Chapter 57 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 57: Harvest and Hibernation 01
This was Delphine's first time on a train. Everything was new to her. She peered at this and stared at that the entire way, chattering in Lucita’s ear without pause.
Lucita answered patiently as she lifted her spoon to eat breakfast: a cup of milk and a sweet bread roll, stuffed with a slice of smoked meat and a lump of cream cheese, expensive and delicious enough to feel like a proper treat.
The people around her had long since given her a wide berth of at least three feet. The rows of seats on the other side of the aisle stole glances at her from time to time.
A peculiar, well-off person who talks to herself.
Lucita noticed, and joked to Delphine: "Everyone around me has been scared off. Do I look that frightening?"
Delphine shook her head and said in all seriousness: "Not at all. You look completely normal."
Lucita choked and burst into a spectacular coughing fit.
Her gaze drifted past the window to the mountains and plains the train was passing through.
Once the spatial fabric had stabilized, the cracks in the world presumably sealed in the process, the magical elements in the air had grown noticeably richer. Even breathing felt easier.
The mountains and farmlands outside the window, whether it was her imagination or not, seemed a little more lush than they had on the way out.
In fact, it was no imagination.
This was the season when certain crops began to come in. Apples and pears hung heavy in the orchards. Grapes clustered thick along trellis after trellis. Early-rising gardeners breathed in the sweet morning air as they walked their rounds, baskets in hand, setting to the harvest with quiet satisfaction.
Over the past half-month, the fruit had grown with remarkable vigor, each one plump and full, red and yellow and purple, the colors rich and vivid. Every piece looked like a promise of gleaming silver coins.
A harvest like this, you might not see once in ten years.
Out in the wheat fields, farmers ran their fingers through wheat ears, which already began to turn gold. The stalks were starting to bow, bent under the weight of ripening grain.
The morning wind swept pollen and mist across the fields in rippling waves, like hills rolling one after another into the distance.
The harvest season was almost here.
Lucita opened the cover of the pocket watch in her hand. The panel representing the magical layer of the world had gradually faded from red into a softer orange-red, far more pleasant to look at.
The panel for the spatial layer had returned to a yellow-green. Ugly, perhaps, but compared to the lovely orange-red, it put Lucita far more at ease. Of course, it couldn't compare to the soft greens of the spirit and life panels……
The mountains rolled green. Haze rose from the ridges.
The locomotive trailed its long plume of smoke, and the long cry of the whistle echoed back and forth between the peaks, slow to fade.
It took Lucita a week to return to Tirol, the neighboring city of Irttat, and the first place she had stepped off a train when she arrived in this region.
Tirol was situated in the southwestern corner of the continent, scattered alongside some of the tribal settlements that existed outside the kingdoms' borders, along the southern tail of the Esti Range. A single old train line threaded through the mountains to reach it, forming the one connection between this place and the wider world.
Unlike last time, Lucita now wore a string of colorful storage necklaces around her neck, and no longer carried the brown wooden box. Her whole appearance looked lighter, more at ease.
She had fully settled into belonging here.
Lucita stepped off the train first, then turned back to offer her hand to Delphine.
The gesture earned her plenty of sideways looks from the other travelers, and more than a few deliberately stepped away as if she carried some contagious madness.
Lucita wasn’t embarrassed in the slightest. She spun in a small circle, breathed in the clean mountain air, and led Delphine out of the station.
As she walked, she asked for directions to the post office. Irttat had no connection to the outside world, and therefore no post office of its own. Tirol was the nearest place where letters could be sent.
The post office was a neat red-brick building. Hanging baskets of spider plants trailed pale blossoms down the wall, and someone had tucked a cut stem of hydrangea into one of the pots. The mauve and pink blooms had dried out and wilted halfway.
Lucita took hold of the door ring and knocked on the large street-facing window.
"Who is it?" A golden-haired youth in a beret pushed open the window.
She looked Lucita over and asked: "Are you posting something?"
Lucita nodded, and took out the recommendation letter and application letter she had wrapped together, handing them through: "I'd like to send these to Viktori, the capital of Kenting. The address is the Spring Tower, Number 49, Robin Street."
The youth, who had grown up here and had no particular sense of what the magical towers meant, asked in a routine tone: “Recipient’s name?”
"Distinguished Professor Astrid, of the Spring Tower."
"Your name?"
Lucita paused: "Anastasia Callen."
The youth glanced up at her, wrote something on the envelope, then held out a hand: "One silver coin for postage."
Familiar prices.
Irttat’s silver mines had flooded into the surrounding region and shifted the local economy. The most obvious result was the depreciation of silver.
After her extended stay on the human continent, Lucita felt a faint internal wince as she dug out a coin and handed it over.
The youth took it, then pointed to the envelope: "Your return address should be your home address, not the post office. How else would you receive a reply from this Professor Astrid?"
"I don't live in Tirol," Lucita said. "Roughly how long does the round trip take? I can come to collect in person."
