Aluanna walked among her camp outside town as several members of her band continued to sleep soundly after a long night of playing had ended just four hours before. The joys of waking with the sunrise had been as pleasant as usual, and even with the dampness from the recent rain, the sounds of smells of the early morning forest greeted her like a friend. All the same, she couldn’t help notice that there were fewer birds singing in the trees than there ought to be so early in autumn, and she worried that the creeping gloom in the region was spreading this close to town.

Aluanna decided to walk to the nearby stream to see if a splash of cool water would calm her nerves. She had just lowered her hands to the water when she felt a surge of magic swell inside her. Toj stood nearby, and when the satyr saw her pause, he walked over to see if anything was the matter. When he reached her, it almost seemed for an instant as if her eyes were glowing white. But then the moment passed and he was certain that the sun reflecting off the water must have been playing tricks on him, because when he looked again, her eyes were the same as usual.

“My Lady,” said Toj, “is everything alright?”

“That stranger, Tarun, and his companions, Seth and Shon,” said Aluanna. “Has there been any word of them?”

“Not since we parted ways,” said Toj. “Why do you ask?”

Aluanna’s voice was quiet and distant, and her eyes seemed focused on nothing in particular. “There may be more to them than we first believed,” she said. She then looked down at her hands and realized they were still in a cupping shape beneath the water, and her fingers were getting chilled. She hastily stood up and dried her hands on her skirt. “Any news on the Sword of Wheat legend?”

Toj scratched his head at the spot where his horns stuck out. “My brothers and I asked around when we arrived to see if any of the storytellers or musicians in town were familiar with it,” he said. “There were two old-timers who remembered it from a nursery rhyme from when they were little. One of them even sang it to me.” Taj made a face. “The tune is a little catchy, but I should warn you that chorus will get stuck in your head for a week.”

“A nursery rhyme?” Aluanna looked disappointed. “I thought it was a whole legend I heard as a child.”

“Sometimes our childhood memories make things grander and more important than they really were,” said Toj. “I could’ve sworn I fought off a bear when I was a kid, but my brothers insist it was just a really cranky raccoon.”

The joke was almost enough to make Aluanna laugh, but there was still something weighing on her. “And you’re sure you and your brothers spoke with everyone?”

“Well, we spoke with all the storytellers and musicians in town,” said Toj. “So everyone worth speaking to.”

Aluanna could tell there was more to that statement than he wanted to explain, so she raised an eyebrow and continued to look at him in silence.

“I mean there was that one guy,” Toj finally admitted. “Probably not the most charming guy in town. Definitely the least charming guy in the whole town. He may be the only person I’ve heard of that can manage to be more rude than Roj without getting indigestion afterwards.”

“Oh no,” said Aluanna. “What happened?”

“I mean, it obviously wasn’t Roj’s fault,” said Toj, which was how he always started stories that ended in fights that were definitely Roj’s fault. “So Roj is on a street corner talking with the Town Gossip, which is a totally legitimate category of storyteller by the way, and he’s asking about the Sword of Wheat. The Town Gossip looks at Roj like he’s got something growing out of his head, which he does by the way because, you know, the horns, but doesn’t know anything about the Sword of Wheat.”

“That’s when this pretentious jerk walks over and starts talking about how he knows SO MUCH about the Sword of Wheat and how he’s practically an expert on it.” Toj rolled his eyes and let out a bleat at the end to show his annoyance. “I mean can you believe that guy?”

“Probably!” Aluanna exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air. “Why wouldn’t I believe him? Who would bother lying about being an expert on a nursery rhyme?”

“Well for starters, someone who would lie about anything,” said Toj. “Tax collectors.”

“Oh no,” said Aluanna with a wince.

“Oh yes,” said Toj. “I mean, it’s no secret that satyrs and tax collectors are natural enemies, so I think it showed a lot of self-restraint that all Roj did was give the guy a couple bruises.”

“Roj punched the one person who can tell us more about the Sword of Wheat than the annoying chorus to a nursery rhyme?” Aluanna looked around to see if any of her followers were looking, then bent down to scoop up some water in the stream and fling it at Toj’s face. “And you didn’t tell me?”

The cold water surprised Toj for a moment, then he looked back at Aluanna with a look of horror as he seemed to finally remember who he was speaking to. “Lady Aluanna, forgive me,” he said, bowing low. “I fear my brothers and I have been acting more like head-butting goats than noblemen.”

“Well then stop acting like buttheads and help me fix this,” Aluanna said, keeping her voice low enough that only her old friend could hear her. “We need to find this expert, apologize for your brother’s behavior, and see what we can learn.”

