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Late summer had come to Ragnor Barony. It had sneaked in, drying the leaves that lined the Imperial road. Perry Dart walked that road. There was nothing yet, not for miles. He was happy with that. Just road and river. There were no horses, no people, no sound except birdsong and running water. The emptiness was a comfort. The Raggle was not so mighty as the West Rag, nor so winding as the South, but it was far enough from home that he could feel alone, the kind of alone that was good, where the sound of footsteps on packed gravel wasn’t background noise, where a man could escape thoughts, wants and worries. The road had been alive once. It was bone now. Sun-bleached and rotting like the empire that had built it. That too was a comfort.
He looked out, over the rising Crosslains in the east. They felt like an insurmountable border, the southernmost point of his life after university. The mountain had heatborne haze colouring its leaves a lush brown. Somewhere near the top, a plume of smoke rose up from the mountains. That was the only sign of human life.
Perry looked at the river to his left. It was clear down to the rocky bottom. Purple flowered bugleweed lined the muddy banks and beneath the water, tufts of grass struggled to maintain their hold against the soft current.
A glint of sunlight struck the scales of a trout swimming upriver. He was hungry. Perry followed the trout’s shadow. He was hunting. A solitary mayfly performed nuptial dance near the surface of the water, which rippled out from where the fly braved touching it, letting the trout catch sight of the motion, and speed up, shadow disappearing in a splash, it leapt from the water and splashed back down, the world one mayfly less alive, but one mayfly more fed, while the trout settled into grassy cover, replete.
Perry walked on. The river split, and the road formed a bridge over the north branch. The flow was slower here. It pooled deeply just to the other side of the bridge. He swung his pack off of his shoulders. Relief washed tense muscle. Perry slid himself down the bank by the bridge to get a better view of the water. From the muddy banks he saw a school of young trout. Their ruddy scales scattered what little direct light could reach the shadowed underbridge. He was happy.
Tufts of tall grass acted as hand holds. He pulled himself up the bank, back toward his pack. At his pack he pulled out his pipe and a tin of tobacco. The pipe was a polished pear wood from a long gone Arguty pear tree. It had been a birthday gift from Jemis on his eighteenth. Just before they left for university and Jemis had left his life. He packed the bowl with a pinch of ochre coloured brightleaf and savoured the aroma. It had a sweet, light quality that he enjoyed. He lit the pipe with a gentle nudge of magic. It was safe enough this far from anyone else. The smoke had the faintest hint of pear and clove. He exhaled a ring, packed up the tin, and hefted the pack onto his back. It was heavy waxed canvas. Durable like him. He took in another breath of smoke. He liked being alone.
Perry walked most of another mile before the road crossed the south branch. The bridge here was longer. He was still alone. He tapped out the dying embers of his pipe. Under this bridge, in a deep rolling pool sat the largest trout he had ever seen. The sun was starting to set over the western part of the Crosslains where they made horseshoe around the Woods.
The mountains imposed darkness on the small river valley. Out of the sun, the trout were confident. Perry put down his pack and laid out his gear. His favourite yarn and feather flies. The contour feathers from the Charese ducks he had brought home made for enticing bait. His brother had shown him how to tie his first fly the summer he turned seven. The first year without their father. Two thirds of his life had passed since then, and his parents were both dead. He didn’t mince words about it. His mother had died during the Interim. It was not her fault. She was not the only one, but she was still gone. It wasn’t uncommon in people Perry loved.
He tested the line by casting into the air, and whipping back the rod. The palmer at the end of his line danced through the air. He brought it to gradual alight at the surface of the water, maintaining a precise rhythm. His father had taught him to cast in time with a song. Perry had always liked to cast in time to “Tarazel” by that anonymous master. It was his mother’s favourite. Tonight, he included some of the more obscure movements from “Aurora.” When his tempo changed, a trout bit down on the hook. Straining against the urgent fight of the trout, Perry pulled in his line, holding firm against the trout’s run, exerting his own strength on the fish when it relaxed, then straining the test of his line when the trout struggled for its life, he knew his hook was set, that he would win this battle if he kept the line from breaking.
“Stay on, steady on,” he encouraged himself, speaking for the first time in hours.
When the trout was close enough to net, he considered the way he broke the silence. The way he had heard voices even when he was alone. The rod, the fly, those voices sang his praise. He tried to ignore them. On rare occasion they won out, like when he had used magic to light his pipe.
The trout was not one of the large ones. Enough to feed him, not enough to bring home. Like most, it had spotted brown-green scales, with a dotted line of dazzling red scales running just above its belly. He put the trout into the wooden pail he carried with him. It held about a gallon of water and bore a double B crest. Perry was happy.
