Chương 62

Jack He awoke in darkness, with a dull ache in his arms and the weight of exhaustion over him. Even when Jack opened his eyes, he saw nothing, aside from a faint red blob on his left. He tried to reach for his eyes, only to find his arm was sluggish… and weighted down, as if he were restrained. His body was warm—almost uncomfortably so—and his throat parched. With some effort, he thought back to where he might be. He'd gotten turned around—he remembered that much.

It was embarrassing, because he was pretty good at navigating the forest. Somehow, he'd ended up in a part he wasn't familiar with… probably part of the prohibited area, now that they had a new lord. He shouldn't have chased the hare so far. The snow had come down faster. Not a storm, but enough to blanket the area quickly, and he remembered clearly the ground giving way into the stream. He'd gotten soaked, desperately looking for a place to stop and build a fire.

A fire which had sputtered away minutes after he'd gotten it going. That's right. He'd given himself up for dead. As he came to his senses, he felt the snug blankets around his body, pinning his arms to his side. One side was warmer than the other, and the faint crackle of a fire reached his ears. Someone had found him before he'd lost his life, and was warming him. Belatedly he realized he was naked, the blanket the only thing giving him modesty. This only mattered when he heard the feminine voices nearby.

"… Fighter if you can get her alone. Once she trusts you to keep her in check, she acts almost exactly like Apprentice."

"Really? I'd never thought she'd be the one to keep those traits."

"We normally don't show our differences when together, but we have different ideas of how to live our lives if we ever go our own way."

"It wouldn't bother you, being separated?"

"That would depend on—oh, our guest is awake." Maybe it was the faint muffling of his hearing, but Jack struggled to tell the difference between the voices. They all sounded like Bea, the girl that had started working at the inn half a year ago. He didn't know her that well, but he'd thought her voice was distinctive. That he couldn't tell the difference between these was disorienting. He'd barely seen Trisha, the owner of the village that had appeared out of nowhere, but he knew that was Bea's twin sister…

maybe they were relatives as well? The conversation made no sense to him. Another attempt to move loosened the blanket, and also caused the pillow at the side of his head to reveal it was a furry animal. He heard the cat mewl and grumpily move away, leaving the side of his head that was facing away from the fire suddenly colder than the rest. The sudden movement gave him pause, and he stopped struggling.

"Don't move about too much," the sweet voice murmured, much closer now.

"We managed to save your fingers and toes, you should be fine, but your eyes will take another day or two to fully heal. Maybe not that long, but we are being careful. You had some severe snow blindness." Jack tried to say something, but struggled with his dry tongue. Before he could wrestle it into behaving for him, he felt something propping up his head, and a wooden cup pressed to his lips. Warm but not scalding bone broth assailed his nose, the herbs and scent strong enough to cut through his congestion.

He drank slowly, unsure if his stomach could handle too much.

"Take it easy. Don't worry, you can handle solid food, but we want to give you some liquid first."

"Do you recognize this one, Cobbler?"

"Yeah, he's from the village. Jack, I think. Once he can talk we can ask him if he knows Bea." Jack didn't feel hungry, but he drained the cup anyway. He knew better than to argue with his caretakers. He was sure that there were multiple girls here, now… though he was having real trouble distinguishing their voices.

"Scout should be back in a few hours. If he's from the village, they're probably looking for him."

"Almost certainly. We don't want them stumbling on us before we're ready. I hope they take her for her word."

"Our Scout self can be very friendly and convincing when we want to be."

"We have a guest, could you talk normally for a while?"

"Sorry, you're right. I'll try to remember that." Jack squirmed an arm free, but didn't try to remove the cloth over his eyes. He felt along it gingerly, confirming it was a covering and not true blindness, before he spoke. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Where am I?" Not an inspiring start to meeting his rescuers. After a moment of shuffling noises, one of the voices was close to him again.

"I'm Ellen, the owner of these lands. You might have met me as Trisha before. We found you in the snow bank just outside our home, and it was pretty obvious you were completely lost. Sorry we didn't take you back to the village, our house was much closer."

"Ask him why he was so far from the village!" One of the other voices, from farther away, interrupted.

"Shh, let him talk," Ellen replied. Jack tried to sit up, but his limbs were still heavy. He laid his head back instead, waiting until his body felt like his own again.

"You said my name earlier… one of you. Jack." He swallowed, but though his lips were chapped, he could speak fine.

"Sorry, I got turned around in the snow when chasing a rabbit. I thought I got him pretty good, but I guess not if he had that much energy. I know I'm not supposed to go too far from the village." Someone giggled nearby.

"Now we have to punish him!"

"Don't scare the boy," Ellen scolded.

"He's been through enough. He's lucky we could see him. I'm sure Hunter will be happy to know her patrols saved the kid's life." He felt his cheeks warming, and Jack fidgeted in the blanket.

