Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty - Smother

“I’m sorry ma’am, but I think you’ve made a small mistake,” I said carefully. It wouldn’t do to insult a worried mom. The older cervid lady was clearly distressed. She was also gathering a crowd.

Those cervid who’d previously been staring at us secretively and from the corner of their eyes now had an excuse to stare and they were using it to the fullest.

The older cervid lady waved her cane around, then brought it down onto the wood of the bridge with a hard clack. She stomped forwards with only the slightest limp of one of her forelimbs. “Where’s my Deiter! What’ve you done with him?”

I glanced to my friends, then back to the lady. “I’m sorry, miss, but I don’t know who Deiter is.”

“My son!” she shouted. “My son that you fawnapped.”

I pointed to myself. “Me? I’d never kidnap... okay, look miss, I haven’t kidnapped anyone today. If you need help looking for your son, then maybe we can help you? We’re pretty handy!”

There was a lot of murmuring going on in the crowd of cervid around us, and I had the impression they weren’t overly happy with the scene going on. A lot of those mean looks were directed at us.

The cervid lady stomped closer, raising her cane over her head. “Give me back my Deiter or I swear on the gods and the World that I’lld beat you myself!”

I raised my hands before me, empty so that it was clear I didn’t mean any harm. “Miss, I don’t know who Deiter is. We didn’t kid--- fawnnap anyone.

The lady screeched and I winced as her cane came racing down.

It smacked into Amaryllis’ outstretched talon with a meaty thwap. My friend closed her hand around the long wooden stick and an electrical arc snapped at the air. A moment later, the stick cracked apart at the middle, bits of wooden shrapnel flopping to the ground as the cane broke in half. “Ma’am, we are travellers passing through your town. Nothing more. Calm yourself,” Amaryllis said.

That was a bit direct, but I suppose she had been about to smack me.

“Fawnnappers! You heard the bird! She admits it!”

“What?” Amaryllis snapped in stupefied amazement. “I did no such thing! Have you gone senile? You look too old by half to have a child!”

The lady was a little more elderly, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe she adopted?

“Alright, alright, what’s going on here?” a deep voice said. An older cervid stepped up. He was tall and barrel-chested, with a bit of a paunch. I think, if he were a human, he’d have what they called a ‘dad bod.’ But he wasn’t human so I really wasn’t sure how to describe the cervid stepping onto the bridge. “Myrtle, what are you doing?”

“They’re the ones who kidnapped Deiter!” the old fawn lady, Myrtle, said. She stabbed a finger at me and my friends with what was left of her cane. There were more murmurs from the crowd.

The big cervid crossed his arms. “Alright. Do you have any proof?”

“They’re strangers!” Myrtle said.

“True,” he replied, his eyes turning towards us. “Do you have anything to say for yourselves, strangers?”

“What?” Amaryllis asked. “That’s enough for you? Someone shows up who you don’t know and you just assume the worst of them? What kind of backwards uneducated hovel-filled heap is this?”

The cervid snorted. “You seem to be making your own assumptions, miss,” he replied.

Amaryllis’ mouth shut with a click.

The cervid eyed us some more, then sighed. “Myrtle, how heavy is your son?”

“What?” the older lady asked. “I don’t know. He weighs more than my old bones, certainly.”

“I don’t believe these three waifs could carry him off, then,” he replied. “They’re too thin, and not nearly muscled enough to manage such a feat.”

I wasn’t sure if I should feel insulted by that or not. I was plenty strong! Over a month of constant physical activity was doing great things to keep me in shape. I wasn’t sure if I could lift a cervid, but maybe if it was a small one?

“We didn’t fawnnap anyone,” I repeated. “We’ve only just arrived in the area, following along that river. Besides, why would we fawnnap someone?”

“To eat him!” the lady said.

I blinked. “But I’m a vegetarian.”

“It’s true that buns don’t eat meat,” the big cervid said. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Myrtle, I don’t see these youths being the ones to take your son out of the town. Still, I wonder what you three are doing here in Riverstart?”

This place was called Riverstart? That was a very utilitarian name. “We’re members of the Exploration Guild,” Amaryllis said. She tapped her chest where she wore her Exploration guild pin. I had my own fixed to the strap of my backpack. I’d kind of forgotten about it, to be honest.

“We’re pretty good at finding things,” I said, mostly addressing Myrtle. “If you want, we can look for your son, maybe?”

“First you fawnnap him, now you’ll extort me to find him again?” she asked.

“Damnation Myrtle, Deiter is twenty-nine summers old. He ought to be able to handle himself.”

“Twenty-nine,” Awen muttered.

I was a bit confused too. That sounded a bit old for a mom to be so worried. Then again, maybe that was normal? I wasn’t in Myrtle’s shoes. Or horseshoes, as the case may be.

“Does it matter?” Myrtle asked. “Someone’s taken him! Half of his things were missing from his room!”

“Wait,” Amaryllis said. She had her hands on her hips and didn’t look amused at all. “So your son was kidnapped, but he’s very much an adult, and he packed his things up before leaving? Were there any signs of a scuffle? Did anyone hear him being kidnapped? Who was the last one to see him?”

