Page 21 of Triadic

Ceridor and I walked through the market, his voice just barely carrying to me above the din. "Turns out quite a few villages are named 'Village on the Danube,' but I did eventually find it. Quickly learned your name is taboo—your parents pretend you don't exist,and no one talks about you anymore."

Though I'd expected as much, it still hurt to hear it confirmed. "Did you find Genevieve?" A part of me feared she too had been exiled and even run out of town. That was my worst nightmare.

But Ceridor's smile put me at ease. "I found her in a little farmhouse on the edge of town. I don't know if they own the land they're working on, but she's married and seems happy."

Oh heaven, my soul flew at hearing that. "That's wonderful! Did she…remember me?"

Ceridor drank and shot me a chastising look. "Of course she did, but she also confirmed that your name has been scrubbed from the village memory. She's been worried about you and was so glad to hear that you're okay. I told her you were temporarily living at a monastery and considering becoming a monk. She laughed at that and couldn't believe it, but I wanted her to at least know that you are safe."

My grin pulled at my face; I couldn't contain my joy. "She knows me better than anyone, and yes, I could see her being perplexed at the thought of me as a monk."

I'd even be perplexed by it, had I not fallen in with Corbi and Marit so easily. I was still at Diana Monastery because I didn't want to leave them. They had once had a third person in their partnership, had lived together with Wren for many years. I couldn't help but yearn that they would allow me into that vacated space, but I'd yet to summon the courage to ask. Both Corbi andMarit were so generous with their affection toward me, it was difficult to tell whether they felt the same as I did.

"Now you can figure out how long you were in the forest," he offered. "How old were her kids when you left?"

I stuttered to a stop. "Kid…kids?"

Ceridor turned to face me, blocking the crowd and forcing people to part around us. "What do you mean? Her oldest is four, a little girl, and her youngest is two, a boy. I wouldn't dare ask a woman such a private thing, but her cheeks were glowing, so she might have a third one on the way."

My mouth hung open. "Ceridor, when I left my village, she wasn't even married to the farmer she loved, much less with any children. How could I have been gone for four or more years? I would have died in that forest in the winter…"

His brown eyes widened, then his expression softened, and he stepped closer to speak quietly. "My poor Peter. I'm so sorry you lost that much time. The fact that the seasons didn't change, or rather moved so slowly, is further proof that you were trapped in a magical pocket that was largely removed from the physical world. How old would that make you now, assuming four or five years have passed?"

I didn't know how to react to any of this. I wanted to cry, but instead I just felt shock. "I left at twenty-one, which now would make me twenty-five or six…"

He clinked his mug against mine and drank, nodding at me to do the same. "That's a good age to restart your life."

I drank and imaginedhe would have said that no matter what age I'd given him.

We started walking again, though I felt like a ghost traipsing beside him. "Once I get a job, I'll send her money. We were betrothed. One of the issues that led to me leaving was that her parents wanted her to be more economically secure by marrying me, her best friend and set to inherit the general store, as opposed to the peasant farmer she loved from our school days."

"Careful," warned Ceridor. "She has her pride, and though her husband was out in the fields, and I didn't meet him, he surely does too. Don't send them money. Maybe they would graciously accept you swinging by with presents for the kids, the traveling uncle that spoils them or something."

I wondered how much he knew about a role like that. "Thank you. I'd like to visit them."

"I'll take you whenever you'd like."

"Thank you, Ceridor."

At that moment I caught sight of the stall, and poor Fritz was slammed, a crowd of people waiting to buy things. I tossed the last of the wine back, and Ceridor took my mug to return, promising more detailed stories later.

Marit and Corbi weren't at the market tonight because of the solstice rituals going on at the monastery. Since I wasn't an initiate, it wasjust as well that I was helping Fritz, and while I was a bit shaken at learning how long I'd been in the forest, I could tell them about it later that night once we reconvened.

I was so glad I'd been able to convince them to stay with me through the night, even though I didn't medically need it anymore. Still, they propped pillows between us, saying that they didn't want their bodies to assume I was Wren and end up glued to me by morning. I only wished I could get the chance to be that close to them.

Back at the market stall, I bustled to help Fritz catch up on the waiting customers, then took over for a while so he could sit down. We'd sold out of a couple of things—all of them medicinal salves and teas—and no small number of people had requested whether any of the medic monks were willing to give massages. Corbi had certainly convinced me of the healing efficacy of massage, but utilizing their training with the life force, it seemed doubly so.

Word had gotten around about it from patients at the clinic returning home to their families. And yet, as Corbi had explained, massage was so hands-on and intensive that it exacerbated his abilities. Not only did that risk burnout on both a physical and emotional level, but it wasn't a good use of his time in terms of there only being so many hours in a day that he could work.

I continued having them sign up on a list for massage interest, but also delivering the polite decline for now that Corbi had asked me to give. Fritz had muttered about how incredible Corbi's massages were forpreserving the life of his hands, and apparently a lot of the elderly monks were privy to those healing practices and were eager to protect their access to them. I didn't envy the old man, who visibly suffered from arthritis, though Fritz overall seemed to have lived a productive and good life. I too was eager to keep Corbi from burnout, since I loved getting his massages every day, and honestly, it was in those long, quiet evening hours of his soft touch slowly healing me that I had unintentionally handed my heart over.

Cheers echoed down the lane, and Fritz urged me to help him out of his chair. I followed him out to see a small parade happening in the center of the lane. People of all ages, but mostly kids, were dressed up as warriors, wizards, princesses, and magical creatures of the forest, with a few of the older boys as Krampus and several older men as Saint Nicholas. We stood out front and clapped and cheered as the cute knights swung play swords at dragons that batted them away, and little fairies and pixies danced and sang, spreading delight to everyone who saw them.

FaschingorKarnevalwas typically in the early spring, a day of celebration and fancy before Ash Wednesday, in which the Christians would don ash crosses on their foreheads and enter a period of forty days of various scheduled fasting and disciplined abstinence of excess, culminating in the large feast day at Easter. In recent decades, however—it had certainly already started in my childhood—I'd noticed the costumed part of the holiday spreading to other events throughout the year.

I wondered what Marit might say about this, since he meditated upon the deep significance of things so often. Maybe it spoke of a fledgling rewilding of our culture. Just as I had that thought, a little boy walked by with deer antlers on his head, reminding me of a tiny version of Gwion and the Antlered One. I laughed, warmed at the reminder of those people in the forest who had helped me. I hoped they dropped in on me and could see that I was doing fine now. I certainly was recovering my health and trying to piece together a life going forward.

Just as Fritz and I got back behind the counter as the parade was dying down, a little hand wearing a webbed glove reached over our counter and waved. I heard a hiss and peeked over.