The Winds of Crowns and Wolves Read Free Page B

that
seemed to reverberate within Neach’s soul, if only for a moment. As
quickly as it had come, the wolf had disappeared into the darkness
beyond the brush and vanished.
    From out of the hall, Asgall and the other
men of the village came running as quickly as they possibly could.
To their surprise, they found Neach standing by himself, staring
off into the distance.
    “ What happened son; we
heard a wolf!” exclaimed Asgall.
    “ It just-it just ran away,
it looked at me and ran away,” Neach stated in
bewilderment.
    He wondered why it hadn’t simply killed him.
His life was within the animal’s grasp. With nothing to protect
himself except a stick, which he had promptly dropped, he was at
the wolf’s mercy.
    Asgall lead Neach back toward the hall with
the rest of the men so the festivities could resume. After a slight
pause in the music, it came back to life with the passion of a
collective of bards.
    The merry gentlemen maintained their drunken
stupor throughout the ordeal, and never batted an eyelash. Their
voices carried through the nooks of the hall and echoed for what
seemed like an eternity. Neach spent the rest of the night
contemplating his near-death experience, and wondering why it was
that the wolf had simply let him go.
    As the night drew to a close, sleep
beckoned. The soft exterior of his bed cocooned him like a newborn
butterfly, and it prevented him from spreading his wings.

III
    Neach was an odd member of his family.
    Born with vivacious auburn hair, which had
waves like the sea to the west, he stood out as a stark point in
his family, which boasted a darker skin and dark hair. His
complexion gave off a pasty glow in the sunlight, which perplexed
him even more.
    Unlike his ancestors past, his eyes were
blue like a cold mountain stream, translucent almost, but with
caricatures of mountains etched into his iris. He stood out,
undoubtedly, but he embraced the differential between himself and
his family.
    He rose from his winter slumber as alert as
when he had gone to sleep. The events of the prior night plagued
him through his rest, and he couldn’t quite understand why.
    A particular vision he witnessed in a dream
depicted the wolf as nearly human, remaining on all fours, but
speaking to him in a language he could understand. It seemed
preposterous looking back on it, but in his dream there was
communication.
    With a shudder, Neach disbanded any thought
of the wolf in his dream, and ventured toward the center of the
hut.
    The sun had yet to rise, but it was
customary for the men of the village to rise before anyone else.
There, he found no sign of any of his family. It was likely they
remained asleep, except for his brother Ealar, who awaited him
outside.
    Ealar had assumed partial role of his duties
in the community, and now that Neach was also a man of the
community, their father Asgall was able to turn in his tools for
good, to the next generation.
    The air was thick with a fog that seemed to
sprawl over the hills, and nestle itself comfortably in the valley.
The newfound men leisurely strolled toward the plot of land, which
their family called its own.
    Once weekly, Neach and his father had
ventured out to the plot with Ealar as a sort of training lesson.
Asgall showed him how to till the land and cultivate it, in order
to receive the highest crop yield possible. True to his father’s
form, he led by example, not by words. Though he rarely spoke, his
contributions were always well thought out and meaningful.
    The sun had yet to rise, as was typical when
the plot was tended to. Darkness cradled the village in its palm,
as if it were a play toy. Rolling fog infiltrated its every corner,
and provided an iridescent filter for the moon, which still shone
high above the hills. The brothers reached their destination as the
first hint of sunlight could be detected in the increasing
brightness of the night sky.
    As they came within a few feet of the family
plot, something struck Neach’s eye that had