The youth calculated. "About a month."
"Anything else?"
"No, that's all."
Before Lucita had even finished speaking, the youth had already snapped the window shut with a sharp bang, dislodging two dried hydrangea petals from the wall display.
What a... distinctive child.
Lucita rubbed her nose and led Delphine away.
Delphine asked from behind: "Where are we going next?"
"To collect our carriage." Lucita explained as she went, crossing the street and arriving at the staging post by the town entrance where they had left it.
The horse had been well cared for, its coat glossy and smooth, its head lowered over a fresh pile of grass.
Lucita settled the remaining hire fees with satisfaction, swung herself on the horse, and gave her legs a squeeze. With the empty painted carriage — its mushroom-red and primrose-yellow sides bright in the sun — trailing behind, the horse broke into a trot.
The road back to Irttat passed through a forest that few people ever traveled.
At this time of year, the forest undergrowth was filled with clusters of wild roses, their buds just forming, swaying between the lush and dense greenery with a lively beauty.
Wild blueberries, cloudberries, and blackcurrants had already put out tart little fruits. In two more months they would ripen into sweet, full berries. Some would feed the birds. Some would fall in untouched clearings, their juice rotting into the soil, becoming nourishment for next year’s flowers and vines.
Familiar rabbits and squirrels flickered through the trees, along with the black starlings native to the Esti Range.
Delphine perched on her shoulder, pointing at this and then at that: “What kind of bird is that? Oh, look, that flower is so pretty. Can you pick one? A rabbit! There’s a rabbit!”
A journey that should have taken half an afternoon dragged on far longer. Delphine’s constant detours left them with an armful of wild roses, half-turned maple leaves, and a pouch of sharp sea buckthorn berries. The sun was already sinking when they finally reached Irttat.
"Delphine."
"Mm?"
“You know… when you’re not talking, you come across as rather aloof.”
"What does aloof mean?"
"..."
Lucita hitched the carriage to a post at the town center, gathered her large armful of wild roses, and made her way down Parrot Street in the freshly lit lamplight, knocking at the farm's gate.
Tap, tap, tap…
"Who is it?"
Violet’s clear voice called from inside. A shadow passed the cottage window. Then she pushed it open, looked out, and saw someone standing at the gate.
A youth with her hair tied back, wearing a strawberry-red top and a deep indigo pinafore dress, holding something large and shapeless in her arms. The silhouette was unmistakably familiar.
"Lucita!" She called out sharply and turned away from the window at once, the quick patter of her footsteps retreating through the living room, then she came running down the front path and pulled open the gate.
Lucita held out the wild roses. "For you."
Violet gathered the unexpected armful of flowers and breathed in deeply. "Are these from the northern forest?"
“Yes,” Lucita said, then gestured to the empty air at her side. “I should introduce you. This is our new friend, Delphine.”
Violet blinked, staring at Lucita with a blank expression.
"Um..." Lucita cleared her throat. "You might not be able to see her, but she's saying hello. Delphine, this is my friend Violet. She’s an elf"
Delphine greeted the new acquaintance eagerly: "Hello!"
The new acquaintance couldn't hear her, but after Lucita's introduction, she still smiled and waved cheerfully at the empty air: "Hello."
Lucita looked around after introductions were done: "Hmm, where's Linnea? Has she gone to sleep already?"
Violet shook her head: "She's been playing with Jessica today. She's sleeping over there."
"Then she'll come home to a surprise tomorrow." Lucita said with a pleased smile, stepped into the yard, and turned to slide the bolt back into place behind her.
The yard had been completely transformed. The pea trellises were thick with climbing vines, and small pods hung here and there among the tendrils. The magical herb bed that had been sparse when she left was now full, with many new varieties added. Lucita could make out evening primrose, pot marigold, and sappanwood in the dim light.
The pot marigolds were in full bloom: clean white petals, single-layered, looking especially fresh and bright in the lamplight by the gate.
By the well, the new small house was a hazy outline in the failing dusk.
Rounding to the back of the yard, the wisteria tree was invisible under a dense canopy of small oval leaves, deep green and moving in the evening breeze. In the pond beneath the shade, the fish flicked their tails, sending out ripples that caught the outdoor lamp's glow and scattered it into fragments of shimmering gold.
The little lambs in their pen were already asleep. Lucita tiptoed closer to look. They were piled together in a comfortable heap, out cold, and visibly bigger than when she had left.
The only thing unchanged was the trailing bell-flower winding along the fence, its large flame-red blossoms hanging low, lush and lovely.
The night grew deeper.
Lucita unclasped her shell necklaces and set them on the tea table, said goodnight to the others, and returned to her own bedroom.
Delphine, being a spirit, had no need for a bedroom. She could rest anywhere. She drifted through the farm, inside and out, circling everything with curiosity. At last she settled beside the marigolds in the herb bed, her spirit-form hovering there, and drifted into sweet sleep as a distant nightingale sang from the forest.
Comments
Post a Comment