ArHi FF:14: The BEASTS and the BLEEDING ROSES Ch 348

|| #3: Reader Realm ~ The Missing One ~ ||

The elderly InnKeeper looked up from the mug he was wiping dry and observed my agitated form at the counter.

"Say, are you alright?" he asked considerately, placing the mug back on the shelf.

"My mind is a bit muddled," I replied dispassionately.

"I see," he nodded sympathetically, "Is it anything I can help with?"

"No," I answered gloomily.

He mediated a moment and then asked, "Has it something to do with that Cap'n of yours - what's his name... Irresponsibility?"

A faint chuckle escaped my dismal lips, "Captain Responsibility? No."

He leaned forward with his elbows on the counter, "There's no harm in having someone to listen."

"I suppose not," I said, looking up.

"What's it about?" he smiled lovingly, "Family, friend, food, a nightmare you had last night...?"

I shook my head, denying the subjects he'd stated as the cause of my anxiety. I cast a glance across my shoulder to make sure no one was watching, and then leaned forward to whisper, "It's about the Story."

"The STORY??!!" He yelled in alarm which startled me.

"Shh," I beckoned him to pipe it down, "Keep it low, would you? I don't want anyone to know, especially my readers."

"What is it?" he asked in apprehension, "What about the Story?"

I hesitated, unsure of revealing the truth. And then-

"I can't tell it anymore," I blurted out.

The InnKeeper was frantic but, fortunately, he spoke in a low voice, "What do you mean?! What do you mean you can't tell it anymore? Is it the beverages, you think everyone's gettin' drunk? I'll shorten the supply of ale and-"

I shook my head, "It's nothing to do with the Inn and the drinks-"

"Then, what is it?" He procured a maniacal detour of thought, "Are you ill? Have you been told to rest? How long do you have till you die?"

"What-?!" I was beginning to lose my patience thanks to his hysterics, "I am not ill, for heaven's sake!"

His frenzied queries saturated into a new assumption, "Has it something to do with the ones listening to your story? Is it, perhaps, their number?"

"No," I assured him, "It's the Lady in the Dark Hood."

"The One who reads you the story?" The InnKeeper's eyes widened in astonishment, "What's happened to her?"

I shrugged, "I don't know, she's just gone."

The InnKeeper gaped, "Just gone? How can she be just gone?"

I let out an exasperated sigh, "If I knew the answer, I wouldn't be sitting like this, would I?"

"True that!" nodded the InnKeeper, as though I'd said something intelligent, and then he wondered aloud, "What happened really?"

I decided he deserved to know, "Last time I went to meet her in the place we always met-"

"Her room, you mean," interjected the InnKeeper.

"Yes, her room," I rolled my eyes and then continued, "Last time I was there, she wasn't there."

"Where'd she go?" he asked interestedly, as though I was narrating him a story and not the real thing, "Did she leave a note?"

"No note, no book," I said dismally, "There was nothing in the room expect a glass of milk."

"A glass of milk, eh?" he asked, his eyebrows wrinkled in deep thought, "Was it full?"

I didn't know how the quantity of milk in an abandoned glass had any relevance to anything but I recalled, for him, the faint memory of its sitting on the dusty window sill, "It was half drunk."

"You're not a positive thinker," stated the InnKeeper importantly.

"What?!" I blinked.

The InnKeeper nodded, "There was a gypsy in here once who said he heard an Italian tell a German that if there was a glass filled only to the mid and if you asked-"

"I know about that!" I grunted impatiently, "You're missing the point here! The Lady in the Hood is gone! Vanished! DISAPPEARED!!!"

I knew I was being overly dramatic but I couldn't help it. I was fraught.

"Ah, but she'll come back," pointed out the InnKeeper calmly.

I was confused, "How do you know?"

"The glass," he explained.

"What about it?"

"You told me it was half filled."

"So?"

"So she'll come back."

I was baffled, "What makes you say that?"

The InnKeeper spectacularly theorized, "The glass would have been empty if she'd been leaving for good."