"I'm not a kid, I'm fifteen…" He snapped his mouth shut. Of course to her he'd be a child, even if there were only a handful of years between them. He didn't know "Ellen" very well, but he knew her sister and had been thinking about her a lot lately. Jack also knew that Ellen-Trisha or whatever she wanted to be called was way out of his league, if she owned the land.

He wasn't sure why her sister was helping out in the inn instead of whatever fancy place he'd been dragged to, but he was sure she could do a lot better than an uneducated rural bumpkin like him.

"Sorry, of course not," Ellen replied, surprising him.

"You're not that much younger than us, but it really feels like we've been here for a few years."

"A few lifetimes!" Another chimed in.

"A dozen lifetimes!" A third added.

"Quiet," Ellen grumbled.

"He doesn't need the rest of you confusing him. Think about how he must feel. He's blind right now… that will recover completely, right?"

"Yes, don't worry. As long as he rests his eyes. If I were a little higher level I could heal that quickly… snow blindness isn't as messy as other kinds of blindness." Jack felt his hand taken by the girl—her hands were a little rougher than he expected for a noble—and a warm bowl placed into it.

"Drink this while you relax. I'll find something to prop you up while you recover." He waited as something warm and lumpy was placed at his back, keeping him upright. It felt like a bundle of furs… just like what he was laying upon. He could feel a large fireplace near him, and the room felt large even if it didn't echo. It felt more like a common room than some fancy noble house, but he also wouldn't know how they'd build a nice house so close to the village without anyone noticing. None of this made sense.

"Get some more rest, you're not fully recovered," Ellen suggested, patting Jack on the shoulder.

"We'll check your eyes in a few hours, if you promise not to panic about what you see." That's ominous, Jack thought. Aloud, he asked, "Are all of your servants women or something?" Someone giggled, and another hand patted him on the other shoulder.

"Don't worry about it. Just focus on healing, and we'll take good care of Mistress Ellen."

"Would you like your feet rubbed, Mistress Ellen?"

"I hope I can be of service, Mistress Ellen."

"Stop that." Jack awoke several hours later, disoriented. He'd finished more broth, then fallen asleep to the sound of huddled whispering nearby. What few words he could make out had made little sense to him, so he'd eventually given in to fatigue and slept more soundly than his half-frozen earlier nap had allowed.

"You're looking better," Ellen's voice said from nearby.

"We think—sorry, I think your eyes are ready to look around now, if you think you're ready."

"He'll be fine, it wasn't like he meant to break the rules. I'm sure he can keep a secret. We're nearing the end of winter… everyone in the village will need to know by then anyway." Jack wasn't sure what they were talking about… but then, if it were a secret, that made sense. He tilted his head, once more trying to distinguish all the voices… but to no avail. None of it made any sense.

"Pauley knows he's up here now, and said it would be fine. We told him when we were down there. Tobias also thinks he'll be fine, they just haven't gotten around to telling him yet."

"I thought so. I remember him being that sort of kid."

"He doesn't want us to call him a kid. He's probably nearing Level 6 already."

"Really? Faster than our first time. I guess we really were coddled a little."

"I wouldn't say that, we didn't get our System until we were almost thirteen. He may have gotten his earlier." Jack didn't know what was going on, but his lack of control really didn't feel right.

"Um, I got my System at eleven, yeah."

"It's not a contest, girls. Just give him some room. This will be the first time we've ever introduced ourselves to a complete outsider… try to behave a little!" Fingers lightly tugged at the cloth around Jack's eyes.

"Close your eyes and open them slowly, we don't want you damaging them if they aren't as healed as my Perk seems to say." He kept his eyes closed at first as the cloth slid away, self-consciously hugging the blankets to himself. He was now highly-conscious of being naked in the blankets in a room full of young women that at least one of them looked like his crush. And he was mature enough to know it was a crush. Blinking rapidly, the blurry room began to resolve.

The firelight was the only source of illumination currently… probably for his sake, he realized. Plenty of lanterns and lamps were around the large room. He had a bundle of furs near the fireplace, where a large supply of firewood was stacked and a ginger cat stared at him, perched atop the pile. Not far away was a much larger pile of furs and a few bedrolls, all combined into a large makeshift bed. Furniture was few and far between, with a very simple table and a few stools, plus some built-in stone countertops.

The whole place was largely stone, though the doors and shutters looked newer, if very basic. Jack quickly counted eight girls around him, though it took his vision a few more blinks for the blurriness to focus enough for him to realize they were all redheaded and young like Bea. One wore an outfit of leathers and pelts, another wore simpler and lighter clothes… most were bundled up for the winter, still.

The one behind him stepped around front, giving him a simple, if sheepish smile as she joined the unreasonably identical cluster of girls. The lightly-dressed one cleared her throat.

"Hello, Jack. We're Ellen." She paused, then gestured at the primitive yet new construction of the home around her.

"Welcome to our hamlet."