June 28, 2016

PodCastle 422: Golden Chaos

* Author : M.K. Hutchins

* Narrator : Heath Miller

* Host : Graeme Dunlop

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

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First published in Intergalactic Medicine Show #40

Rated PG

Golden Chaos

by M.K. Hutchins

Being near Ingrid was the only good thing about living in a God-neglected frozen wasteland. Her face was round as the moon—a soft, pleasant face that suggested her cooking encouraged second helpings. Her face didn’t lie: light rye breads, sweet poached fruit, elk and wild onion stew that made my beard grow. Well, the bit of a beard I had. Ingrid always laughed and teased when she caught me finger-combing the handful of hairs sticking from my face. Her laugh—that was pure silver. For too long, she’d slaved away under Arbiter Elof’s guardianship. The day I signed a contract with Elof and became Ingrid’s betrothed was the happiest day of my life.

The next day was the worst.

I clambered down the loft, picking bits of straw from my clothes. Grandma stirred something on the hearth. “Breakfast for you? Your folks are already off preparing the cellars.”

“Rob’s helping them?” Other than Grandma and me, my family’s one-room house was empty.

She smiled fondly. “No. He woke early and asked me some questions about my days in the Confederate Ithena. He left before anyone else woke up. Don’t think your folks realize he’s not still sleeping in the loft.”

I groaned inside. Grandma had traveled with the merchant caravans before she married Grandpa—she was one of the rare people who’d chosen to live in Ogynan’s frozen lands. “Your stories bring out the worst in Rob. I wish you’d stop.”

“The worst?” She raised an eyebrow, pulling a trail of wrinkles with it. “He’s a curious boy. No harm in that.”

“Curious is an understatement,” I muttered.

Grandma dropped some wild rye berries into her pot. “And worst seemed like an exaggeration. We’re even.”

“Where’s Rob?” I asked again, already tired.

Grandma shrugged. “Why not leave him alone?”

“Because it’ll lead to more quarreling.” My parents had spent all of dinner last night chastising Rob for shirking chores, but lecturing Rob was like lecturing a glacier. He never seemed to hear. Then Grandma chided them for being so harsh on him. Everyone went to bed cross.

Well, everyone except Rob. He went to bed oblivious.

“Please, Grandma,” I pleaded.

“Always the peacemaker.” Grandma mumbled that like it was an insult. She pursed her lips. “He’s up by the border between us and the Confederacy. West of the ice-lanes, if he didn’t get distracted.”

That was a pretty big if. I grabbed a flat of rye bread—nothing like my Ingrid’s—and gnawed it as I hurried outside.

Snow blanked the sod roofs and the ground, giving the village a pearly, sparkling veneer. Too bad the lumpy wattle-and-daub walls remained visible.

I passed several sleds already running loads down the ice-lanes. My gut twisted. Rob and I should be running loads ourselves. I had a bride-price to pay. No work, no money, no Ingrid.

I veered west and, sure as snow, Rob crouched by the border. Even though he was fully seventeen, from a distance his thin frame made him look more like ten. The snow ended in a sharp line at the border. On the Confederacy’s side, lush grasses and tiny yellow autumn flowers blanketed every hillock.

Rob meticulously lined purple-black elderberries right along the border,

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