Hokum

A Goat Named Jed

5

The man, Jack, left eventually. Amber followed him best she could through the louvers – that is after she picked herself up off the floor - and sure enough, as suspected, he entered the Greenfalls Inn across the street.

As she watched the door shut behind him, she instantly felt bad, but at least the voice in her head had shut the hell up. That damn inner voice, always seemed to turn up when least welcome. Not that it was every really welcome. Eventually, the guilt became too much, unreasonable even. She had turned people away from her shop before, but never had it played on her mind as much as this. She felt so bad that she decided not to trade at all that day. She just didn’t feel like facing anyone, and she sure didn’t want to take the chance of Jack returning. That would be embarrassing. She did, however, find it completely noble and reasonable in some undefined way to go find him at the Inn and apologise.

After tightening the laces of her bodice and slipping on her outdoor boots, she left her house and headed for Greenfalls Inn with a pronounced stride of determination.

A Goat Named Jed

4

Amber was now at one of the windows in her living area of the house, and although the shutters were closed, one of the louvers were loose and angled low enough at one end to form a crack she could peek out of. From there, hunched over and peering wide-eyed, she had a great view of the man, Jack. Yes, he was still standing on her front landing. Just standing there. Why? He wasn’t facing the house anymore, though, he was facing the street, he looked a bit confused. His brow was creased in thought. He rubbed his whiskered chin with thumb and finger. He took a moment to stare wonderingly at each building across the street. He spent more time staring at the Inn than any other building. He must have been wondering were to go from there - the Inn being the most alluring option at this point - as apparently being turned away from her store had set his plans off balance.

‘Typical eccentric,’ she said in a cussing tone.

‘Let him in,’ spoke the voice in her mind.

'No!' she hissed, 'just you shut up now, you hear?'

‘You know you want to,’ rebuked the voice, ‘why abstain from the things you desire?’

‘Shut up!’

‘You know you want him bad - just look at you, crouching and staring out the window at him. What the hell is wrong with you? Just let the poor guy in. He only wants to do some shopping.’

‘Just stop!’

‘I won’t stop, I know what you want.’

‘No, no you don’t!’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘No! You don’t!’ She snarled, hands forming into tight fists of frustration.

'Yes, I do,’ the voice insisted, ‘you want him so bad, so very bad, you want him in your shop, you want him in your house, you want him inside you.'

‘SHUT UP, YOU PERVERTED FOOL!!’

The man outside suddenly turned his head to look towards the window with an expression of both curiosity and caution. Not surprisingly, he had heard her shout. Now, even though he couldn’t have been able to see her in the darkness behind the crack in the louvers, it was like his eyes made direct contact with hers in that short moment before she found herself staggering backward, both hands covering her mouth. She tripped over a bucket and landed hard on the floor.

A Goat Named Jed

3

No! no-no-no-no-no-no-no! Not again. Not now, this wasn’t about to happen. She had just gotten over her last affair, finally, after many months apart, she had at last entered that nice place where she no longer had him on her mind every moment of every damn day – and there was no way in Dahla’s wisdom that she was about to let some new eccentric and handsome madman derail her sanity like some wobbly mining cart.

Okay, she may have been overreacting, just a bit, she thought. After all, he did only turn up her door, said hello, requested they do some business. But he was an eccentric. An eccentric madman! Surely he was! But why did he have to be so handsome? And nice, nice too? Oh, my lord, and that smile, that smile melted here heart a little more each time it flashed through her mind – why do all the maniacs have to be so attractive? Why? Just why?

She paced the shop, the first aisle, then the second, then the first, then the second and so on and so forth, every detail of her brief encounter with Jack racing on a loop through her mind.

‘And what sort name is that - Jack??” she yelled, then suddenly stopped in her tracks and covered her mouth when she realised that - if he hadn’t yet left the front landing - he would have heard her. She paused to steady her breathing then peeked around the corner of a shop display to see if he was still at the door. The daylight spilling in under the crack of the door was broken at the center from his shadow. He was still there…. ‘He heard me….’ She whined. ‘Why won’t you leave? Leave. Please just go’

‘Please stay,’ a little voice in her head replied.

