The Master of Budding-Bright Hall Shorts: The Morrisville Fire

Baard was a pretty little village, hard by the south bank of the Bullriga, called the Noisy River in the tongue of the now dominant humans across the river in the big towns. Baard had been there first, back in the day when the whole region was elf country and hardly a soul dwelt in these backwaters, but then the wars came, and the world was changed. Earthquakes, fires and swords ripped the land apart, destroyed the coastline, laid waste the forests and many a river ran dry, or fled its banks, but the Bullriga remained and sleepy Baard was largely ignored by all sides. Keef’s folk told those stories and how their people hid in their deep holes until the troubles passed. How things finally seemed to be settling down again by the time Keef was born and there was hope that Baard would go on as their pretty little village and they wanted nothing more than that. The great elves were gone, as too were the great lizards, and then the Fay come up they say as a sudden wave, unstoppable they rolled on and their horror drove all other horrors away until they drifted back into legend and hearth fire story to frighten children. Even the local wood elves and the other native creatures of the region became few and far between in visits, and so sleepy Baard dreamt of solitude. But then came the rumors of hard times again, not of war at first, but of laws, laws enacted by the great elf houses in the south against Baard’s kind living in far away lands which once were their own before the greater houses claimed them.

In time, when Keef was still a young man, the first of those displaced souls drifted into the village, seeking relief. Worn and hungry looking, these were the first evidence of the dreadful purity laws enacted by the City of Kay, by which every creature deemed unnatural to the great elves was driven out of elf lands and forced to flee or be put to the sword. Keef’s people, more natural to this place than those great elves from other lands knew better to resist, for what could poor tinkers do against elf might; it had always been so for the tinkers. Baard grew in size, for no tinker could turn another away. Yet it was a great time for Keef, who marveled at the fresh stories and new skills these cousins brought, but then soon the harsh laws down south saw others arrive. New people were now deemed unnatural and unfit to stay in elf lands. Property was sold for pennies, lest it be seized without pay, and in time the first humans came up the road. They had little interest in Baard and her tiny mines and fields. It was the winter of that year, and it was easy for the tinkers to shutter in again and avoid these folk. But come the spring, it was found they hadn’t gone far at all. They had made their crude settlements down by the sea edge near the bay where the old rock remained and hadn’t succumbed to sea and quake.

The human villages were called Freeport back then and Freetown and names of that nature, but there were only some few families who stayed to fish and farm the area. And in time, the people of Baard made themselves known to their neighbors, trading their services as tinkers for gold and seafood. It would have made a peaceful life, but more men kept coming and the humans could breed at an alarming rate and soon there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands rimming the bay and moving inland to settle small villages of farms. Baard grew wary, but the humans, knowing what it was to be driven out and hated only for being different, were kinder to the tinkers than any great elf and they abided each other’s company. By the time Keef wed Shanta the human settlements had formed towns and ever more villages. Freeport had become Old Town, being the oldest human settlement and Freetown and Freeville grew apace as well, until human houses and streets stretched all along the bay and for miles west towards the distant cliffs. More men arrived and more both from Kay and from other elf cities further afield. More tinkers came too and elf refugees from the ruins of ancient mines who settled beneath the cliffs and dug their homes into the rock as the tinkers of Baard did.

When Keef’s first son was born the future looked promising and bright. Keef had become friends with a human blacksmith named Morris and in time he and his humans came to learn the tinker’s trade and Keef built a bridge built between his friend’s town called Morrisville on the north bank and Baard on the south bank. Life was very good and just a few years later they had both grown wealth and Keef was awaiting his second child and Morris his fifth, but that was the year of the Illness Winter, and many died of some miasma for which there was no cure. Shanta died that year and took the baby she carried with her. Morris too was gone and six of his children. It was an ill omen and not just an ill winter. Come the spring people tried to shake off their gloom. The humans more so than others, as was their nature to hope for better times, and yet Keef could still feel the wind bite, still feared some greater calamity and then they came. A hunting party of Great Elves, demi-fairies some of them and nobles at that. They were startled by the men all along the coast, their coast they claimed, and things could have gone very wrong for Baard and them all. The tinkers knew their kind and knew elves were not tolerant like the humans. It had been less than a generation for the tinkers since they had been driven out and the stories were fresh, but for the men of the coast many generations had come and the old miseries were not fresh in younger minds, like that of Morris’ boy Tam, new headman of Morrisville and friend to Keef’s own son Tam Keefsen, for whom Morris named the lad.

Fortunately, these great elves, probably due to their fairy blood, were disinclined to drive the people off what they still insisted was their land. They said the whole region belonged to Basillia, a great elf nation many leagues to the west and that this very land was the property of the Great Duke before them. As chief tinker now, Keef Olsen met him that day, a tall noble by the name of Hadrim, looking more like a Fay than an elf, but less distant and more caring. Almost it seemed on a whim, this Hadrim Dabrova declared at a village feast in the fields across from Baard that he would put the whole region back under his protection and make citizens everyone from the cliffs of Bren to Haven Point, which he called the hard rock north of the Bay. The people cheered this news, for in truth though they feasted this party of hunters they feared that it would mean great elf armies would soon come and drive them all away. Instead, they became a protected people, and for the first time ever Hadrim included the tinkers and the cave elves as his people as well. In their relief the locals renamed Old Town Brenhaven, taking the two Basillian names unto themselves and honored the Duke as their founder and protector.

 Keef saw it all, hoped to believe it, even allowed himself to do so for a time, as the Duke was true to his word and returned annually to hunt and feast with his new people. The two Tams grew in strength and friendship, had children of their own and Keef took this in too, but still the itch of an ancient fear troubled him. And yet they grew ever happier as Basillians and people of Dabrova. The promise seemed good, and the future was bright once again, but the life of a tinker is much longer than a human’s and Keef watch and brooded to himself. And yet the decades rolled along and Brenhaven became a city and Baard-Morrisville grew in size as well, though they remained outside the great wall the Duke built for the ever growing human city that was now his coastal capital when he visited.

One could almost have become infected with human hope, the world looked so good to see and it was for most a great time to be alive, but nothing lasts forever except the Fay, as they say, and Hadrim on year came to announce that his people had made prince a prince a new Duke was appointed, the old Duke’s son, Aiduin Andamas and the people rejoiced their lord’s good news. For some reason Keef felt more uneasy than ever. His boy Tam said it was just the hasty change and it was nothing to fear. Keef should enjoy life and his grandchildren and abandon his gloom lest he frighten the children. That was all really just a little while ago now, just a change of seasons since Aiduin took command and with him all hope faded, like the arrival of a new ill winter. Keef watched the few short decades change the very face of the land and the relationship between lord and subjects. He watched the humans, too long from the horrors of the Purity Laws dare to revolt at the harsh treatment of their lord and now Keef stood there, watching Morrisville burn, looking at the dead in the field and the bridge thrown down and both Tams impaled on stakes over on the north bank as a warning to any who might resist the Duke Dabrova and he wondered how long Baard had left with the return of these new bad old times.