Day Three-Hundred-Five: No Dig

I had suspicions. After the screaming… thing… I had suspicions. Now, though, after… today… I know. My wife has given birth to another abnormal kid.

Dammit. Things were off to SUCH a GOOD START

I concluded yesterday with the decision to bring June in on the whole village-building thing. If she's gonna live here, if she's gonna force US to live here, with her magic golden tree 'n stuff, then she should help out a LITTLE bit. All I wanted was some damned advice on getting started, and with the wagons mostly stripped by lunch today, I knew I had to search fast.

Grabbing Edmund, I waded into the forest that June's calling home. Everyone else was busy, 'n Ed's had experience travelling through tough terrain, so… y'know… figured he might be able to keep me on the right track. In retrospect I SHOULD have brought somebody who knows how to FIGHT, as Edmund's almost as useless in combat as I am. Guess he could beat people with his lute, if he wanted… you should see him try and fight raccoons with a club, it's almost funny…

The forests 'round this part are nice, and the thick one to the north, where June vanished, ain't no exception. It's much more spacious than near the castle: there're tons of tall redwood trees, and the brush is minimal. The gaps in the trees aren't so great that you can see clear through to the other side of the forest, mind, 'n it's on a downward slope that creates a little valley in the middle to further obscure matters, but it's much less daunting than that shitty swamp forest back in Goblinoster.

Doesn't mean we found June, of course. Wandered in that stupid forest for three hours without a peep from the old woman. I figured she would leap outta nowhere and scare us to death, saving us the effort of finding her, but noooo. Trees, some indigenous lizards, a passing grizzly bear… no witch.

(Speaking of bears, don't let the name fool you. 'Grizzly' bears are damned nice fellows. This one waved at us as he sauntered by! How genial. Maybe I should invite him into the village as a protector or somethin'. Shame that attitude doesn't extend to the rest of the bear family… I'm looking at you, fuckin' POLAR bears.)

We searched for so long that we were quite lost by the time we hit the three-hour mark, and SO lost that we were on the opposite side of the forest, staring at a wide plain between the vegetation and the small mountain range. We DID find somebody when we came out of the trees, but it wasn't June.

It was Grayson.

Edmund saw him first. "By the gods, look! Is that your kid? / Who floats in the air / Without any care / As the wyverns of old once did?"

I don't know anything about wyverns, but mention of 'kid' brought my head around from staring at a bush, and sure enough, there was Grayson. He was floating three, maybe four feet off the ground, seated cross-legged on strong gusts of wind that swirled under him constantly to keep him aloft.

He looked at me, smiled, and pointed a pudgy finger at the nearest mountain, a sloping peak that might almost be better called a large hill, save for its size. "No dig."

His first words. 'No dig.' Subtle, sweet, spoken as though addressing a pretty kitty on a fence. What they mean I don't know.

I stepped forward carefully, quite aware that my son was in danger of bonking his head on the ground should he slip from his aerial perch. "Gr… Gray… stay still, okay? Daddy's comin'…"

"No dig," he said again, laughing. Pointing. "No dig, no dig, no dig."

"Sure, kiddo, whateeeeever you want… just… don't fall…"

"He won't fall."

My eyes twitched, and I had to strain to look away from my levitating son and address the speaker. "Are you doing this to him, you bloody b… witch?"

June, stepping out of the trees, her normally dun cloak covered in shrubbery patterns, smirked. She leaned on a new staff, almost identical to the old. "Pfft. No. I wish. Maybe some day… but no, not yet, not yet. This child does it on his own, doesn't 'e? Yes, yes he does, right, Grayson?"

Grayson beamed, giggling as he dipped dangerously close to the ground. Another gust of air tossed him back up three feet - about the same distance my heart dropped as I watched.

(Remind me never to tell Libby about THIS part of the exchange, she'd kill me for not catching him right off.)

"He knows," June continued, jabbing her stick towards the mountain. "He knows what I do. This's why we're here. This's what… what we need."

"A mountain high? 'tis but a jutting mass of earth! / What value be it to a village nearing birth?" You can guess who said that, I'm sure.

"Woo, you're a quick one, boy! Love that tongue o' yours, I do." June laughed, twirling her cane on the tip of her big toe. "There's something IN the mountain. Under it. I'm not sure what… yet… but I'm confident it'll help us."

"Yeah. 'cause the LAST hole was so good. You know what was in it, right?" I snorted loudly, stepped over to my son, and gingerly plucked him out of the air. The wind stopped. "I agree with this little guy. 'No dig.'"

June shrugged, but her smile didn't fade. "We'll see. You might think your life's gonna be roses 'n sunshine, boyo, but you're just getting' started with the shitstorm. You're on the edge - the eye's comin'."

"Be not the eye of the storm / the one place where calm doth form?"

June bit her lip, then sneered. "You shut it, bard. I don't like you so much when your logic crap's directed at me. 'n for your info, the eye is SOMETIMES the ROUGHEST part! So be prepared!"

"What kind of storm do we -"

"Can it, Ed," I cut in. I was tired, hungry, a little frightened from watching my kid FLOAT, and generally irritated. Didn't wanna debate storm patterns. "I need help settin' up. You game? Or are you gonna hide out in this forest for the rest of your life?"

June blinked at the question, seeming to consider it. Then, licking her lips, she smiled. "Oh no. No no no, I have lots of things planned… lots of things indeed."

Yeah. She's a bad guy. Somehow she's a bad guy. I could tell by her cackle. Fuck! 'least she agreed to come back with us - though she's not much better at town planning than I am.

I'm by the big fire pit we have set up, writing by the light. Robert's cooking up a late-night supper for everybody who's been working all day. A lot of people have already been setting up foundations for houses, digging out the ground, and I'm totally cool with that. TOTALLY cool. Things will happen, with or without my help… I just hope I can contribute SOMETHING. Kinda my job, as the mayor.

But…

Fuck, always a 'but'…

My kid can fly. A little bit.

And he can talk.

AND he seems to know something about the mountain that we all don't.

That's… that's…

Bugger. It's Eve all over again.

Sincerely,

Dragomir the Mayor