Excerpt: Stolen Away
With Return From Divalia coming out this winter, I thought it would be fun to look back on the story that inspired the novel. “Stolen Away” was published in Weasel Presents and will be included in the Return From Divalia novel. Here’s how it starts, in a market in the rain…
Coryn picked another one of the reeds that sheltered the bottom of his father’s stall from the driving rain and wove it into the shape he held in his paw. The weave of the concave shell was not simple, but his fingers took care of it while his mind recited once more the list of things he’d hoped to do in Divalia that had not happened and did not look likely to. Try an exotic drink in a tavern. Take a ride on a boat in the river. See the Great Cathedral. Meet a noble (even the lord of his own land of Deverin would do). Witness a master thief in action.
The only one that seemed remotely likely at this point was the last, and that only if a master thief were desperate enough for food to try to steal a loaf of barley bread or a pawful of raw barley. In the pouring rain. Coryn’s father, of course, did not see it this way. “This is the weather the thieves love,” he’d snarled. “They come out when honest folk are cozied up in their beds, when nobody expects ’em to be out.”
And though he knew better, Coryn had argued, accomplishing no more than to be sitting under his stall with a bruised muzzle. The oilcloth he was sitting on had flooded twice, leaving his tail and rear soaked. None of the other merchants they’d traveled with had made their sons or daughters guard their wares at night. After all, there was a city guard posted at the end of the street. That was good enough for most of the wolves.
But at least he was keeping the barley as dry as he could, by making sure the wind didn’t blow the oilcloths up from under the wooden pallets. Drier than I am, he thought, holding up the little boat he was weaving. While Father sits in his room at the inn, all snug and warm and dry.
A gust of wind drove through the stall, chilling his fur and spattering him with rain. He huddled under his saturated cloak and folded his ears back, trying to curl into a warm ball. He wanted to close his eyes, but he had to stay vigilant. The only thing worse than being sentenced to sit here all night would be to sit here all night only to find they’d been robbed anyway.
Outside the front of the stall, a veritable river ran through the gutter. Coryn weighed the boat in his paw and then leaned forward. “I Howl thee the Adventure of Divalia,” he said. “Sail under the eye of Canis.”
It was gone a moment after he dropped it in the water, swept away by the raging current. He imagined the currents of the Lurine bearing it southward to the great sea, and to the lands beyond. Who knew what adventures it would have, while he sat here in the rain? He pulled his cloak tighter around himself and sneezed.
“This yours?” He jerked his head up. A brown pointed muzzle was stuck under his stall, teeth showing in a grin below two soft brown eyes. The water coursing through his fur and around his small round ears didn’t seem to bother him one bit. Below his muzzle, one small pink paw held out Coryn’s boat.
“Y-yes,” Coryn stuttered, as much from the chill in his jaw as from the unexpected visitor.
“Thought I saw it slip out from this here stall,” the rat said, dropping the boat in front of him. “You’da lost it right quick if I hadn’t snagged it. Oughta be more careful with it. Wouldn’t wanna lose a nice boat like that.”
“It’s j-just a little th-thing,” Coryn said. He didn’t move to pick it up, focused on the rat’s muzzle. The rat was really looking right at him, seeing him. He’d noticed the boat and complimented it.
“Well, cheers,” the rat said. “Got things to do and the weather’s a touch, well, you know.” He pulled his muzzle back.
“Wait!” Coryn yelled. He scrambled forward and almost smacked his muzzle into the rat’s nose as the rat poked his head back under the stall.
“Hey, look, there weren’t nothing in it when I picked it up,” the rat said.
“No, it’s not th-that,” Coryn said. “I j-just wanted to s-say, thank you.”
“Oh.” This appeared to perplex the rat. He nodded. “Well, that’s nice of you. And now, I really have to—”
“It’s my first time in the city,” Coryn said, all in a rush. He was aware that he was still shivering under the cloak, but for the first time that night, he didn’t feel cold.
“Zat so?” The rat grinned. “Coulda fooled me.” He took a closer look around the stall before letting his eyes come to rest on Coryn again.
Coryn’s ears flattened further. “Sorry.” He sat back. “Just don’t take anything.”
The rat sniffed. “Barley? Nah, not t’my taste. Nothin’ here really worth taking. Cheers.” And he was gone.
Coryn reached out and picked up the boat. He turned it over in his paws. “Some adventure,” he muttered. Without any ceremony, he tossed it at the front of the stall, near the gutter. It landed on its side and slipped into the churning water, tumbling end over end and out of sight.
His eyes were closed, muzzle down against his chest, when he heard a high-pitched voice. “I reckon maybe I was a bit hasty back there.”
Coryn looked up into the sharp brown face, water dripping from the rat’s whiskers. “You can have the barley if you want,” he said. “I won’t stop you. The bread’s pretty good.”
“Oh, not ’bout that.” The rat flicked his whiskers, spraying water. “Seems there might be a thing or two worth havin’ here, after all.”
Coryn looked at the sheaves of barley, stacked under oilskin, at the loaves of bread wrapped in cloth, and then back at the rat. “Please don’t take the oilskins. The barley’ll be ruined.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” A small pink paw reached out to him. “I was speakin’ of the young wolf on his first visit to the city. Seems like a terrible waste t’spend it soaked under a smelly stall.”
Coryn’s eyes widened. “M-me?” The rat nodded. “I can’t, I mean, my father...”
