The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) (15 page)

Grange and Ariana, far ahead of the others, walked to their trees as the others walked past, marveling at where the two had managed to reach.  There was chatter ad high spirits above the ordinary, as the boys were energized by the arrival of the girls as their partners.

Grange and Ariana looked at one another with smug expressions, then resumed their work, and by lunch time – despite the delay by the passage of the storm – they were within easy reach of the cider barn.

“You two have given the best effort I can recall,” Thrall told them as he walked up behind them, having examined their trees and found that they had been thoroughly picked.  “If you want to finish these few trees after lunch, you can have the rest of the afternoon off,” he told them.  “Since you’ve already done more than your share of the work today.”

“As long as you act proper and there’s no mischief,” he added sternly.

“I’ll keep him in line,” Ariana said reassuringly.

“I believe you when you say that,” Thrall affirmed.

The group gathered in the cider barn, then walked together to the spot where the local adults had prepared the midday feast for the workers.  There was a slight air of sullenness among the local girls, who were upset by the importation of Ariana, Deana, and Clarine, providing competition for the companionship of the High Meadow boys, but only a few minutes were needed for most of the boys to migrate over to sit among the disgruntled girls, and conversations slowly crept from low murmurs to laughter and loudness.

“You’re Grange?” a girl boldly came over to place a hand on Grange’s shoulder, even though he sat with Ariana the whole time.

“I am,” he cautiously agreed.

“The boys say you have a flute, and you can play dance music for us all night long,” the girl explained.  “We’re all so happy to hear that!  The old folks want to play old songs, like you hear in the temple when you go to the city – no one can dance to that!”

Grange looked at Ariana, who nodded her agreement.  “I expect I’ll be done with you before sunset, so if you want to play for the dancers, be my guest,” she said calmly.  “I might even dance a few steps with some of the boys.”

“Let’s get going so that we can finish, and start your lesson,” she stood up and held out her hand.  As soon as Grange stood and took it, she started marching off to the orchard, pulling Grange in her wake, as all eyes watched, and numerous comments were quietly uttered.

That afternoon was exhausting for Grange.  He and Ariana finished their last trees in no time, then returned to the wagon, where Ariana retrieved the sword before she led Grange into the unpicked, undisturbed orchards on the other side of the road.  She selected a dead tree branch about the size of the sword, and began her lessons in how to hold the weapon.  She made Grange try handling the stick and the sword, using first his left hand, then settling on his right.

“You might be able to use your left hand, but it would take a long, long time to teach that, and I don’t think I have that much time,” she decided after just a few minutes of watching him awkwardly maneuver the blade with his left hand.

“How much time could it take?” Grange asked in protest.

“Based on what I see, eternity,” she replied, making him angry, so that they argued for several minutes.

“I tell you what, when you get good with your right hand, we’ll go back to trying your left hand,” Ariana offered a compromise finally.  After that, they practiced gripping the sword, holding the sword, swinging the sword, positioning the sword, and numerous other functions with the long metal blade.  Grange was convinced that the weapon’s weight doubled and then doubled again.

“Keep your guard up!” Ariana demanded as she held her wooden stick-as-a-sword in preparation for yet another mock exchange late in the afternoon.

“I can’t!” Grange angrily shouted at her.

Her eyes blazed for a fraction of a second, and Grange swore that they seemed to shine with a crystalline glow all their own, but then her face grew calm, and she lowered her stick.

“It’s your first day, and we’ve done enough.  Let’s go see how everyone else is doing, and eat some dinner, so you’ll have time to entertain the dancers,” she suggested.

Grange ate, and he performed his musical obligations, but just barely.  As the hours of the evening passed by, and the dancers circled around the impromptu dance floor under the gray skies, he felt his arm grow more and more sore.  He finally cut the music off, well before midnight, both because of the soreness in his arm, and because of his jealousy as he watched Ariana dance with the other boys while he remained outside of the dancing circle.  Despite the groans of protest, he held firm to his decision to end the music.

“Well then, let’s go to bed, shall we?” Ariana said simply, as he pocketed his flute and left the dancing space.

