” Molivny laughed again. “You've seen at least forty, or I'm a pig to be spitted.”
“I've seen thirty-five,” Lari said.
“I... beg your pardon, folks. Mister Molivny,” Reuben said, “may I ask how old you are?” That drew confused looks. “How many winters you've seen, sir?”
“My name is Molivny, and let's leave it at that,” he said. “And this past winter was my ninety-eighth.”
98... Reuben blinked, processing the information. Judging from his appearance and that of his children, Molivny had to be in his late forties, by Reuben's understanding.
“I don't understand how exactly it works,” Reuben finally said, slowly, “but it appears that my notion of a person's age works differently from yours. The number you go by, I think, is about twice the number I do. So I think I would be about forty-four or forty-five by your reckoning.”
“Well, how long's a year in your Earth world?” asked Molivny.
“Three hundred sixty-five days.”
“That long?” he exclaimed. “So your seasons are... you do have seasons, right?”
“Yes.” Reuben nodded, relieved that these two places had something in common. “Spring, summer, autumn, winter?”
“Yes.” Molivny laughed, obviously equally relieved. “Well, here those are forty-five days each, regular as clockwork, which makes 180 days a year.”
“That all makes sense, then,” Reuben said. “Your year is almost exactly half as long as mine.”
And so it went from there, day after day, in long conversations with the Molivnys. A year in this place called Arcoa was 180 days, and they had no concept of months, but rather four seasons of 45 days each. He also figured out that 'mamoyres' were their unit of distance, and eventually worked out that a moyre was about two feet and a mamoyre a thousand moyres, or a little more than one-third of a mile. At least the sun in Arcoa behaved the same way as Earth's; a day was comprised of 24 hours in one place just as the other.
Nine days after his arrival Reuben was able to go outside and behold the night sky, where he saw the Stars: Six of them, arranged more or less in a very wide circle in the sky, each shining very brightly in its own color: Starting from the top of the circle and moving clockwise, they were yellow, blue, green, red, gray and white. Most of the stars were white, of course, but the white Star—the Molivnys always pronounced Star, when referring to these six, as though it were capitalized—was easily discernible from the thousands of mundane stars. These, Molivny told him, were the pins that held Arcoa together, the source of all life and power, or so he believed, and they told him of prochons, people who possessed special power derived from the Stars themselves. Molivny knew no specifics about that, but reverence was clear in the voice of all the Molivnys as they spoke of the Stars.
For two weeks more, as Reuben healed from his injuries, he stayed with the Molivnys and became increasingly active, even going so far as to join Alam and Alavom in some of their work during that last week, which they didn't try to stop him from doing. The speed with which he recovered was incredible. He was still sore, true, but he was pretty sure a person wasn't supposed to recover from broken bones and a collapsed lung this quickly. Every night when he went to sleep, he expected that he would awaken in the morning in his own bed in his own apartment in Elsrum, Virginia; he expected the dream to end. But it never did, and after three weeks' time Reuben's assumption that he was dreaming had been pushed back into a corner of his mind. What seemed so impossible – still seemed to his mind utterly impossible – seemed to be true: Reuben was no longer on Earth. He had somehow found himself in an entirely different world.
Technology was different. There was only crude running water, and no electricity. When he walked around outside, the surroundings resembled a very peaceful northern wilderness – no cars, no cities, no people, nothing but forest and all its natural sights, sounds and smells. Wherever he was, the ambient technology was medieval at best. Molivny had two horses that he used to pull carts laden with the goods he grew or captured hunting, when he traveled to Aster to buy and sell. Reuben tried to explain the concept of cars to them, and they thought it a wonderfully funny story.
It was mid-Summer when Reuben had crashed into the Molivny's pond, and had faded to early Autumn more than three weeks later, when he decided it was time to try to get back home. Late one evening, after Molivny had returned home from his work harvesting his corn fields, Reuben had Molivny lead him to the pond into which he had fallen at the first. Surely, he thought, I can get back the same way I came. Reuben dove into the pond, which was about a hundred feet in circumference, circular, and the water a good twenty feet deep. He spent ten minutes scouring every square foot of the pond's bottom, coming up time and again for air and then plunging back down. He found nothing he wouldn't expect to find in a pond.
