It seems like everything that happens these days serves no purpose more than to point my thoughts to the path before me, and how clouded it is. Come spring, I will head to the Mark. What happens after that has been shrouded in uncertainty. And it still is, but more every day, my thoughts are focused more narrowly on the choices that might be before me then, depending on how things turn out, and which choice I might make. Will I stay in the Mark, or return to Bree-land, or choose a life on the road? Will I take up a trade? Will I ever have a home, or maybe even a family? I used to think these questions depended on other people. On what my parents chose for me, or arranged for me. On what the Thane chose when I gave him my report of failure. But every day, everything that happens conspires to make me focus on what choice I have in all these things, and on what I must do, what I must dedicate myself to, to make that choice lead to a life.
It turned out that the small injury of that goblin arrow-bite was more than I realized. The injury itself was as minor as I assessed it, but a day later, my knee was getting stiff, having trouble bending, and the wound was turning angry red and yellow. I went into town looking for Miss Arelienbur, as she'd offered to look at the injury the night before, but she didn't see me, or perhaps was cross at me and ignored me. And by then the leg was starting to throb, so I repaired back to Hookworth. Fortunately I found a healer there, who examined the wound and told me the trouble was poison. Goblins sometimes put poison on their arrow-heads, it seems. If it hadn't been such a minor injury, I would have felt it much more potently, much sooner. She had to clean the wound out, which hurt far more than the arrow-bite itself, and then apply a salve of something gooey and powerful of smell, and finally put a new bandage on it. Luckily, it would take only a few days, she said, before it felt better, but until then, I'd find my leg very stiff, and prone to getting sore quickly. Which is just what's happened. If I sit too long it stiffens and I have to stand and move, but if I do, it feels weak and I need to sit. The thought of a life on the road, working as a guide, still calls strangely to me, but at the same time, I cannot get over the fact that, even were I as much a master of sword and battle as Miss Tylva, that arrow would have been just as close to ending me. The life of a guide doesn't just mean I cannot hope to have a family -- a hope that seems empty anyway, as I cannot right now imagine how I could find one -- it means I may not have a life, if such a small ill turn of fortune could leave me to die far from anyone.
Missus Barleycorn, on hearing about the poison, insisted I ease up on my work in the stables, but the timing of that was fortuitous. For while I was doing the few chores I could do, Missus Inayat's husband, Mister Aren, found me and set to teaching me the basics of swordplay. It was a puzzling thing at first because it seems he does not, perhaps cannot, speak, and I am still very slow at letters. With gestures and puzzling things out slowly, we found our way to where he could show me a proper grip and a basic swing, and how to practice it while sitting, as well as how to take better care of my sword. Seems it's been dull all this time. Did the Thane give it to me dull, and why? Or did it become dull somehow during the last three years, though it's hardly left the sheath? I don't know, but at least now I know how to tend it. The sword, and the skill he will teach me with it, may help me make my way to the Mark, but will it make me a trade?
And what could be more potent a reminder of the path before me than the furs that Miss Sareva has been preparing for me, for the crossing of the High Pass, being finally ready. They seem, as expected, very well made; there is no doubt that Miss Sareva is a mistress of her craft, as well as the most pleasant hostess I've known. I'd felt foolishly like I'd done good in thinking to bring tea when I led Haritha to her old home, but mine was a coarse leaf in a flat pan over a smoky fire. Miss Sareva has a dozen kinds of tea to choose from, and serves them in fine cups at a well-arrayed table in a charming sitting room, and she is ready to receive five unexpected visitors at once with grace and charm and no sign of being ruffled. I did my best to speak properly as I was taught in Dale, but still felt like a field mouse in the Mead Hall. There before me, two worlds: the furs speaking of the harsh challenge of the High Pass, a challenge that I fancy myself the equal of, but which one tiny arrow-bite shows to be beyond me; and the prospect of the comfort of home and hearth and family, in which I seem like a bear that somehow stumbled into the barn and was mistaken for the ostler.
The most odd thing about that visit, though, was that two of the visitors at that unexpected tea party were elves, looking to view the craftsmanship Miss Sareva had to offer. One of them comes from the Golden Wood, and told me that the tales we are told in the Mark of its Witch ensnaring the unwary are, as I had already come to suspect, folly. Then he offered me a carved wooden leaf, of the most exquisite craftsmanship, looking as if it had just been wind-blown from a tree and turned to wood as it touched the ground, untouched by any hand. This leaf, he told me, would allow me entrance to the Golden Wood. I had wondered at times, after speaking with one of the elves of the Mirkwood, whether those of the Golden Wood might have some knowledge of the passage of the Éothéod, or even of the provenance and fate of the lantern. And my road next year goes right past that shining forest. The hope of finding the lantern, which I had long ago laid in the ground, now flutters with the faintest shiver of life. But even if by some miracle the Golden Wood possesses the lantern, or its secret, and my return to the Thane is in triumph rather than despair, what then? The fog that shrouds my future is not thus cleared. I still have no trade, no home, no prospect of family, no certainty of whether I belong better in the Mark or Bree-land or neither. I still don't know what place, or what people, I would miss the most potently. Nor who, if anyone, might miss me.
For a few minutes of happy folly tonight, perhaps dreaming of home and family, perhaps so in dreams I'd forgotten to think of the clouded path, I entertained the thought of dancing with a pretty girl who'd asked me to take her to a harvest festival. It's not that I thought I would be courting her. Courting is a matter of making a promise: that we will try out how we fit one another, and if we feel we do, we will make a family one day. I cannot make such a promise, so I cannot even start to court. But as much as I knew that, I thought asking a girl to dance was… no, I didn't think anything, I was simply swept up in joyful memories of dancing, and harvest festivals, and in the feeling of a fair lass that seemed, for a moment of laughter, to enjoy my company as I enjoyed hers. And as sharp as a goblin's arrow-head was her answer, a stinging reminder that such feelings are not my place to feel, such questions not mine to ask. Soon, everyone in the pub was in merriment while I felt nothing but the poison in that arrow-bite. It told me that my path remains clouded. It's not merely that I cannot court until the questions of next spring are answered: it is that I have nothing to offer in a courtship. No home, no trade, no future. A courtship is the promise of one's self, and I do not know who I am, or who I may one day be, so what can I possibly offer in promise?
I have two seasons to find some way to fix this. To determine what I want to be, and then, somehow, to make myself into that. I will work as hard as I can on what is before me. Ostlery apprenticeship, and sword-play, and learning to be a guide, though I know most if not all of these will come to nothing in the end, because perhaps one of them will. But if life keeps putting before me the question of its own promise, it comes no closer to putting before me any answers. It gives me only this one certainty: that I must set aside such frivolous and foolish thoughts as the fantasy of dancing and festivals and the joy of a pretty girl's company, and instead focus, entirely, on finding the unclouded path, and making myself into the person who can walk it. Nothing else can take my time, nor be allowed to strain my will or pierce my heart. It may be too late to finally choose my way, but if it's not too late, it will be soon, if I do not dedicate myself to the effort, right now.