I snorted, "That's ridiculous! No one can make such inferences on the level of milk in a glass!"

The InnKeeper proposed to justify his theory, "You told me the Lady was a weird one. I'm certain she does things in a weird way too. If she left behind no written note, that's because the glass of milk WAS her note."

I felt I was reasoning with a toddler, "That's not practically even a-"

Just then the Inn door opened and there stood a messenger with a satchel hanging down from his shoulder.

We watched him stride towards the counter and address the aproned InnKeeper, "A mug of beer, if you please."

"Certainly, my man," affirmed the InnKeeper, who then he winked at me and whispered secretly, "No one who has the etiquette to say please at my Inn should be denied beer."

A minute later, this messenger was drinking his offered beer in the course of which he asked, "Is there someone here named...?" He paused to take a gulp of the beer.

The InnKeeper and I leaned closer to where the messenger sat so as to hear the anticipated name when it fell from his lips.

The messenger placed his mug down, burped and completed his enquiry, "The Storyteller?"

The InnKeeper stared in my direction and I gaped at the messenger, "That would be me."

The messenger leaned back and evaluated me from head to foot as though my appearance did not quite capitalize the title of The Storyteller.

Leastways, he mentioned what he'd come for, "I have a letter for you."

"Do you?" I was surprised and wondered who would be writing a letter to me, all the way from home in this remote land of Arhaisa.

The messenger drained the remaining beer down his throat and then groggily rummaged through the contents in his satchel, until he pulled out a roll of parchment.

He handed it to me and, with a respectful lift of his cap, departed for the day.

I could feel the InnKeeper's curious eyes boring into the parchment in my hands, "Are you gonna open it or what?"

I didn't really need that invitation, of course, for I was already breaking the seal upon it. There were two parchments to be exact and one of them was unwritten.

The second one was a letter, written in a neat long script, which read thus:

And that was it. No explanations, no signing offs.

I looked at the InnKeeper who merely shrugged.

"Do you suppose," I was afraid to ask it but couldn't help wonder, "Do you suppose this means that there is only one more chapter to the story?"

The InnKeeper stared blankly at me, "Oh dear. Could it be...?"

My heart sank at the thought, "Now, that I think of it, it felt like the final and is in many ways. They're fighting the villain's crew, the General's joined them and nearly everyone's bound to be saved. And more or less, it did seem that the beasts have come close to be being cured..." I looked uncertainly at the InnKeeper who also seemed to find the thought sombre.

"Well," he said finally, as a resort to comfort me, "At least we can know how it ends."

I nodded sadly, "Every good story needs a good ending. But...this came too suddenly."

"Suddenly?" The InnKeeper stared at me, "It's been four years, child! Have you lost count of time? Four years! That's..." His gaze searched the ceiling as his lips counted away and then he proclaimed, "That's 1400 days!"

I sighed, "I didn't mean the duration. I was talking about how the end has come so suddenly. How do you suppose it will conclude with just one chapter to go?" I was nearly hysterical but the next words came with a grunt, "And you know how short the chapters of this story are!!"

"Patience, child, patience!" remarked the InnKeeper coolly, "Maybe this last chapter will be long, and everything in the ending would leave you satisfied."

"I don't know," I muttered, plopping on the stool at the counter again, "There is something wrong about all this! Something's just not right..."

The InnKeeper was silent and I knew what he was thinking.

It was the very same thought that had crossed my mind; the very same worry:

Something bad was going to happen. Something terrible had struck Arnav and Kushi and all those who were fighting on their side.

That was why the Lady in the Dark Hood didn't want to read me the story in person, because it wouldn't bode well.

Nevertheless, I had to know.

So as the InnKeeper watched, I rose to my feet, dragged myself to the fireplace and, with my forlorn gaze on the blazing flames, threw the letter into the hearth.

The flames licked the parchment from every corner and burned it to dark ash, which vanished through the coal and emerged as dark script on the parchment that had been empty in my hand.