Sitting on the bank with the Molivnys watching on, perplexed, Reuben looked up. Up! I didn't just appear in the pond; I dropped into it from above. I remember that I did. He spied a thick branch reaching out thirty feet above the pond, or close enough to the pond for his liking, and he climbed the tree. In the back of his mind it struck him how bizarre that was, for even as a child he was never much for climbing trees. He was sore, but he shocked himself with the dexterity with which he pulled himself up the thirty feet. He could hear the Molivnys below loudly wondering what he was doing, but no matter; this had to work. Had to.
It didn't. He leaped from the farthest point out he could get on the branch—he heard Lari scream—and splashed down into the pond, and bobbed back to the surface. Nothing was different. He was still where he was.
“I can't stay here forever,” Reuben said the next evening, at supper. It was already dark, nearing midnight, for the men had been out all day long working in the fields, Reuben too. “I don't know how to return to Earth, but I know I don't belong here. I must find a way. If I can't get back the way I came, I'll wander this world until I find something or die trying.”
“I see the young men of Earth are no different from young men here in our good Arcoa,” said Molivny between slurps of the thick vegetable soup Lari had prepared. “Foolhardy and adventurous. Always want to go find something as they don't even know what.” He laughed, as he so often did. “I'm not insulting you, I'm not insulting you. I remember when I was young myself; why, it wasn't so long ago. A man has to do what he can do, fulfill his heart's desires while he's young; yes, I believe it's so.”
“Where will you go, Reuben?” Alavom asked.
“I haven't any idea, of course. If I go north, what will I find?”
“Forest and lots of it,” said Molivny. “There are villages here and there. Long as you have the good sense of direction to keep going north, I'll say you're in no fear of starving in the woods. Go far enough and you'll cross into Tuaisosopo. Just don't drift west, whatever you do. Evil, evil lands to the west.”
“Omegas,” said Alavom, sitting up straighter the way a boy will when excited.
“You've not even seen an Omega in your life, lad,” said Molivny, “and the Stars grant that you never do in this peaceful place. Bloodthirsty creatures they are, and they'll kill on sight. When you arrive at a village, Reuben, make sure to find out where you are. Make certain you don't move west, toward the Plains of Elzareth.”
“Are you certain you won't stay longer, Reuben?” Lari asked in her quiet way. He couldn't deny even to himself that she had taken a liking to him, but was that any surprise, isolated as she appeared to be? He forced himself to think nothing of it. Soon, he told himself, he would see Bethany again. Hopefully before she wrote him off for dead and moved on to new faces.
“I'm certain I don't belong here, and as your father has seen time and again, I'm no farmer.”
Molivny laughed loudly. “It is true, it is true. You're a hard worker, Reuben my friend, but I'm still at a loss for how you eat.”
“It's been an honor to stay with your family,” Reuben said. “And I owe you my life. I would be dead were it not for your kindness.” And he afforded Lari a smile. “Especially yours.” That got a blush from her.
The family saw Reuben off at first light the very next morning. Molivny had prepared Reuben well for a long journey. Reuben was dressed in Molivny's clothes; old and oversized as they were, the shirt Reuben had been wearing on the day he fell had been torn to tatters and he had nothing else. Molivny's generosity was remarkable; he gave Reuben also a pair of hiking boots, a large backpack and four canteens of water, plus a kind of ground up, dried cornmeal that Lari had prepared to feed him. The family had little on hand, yet Molivny gave him some gold pieces, enough, said Molivny, to pay for food and lodging for a little while to come.
Most generous of all, Molivny warned Reuben that “the world's been changing of late. There are bandits going about, and I hear tales of animals attacking people. If you're going to travel, you must travel armed.” And Molivny gave Reuben his own sword, which, Molivny told Reuben, outside the earshot of his children, he himself had used in battle decades before, in what Molivny called the Invasion from the Sea. It was a good sword, and Reuben couldn't refuse it. Still, he felt incredibly awkward strapping it to his back—“now, carry it where they can see it, don't let anybody think you're unarmed,” Molivny had said—and a little silly, like he was dressing up for a Renaissance Faire. But then, this whole world appeared to be one giant Renaissance Faire. The goodbyes were said, and Reuben headed north on foot, hoping fervently he would never have to remove that sword from its sheath.