“I was!” A cervid on the sidelines spoke up. Everyone turned to him, and he wilted at all the sudden attention. “Ah, well, he was walking out towards the north with his saddles full. He said bye?”

Amaryllis threw her arms up. “He wasn’t kidnapped, he ran away!”

“He might still be in trouble though,” I said. “We could help.”

“Broccoli, we’re only travelling through this town. We have business elsewhere. I know you love your detours and pointless stops, but we can’t help with every little problem we run across. Especially not when the problem comes from people who like to accuse others without any proof or reason.” That last part was very clearly aimed at Myrtle who bristled at the accusation.

“You broke my cane! Everyone here saw that!”

“You assaulted one of us! Everyone here saw that, too!” Amaryllis snapped back.

“Alright, calm down, both of you.” The bigger cervid stepped up next to Myrtle and laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll figure out what happened to Deiter, Myrtle. Maybe we can set up a search party. Judging by the amount of people lollygagging here, we have plenty of fine cervid with nothing better to do. Now, you three. Are you really just passing through?”

I nodded. “That was our intent, mister. We’re trying to head to Fort Middlesfaire, but we couldn’t find a place to cross the river.” I remembered that we were trying to be a bit subtle about what we were up to. “Uh, we might have gotten a bit lost?”

“Hmm,” he said. “I’m Cody, what passes for a mayor in this fine little town. We can point you towards the fort if you want. We head over there every so often to trade. It’s a good day’s walk from here. Two if you leave at this hour.”

I glanced up. It wasn’t noon yet, but it was getting closer to it. My tummy was also starting to feel a bit empty, which was as good an indicator of the time as any. “Is there an inn here?” I asked.

“Sorry, I’m afraid not. We have a general store and a smithy that I run. That’s about the whole of it. Riverstart is mostly farmers, lumberjacks, and a few odds and ends. Good folk trying to make a life for themselves on the old frontier.”

“Oh. Well, it looks like a very nice town,” I said.

Cody regarded us for a moment, and I felt as though we were being judged. “Say, you’re Explorers, aren’t you? Do you think you could handle our Myrtle problem?”

“What do you mean, Myrtle problem?” Myrtle asked, seemingly incensed. “I’m not a problem, my missing son is the problem!”

“We don’t actually know that it’s an issue,” Amaryllis pointed out.

“Ah, we might be able to ask around here about... you know, our diplomat problem,” Awen said. “Or maybe someone here knows someone who might know better in Fort Middlesfaire.”

One of the mayor’s eyebrows perked. “What’s this then?”

“Can we discuss this in a more private setting, perhaps?” Amaryllis asked. “I think we’ve entertained the town enough for one day.”

Mayor Cody nodded, then gestured to the general store and smithy on the other side of the bridge. “Come, we’ll talk by the forge. I need to keep stoking it, anyway.”

“What about my son?” Myrtle asked.

“I’ll talk to these misses about it, Myrtle.”

“They’re just children,” she snapped. “And girls besides.”

Amaryllis puffed out. “And a minute ago you thought we were able to kidnap your son? Did your egg crack before you hatched, you--” I placed a hand over Amaryllis’ mouth, which didn’t stop her from ranting but it did turn her rather mean words into mumbles that no one could understand.

“I think that maybe we should go our separate ways for now, Miss Myrtle,” I said. “It was nice meeting you... I guess?”

I dragged Amaryllis across the bridge. My friend looked quite ready to smack the elderly cervid lady around, but I tugged her along before she could do anything regretful.

“I am sorry about Myrtle. For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone sensible in town will actually listen to her. We’ve seen her behaviour for long enough to be used to it. It’s good drama, which is hard to come by in these parts, and most folk don’t put much credit in what she says.”

“Then why do you allow her to continue?” Awen asked.

“What else are we to do? Kick her out of the town? She’s not healthy enough to be on her own, nor would it be honourable to leave a woman to fend for herself in the wilds. This may no longer be the frontier anymore, but it’s no less dangerous at times. Her son keeps her in line. Or did.”

Amaryllis huffed. “He probably ran away from her.”

“Good for him. Still, it would behoove us to make sure he’s well,” Cody said as we approached the blacksmith’s shop. The side was built with a big sliding door that was opened up into the forge itself. Even with such a big opening, the space around the forge was smokey. At least it smelled nice, like fire and leather and that weird smell that burning metal had. “So, what is it that the Guild sent you here to find?” he asked.

It wasn’t quite accurate, but it was a good guess on his part. I wanted to correct him, but then held back. We were supposed to be subtle. Amaryllis spoke up before I could make up my mind. “An airship crashed in the region, and the owners of it would like to know where and how. So we were dispatched to explore the area.”

Not quite the truth, but not entirely untrue.

"Huh." Cody scratched his chin, staring off into the distance. "Well, I think I know someone who might know a thing or two about that,” he said. “And it just so happens to be in roughly the direction I think Deiter went in.”

***