“Left you here to guard the wares while he stays nice an’ warm in a cozy tavern, no doubt. Ale in one paw, attractive barmaid on t’other, what?”
“My father wouldn’t!” But Coryn remembered the smell of the female raccoon in their chambers, and how he’d just assumed the servants had come around to clean. And how his mother had wanted to come along this year and last, and his father had never allowed her to. “He wouldn’t,” he repeated.
“Course he would,” the rat said. “Anybody’d seek out comp’ny in this miserable weather, ay?”
The smell of the rat’s wet fur insinuated itself into Coryn’s nose, through the strong smell of wet garbage and damp barley. He flicked his ears and managed a small smile at the rat’s bright expression. “Aye?”
“That’s the spirit! Come on, this stuff’ll be safe ’nough ’til morning.” He shimmied back out of the stall and called, “Shake your tail, there!”
To stay now would be cowardly, and rude besides. Coryn climbed slowly out of the stall after the rat, putting one paw squarely in the icy water of the gutter as he did. He yanked it up and shook it, though the reflexive motion did little in the steady rain. He looked around the deserted, dripping market and saw that the rat was already three stalls down and walking briskly away.
“Hey!” he called, taking two steps and then stopping. He folded his ears down to keep the insides dry.
The rat stopped and turned. He held aside the collar of his threadbare cloak so he could look at Coryn. “I’m keen to get outta the rain,” he said. “C’mon.”
“You sure...” Coryn looked back at his stall.
The rat grinned and spread his paws. “You see anyone else guardin’ his stall?” he called loudly over the hiss of the rain.
He had, in fact, seen a raccoon down at the other end of the market, but there was nobody in sight now, not all up and down the twenty stalls of this side street, nor on the few stalls he could see on the main street. And some of them, he knew, had more valuable stock than barley. Well, on the off chance that anyone did steal their bread, or grain, he’d just get back early in the morning, before his father showed up, and he’d claim he’d thrown out what got damaged by the rain.
His paws splashed through the puddles in the cracked paving stones, catching him up to the rat, who was setting a brisk pace again. “There’s a guard,” Coryn said, as they approached a stall where a fox kept a wary eye on them amidst a small cloud of hanging bronze lanterns. The few that were still lit cast eerie light and crooked shadows over the fox and the nearby street.
“Got valuable stock,” the rat said. “Trust me, no thief’ll come down here in this weather.”
He said it loudly enough that the fox’s ears flicked toward them. Coryn saw his snort and his intent gaze as the two of them passed. “You sure?”
“I know most of ’em. Hate the rain, they do.”
Coryn looked at the rat’s little pink paws, not jammed into the pockets of his cloak like Coryn’s were, but spraying droplets of water from the tapping fingertips in front of him, as active as the rat’s eyes darting from side to side. “But you’re out in this weather,” the wolf said.
“Ah, well, I’m a special case, ay? There’s things in the rain that’s overlooked by most.” His whip-thin tail smacked Coryn in the back of the leg.
They’d reached the end of the market, the last two stalls with their brown oilcloths dripping over wooden tables empty of their wares. Beyond them, a pair of pubs shone through the weather, windows bright with lanterns and roaring fires. Coryn gave them more than a glance, suddenly aware of the chill in the rain and the emptiness in his stomach. Then he realized that his father might be in either of the pubs, looking out the window, and he hurried ahead to catch up with the rat.
“Where are we going?” he said.
The rat didn’t pause, leading Coryn around a corner and past another tempting pub, so close that Coryn could hear the laughter and talk from inside when a stag, hurrying through the rain toward them, pushed the door open and ducked inside. But the rat kept going past the pub, saying, “Well, tell me, a young wolf, first visit to th’city, what would he like to see?”
“The Great Cathedral?” Coryn said.
“Sure, we can go by there.” The rat ducked into an alley and pulled Coryn with him. “Quicker this way. But how about the house of a noble? Wanna see how the upper crust live?”
“Oh, yes!” Coryn squinted. “Wait...you’re a noble?”
“Well,” the rat said, “let’s just say I’m owed a debt by a noble an’ I choose tonight to collect.”
“But...” Coryn stopped, then hurried forward again, tugging at the patched tunic clinging to his fur. “I’m not dressed...I’m soaking...”
“Oh, not t’worry,” the rat said, humming as he slowed his pace toward the end of the alley. “He won’t be there. Would make things a bit awkward.”
Won’t be there? Coryn had just figured out what the rat meant when they emerged into a large open street, the rat striding boldly out while Coryn hung back, staring to his left. Over the tops of the buildings, beyond the end of the street, the large dome of the Great Cathedral rose against the sky.
He’d never seen a building so tall. It seemed to reach to the clouds with a seven-fingered paw, six dark spires that were merely breathtaking circling the central spire, which disappeared into the rainclouds. Above it, through the lower layer of clouds, even in the night and rain, a gleam of gold shone through. He thought at first that it was Gaia herself, looking down on the Cathedral, but it didn’t move, and after a moment, he realized that it was the tip of the central spire.
A paw tugged at his sleeve. “Hey.” He turned to see the rat there, following his gaze. “It’s a wonder, innit?”
“I’ve never seen...” He groped for words.
“Ay, I know. But it’ll be there still in an hour, an’ we’ll be enjoyin’ the view with full bellies an’ a warm fire. C’mon.”