Children of the Wildings Bonus Epilogue: Kessie’s Homecoming
Spring, three and a half years after the battle at the Gap
Kessie huffed for breath in the thin air as she labored up the last ascent to the summit of the Gap with the first merchant caravan of the season. The trail itself was mostly clear of snow, though deep piles of white still lay in the shadows of the mountainsides, and the air still held a deep chill. But she had finished her certificate at the school of healing more than a month ago, and hadn’t wanted to wait any longer to go home.
Not that she didn’t like it in Granadaia. Despite the snooty treatment she sometimes received from students and teachers who were pure-bred members of old, high-ranking mage families, she did like it there. It was different from the Wildings, closely-settled, vibrant, always something interesting to see and do. And she had come to love the ocean, only a few leagues away from her school.
But her life was in the Wildings. She was eager to see her parents again, and see if they really were still as hale and healthy as they said they were. Her father wasn’t so young any more, though mages seemed to age more slowly than Plain people and her mother always said that ranch work kept a man fit. She couldn’t wait to meet all her new nieces and nephews. Blake and Comfort, Garis and Halna, Vera and Luthe, and even Collen, who had married several months after the fight against Wedlin and his outlaws, had all had children in the last three years. And her baby sister Zina would have changed so much – she would practically be a young lady now.
And her skills were needed in the Wildings. While there were more Granadaian-trained physicians there than before, they were still few in number, and trained magical healers from Granadaia were even more rare. Her teachers and the other mage healers she had met mostly seemed to regard the Wildings as a wilderness with no civilization or anything else to recommend it.
Most of all, Ti’atak was in the Wildings, and could never leave. She had written to him faithfully once a month while she was gone, saving up her letters during the winter when the pass was closed to send in the spring. She sent the letters in care of the Coltors, who read them to him and wrote his responses. And every month except during the winter, a reply had come to her. He told her that his father and the men who had posed as Rilak’s followers then switched sides to protect the settlers in the fight against Ditaji and his dragon riders had staged a takeover of the clan leadership. Anyone who still tried to stir up trouble against other clans or the settlers would be accursed and cast out. Ti’atak was no longer in danger of being outcast from his clan himself, but he had older brothers to care for their parents and inherit their father’s position as clan wiseman when the time came, and Kessie caught a hint of restlessness in his replies to her. He wanted a life beyond the little village high up in the Bluecloud Mountains, she sensed, and perhaps even beyond the Bentwood Valley.
Then, the last several letters had been in a different hand, childish, the language simple. But these made those letters all the more precious to Kessie – Ti’atak had learned to write himself.
His letters held few expressions of affection. Sometimes, Kessie wondered if his heart had changed towards her while she was gone and he was only writing to her out of friendship or a sense of obligation. But, no, he had given his promise to her, and the A’ayimat didn’t make such promises lightly. The A’ayimat were very reserved about showing affection except in private, she reminded herself, and of course he wouldn’t want to speak of such things to Mr. and Mrs. Coltor as they wrote his letters to her. Even after he learned to write himself, he still might fear that someone else would read the words meant for her.
The trail narrowed. In the last three years, the work to lay rail lines and bring message wires through the Gap had crested the pass and progressed several leagues down the Granadaian side. With spring, work was resuming, and workers and construction materials and machines took up half the trail. The trade wagons, already going single file, slowed down, and those who were walking – everyone who could walk in the harsh conditions was on foot, to reduce the burden on the draft animals – fell back behind the line of wagons.
As the caravan slowly rounded the last bend before the summit, Kessie heard people up ahead say, “Who’s that up there?”
“What’s a blueskin doing there?” someone else asked, sounding worried.
“Wait!” Kessie called out. She started carefully edging her way past the wagons on the narrow strip of trail between the wagons and the rushing creek that would eventually flow into Granadaia and become the great Dostra River. Soon she could see past the wagons to the man standing at the summit of the pass, his long white braids and dusky-blue skin proclaiming that he was A’ayimat.
He raised a hand in greeting and a wide smile broke out on Kessie’s face. “It’s all right, I know him,” she said. She waved back at Ti’atak and, fast as she could on the narrow strip of rocky trail, hurried towards him, leaving the caravan behind.
She reached Ti’atak and he caught her in his arms, swinging her off her feet. She flung her arms around his neck and their mouths pressed together in a long, eager kiss. Clearly, he hadn’t changed his mind while she was gone.
Laughing and out of breath, she pulled back after a moment. “Let me look at you.”
