You Can't Go Home Again
Chapter One - ArrivalThe Wildeye Paint paused on the ridge. His tall rider regarded the small village spread through the dell below. Ten or so huts clustered around the Chapel and the Loft and straggled along the bank of the narrow river. Out of old habit, the man's eyes sought out the small house next to the smithy. Unlike the others, no smoke rose from its wattle-and-daub chimney, no chickens clustered in front of its stoop.
Once more the sharp twinge closed his throat, and Steffan briefly considered turning the sturdy Paint back in the direction of Bruma.
Never mind, he reminded himself. You're a grown man, fending for yourself in the world. You owe nothing to no man. Or woman. The temptation to retreat faded, replaced by a sad resignation. The big Paint's ears swiveled as Steffan nudged him forward. "Let's go, Tom." The horse, rented from Petrine in Bruma, picked his way along the rock path.
The road wound through the huts toward the
chapel. Not as massive as the big Cathedral of Talos in Bruma, the wooden structure still stood taller than all the other buildings in Roldalr. The village's structure showed Imperial influence in the presence of the chapel and the cobblestones laid into the road. Yet the Skyrim heritage remained strong in the organization of the buildings as well as their architecture.
The second largest structure in Roldalr rose opposite the chapel at the edge of the central plaza. Two stories high, supported by massive logs upended on stone sills,
the Loft provided the storage for the village's stock, both imported and homegrown. It stood beside the village well, this simple protection against fire indicative the Loft's importance in Roldalr.
The Paint sensed something on the air and his feet became springier as he stepped along the narrow road. As they worked their way down the hillside, Steffan recognized the old rail fence that ran alongside the path. He glanced into the rocky pasture beyond and spotted
curious goats, horns long and loosely spiraled, shaggy coats brown and black and grey in color, watching him with tawny eyes.
Auntie Hulda raised goats here, made cheese from their milk and sausages from their meat. Wonder who is managing this holding now? Steffan's question had barely faded from his mind when he spotted a skirted form bent over the lower fence rails. Just beyond her stood a
small cabin, smoke rising from its stone chimney. Here a wall of boulders edged the opposite side of the road, meant to keep snow from blowing across the path in the mountain winters.
The woman straightened up and turned to face him, one gnarled hand lifting to block the high summer sun from her eyes. Steffan halted the Paint and eyed the fence behind her. Two of the lower boards sagged away from the post, rot shortening their lengths. He met the woman's gaze. She regarded him with the suspicious curiosity of isolated villagers toward outsiders. As her eyes traveled over his form, Steffan became self-conscious of his fine woolen cloak, his quilted jacket and dark blue leather pants, so foreign to these parts.
"What brings you so far from home, stranger?" Her voice cracked with age, but Steffan still recognized her tone.
"Stranger?" he repeated, falling into the local dialect he hadn't spoken in years. Steffan swung a leg over the Paint's crested neck and slid to the ground. He crossed the reins over Tom's neck with a scratch at his withers, then turned toward the fence. "Mayhap I am a stranger now, Auntie Hulda," he continued. She looked up at him, and he realized that he now stood taller than the aged woman.
She frowned, her pale blue eyes locking with his own. "Should I know you, son?" Her white brows rose when Steffan took the hammer and chisel from her hand and knelt beside the fence. He began working at the mortises in the post, clearing away the rotted wood.
"It's been years, Auntie," he answered, his hands falling into the rhythm he remembered. "When was the last time these boards were set?"
"When young Stef-" Auntie faltered and stepped back involuntarily. "Is that you, Steffan Arngrimsson?"
He glanced over his shoulder at her, the sun full in his eyes. "Who else would I be, Auntie?"
"By Shor's flat teats!" Her exclamation spurred Steffan's lips into a grin.
She always did have a way with the usual epithets, Steffan mused silently. "Stand up and let me have a look at you, lad!"
Once again old habits prompted Steffan to obey the Nord. While she had the height typical of the local women, Steffan still topped her by more than a couple of fingers. Her hands gripped his upper arms with remembered strength as she gazed up at him. "You've got your Fa's height and eyes, son. You sure growed up more since the last time I saw you!" Her eyes grew dark with grief. "If only your Ma could see you now!"
It's probably for the best. I always reminded her of Fa when he was younger. How much more so now? Steffan felt his jaw clench against the old bitterness. He could barely remember his father, a burly mountain of a man with a leonine blond hair and eyes the color of the western sky at dawn. To the boy Steffan had been, Arngrim Tormodsson had seemed bigger than the massive brown bears that dwelled deep in the woods. When a Draugr appeared among the stones being laid for the foundation of the new chapel, it was Arngrim who had gone against the undead. His bones still lay entangled with those of the cursed being beneath the chapel.