Grange felt his heart skip a beat.  “That sounds good,” he agreed, in what he hoped was a nonchalant voice.

“We can sleep under our wagon,” Ariana directed, and she led Grange away from the other boys.

You did well today, and I want to show you my appreciation,” she said as they reached the wagon.  “Do you have a blanket?” she asked as she started to stoop down beneath the wagon.

“I do,” he said, reaching into the space below the driver’s bench, and pulling out his bundle.

Ariana took the blanket and spread it over the damp ground beneath the wagon, then crawled onto it.

“Come down here, and let me massage your arm,” she instructed.  “I’ll make it feel as good as new.”

Grange felt a sense of deflation.  “Is this how you’re going to show your appreciation?” he asked.  He heard the voices of the other boys, and those of a few girls, still sitting around the bonfire, laughing and enjoying each other’s company.

“Well, of course,” she told him, patting the space on the blanket next to where she sat.  “What else?”

“I don’t know,” Grange sighed, as he scooted into the spot.  He laid back, and let Ariana lift his right arm, to start massaging it.  Her fingers dug deeply into the muscles of his forearm, finding the tender spots that made him wince.

“Is this supposed to help?” he asked.

“Stop being a baby,” she said heartlessly.  “Just wait.”

Minutes later, his arm did start to feel better, as she massaged his muscles into contentment, easing the pain he felt, then she moved up to his upper arm, her work climbing above his elbow to dig into the larger muscles there, repeating the process of loosening, then relaxing the flesh.  Her fingers slowly climbed up to his shoulder, then his neck and his back and chest in part, and he began to feel so relaxed that he closed his eyes and began to breathe deeply.

“Don’t you think you’re going to sleep on me now,” she growled suddenly, making his eyes pop open.

“It’s your turn,” she explained, rolling over so that her back faced him.  “I want you to massage my shoulders and back,” she explained.

“Like this?” Grange asked tentatively, as his fingers began to idly circle the fabric on her back.

“Put some effort into it,” she directed.  “Make the muscles move around and untighten.  All that reaching up into the trees really got to me!” There was a note of emotion that made her sound softer, more reasonably vulnerable than she had seemed since her arrival in the wagon the night before.  It made Grange feel more sympathetic towards her, and he tried to improve his technique.

“Ah, there, that’s good,” she encouraged him.  “Keep going,” her voice sounded relaxed, and Grange began to massage in earnest, determined to make her appreciate his ability to do something for her.

“Mmm,” she moaned ten minutes later, as Grange’s fingers were on the verge of cramping up from his constant kneading and massaging.

“That’s all for tonight,” Grange said, giving her shoulder a tentative pat as he finished his massage.  Carefully, he snuggled against her, placed one hand under his head, and let the other arm gently wrap around her waist, loosely holding her in an embrace as they both fell asleep after a long day of work.

The next day the group of pickers finished the remainder of the orchards in the area in record time, and Thrall allowed his crew to have part of the afternoon off before the migrants started another overnight journey to their next work place.

“Do you want to go swimming with the girls at the local spring?” Connan asked Grange.

“We’ve got other things to do,” Ariana spoke up, then she and Grange proceeded to spend three hours in more intense sword training, until Grange’s arm felt ready to fall off once again.

They boarded the wagon that was assigned to them to drive once again.  Garrel rode in the wagon ahead, with Deana and Clarine and her father, then the small cavalcade rode down the hill to a chorus of farewells from the orchard owners, their families and neighbors.

“What was it like, growing up in the city?” Ariana asked Grange, as they rode north through the early evening.  The countryside was a mixture of forests and scattered fields and pasture, evidence that settlers lived peacefully in the lands with the gently rolling hills.  The climate remained mild, something between late summer and early autumn, as they headed slowly north towards the tropics, and slowly descended in elevation.

“There were always people around and there were always buildings, and always someone telling me what to do,” Grange described his life in Fortune.

“What was it like growing up in a village in the countryside?” he asked her.  “What were your parents like?”