They gazed at each other, Kessie only partly aware of the caravan drawing closer. Ti’atak looked older, the broad planes of his face harder, the last softness of youth gone. A white stubble covered his chin and upper lip; A’ayimat men’s beards came in late. He was perhaps a finger’s width taller, and the last three and a half years of work had added even more strength to his arms. His amber eyes shone with a joy more open and unreserved than she could ever remember seeing before. “You’re looking good,” Kessie said. “More handsome than ever.”
“You look good, too.” He brushed her cheek with his hand and smoothed back some strands of dark hair that had come loose from her braid. “More beautiful than ever. And like – like you’ve been places and learned things and you like who you’ve become.”
She thought about it. “That’s true. But I’m ready to come home now.” She hesitated. “Wherever that is. I told your mother I’d come back and finish my apprenticeship with her, and I’d like to see my parents and brothers and sisters, or if there’s somewhere else you’d rather go…”
He laid his hand against her cheek again. “I know one thing.” He grinned. “My mother will kill me if we don’t have our wedding at the village. But after that… I like working for Coltor, but I want to see more of the Wildings. Prairie Wells, and more places. Maybe there are places that need a healer like you, or people who need you to teach them. And I can always find work on a ranch or in a forge.” He kissed her again, lightly. “My home is wherever you are, my heart,” he added in the A’ayimat language.
Kessie’s heart soared. “Then I suppose we had better go to the village first. I’ll wire my parents from the wire office at the market lots and tell them. They can take the train and be at Bentwood Gulch in less than a nineday and come to our wedding, whenever we decide it will be.”
“It won’t take us long to get to the village; one of the dragons given to our clan likes to visit, and he agreed to bring me here. He’s waiting at the meadows, and once we’re out of the pass, he can have us home in only a few days.”
Kessie’s insides fluttered with excitement. To ride a dragon, to see her parents again, to finally marry Ti’atak – it was all almost too much. She could hardly wait. “Then let’s be on our way!”
At the same moment, the caravan boss called out, “We need to keep moving now, Miss Vendine!”
She waved acknowledgment, and she and Ti’atak stood aside as far as they could, allowing the caravan to pass. Then, hand in hand, they followed the wagons down the downhill side of the pass into the Wildings, and towards their new life together.
* * *
Spring, three and a half years after the battle at the Gap
Kessie huffed for breath in the thin air as she labored up the last ascent to the summit of the Gap with the first merchant caravan of the season. The trail itself was mostly clear of snow, though deep piles of white still lay in the shadows of the mountainsides, and the air still held a deep chill. But she had finished her certificate at the school of healing more than a month ago, and hadn’t wanted to wait any longer to go home.
Not that she didn’t like it in Granadaia. Despite the snooty treatment she sometimes received from students and teachers who were pure-bred members of old, high-ranking mage families, she did like it there. It was different from the Wildings, closely-settled, vibrant, always something interesting to see and do. And she had come to love the ocean, only a few leagues away from her school.
But her life was in the Wildings. She was eager to see her parents again, and see if they really were still as hale and healthy as they said they were. Her father wasn’t so young any more, though mages seemed to age more slowly than Plain people and her mother always said that ranch work kept a man fit. She couldn’t wait to meet all her new nieces and nephews. Blake and Comfort, Garis and Halna, Vera and Luthe, and even Collen, who had married several months after the fight against Wedlin and his outlaws, had all had children in the last three years. And her baby sister Zina would have changed so much – she would practically be a young lady now.
And her skills were needed in the Wildings. While there were more Granadaian-trained physicians there than before, they were still few in number, and trained magical healers from Granadaia were even more rare. Her teachers and the other mage healers she had met mostly seemed to regard the Wildings as a wilderness with no civilization or anything else to recommend it.
Most of all, Ti’atak was in the Wildings, and could never leave. She had written to him faithfully once a month while she was gone, saving up her letters during the winter when the pass was closed to send in the spring. She sent the letters in care of the Coltors, who read them to him and wrote his responses. And every month except during the winter, a reply had come to her. He told her that his father and the men who had posed as Rilak’s followers then switched sides to protect the settlers in the fight against Ditaji and his dragon riders had staged a takeover of the clan leadership. Anyone who still tried to stir up trouble against other clans or the settlers would be accursed and cast out. Ti’atak was no longer in danger of being outcast from his clan himself, but he had older brothers to care for their parents and inherit their father’s position as clan wiseman when the time came, and Kessie caught a hint of restlessness in his replies to her. He wanted a life beyond the little village high up in the Bluecloud Mountains, she sensed, and perhaps even beyond the Bentwood Valley.
