The Gaming Outpost

The guinea hens outside the shuttered window yanked Jake out of the too-small trundle bed, and to the window where he thrust back the shutters with a snarl. The cackling of the hens changed to heckling as they scattered out of range of the window sill stored pebbles he half-heartedly tossed at them. Slumped by the log cabin wall, he groaned. Uncle, not really, Raymond, was a hard man, but even he did not demand you get up at the crack of dawn. However, the hens did, and if they did not get their food, they would wake the rest of the household, and then Jake No-last Name would be in trouble. He had been found the lone, traumatized survivor of a caravan that had been massacred.

Worse, at eight years old, he had not known the local language. He had craved sugar with a passion the others found shocking, and his clothes were clearly made for a peasant with their dull colors, but with the quality suited for a prince.

Sighing, Jake slipped on his sandals, and tied them up, making time to yell at the hens that yes, he was coming so they could ‘shet it’.

Even after seven years, the new language he had learned sounded strange in his mouth when he got up in the morning. The last memory he had was of Christmas, but the Uncle, who had made him an apprentice printer, with the approval of the knight at Staireval Castle, and no one else around here knew of Christmas.

Clomping outside, but quietly, through the workroom, and into the kitchen/great room he heard Aunt Ess mumble through the thin interior wall something about ‘hens.’

He also went past the small room where the twins, both older than him, and rather pompous, Gra and Mog, slept. Soon Mog, the second born would go off to join the army, it was all planned. And Gra, in a few years would get enough help to build a new printer’s house in a village without one. For Jake, it was expected he would help the Uncle for another four years, and then he would be turned out a Journeyman.

Jake walked out on the porch and greeted the rising sun with a wave. He supposed he could not blame Uncle or Aunt. After all, they had taken in a homeless and much distraught child, but it seemed hard to him. He had dreams of palaces, and lights at night, and plenty of food with no need to go hungry in spring. And then a kindly folk in caravans found him. And then monsters ate them. And now he was up to feed the guinea hens.

Sighing again, Jake began to toss out the grain he found in the closed barrel in the farm shed. The hens practically attacked his hand so eager were they, and so Jake taking a careful look around to see if Aunt was up early, reached out and punched a couple in the face.

They got the notion, and stopped jabbing at his hands, and legs. Greedy guts could draw blood, but Aunt did not want them upset or they would not lay eggs, or so she thought. Jake thought, as did Gra and Mog that they would lay eggs in a whirlwind.

A tornado.

The strange word came back to him.

Finished, he walked out to the pebbles he had tossed, and unerringly picked up the ‘special ones’ that he had tossed from the window sill.

He did not know how he did the magic, but the same nine stones he had held for the past years, they called to him, in his stomach.

And in the distance, something else did. He wondered what it was,and if it would have the answer to who or what he really was.  After all, he looked not a day older than the eight years old he had been found as. Perhaps, he was, as some thought, an elf-child.  But that was for later. Now was for finding the eggs.