“My parents were,” she paused in her answer, “distant.

“I liked where I grew up.  We had a sense of purpose.  We knew what we were supposed to do,” she was thoughtful as she answered.  “My sisters and I always made plans on how we would do things together, even though we squabbled sometimes over the little things.”

“Why did you leave then, if things were so good?” Grange asked.  “I’m glad you’re with me, but why leave a good thing.”

“It is time,” Ariana answered simply.  “The time comes when we have to grow up and go out to live our lives, and that time had come for me.  Don’t I look grown up enough to you?” she asked.

Grange stared for a second at her.  “You almost look like a woman, not a girl,” he told her.  “But it takes more than just a body to stay alive,” he added.  “You seem to be,” he paused as he groped for the right word, “tougher than I’d expect a country girl to be.  You’ve got a lot of discipline.”

“That’s insightful,” she told him with a serious smile.  “There may be more under that ragamuffin exterior than I realized.”  After that exchange, they rode in silence, until the three wagons stopped for dinner at a clearing where the road forded a small brook.  Afterwards, they traveled through the night, and arrived at their next destination before dawn the following morning, allowing the party to sleep for a couple of hours before sunrise – except for Ariana and Grange, who walked away to practice sword work once again.

Chapter 10

The next month was a blur of activity for the two labor camp refugees, as it turned into a long, daily routine that Grange became comfortable with – frequent moves between villages and harvests, music-making for the dances at least once in every village they stopped in, and grueling hours of practice devoted to learning the use of the sword with Ariana.

Time after time, Grange received comments on his appearance, the paleness of his skin and his light hair, so foreign to the people who lived in the northern land, and whose complexions seemed to Grange to gradually grow ever darker as the harvesting crew moved north.

Grange felt satisfied with letting Ariana virtually run his life for him.  There was some inexplicable air about her that gave her mastery over him.  She was relatively kind, and seemed to have a growing sense of affection for him as they traveled and talked, but she never displayed any remote inclination to accept him as her lover, despite what all the other travelers in their group thought – and Grange never felt compelled to try anything after their first night together.

He had tried to talk to the jewels, on numerous occasions, without any response.  He covertly raised his sleeves to look at them frequently, and always found that four of them were present.  But there was no word or thought or concept that they shared with him.  He worried about the jewels; were they mad at him, he wondered.  Or was there simply no reason for them to converse with him.  That seemed unlikely, given the dire warnings they had given him, but they remained silent nonetheless.

“So what do you think?” Grange asked Garrel one morning as they were awaiting the start of the harvest in that day’s orchard.  They’d been with the harvesting crew for three weeks at that point, and the routine felt like the way life operated for Grange.

“It’s good enough for you, I suppose,” Garrel opined.  “You’ve got Ariana, and who wouldn’t be happy with a girl like that?”

“You and Deana seem pretty close,” Grange observed in a neutral tone.

“You think so?  You’ve noticed?  Do you think she likes me?” Garrel asked immediately.

“Based on the fact that you two always dance nine dances out of ten together, and since you pick apples next to each other nine trees out of ten, I think there’s something there,” Grange assured his friend.

“Yeah, she’s a pretty special girl.  Since she’s been along, I haven’t really even minded the fact that we’re out here in the middle of nowhere.  How long have we been picking apples anyway, a few days?” he asked, having lost track of time while enjoying Deana’s company.

“Maybe a little more than that,” Grange responded with understatement.  “But we’re supposed to reach the last orchard next week, and then the apple pickers are going back to their village, High Meadow.  What are we going to do?” he asked.

“We ought to ask the girls what they want to do,” Garrel said.  “Of course, you and I could find new girls when we get to the city, for that matter,” he said with bravado.

“I’m not looking to meet a new girl right now,” Grange answered slowly.

“It’s like that, is it?” Garrel asked, watching his friend with interest.

“It is and it isn’t,” Grange replied.  “But I won’t mind seeing a city again, even a strange city, a foreign one.”

“We’ll figure it out.  Cities are all the same,” Garrel said.

