Chapter 19: 19: Breakfast and a Tour

Wren’s head hurt.

Not as badly as it should have done, thanks to Karrhael and her little infusions of instant sobering-uppering, but she couldn’t claim to be feeling exactly brilliant.

She stretched out on the Clair family sofa, which had given her an astoundingly comfortable night’s sleep. Or perhaps she had been inebriated enough that she could have comfortably passed out on a pile of bricks. Either way, she felt better rested than she had any right to, but she wasn’t about to complain.

“Morning,” said Juniper.

Wren fell off the sofa. “How long have you been there?” she asked, clambering back up.

“Not that long,” Juniper said. “Haven’t quite finished my tea.” She held up a gently steaming mug.

“If you haven’t quite finished it,” Wren said, blinking as her sluggish brain tried to form the thought and pass it to her fuzzy tongue to turn into a sentence, “you’ve been there at least long enough to drink some of it.”

“Yep.”

Wren rubbed her face. “Was I snoring?”

“Like a walrus.”

“Ugh.”

Juniper held up another mug. “Want one? I haven’t poured yours yet, didn’t want it going cold, but there’s more in the pot.”

“Please.” Wren wobbled over to the table and slunk into the chair opposite Juniper. “Did I make an idiot of myself last night?”

“Not at all,” said the younger woman, pouring a stream of hot tea from a big, beautiful pot painted with a range of herbs and flowers. “Everyone really liked you, actually. Said that if Din didn’t want you, there must be something wrong with Din.”

Wren rested her chin in her palms. “They did not.”

“They did.” Juniper handed her the mug. Wren clasped it, enjoying the warmth. “I mean, I think most people around here think there’s probably something wrong with Din, but that’s because we’re… well, we’re Cotton Mossford folk. We’re not the same as Din folk. Which is fine, the world needs all sorts of people. But… if you don’t mind me saying, you seem more like a village person than a Din person.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Wren murmured. “I never felt at ease there. Maybe I should just always have been… here, or somewhere like here.”

“Well, never too late.”

“Cheers to that.” Wren raised her mug, then took a big gulp, which she immediately regretted because the tea was still scalding hot. “Ouch,” she mumbled lamely, forcing herself to swallow rather than letting a mouthful of tea slop back into the mug in front of her host. Then, after a moment of reflection, she said, “What do you want to do? In life, or whatever.”

Juniper stuffed a biscuit into her mouth and chewed pensively. “What do I want to do?” she repeated, turning the phrase over in her mouth as if it had an unfamiliar taste. Then she said it again, putting emphasis on each word in turn: “What do I want to do, what do I want to do, what do I want to do, what do I want to do…?”

Wren found that she was having more trouble than usual following a conversation, or perhaps it was in fact the topic itself rather than her fuzzed-up mind. By the time Juniper had said the same thing six times, though, nothing sounded like words anymore, so it took her a moment to notice and refocus when the young woman finally said something different.

“I'm my father's daughter,” Juniper said. “He brought me up into the business he built, you know? Or my grandparents built, but Dad’s been running for the last however many years. That's a gift, isn't it?”

“It is,” said Wren, getting the sense that she might in fact not want to pull too hard on this thread.

“If I'm honest,” Juniper continued around another mouthful of biscuit, “I'm not sure I've thought about it. I know I said I sometimes wonder about what else I could have done, but in that sort of daydreamy way where it doesn't matter because it's got no real bearing on my actual life. I just… am the distiller’s daughter, and that's what I’ll keep being. And occasionally working some hours for Myrinna, I guess.”

She stuffed one last biscuit into her mouth and crunched, sounding far from dissatisfied; Wren envied her, to have been given a lot in life and to have accepted it as a good and fulfilling thing.

She's not just someone's daughter, though, she thought. She's a person of her own. But I probably don't know her well enough to question her life choices, so… eh.

“We've got a while before the community café opens,” said Juniper. “Village hall, a bit before midday, so I've got some time to just show you around if you like? See some of the places you'll be needing to know if you stay.”

“Absolutely,” Wren said, “but, um, before we go… do you have food?”

Juniper snorted. “Can a Ruddanwell goat drop-kick a kestrel?”

“I… have no idea.”

“Yes,” Juniper clarified. “Yes, it can. You really have to see it.”