Then, the last several letters had been in a different hand, childish, the language simple. But these made those letters all the more precious to Kessie – Ti’atak had learned to write himself.
His letters held few expressions of affection. Sometimes, Kessie wondered if his heart had changed towards her while she was gone and he was only writing to her out of friendship or a sense of obligation. But, no, he had given his promise to her, and the A’ayimat didn’t make such promises lightly. The A’ayimat were very reserved about showing affection except in private, she reminded herself, and of course he wouldn’t want to speak of such things to Mr. and Mrs. Coltor as they wrote his letters to her. Even after he learned to write himself, he still might fear that someone else would read the words meant for her.
The trail narrowed. In the last three years, the work to lay rail lines and bring message wires through the Gap had crested the pass and progressed several leagues down the Granadaian side. With spring, work was resuming, and workers and construction materials and machines took up half the trail. The trade wagons, already going single file, slowed down, and those who were walking – everyone who could walk in the harsh conditions was on foot, to reduce the burden on the draft animals – fell back behind the line of wagons.
As the caravan slowly rounded the last bend before the summit, Kessie heard people up ahead say, “Who’s that up there?”
“What’s a blueskin doing there?” someone else asked, sounding worried.
“Wait!” Kessie called out. She started carefully edging her way past the wagons on the narrow strip of trail between the wagons and the rushing creek that would eventually flow into Granadaia and become the great Dostra River. Soon she could see past the wagons to the man standing at the summit of the pass, his long white braids and dusky-blue skin proclaiming that he was A’ayimat.
He raised a hand in greeting and a wide smile broke out on Kessie’s face. “It’s all right, I know him,” she said. She waved back at Ti’atak and, fast as she could on the narrow strip of rocky trail, hurried towards him, leaving the caravan behind.
She reached Ti’atak and he caught her in his arms, swinging her off her feet. She flung her arms around his neck and their mouths pressed together in a long, eager kiss. Clearly, he hadn’t changed his mind while she was gone.
Laughing and out of breath, she pulled back after a moment. “Let me look at you.”
They gazed at each other, Kessie only partly aware of the caravan drawing closer. Ti’atak looked older, the broad planes of his face harder, the last softness of youth gone. A white stubble covered his chin and upper lip; A’ayimat men’s beards came in late. He was perhaps a finger’s width taller, and the last three and a half years of work had added even more strength to his arms. His amber eyes shone with a joy more open and unreserved than she could ever remember seeing before. “You’re looking good,” Kessie said. “More handsome than ever.”
“You look good, too.” He brushed her cheek with his hand and smoothed back some strands of dark hair that had come loose from her braid. “More beautiful than ever. And like – like you’ve been places and learned things and you like who you’ve become.”
She thought about it. “That’s true. But I’m ready to come home now.” She hesitated. “Wherever that is. I told your mother I’d come back and finish my apprenticeship with her, and I’d like to see my parents and brothers and sisters, or if there’s somewhere else you’d rather go…”
He laid his hand against her cheek again. “I know one thing.” He grinned. “My mother will kill me if we don’t have our wedding at the village. But after that… I like working for Coltor, but I want to see more of the Wildings. Prairie Wells, and more places. Maybe there are places that need a healer like you, or people who need you to teach them. And I can always find work on a ranch or in a forge.” He kissed her again, lightly. “My home is wherever you are, my heart,” he added in the A’ayimat language.
Kessie’s heart soared. “Then I suppose we had better go to the village first. I’ll wire my parents from the wire office at the market lots and tell them. They can take the train and be at Bentwood Gulch in less than a nineday and come to our wedding, whenever we decide it will be.”
“It won’t take us long to get to the village; one of the dragons given to our clan likes to visit, and he agreed to bring me here. He’s waiting at the meadows, and once we’re out of the pass, he can have us home in only a few days.”
Kessie’s insides fluttered with excitement. To ride a dragon, to see her parents again, to finally marry Ti’atak – it was all almost too much. She could hardly wait. “Then let’s be on our way!”
At the same moment, the caravan boss called out, “We need to keep moving now, Miss Vendine!”
She waved acknowledgment, and she and Ti’atak stood aside as far as they could, allowing the caravan to pass. Then, hand in hand, they followed the wagons down the downhill side of the pass into the Wildings, and towards their new life together.
* * *
