Alison
“Let’s hear it,” said Willow, her pointed ears twitching forward to listen.
Alison read out the lines that had been troubling her to the cat:
O’er heathered hills, with trees so high,
They reach like smokestacks to the sky.
“I like the alliteration, but that simile is tortured. Try again.”
Harsh, but fair. The cat was an excellent critic; Alison had to give her that.
She was less helpful when it came to organizing Alison’s papers. Willow’s relentless need to see the inkwells pushed from Alison’s desk onto the cottage floor resulted in disaster on more than one occasion during Alison’s time drafting and editing her poetry for the pamphlet.
It did afford Alison the first success she had managed in working her magic on her own: apparently the prospect of a gigantic black ink stain on her sitting room rug was enough motivation to finally wrangle the power within her for some good purpose.
Alison had been at work on finalizing her poems and editing the essays for nearly three weeks, and she was ready to do just about anything else. It was difficult watching her friends come and go, heading into town and down to the manor to enjoy the summer festivities without her.
They had been kind enough to help her take care of herself as she worked: Gwenla bringing tea and helping her tend to her garden, Keir bringing dinners of spicy vegetable curries and a smoky salmon dish that he’d cooked with help from Charlotte, and even Rinka bringing the latest gossip from Fossholm on a visit to pick up some things from her trunk and satchel.
She had taken an afternoon off for Rinka’s visit, enjoying a replacement strawberry welcome cake and showing her around Herot’s Hollow at last.
“Oh, the houses are so charming!” Rinka had said when she’d seen them. “So much personality, so much history compared to Fossholm. I can see why you want to save it.”
Alison brought Rinka to the inn where she met most of the townsfolk, becoming fast friends with Strelka and Charlotte especially, Charlotte apparently having become something of a legend there already on account of her ability to drink like a fish.
Mr. Smalls, the bard, had led them all in a rowdy song, with Keir leading them in a dance that ended up with more than one person on top of the tables, much to the consternation of the innkeep, Mr. Rainey.
Alison smiled at the memory.
“You’re getting distracted,” said Willow the taskmaster. “Get back to work.”
Alison gave the cat a fake salute and lifted her pen to paper once more.
Keir helped Alison with the box of freshly printed pamphlets, carrying them for her up to the manor house where the preparations for the regatta were underway.
Gwenla had come along, of course, and Lady Sibba had as well. They were bickering as usual over the best way to get the pamphlets into the right hands.
“If you just hand them out, people will think they’re rubbish and drop them to the ground,” said Lady Sibba. “If we charge just a copper or two for them, they’ll think they’re worth something.”
“Who could drop something so pretty on the ground?” asked Gwenla.
The pamphlets had turned out beautifully, that much was true. They unfolded into more than a dozen panels like a map, some dedicated to the essays Keir and Laddy Sibba had written, the rest covered in Alison’s poems and Weyland’s illustrations. “Preserve Herot’s Hollow: A Place of Outstanding Natural Beauty,” the pamphlet implored.
Alison hoped it would be enough.
The answer to their distribution problem presented itself as they arrived at a booth on the lawn where guests were being greeted ahead of the regatta.
“Ah,” said Rinka, who had been waiting nearby. “Those must be the pamphlets. These go out with the programmes,” she told a human who was handing out the programme of the day’s events.
“Yes, my lady, of course,” said the human. Keir sat the box next to him, and he took a stack of them and began handing them out with the regatta’s schedule.
Rinka took a stack from the box. “Come, Ms. Lennox. We must introduce everyone to the poet responsible.”
Rinka brought Alison around to a dozen courtiers—how had she possibly learned so many of their names in such a short time? Alison wondered—telling them all of her recent visit to thecharming town of Herot’s Hollow and handing them a pamphlet to enjoy while they waited for the races to begin.
Alison marveled at her friend. It was hard to imagine that this was the same orc who came home every night covered in blood a few months earlier. Her grace, her beauty, her good manners—Alison felt that this life was made for her. She knew that Rinka could be happy with her in Herot’s Hollow, knew that Rinka could be happy pretty much anywhere—she was just blessed with the kind of easy good humor that eluded most. But Alison hoped that Rinka and Idris would find some way to continue once the summer had finished. It would be a shame to dull her sparkle.
