The Scholar of Bodra
High expectations rankle a former student of a prestigious institution, which is further complicated by her warring feelings, insatiable curiosity, and festering secrets.
Sareit donned the scholar’s robe for a fifth time, muttering under her breath while adjusting its fit around her shoulders. It weighed on her awkwardly, and the clasp kept slipping upward in a threat to choke her.
She checked herself in her full-length mirror. She straightened her blouse and vest; arranged the pleats in her long, belted skirt; and checked the hidden pockets of the robe for her pen and notebook. Then she turned on her heel.
“This is idiocy.”
She removed the robe, flinging it at her open wardrobe and flopping face first onto her bed with a groan. She listened with the sharp hearing of a Beastfolk to the distant sounds of the town coming awake and the closer sounds of people moving about her family’s inn.
Dawn had yet to break, but mornings started early in farming provinces like Bodra. They started even earlier for the proprietors of the Honeycomb Inn.
Dallor and Oliette Honeywillow each tended to their various duties in preparation for the yearly harvest festival. Farmers and merchants had descended on the town to set up their wares in the lane encircling the inn. Anticipation buzzed in the air. For most, it manifested as jovial excitement.
But for Sareit Honeywillow, it thrummed as a hive of anxiety which currently focused itself on her wardrobe dilemma.
“I’m not wearing it. That’s final.” She rose, dusted her hands, and opened her bedroom door.
Oliette, with the preternatural senses gifted only to mothers, waited for her on the other side. The portly woman carried a stack of linens and an innocent expression.
Sareit knew an ambush when she saw one.
“There you are!” said Oliette with a sweet smile.
As though you didn’t know, Sareit thought wryly.
Oliette handed her the stack of linens. “I am absolutely swamped this morning, so would you be a dear? Put these in the linen closet, warm the bath, and tell your father to bake a double batch of biscuits.”
“Only a double?”
Oliette thought for a moment. “You’re right. Make it a triple batch. Thank you, dear.”
Sareit took the stack and tried to conceal her surprise. She’s not going to ask? Thank good—
“Oh, and Sareit? Don’t forget to wear your robe when you go out to teach your lessons.”
Sareit ground her teeth together, resisting the urge to pitch the linens at her mother’s back as she toddled away.
Sareit busied herself with her assigned tasks, all while wearing the robe and shooing away her nagging thoughts.
When she went to the tavern to deliver her mother’s message to her father, he guffawed. “Tell that woman I’m way ahead of her. This is a quadruple batch.”
To watch such a large man putter around such a small kitchen may have struck some as funny, but none who knew Dallor Honeywillow would have been caught laughing out loud. His reputation as a chef and baker only slightly outclassed an infamy for no nonsense in his inn. However, his family knew firsthand that he had an impish streak of his own.
“Try to keep the lesson short today. We’ve got to get out to the festival early.” Dallor glanced away from his oven and gave his daughter a smirk. “I see you’re wearing your robe for today’s lesson.”
Sareit grabbed a nearby oven mitt and chucked it at him, exiting to a rumble of laughter. She wove through the inn, dodging smiling patrons and their pleasantries, to prepare for her weekly meeting with Bodra’s youth.
Upon her return from The Great Library of Zurin three years prior, she had been pressed into service by her parents to educate all the children in the surrounding area. On the first day of each week, locals were invited to bring their children to the Honeycomb Inn for lessons with the darling scholar of Bodra.
Early on, Sareit objected on principle. She was a returning student, not a teacher, and she would not be all that much older than some of her charges. But once word spread and a couple weeks had gone by “successfully,” her objections morphed into indignance concerning the scholastic apathy of the children left in her care.
A number of farmers had seized upon the opportunity to place their progeny with Sareit while they did their weekly business in town, which of course included drinking and gossiping in the inn’s tavern. These activities proved much easier when untethered from children.
Sareit’s first few months of lessons were, in a word, chaos. Screechy toddlers crying for no good reason, rambunctious kids roughhousing and cackling, brooding teenagers rolling their eyes at every attempt to reach them. The whole lot was bent on the destruction of Sareit’s nerves. They had no inclinations toward ordered schooling, and their parents would only grin and shrug when the young woman would entreat them for help.
Her own parents were just as bad.
“You’re a smart girl. There’s never been a problem you haven’t figured out, so get to figuring, my dear.”
And figure she did. Not all of Sareit’s learning at the Library had been done in books and on paper.
The first time she conjured a thunderclap in the middle of a session, more than half her students wet themselves. Rumor said that a few of their parents in the tavern did, too. Her student population halved the next week.
The ones who returned wanted to know how she did it.
Sareit was most surprised not by their sudden interest in learning, but in her own willingness to oblige. So long as Sareit gave some practical lessons in the ways of magic, her students were mostly happy to learn about history, math, and languages in between.
During the three years of Sareit Honeywillow’s tenure as Bodra’s preeminent professor, she discovered that few things are sweeter than a student who truly wants to learn.
However, the subject of the scholar’s robe remained a relentless point of contention. Sareit could not understand her mother’s insistence that she wear it, and she moreover could not bring herself to explain why she was so resistant to it.