“I think I really do.”

~~~

Yet another astoundingly good meal later (baked oats and berries with syrup, several sweet biscuits, a pitcher of orange juice, and toasted bread with creamy butter and tangy marmalade), Wren - feeling significantly better - hefted one of two rucksacks pre-packed with the Clair family's offering for the community café and followed Juniper out of the house and up the path, away from the junction with the main street and the Twin Cob Tearoom.

They ventured uphill, between a few more houses - including one Juniper pointed out as the glassware shop of Neal Arne, whom Wren vaguely recalled meeting at the bellringers’ practice when she'd arrived in town. Juniper seemed about to add something else to her explanation of Neal's shop, but caught herself and gave Wren an apologetic smile.

“There was someone else working with him until not so long ago,” she said, “but… well, something happened. But like Dad said last night, people's own business is for them to keep or share.”

“I get it,” Wren reassured her.

“Can't imagine someone else won't spill the beans anyway, if you just stick around long enough and talk to certain… what would Mum call them, sufficiently indiscreet individuals,” Juniper muttered. “Won't be me, though!”

They reached the top of the hill, where open space yielded to thin woods with slender trees. A narrow, steep path took them down past a fenced area where two ponies blinked dolefully at them, then past a large white house, just beyond the treeline, surrounded by gently waving grass and little dancing yellow spots where spring flowers were beginning to pop up.

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“The man who lived there died last year,” said Juniper. “He was probably the oldest person in the village, so it wasn't a horrible shock or anything, but a lot of people feel his loss. He was involved in a lot of stuff - some would probably say he made it his business to get involved in too much stuff, but it means he left a big hole.”

“He didn’t have anyone else living with him?”

“Nope,” said Juniper. “Just him. I think he had more family - parents, obviously, but maybe siblings too? Anyway, I think there were more people living there in the past, but eventually it was just him. And nobody else wants to go in there now because… um, because it wouldn’t feel right just yet.”

She had been about to say something else, Wren was sure of it, but she didn’t push the issue.

They continued on the path - well, barely a path, but there was a sort-of-defined route through the various trees and hedges of the area - downhill for a short distance more, then across a small stream, a bit further on, back across the stream again, across a field neighboured on either side by pastured sheep, along a little lane with a cottage and vegetable gardens on each side, then up a steep, grassy slope. Juniper pulled a bottle of water out of her pack and offered it to Wren when they were halfway up.

“I must’ve come this way at least a couple of times a week for the last ten years,” she said, “but it gets my legs aching every time.”

Wren took a gulp and handed the bottle back appreciatively, electing not to speak.

“Check it out, though,” said Juniper, gesturing in the direction from which they’d come. Wren turned and looked out over fields and hills lined with the occasional house, patches of trees, little black and white and brown spots that must have been livestock - or wild animals, she supposed. “You can’t quite see to Ellinton that way, but you can see most of what’s between here and there. That isn’t super uphill, anyway.”

On her journey southwest from Din, Wren had considered most of the landscapes she’d passed uninteresting at best, like the kind of dull paintings she’d seen a thousand times in various establishments in Din and never really noticed, always walking past them to wherever she was going and barely registering them passing her by. It was just scenery. Just the terrain. What was interesting about that?

Now, though, she thought she was starting to get it. A vague pang of regret gnawed at her for having dismissed the idea that she should stop and look around at any point on her travels - and even for never having properly examined any of those paintings she’d just assumed weren’t worth her attention.

“Right,” said Juniper, tucking the bottle back in her pack, “to the top. No more climbs after this, promise.”

Wren nodded.

A few minutes and some incandescently burning thighs later, they crested the hill. Upon its rolling back were lines of trees - trees that had obviously been planted in deliberate order, creating neat rows that popped out of the earth like a hedgehog’s quills. There was a clear chronology: each row was filled with trees of about the same age and height, but it looked as if each row had been planted in a different year, with those on the westmost part of the hilltop standing fifteen feet tall and progressing down to saplings on the eastern side.

“This is Higher Orchard Hill,” said Juniper. “Well, one of the Higher Orchard Hills, there are a few all surrounding this bit, but this is the one with a footpath right through it.” She put her hand on the trunk of one of the nearest trees. “These are Cottonflower apple trees. Rare variety - they’re quite sweet, good for just eating straight off the tree. Apparently they’re not great for cider, though. Too light, or something. You can make some good stuff with them, though: syrup, liqueur, brandy… oh, and non-alcoholic things too, of course.”

Wren was half-listening. The trees were beautiful, but the view was better.

“They’ll bear fruit in the autumn,” Juniper went on, “but the really cool thing about these trees is the blossom. You just wait for the end of spring - we make a whole thing of it.”