There was a silent pause, then he spoke further.  “Do you think we should plan to pick pockets again?”

“I’d like to try something else,” Grange answered.  “I thought I’d see if my music could keep me warm and fed.”

“You’ve learned enough songs on this trip, you could play all night for a week and not repeat a song!” Garrel grinned.  “But I don’t know where that leaves me,” he added as his grin faded.

“Let’s see what happens,” Grange counseled.  It was all he could say.  He hadn’t talked to Ariana, and he feared that when he did, the girl was going to announce that she had plans of her own in the big city, plans that wouldn’t include him.  And so he stayed silent and waited with increasing tension for the time when they finished picking apples and went on to the city of Palmland, the port at the mouth of the Stony Current River, and the capitol of the nation of Palmland, whose ill-defined border they had crossed by picking apples.

“You’re getting better, Grange,” Ariana told him the next afternoon as they finished their practice bout in the orchard.  Grange’s arm no longer ached all night long after practices, and he had grown confident in his ability to make the elementary motions needed to fight with a sword.  Every time he began to think he was making such progress as to match Ariana in any way though, she would launch a two minute drill that would leave him marked with bruises from the many pokes and slaps that she landed using her wooden stick substitute sword, and he’d often find his metal sword knocked completely out of his hand by her fierce assault.  Each such exchange made him first feel that there was no hope of him every attaining proficiency, and then resolving to work even harder at learning the art of weaponry.

The day after Grange and Garrel’s discussion about their future, the caravan of wagons came within sight of the Stony Current River itself, not far above its end, where it emptied its cold, mountain-bred waters into the warm northern sea.  The river waters looked blue and inviting as seen from the road that came to travel parallel to the river.

It was early in the morning, and the trio of wagons stopped at an orchard planted atop the low hills that rose from the edge of the river’s flood plain.

“This is our next to last orchard, gentlemen,” Thrall announced.  “And ladies,” he added awkwardly a moment later, as he noticed Clarine and Deana and Ariana.

“We’ll be here for two days, then make one more stop before we turn around and return to High Meadows.  We’ll buy the supplies and goods the village needs to get through the winter, and we’ll have a little spending money besides.

“You’ve all been the best harvesting crew I’ve ever brought down through the orchards, and the farmers are pleased with the work you’ve done.  We’re already contracted to visit all the same sites again next fall,” he told them with a pleased expression.  “So everyone get out there now and get to work, and come back in for lunch.”

They needed no further instruction, after the dozen-plus orchards they had experienced picking already, and they quickly spread out, Ariana and Grange working as a team on the rows of trees farthest from the wagon.

“It should be the end of autumn.  We should be cold,” Grange complained to his companion.  “Instead we’re sweating.”

“I’d rather be warm than cold,” Ariana said.  “Being cold for a long time is not pleasant at all, believe me.  We can always cool off from the heat by slowing down if we need to.”

Grange shrugged his acceptance of her opinion, though he still thought that the warmth was wrong for the season.  He’d listened to explanations about geography and the tropics, which northern Palmland teetered into, and understood that there was some logic at work, but it felt wrong nonetheless.

The next evening they left the orchards and rode all night long, on the road near the river, to reach the last set of trees they would pick.  The boys in the group were reflective at the end of the day, as they started eating their dinner.

“You’ll play some lively tunes for us tonight, won’t you Grange?” Clarine asked him as he sat with Ariana.

“I play lively tunes every time I play,” he protested.  “Nothing but lively tunes.  That’s all that the dancers want.”

“If you ever danced with us, you’d understand,” Clarine said breezily.

“No one would play the music if I danced,” he protested, as Ariana looked on with a slightly amused expression.

Clarine sought to shift the conversation from the logical dead-end she had trapped herself in.  “Ariana, you’ve seemed so different during this trip.  I never knew you could handle a sword, and you’re so much more bossy.”

“I’ve felt different on this trip; I feel comfortable saying what I really feel,” Ariana answered.  “Especially since I’ve met Grange.  He’s very special, the most important person in the whole world.”  She placed her hand on Grange’s leg affectionately, to emphasize her point.