Finally ready for the morning’s lesson, Sareit went through the tavern toward the veranda at the inn’s rear where their meetings usually took place. Her students awaited, some seated on the wooden steps, some playing on the small lawn in the golden sunrise. When she opened the glass double doors, she was met with a scattered chorus of, “Good morning, Miss Sareit.”
“Good morning, everyone,” she replied. “Gather up. We’re just going to do a quick review today before the festivities start.”
They formed a circle on the lawn, opting to stand instead of sit in the dewy grass. Sareit took a quick headcount. The class was smaller than usual, likely due to some children being put to work for the festival, but the ones in attendance were all children Sareit had taught for some time.
“Lillias,” Sareit said to the dark-skinned girl next to her, “it’s your turn today. Go around the circle and tell me everyone’s tribe and clan, and give one fact about each.” She turned to the rest of the group. “When Lillias introduces you, you may conjure. Start with yourself, please.”
Lillias tugged on a braid of her hair and swayed as she spoke timidly. “My name is Lillias, my family are luxes, and my momma is teaching me how to knit.”
“Very good, but don’t forget the tribe name, too,”
“Oh, right. We’re Plainfolk.” With that, she poised her hands as though holding a ball, and a white, glowing sphere formulated. It flickered erratically until it detonated in a bright flash.
Two boys standing nearby snickered, elbowing each other until they were observed by their tutor.
“It’s all right,” Sareit assured her. “Keep going.”
“Miss Sareit is a Beastfolk of the zoan clan, and she has really pretty hair.”
Sareit snapped her fingers, producing a spark and a small peal of thunder.
Lillias moved on to the teenager standing to Sareit’s right and the little girl holding his hand. “That’s Volok. He is a Frostfolk orc, and he’s very tall. That’s Kinnio, she’s a Frostfolk orc, too, and she makes pretty flowers. Her special name is Everbloom, and she’s my best friend.”
Volok declined to conjure anything, but the little girl named Kinnio giggled and waved at Lillias. As she waved, flower petals bloomed across the grass between them.
“Orcs making flowers doesn’t make any sense,” snorted the boy with the same dark complexion as Lillias. “Real Frostfolk make ice, duh.”
“Talfen,” Sareit warned.
Lillias wheeled on the boy. “He’s Tal, he’s a Plainfolk lux, and he’s a mean dummy who stinks at magic!”
“Shut up, Lil,” Talfen fired back.
“Miss Sareit, he told me to shut up!” Lillias whined.
“Both of you cut it out,” Sareit said firmly. “Talfen, you’re being rude so no conjury from you today. Lillias, don’t call your brother names during my lessons. Try again.”
The scolded children looked away, Talfen with his arms crossed and Lillias with the braid of hair now in her teeth. Eventually, the girl mumbled, “He’s my brother Talfen, he’s a Plainfolk lux, and sometimes he tucks me in at night.”
Talfen looked even more incensed at that, but Sareit’s withering gaze prevented any commentary.
Lillias pointed to the last of the group, the boy who had been roughhousing with Talfen and now took to innocently studying the tree branches overhead. “And that’s Anlow. He’s a zoan like Miss Sareit, and he gets to play with horses.”
“He doesn’t play with them,” Sareit said. “He and his father manage the stables in town. And I heard you’ve started watchtower duty?” she asked the boy.
Anlow beamed. “Yes, ma’am, Daddy said I wasn’t too much help around the stables anyway, so I get to go up to the top of the tower and see how far I can throw stuff and sometimes see monsters way out yonder and—”
“And I’m very proud of you for helping out,” Sareit cut in. “Talfen, tell the group one thing you remember about your last lesson.”
Talfen still sulked but then brightened when he recalled something. “Last time, you were telling me about the Wolf Rider!”
An excited gasp came from the rest of the students.
Sareit realized she had made a miscalculation, but it was too late.
“Three years ago, Merros and Orynheim were trying to kill each other at the Wall of Addition.”
“The Wall of Attrition,” Sareit corrected with a wince.
“It was the final battle, and then Orynheim released a whole load of monsters on the battlefield, and it became a bloodbath.”
Sareit shook her head. “No, Talfen, it was Merros that released the monsters.”
Talfen and Anlow looked at each other. “But Anlow’s dad said—”
“It was Merros. Some people who live around here don’t like to admit that our own nation did something like that, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Now, if you’re going to tell the story Talfen, hurry up and get to the good part.”
Anlow stared at the ground, but Talfen grinned at the permission he had been given.
“Okay, so, all the soldiers started freaking out because there were monsters, oh, and the duchess and the king blew each other up and there was fire falling from the sky like it was the end of the world, that’s what some of the soldiers told me, and then, outta nowhere, the Wolf Rider showed up and saved the day! And because of the Wolf Rider, all the soldiers stopped fighting and became friends and that’s why there’s people from both nations living here in Bodra, right, Miss Sareit?”
All eyes locked onto Sareit. She hesitated, sensing their need for confirmation. Finally, she relented. “That’s right.”