He picked out a green haze dun, retied his line, and cast out again. Only he and an occasional splash broke the stillness. The hint of sun left lit the river basin in a purple twilight when Perry gave up for the evening. He would be safe enough from the Kind Neighbours if he stayed on the road. Instead of returning home, Perry built a fire. Camp kept his hands busy.
He grabbed the trout from its bucket then looked at it. It had the wild eyes of something facing death. Awake, unafraid, resigned. He rolled his eyes, and tossed the fish back into the river. It swam like a flash of lightning. He turned back to his fire and sat near it, eating brown bread and cheese. That trout had been too small to bother with gutting.
He looked back to the eastern Crosslains while he ate. The fire that had been there this afternoon was still burning. Smoke obscured the early evening stars. Insects screamed their tuneless song. He flinched when an owl flew overhead. Silence kept him company a while longer. He saved half of the bread for the morning, and tucked into his small bedroll. Perry Dart was happy.
#
The fire went out in the night. It still had hints of ember when Perry woke up with the first light of dawn. Dawn brought with it hunger. He ate some of the bread while reconstructing the fire from the barely hot charcoal. They wanted to be lit, to be fire again. It was purely coincidence that they had a shared goal, and he continued to ignore their voices. The sun lit the warm green of the mountains around him in a glowing light. The Woods Noirell off along the horizon drank in the light and sat still, darkened. His eyes slid off the Woods as he worked and always came back to the bits of camp he could make ready.
He heard a splash, then saw a running trout as it darted its way down river. It was too early for shadows this deep in the valley, but he saw the small flash of red as it turned into the upstream flow in the safety of the bridge. It nestled in among the larger trout, each waiting for the right moment to strike.
He thought to supply them with that moment, and grabbed the still baited line, casting quick flicks of early morning dance on the surface of the water until he felt a telltale pull. This fish was heavier than the last. The duel would be methodical. Let out line through the run, then pull back when it tired, keep an eye on the tension. He flashed through all of the advice he’d ever been given. He remembered catching a trout one summer morning with Jemis and Roald. He kept fighting. The trout would leap, and run, pull and twist his line around any bit of something it could find. He was ready. He guided the slack and tension with the practise of old hand. Eventually, he netted a fish. It was bigger than any he’d seen before in the Raggle. He had caught trout like this outside of Stonybridge. That fishing trip with Domina Black had been the best part of his time there. Perry did not want to dwell on the past. He had a fish to tend to.
He wet his hands before pulling the trout out of the net and putting it into the bucket. There was something about this fish that told him not to kill it. Not to gut, cook and eat it. It had familiar russet eyes that contrasted the pastel rainbow along its sides. He saw what he could only interpret as a flash of recognition in its eye. This was a different kind of trout. Not typical to these waters. Different patterns to that of the common river trout. Not quite the drab olive colour of the local sport fish, this trout was speckled almost like the cape wigeon ducks he had seen in Chare.
This trout was alone. None of its kind lived in these waters. Perry wondered if the trout might be happy by itself as well. Something possessed him to ask.
“Are you alone or do you have family with you?”
The trout stared.
“I have family, but I think more often than not, I’m alone. I don’t mind it, but I miss when it wasn’t so necessary. I think you might understand that. What do you think?”
The trout continued to stare.
“I haven’t heard from Jemis in months, and Roald is—well, he’s Roald. I tolerated the isolation at Stonybridge out of love for my brother, but I can’t even tell him that. It’s too much to put on him. I just didn’t expect to face it again when I came back home. I miss the men who were my friends. I tell myself that I’m happy, but I miss what we had.”
The trout opened and closed its mouth a few times. It was something.
“I suppose somewhere I made the choice to embrace being alone. It was better than suffering from it. I know, how noble of me to weather the pain.”
The trout spat a spout of water at him.
“Excuse me, sir. That was quite uncalled for.”
He smiled while the trout gulped again.
“Although, I do tend to agree, the self-pity is quite useless.”
Fishing was quite suddenly acutely unappealing, so he set about packing up camp. It was all quite neatly placed for his convenience, and packing would not take overlong. He packed his bedding. He packed his flies and rod. He let his net dry near the fire before packing that too. The last thing was to douse the fire. For that he needed the bucket. He picked it up, and brought the bucket to the side of the bridge.
“If you have any more indispensable advice for contending with the ennui of isolation, now is your last chance,” he said, dipping his hands into the water.
He could swear he saw the fish wink, then propel itself improbably through the air, back into the river with a heavy splash. He shook his head, and emptied the bucket onto the fire. Filled it again, and emptied it onto the warmish remains of the fire until no smoke or steam rose from it.
He decided to be honest with himself. He could admit that he wasn’t happy. It was not something that needed to be solved. Not when it was the perfect time to try his hand at picking mushrooms.