The Caravan Road Read Free Page A

return – a month each way at best, we figure.  That means we’d have to leave the kids to tend the farm, and that worries me,” she admitted.
    “Would you think it’ll do to let the two of them stay in the house on their own?” she asked.  “And would you be willing to have someone check on them on a regular schedule to let them know they have someone to help if they need?” Carmive asked her second question before Alec had even answered the first.
    “Carmive, we can certainly send someone to go by the farmhouse every day you’re gone,” Alec agreed.  He thought about her two children, a son and a daughter, the son probably still a teenager – though just barely, and the daughter perhaps a couple of years younger.  The son, whose name Alec recalled as Jasel, was a strapping, husky boy, someone built to work on a farm.  His younger sister, Kriste, was inexplicably petite, with a frame that was thin and small, petite in contrast to the rest of her family.  Alec had delivered Jasel himself, but had been absent when Kriste was born; one of his apprentices had successfully handled the delivery while Alec was on one of his periodic trips to Valeriane.  Alec had often checked on Jasel, a boy who had lived a boy’s life to the fullest on the farm, frequently suffering injuries and accidents from his handling of implements and animals.
    “They’re good kids; they won’t cause any trouble,” he assured her.  “You and Jasen can travel without worry.  Is there anything I can do to help you prepare for this journey you’re going to make?  I’ve never been to the Twenty Cities myself to know what to prepare you for; it’s a long trip, especially for a couple that’s traveling alone.  You’re going to be coming home well past the start of autumn, and that’s not a good time for normal folks to try to travel the mountains,” he warned Carmive, unnecessarily, for he knew that she was well aware of the potentially troubling weather than could descend upon travelers when cold weather claimed dominion over the mountains.
    Although he knew the weather grew challenging all along the road, Alec had never gone any further west than the clinic where he resided.  His long-ago journey to the clinic site had brought him from the Avonellene Empire to the place where he’d founded his home, and the handful of trips he’d made since settling down in the mountains had been back in that direction, back east to Valeriane or Warm Springs.  He didn’t go as far as Vincennes.
    “We hope we’ll have everything settled quickly in Oolitan, and return before the weather’s bad.  We may just join a caravan for the return, if there’s one available,” Carmive replied.  “There won’t be much to settle other than to make sure Grandfather’s body is properly buried and his spirit is tended to in the afterlife, once we sell the house,” she replied.   “Jasen has a notion to try to do some trading, but we won’t slow down for that,” she spoke in a more confidential tone.
    “Thank you for keeping watch over the children.  We’ll plan to leave the day after tomorrow, now that that’s settled,” Carmive said gratefully.  Minutes later, after a last few words of advice, she was out the door of the room and on her way.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2 – Kriste’s Farm
     
    Three days later Alec personally went to the farm to visit the stay-at-home teenagers.
    “I think dad should have taken me,” Jasel grumbled as Alec helped him lead the small herd of cattle from one pasture to another.  “You never know; he might need my strength to lift something.”
    “He might,” Alec agreed, as Jasel lifted the bar back into place behind them to keep the cattle penned in place.  “But he knew he’d need your strength here at home while he was gone,” Alec added.  “Who else could he rely on?  He didn’t trust anyone better than you.”
    Jasel was silent as he contemplated Alec’s words, and by extending