The
Alchemist was known as Rah Gaffer Gospode, to some, but to most he went only by
“Frith,” for reasons long since forgotten. The “Rah” was a sign of nobility,
but he didn’t seem to have a family, or much of anything else, really. He
drifted through the forest, mostly alone, occasionally popping into a town to
buy or sell a few trifles. Sometimes strange fungi that seemed to twist towards
the moon or little glass bulbs filled with blue liquid appeared in the markets
after he had gone, but few could say whether he had brought them or not. He was
a tallish, strangeish fellow with eyes that shifted color with the phases of
the moon and a strong, angular jaw like a stone in a stream.
He
carried a bamboo pack tight-bound with iron bands and locked with two brass
padlocks that clinked when he walked. A sword as long as a short man’s leg hung
in a scabbard from the side of his pack, a long blue tassel affixed to the
hilt. In winter he grew a beard, knotted and black and rambunctious like a
briar thicket. Sometimes he did small favors for people in the town of
Silverbone, blessing a gate so it never rusted, or creating some elixir that
swelled pumpkins three times their normal size until they looked like fat
orange sows in their furrows in back gardens. He never slept in a normal house,
only in barns or hedgerows or propped in
the crook of a leaning tree eight paces from the road. He spoke little but
smiled brightly and often, even if that smile was a touch too wide and a hair
too sharp at times.
Bufo
DeLivre, the butcher, was completely different. Short and fat in the strong,
sturdy manner of a boar or bulldog, he was loud and as often jovial as he was
enraged, and he had thick brown arms like summer hams that he swung in great
arcs when he talked. A broad cleaver swung on a leather thong at his belt, the
handle polished from three generations of DeLivre hands. He swore it could
slash a maple leaf as it fell but chop through a steer’s neck with one blow. No
one ever saw him use it. No one ever saw him work, honestly. He sat in front of
his shop and shouted orders through the open door at his niece or the orphan
boy who was madly in love with his niece and did all the work she was supposed
to. Bufo and Frith got along in the bickeringly friendly way fast friends did,
with Bufo roaring insults between laughs punctuated by Frith’s quiet, sharp
retorts and flashing smile.