Then, apparently noticing Wren wandering away between the trees in search of a clearer line of sight across the landscape, she shut up and trotted after her.

“Ah, yeah, this is the real reason I wanted us to come out this way.” Juniper took a deep breath of fresh air and put her hands on her hips, gazing out over the village with a fond smile. “You can see pretty much the whole of Cotton Mossford from up here. Cool, right?”

“Pretty cool,” Wren agreed.

The village stretched out before her, nestled between hills on all sides - including more that bore rows of planted trees. More Orchard Hills, Wren supposed. The route she and Juniper had taken from the Clair house must have taken them roughly north, then curved around to the east; from the position of the sun, the Higher Orchard Hills were to the north-west of the village. Nearer to the hills and to Wren’s vantage point was the dungeon, clearly distinguishable from above because, as with all dungeons, the rise of the hill into which it was set bore a huge blazing red character in a language nobody had spoken for centuries, one that would continue to burn with crimson light for as long as the dungeon existed. Which meant that that building there, not far from it, was the Hilarious Misunderstanding; next to it was a larger one that must have been the town hall. Across a road to the left (from Wren’s perspective) were a few more buildings including one with a large playing field where various lines for games had been painted into the short grass. A school, perhaps.

These features, beautiful as they were, all sat between swathes of other roofs that were less well-kept. Cotton Mossford had its pristine and beautiful places, but at this height, looking out at the whole thing at once, it was clear that a large chunk of it simply hadn’t been maintained in some time.

On the other side of the main street, she could see the church of Saint Auspicious standing proudly, and not far from that was the roof of the Trebuchet Inn. She followed the line of the road and found the Twin Cob Tearoom sitting cosily in the crook of two paths, the larger of which disappeared from view as it headed uphill towards Ellinton. A short distance south of that, away from most of the other buildings of the village, was a large building whose roof was an arresting combination of black, white, and red tiles.

“What’s that one?” she asked Juniper, pointing.

“Oh, that’s the library,” Juniper answered.

“What’s with the roof?”

“Well,” Juniper said, then snorted with laughter. “It’s really stupid. Ask Elira when you meet her, she gets a kick out of telling people.”

“Elira is…?”

“The librarian.”

“Right.”

Juniper pointed to the east of the village, where Wren could see the flowing River Marten and several fields full of cows.

That must be the way I came in, she realised. On the other side of the water, to which she hadn’t crossed on her arrival, she could just about see another, smaller church and a few houses.

“We’re heading down that way, then back up into the village,” Juniper said. “Those fields are technically public land but everyone calls them the Manchfort Cow Fields because the Manchforts’ cows have always just sort of occupied the whole thing.”

Wren gave her a questioning look.

“Oh, it’s not a problem,” Juniper said quickly. “We all benefit from those cows being there, it’s not as if Rodean and his family just took over the space and stole it from everyone else.”

“That would never work in Din,” Wren muttered. “Every bit of space is someone’s private property, and they’ll charge you for anything you want to do in it.”

Juniper frowned. “Is Din really that bad?” she asked. “I know I said folks from around here aren't keen on the idea of the place, but I thought it was supposed to be… I don’t know, sort of wonderful.”

Wren gazed out at Cotton Mossford, a village that could probably have fit into Din two thousand times over. “It is,” she said after a moment. “In a lot of ways, it really is. It’s all these ancient and new places all built on top of one another, so you can take one step out of a modern street and find yourself in… in, like, an ancient lane where there’s ivy growing between the bricks, so old it’s almost petrified.

“There are things there you can’t see anywhere else, or so they say - all kinds of art and architecture, museums with collections that are supposed to be the best in the world. Couldn't tell you whether they really are, although people come to Din from all over, so you can always find art and clothes and food from every country, made by people who grew up there. Or sometimes knock-off versions that are really Gradian inventions pretending to be exotic or whatever. Doesn’t mean some of them aren’t still good, though.

“There’s all this ceremony whenever the Crown does anything, and you can get caught up in crowds of people all trying to see what’s going on - it’s annoying if you need to get somewhere, but you just get swept up in the excitement. Hundreds of pubs, all with different beers. Parks and lakes right in the middle of the city, sitting between buildings taller than any you’ll see in the rest of the kingdom. Huge industries bigger than villages, with hundreds of people working for a single company with a single goal, or factories turning out thousands of products in a day.”

She paused. Juniper waited.

“There’s a magic to it,” Wren said eventually. “A hundred different kinds of magic, even. But it’s not… it’s not for everyone.”

“Nothing is.”

Wren continued to take in the sight of Cotton Mossford, a place that already felt more like home than Din ever had. “No,” she conceded. “But everyone deserves to find that thing that’s right for them.”

After a few seconds, Juniper clapped her hands and cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, “shall we continue?”

With one last look at the village, Wren turned and followed Juniper down and off Higher Orchard Hill.