“As a matter of fact, if Grange wants to go back to our village, I’ll go with him, even though I really want us to go to Palmland city to live together.”

“Ariana!” Clarine exclaimed, as Grange’s heart began to flutter.

“Do you want to live in the city with me Grange?” Ariana asked.

“More than anything in the world,” he swore solemnly.

“There you have it,” Ariana said.

“Deana!  Did you hear this?” Clarine called out across the group.  “Ariana and Grange are going to go live in the city together!”

The boys and girls sitting around the fire began to buzz with commentary.

“Deana,” Garrel suddenly spoke to the girl beside him, “I’d like to go live in the city too.”

“I’ve never been to a city before,” Deana answered cautiously without looking at him.  She turned to stare into his eyes.  “What’s it like?”

“It’s exciting, with all the people around and the things to see and do.  They have dances going on in the city every night!” he exclaimed.

“We’ve had dances almost every night while we’ve been picking apples,” she replied.

“But do you have dances every night back in your village, in High Meadow?” he asked pointedly.

“No,” she agreed, “we won’t have another dance back there until the spring festival.”

“Are you asking me to come with you to the city?” she asked after a moment’s pause.

“Yes,” Garrel replied.  “Deana, come to the city, stay with us.  You’ll like it; if you don’t, I’ll escort you back to High Meadows in the spring.”

“Deana, don’t tell me you’re considering that proposal!” Clarine exclaimed within a split second.

“I want to think about it,” her friend exclaimed.  “And since it’s almost time to start dancing, I’ll think about it while we dance.

“You’re going to play for us tonight, aren’t you Grange?” she asked pointedly.

He smiled and took the hint, gently moving Ariana’s hand aside as he stood up and pulled his flute out of his back pocket.

There was an immediate buzz as the harvesters informed the local girls about Grange’s musical skills, though the girls had heard about and been looking forward to the promise of dancing music all afternoon. 

The whole group migrated from the dining spot to an opening in the orchard, where a number of lanterns were quickly hung from the surrounding trees, while Grange practiced his scales briefly, then began to play the first song of the night, a lively reel that the boys recognized immediately, lining themselves up, as they cajoled several of the local girls to line up across from them.  It brought several of the barely acquainted dancers together for several minutes, which was why Grange selected it to start the dance.

Ariana sat next to him for the first three dances, until one of the harvesters invited her to dance, and she stepped out onto the dance floor to enjoy herself in the festive movements, then returned to Grange’s side, leaving him only occasionally for turns on the dance floor with others.

When Grange grew exhausted, and several of the dancers slowly slipped away late that night, he announced the last song, then played a tender lullaby melody that he remembered from his youth in the orphanage, a slow song that several couples swayed to.

Ariana sat patiently beside him as the departing dancers stopped to thank him for the music, then departed with the various lanterns, leaving her and him alone at last in the starlit orchard.

“You and I have never danced, have we?” she asked him.

“And this was the last dance of the harvest,” she added as he agreed.

“Then dance with me, and we’ll make our own music,” she said softly.  “That was such a sweet song you played to finish the night.”  She surprised him by taking his hands in hers, and pulling the two of them together as she softly hummed the lullaby tune.  They circled slowly in the darkness for two repetitions of the sweet tune, then clung to one another, standing still in the silence, when Ariana stopped humming.

“I love you,” Grange whispered to the girl at last, enchanted by the gesture on her part, and still intoxicated by her declaration of her wish for the two of them to live together in Palmland city.

“Oh Grange, you have such a good heart under that adolescent exterior.  If you had been brought up differently, there’s no telling what you’d be like,” she squeezed him.  “But you wouldn’t be who you are now, and you’re the person I’ve pinned my hopes on,” she sounded strangely serious to Grange.

“And I love you too,” she added, just a second before he would have given up hope of hearing her say the words, words that thrilled him.

“Let’s go get a good night’s sleep before we spend our last day in the orchards,” she suggested, and she led him to the wagon, where they quickly fell asleep, holding hands.