Steffan shook the memories away. He made himself smile down at the old woman. "I'm glad to see you, Auntie Hulda," he hugged her. "Now are you telling me these rails have held up all these years?"
"Aye, that they have," Auntie reached past Steffan and grasped the top board in one strong hand. The wood rattled slightly. "Your idea to shape the wood to shed water has been surprisingly effective."
"Well then, it seems I have returned just in time to fix my own work," Steffan turned back to the fence.
"In that case I will bring your horse in so he can graze." Auntie Hulda patted the patient gelding on his shoulder and took his reins. He followed her willingly through the gate and dropped his nose to greet the big white dog that came up to investigate. In the time it took Steffan to clean out the mortises in the two posts and prepare them for new rails, Hulda had stripped the Wildeye Paint of his tack and brushed the evidence of three day's travel from his brown and white hide. "He's a fine one, Steffan," Auntie Hulda slapped the horse's neck affectionately before sending him out to graze among the goats.
"He's not mine, Auntie," Steffan straightened up from the post. "He's rented from the stables in Bruma."
"The Skyrim blood's strong in that one," approval tinged Auntie Hulda's voice as the horse wandered away. "Big enough for your height." She turned and eyed Steffan thoughtfully. "What have you been up to all these years that you couldn't return home to your Ma?"
"Traveled here and there around Tamriel," Steffan avoided the full truth.
Imperials are not well accepted here. Not so close to Skyrim. My mother never quite fit in, and that hasn't made losing Fa any easier for her. "Saw things better left in stories."
"Really?" the old woman's brows rose. "And do you have stories to tell?" Steffan only cast his eyes around for the new lumber he knew she had ready to replace the rotted planks. "I see," she said finally and moved to the shed where she had untacked the Paint. Steffan followed her and spotted the fresh-sawn lumber resting across the manger. "I was just about to shape them, but if you're here--"
He laughed at her transparent manipulation. "Of course, Auntie," he smiled and set the tools down. "I'll shape them. Where's your plane?"
A few moments later he straddled one of the planks, turned edgewise and supported by his knees. The old tool fitted into his hands like a well-worn glove. As he began rounding off the edges of the board, Auntie Hulda disappeared from the shed. Memories assaulted Steffan with the smell of freshly-planed pine as the yellow wood peeled away in thin curls.
Auntie Hulda found Steffan in the workshop. "What is the matter, son?" she asked him.
"Nothing." Steffan rubbed the tears from his face almost angrily. "I just wanted to get away."
"Get away?" the older woman repeated, hands on hips as she gazed down at the twelve-year old boy. "From what?"
Steffan avoided her penetrating gaze and instead wandered over to the workbench. "Could I apprentice to you, Auntie Hulda?" He picked up a chisel. "Learn the wood skills from you?"
"Does your mother know you wish to do this?" Hulda still stood arms akimbo in the doorway. Steffan could hear the skepticism in her voice.
"Ma doesn't care about me," he muttered as he ran his hand over the warm grain of the freshly sawn wood. "I could be dead and she wouldn't care!"
Callused hands gripped his shoulders in an implacable grip and spun him around to face Hulda. She bent down to meet his gaze at his level, her own stormy grey eyes piercing to his broken heart.
"She does care!" she hissed. "Your Ma's had a terrible shock. She lost the one thing in this village that kept her here. Without your Fa, she's lost like the goat kid in the woods. No family, no friends except you and me! If we don't look after her, she'll fade away into a ghost. You don't want that of your Ma, do you?"
All the pent-up emotions roiled up into Steffan's throat. "What about me, Auntie!" he shouted back. "I miss Fa too! I look for him every day, listen for his voice every night! Who's going to look after me!"
"Oh, son," Hulda sighed, and now Steffan could see her eyes glistening in the dim daylight that suffused throughout the workshed. "I miss your Fa too. When it gets to be too much to bear, you can come here. You can come to me.
I'll look after you." Steffan sobbed into Auntie Hulda's ample breasts as her strong arms enfolded him in a tight hug.
The young Stef's reaction - "What about me!" while selfish, is absolutely normal. It would seem strange if he didn't feel that way, especially given his youth at the time. The entire thing gives us a wonderful peek behind the curtains at the man who earned Julian's love. 