She almost choked on her own breath, horrified. ‘Don’t you dare get involved with this!’

A Goat Named Jed

2

The man was obviously some variety of eccentric madman, and likely a wealthy one too. He didn’t wear the usual long, heavily dyed cloaks of the wealthy, but his trousers were made of an exotic material Amber had never seen before, his torso coat was made of leather so very refined, and he was clean, cleaner than any man she had ever seen with not even trace of body odour. Atop all that, he was wearing some unknown and therefore likely expensive form of man’s perfume. She had met eccentric madmen before, and not once did the meeting turn out well.

He greeted her with ‘hello’ but she didn’t reply. She stood glaring, looking him up and down, assessing his daggers, sniffing the air a few times more to see if she could recall smelling that scent before. She couldn’t.

The man too started behaving a little awkwardly, shifting his weight to one leg and folding his arms, he even had a long gander at the exposed crease of her cleavage before thinking it was his obligation to try and remedy the situation with a thick, madman smile.

‘I’m Jack,’ he added, ‘just passing through town on a job. I need something crafted out of leather, maybe some new clothes as well… and I hear you might be the one to talk to about that?’

She slammed the door in his face.

A Goat Named Jed

1

Amber woke, heated a few buckets of water over the fire, then bathed in a large wooden tub by her back window, shutters open to let in the fresh morning air and light from the suns dawn. Once finished bathing she toasted some bread over the same fire, grilled some grunter rump, fried a clucker egg, and ate it all at the table next to her bed with a tall wooden cup of spring pear juice. While eating she heard a loud noise from afar in the forest, possible the call of a Huntstan, but didn’t really think anything of it. Not the first time a Huntstan would be heard wandering these parts.

After breakfast she sifted about in her dresser drawers for too long before deciding on one of her many string strap tube-slip undergarments, covered then by a pale-purple and sleeveless semi-bell dress that barely reached her knees and had a frontal lace-up low-fit bodice to expose some upper cleavage. She at last fixed her hair and slipped on her favourite pair of woolen ankle boots and entered the second room of her house - which was in fact her leather shop - at the same time that her first customer for the day knuckled down hard on the door.

Closing the door to her living area behind her, she crossed the store swiftly, checked her look and her cleavage in the polished metal pane on the wall next to the entrance, then unlatched and swung open the door with a welcoming smile – a smile that quickly ran from her face when she saw the weirdo standing on her front landing.

She gasped.

A Goat Named Jed

Part 3

A Different Perspective

A Goat Named Jed

12

Minus the bow for now, Jack left Torn’s Blacksmith with duffel on shoulder and his new daggers dangling open blade from his belt. When he stepped out on the street he looked down toward the bridge. The guard was still near the tree by the Mill’s entrance, his eyes were still stuck like glue to Jack, his hands were still fixed to the hilt of his sword. Apart from that, the sun had snuck behind the mountains on its angled ascent of the morning sky, causing an eerie type gloom to be cast upon the ancient village, where, aside from the guard, the community seemed utterly absent of any activity.

Jack felt like antagonising the guard, so he did. He contrived a ridiculous smile, a little wave of one hand. The guard in response widened his stance, hands tightening their grip on his weapon. Jack chuckled and walked the rest of his short journey across the street to Amber Wears.

A Goat Named Jed

11

More information about the previous civilisation would have to wait for another time. For the time being, Jack was in need of establishing his situation, which, for now, meant choosing a weapon or two and then finding a means of paying the Blacksmith. He then needed to go and visit the leather worker across the street, and then possibly rent out a room at the Inn for the night.