The two little girls and the pair of boys whooped and took to running around, playing an impromptu reenactment of the legendary scene. Volok chuckled as he stood next to Sareit, looking as though he would have liked to join in if not for his teenage pride.
“Is that how it really happened?” he asked the scholar.
“It’s actually not too far off, at least from my understanding.”
Survivors of the Final Battle all told stories of the Wolf Rider: a man astride a flaming blue wolf who cut down the monsters unleashed on the battlefield. No one knew his name or recognized his face. He just appeared suddenly in the midst of the battle, reaping monsters as easily as a farmer reaps wheat. He swept across the terrain, stopping skirmishes, felling creatures, rescuing the injured.
What made the man most revered was the final task he accomplished there. The story among the soldiers went that he personally rounded up the generals of both armies and bore witness to the agreement of terms for the truce that has lasted ever since.
The soldiers each told variations of the tale, but they all agreed that the moment the two generals shook on the deal, the Wolf Rider dismounted from his fiery canine then lay down on the ground. He folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes, and they had been closed ever since.
There were skeptics and naysayers, of course. Conspiracy theorists who claimed it was all a propagandist lie, or worse, that the Wolf Rider had been responsible for the deaths of the two nations’ monarchs.
But those aspersions were cast down by soldiers on both sides of the conflict. No one who saw the Wolf Rider in person had anything to say other than words of awe. A supernatural peace had settled over that bloody land, and the men and women who were there all agreed it was past time for the bloodshed to end.
As fascinating as the stories were, they were riddled with missing information that Sareit craved. Where did he come from? What was the wolf-beast he rode? What kind of magic could end a war that had lasted one thousand years?
“Right, Miss Sareit?” Volok asked, jolting her from her thoughts.
“Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Just that it’s amazing how much has changed in three years.”
Sareit smiled softly. “Somethings, yes.”
The children were disappointed when Sareit announced that no more magic would be done that day, but their moods lifted by being released to the festival. Lillias and Talfen’s parents came to claim them, while Anlow bounded off to his watchtower duties and Volok led his little sister away to tend to the festival booth they would be running together.
When Sareit returned to the inn, she headed to the second floor to perform her final task of the morning.
Her nerves jittered as she approached the last door on the left of the guest hallway. Three years of this routine had done nothing to quell that. She fussed with her dark hair, settling for draping it over one shoulder. She exhaled slowly as she reached for the doorknob, but it was pulled from her grasp.
“Mother!” she exclaimed as Oliette emerged from the room with another armful of linens.
Oliette giggled. “I’ve already seen to the guest and changed his sheets, but I’ve left the last bit to you.” Once she reached the other end of the hall, she said just loud enough for her daughter to hear her, “You get cranky if I don’t.”
“I don’t get ‘cranky,’” Sareit called after her mother while her cheeks burned. She entered the dim room and closed the door behind her.
The room was the largest bedroom in the inn. Sareit’s father had always referred to it as the suite, though the only amenity it had over the other rooms was a small fireplace which currently lay cold. She would be sure to light a fire during her evening rounds, but the day would be warm enough not to warrant it.
Sareit crossed to the window to draw back the curtains, the task her mother had left for her. There was a reason that particular task was left for last, though it was likely a silly one.
Sareit paused with fistfuls of the curtains in her hands. Maybe today…
She threw the curtains open, letting the early morning sunlight pour in to illuminate not only the room but also the sleeping guest. And just like every other morning for three years, the legendary figure did not stir.
The man in the bed looked to be around thirty, ten years Sareit’s senior. While the Honeywillow family belonged to the Beastfolk tribe, sporting downy fur and animalistic features, the guest’s smooth skin and rounded features were obviously those of a Plainfolk. His beard and hair had grown long enough to give him an unkempt look. Sareit made a mental note to tend to that soon.
She observed him for a few moments. It was foolish of her to get her hopes up. If her mother changing his linens had not awoken him, then certainly neither would a little sunlight nor Sareit’s hovering.
At one time, she had been accused of having a girlish crush on the guest, and at one time, that might have been true. It was hard not to romanticize the image of the great hero who now slumbered like a fairy tale under their own roof.
However, Sareit’s vested interest in the guest was not a romantic one. It was one of supreme curiosity.
Sareit did not merely want to know things; she needed to know them. Wondering about a subject was so inferior to digging in and knowing about it. A mystery was no good to Sareit without a solution, which made the mystery of the Wolf Rider an infuriating obsession for the scholar.
Sareit sighed. She withdrew her pen and notebook, jotting down a reminder to see to the guest’s grooming as well as a few additional questions she would ask him when he someday awoke.
“Sareit,” came the sing-song call of her mother downstairs. She sighed again and went for the door.
Something rustled behind her. A whisper of shuffling cloth. She whipped her head back toward the bed. Had the guest’s feet always been that far apart? Had the tilt of his head shifted? Was it possible he was…
“Sareit, hurry!” her father bellowed. “All the good booths are gonna be taken!”
“I’ll be down in just a moment,” she hollered back. Sareit stared at the guest a moment longer before deciding she was losing her mind.
She left, closing the door behind her, just as the guest stirred awake.