Per Torn’s advice, Jack selected a bow. Not a long bow by any means. It was shorter than a meter in length and came with a quiver of iron arrows to suit, as standard length arrows for standard sized bows would not work In it. The bow, according to Torn, was crafted from a very rare naturally occurring metallic element called Absint. It was therefore duly expensive, more valuable than gold, and items crafted from it were even more rare and usually only commissioned by kings, royalty, and other self-important types. The greatest things about Absint was its strength, its flexibility and, somewhat most importantly, it’s extraordinary light weight - all the combined qualities needed in creating an almost weightless compact bow with the power and accuracy that exceeded its larger counterparts.

Jack also chose two daggers. These daggers had 11 Inch double-edged blades made of a metal that looked and felt suspiciously like titanium, though Torn referred to it as Stir. The daggers came with iron hoops with strap that could be used to holster them from ones trouser belt. Torn also pointed out that if Jack actually wanted a leather sheath for the weapons he would need to be asking Amber across the street about that.

In the end, paying for the weapons came with greater difficulty than Jack had hoped. Even though he and Torn seemed to have been getting along just fine for the time being, the Blacksmith was not a man to take business lightly, not even among friends. Jack attempted to offer Torn some gold plated coins, which were in fact just dollar coins from 20th century Earth and a land called Aus. To Torn, however, despite their unique exotic quality, they were nothing more than an insult. Still, Jack must have made some sort of good impression not to have Torn kick him out of his store without a weapon, and instead had a little work for Jack to do. And by a little work, what he really meant was a big and dangerous job that may or may not include murder.

A Goat Named Jed

10

Torn explained the three materials smelted to create the metal called Mironyn, used to craft the bow Jack had asked about, was actually one of the most used flexible metals in the land. Of course, this knowledge, aside from making Jack look like a complete ignoramus, paled in comparison to the information Torn soon shared about the metals of even greater quality used in crafting the weapons waiting in the other room. Jack had been correct. Torn’s better craftsmanship was indeed held in a separate room.

This other room was smaller, it too was illuminated by an iron cupola, but dedicated solely to weapons, and such were on displayed in a way one might imagine ritualistic tools be placed on stone shelves of a subterranean cultists chamber. Each weapon had its own stone shelf, yet more than just a shelf, rather a cavity chiselled out from the natural stone formations of the walls. And again, on one of the walls, was yet another door, closed, arched in shape, and made of a very heavy timber.

‘You really have been busy, haven’t you?’ asked Jack, shaking his head in dismay.

Torn replied, ‘Don’t be absurd, man. I am not a crazy idiot. This room is part of a vast network of underground caverns left behind from an older civilization. My father merely discovered this area of the caverns and built his house upon it.

A Goat Named Jed

9

Jack chuckled. He knew there wasn’t much point in trying to hide his outlandish circumstance, at least not from the Blacksmith. Torn, despite his brutish size and beaten face, had a certain refines dignity about him, and that was something Jack felt like he could trust. Even so, he wasn’t prepared to spill everything. That would be a tremendous mistake, that is, if Torn was of the mind to believe him at all.

‘A land very, very far from here, sir.’ Jack turned to Torn, stuffed his hands modestly into the pockets of his jeans. ‘I doubt you would have heard of it.’ He took his eyes to the sunlight shining down from the open doors in the ceiling. ‘Things are a lot different around here.’

Torn somehow revealed a smirk without actually changing the expression of his deadpan face. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

There it was, that moment between two strangers wherein they seem to connect on a deeper level by undefined and unspoken means. Jack and Torn stood there, stare fastened to each other as they - had anyone been watching on - would have appeared to be busy reading each other’s thoughts.

‘How long will you be with us?’ Torn finally ended the moment, a new, cryptic tone in his lowered voice.

‘I can never really tell at first. Depends on why I’m here and what I need to do. Both of those things aren’t clear at the moment.’ Jack broke eye contact, taking his look to the closed door beside the table. ‘I guess you have all your good stuff hiding in the other room.’

Torn sneered again. ‘All my stuff is good.’

‘No offense, I just feel a man like you can do better than what you have on display in this room.’

‘Feelings are for women,’ Torn said, but he smiled at last.