“Of course,” said Toj. “At once, my lady.”

“Thank you,” said Aluanna. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Now where can we find this tax collector?”

“Oh well the funny thing is,” said Toj, “it turns out that this town doesn’t actually collect taxes in the traditional sense. So while this guy is just as dry and humorless as a tax collector, he’s actually… the keeper of the town treasury.”

Aluanna sighed. “Of course he is.”

 

---

 

Toj sat in a chair next to Aluanna in the most boring room he had ever visited. In front of him was the most boring desk he had ever seen, and on the other side of that desk was surely the most boring human Toj had ever met. It was a testament to Toj’s loyalty to Aluanna that he managed to keep his hoof-tapping to a minimum.

“Thank you for being so gracious, Lord Haughlt,” said Aluanna. “My followers have an abundance of passion, and sometimes it spills over in unfortunate ways.” It took everything Toj had to resist kicking something at the indignity of the situation. If anything, their gangly pallid host should be the one thanking Aluanna for gracing his town with her presence. She had even put on shoes before coming into town. The idea of Aluanna, Lady of the Wood herself, covering her feet offended Toj from hoof to horn.

“Well passion is certainly something we have in common,” Haughlt said in a nasal monotone voice. “That’s why I would never let something as trivial as a bruised eye and swollen lip get in the way of my duties as the steward of public records for the entire Southern Moorfast region. After all, acting deputy town treasurer may be my occupation, but my true calling and passion is my work meticulously maintaining the integrity of the documentation that reports the material contributions paid from citizens and businesses to the various local and sovereign governing bodies that have existed in this region during the last four centuries, as well as the records of expenses made public regarding the use of those communal funds.”

Toj sat stupefied, unable to comprehend the human sitting before him. The man’s eyebrows and mustache twitched as he talked, as if whatever nonsense he was discussing was actually capable of evoking excitement and joy out of any living creature. Indeed, his eyes seemed to flash with euphoria as he spoke. And yet his tone never shifted up or down to punctuate his words. His volume was as even as roof that leaked all night, and his rate of speech was as steady as a metronome.

“Did you know,” asked Haughlt, “that the Southern Bellfast region boasts the most comprehensive historical financial accounting records on the entire continent? Thanks largely to its lack of strategic or political value in nearly all major conflicts on record, our books have never faced devastation by war or fire like so many other regions in the past. In fact, the greatest risk these records face is abandonment and careless handling, against which I stand as their staunch defender.”

Truly, the languid, monotone voice which continued to drone on from Haughlt matched the dullness of the subject, yet Toj could not look away. How could this man’s eyes be so electrified, the fur between his nose and lip scurry so jubilantly, while talking of numbers on paper and tax records written by long-dead nobodies, all spoken in a voice that sounded like someone spent an hour sitting on cheaply made bagpipes?

“That is remarkable,” said Aluanna, catching a yawn so sleight that Toj was sure he was the only one to notice it. “Please, Lord Haughlt, what can you tell my companion and me about the Sword of Wheat?”

“Ah, now that is something noteworthy,” Haughlt said in the same tone that was never used by anyone ever to say something interesting. “Now a number of people have heard of the Sword of Wheat from the once-popular children’s song by the same name. Hopefully you’ve already heard this song for yourselves, for I’m afraid I would be unwilling to sing it for you.”

Toj’s heart skipped a beat. Both at the horrifying prospect of hearing Haughlt sing anything, and the simultaneous relief that he would not have to experience those horrors first hand. Finally, Toj thought to himself, he had caught a lucky break.

“A few perceptive historians have even proposed a connection between the song and the unique grain that grows in a more…” Haughlt paused to find the word he was looking for, and Toj found himself unconsciously holding his breath in response. “…unsavory area in the region.”

All the moisture in Toj’s mouth was gone. He felt a great weight in the pit of his stomach, and a numbness crept through his limbs. He could not even build a proper rage at what he had just witnessed, but only an exasperated hopelessness for the man across the desk.

One of the longest and proudest traditions among the dwindling culture of satyrs was that of sharing stories of heroic satyrs who goaded hapless humans into battles of wits and guile, and of the fantastic wordplay that went over the humans’ heads. The most popular of these stories always involved a human so dull and witless that they actually made a play on their own words without even realizing. And then, as Toj listened with his own words, Haughlt had been an inch away from executing one of the most perfect unintentional puns that any satyr had ever mocked a human for, and he missed it.

In his imagination, Toj could see the scene of hilarity as he shared with his brothers how this dolt of a human had called the dark-yet-oddly-wheat-abundant realm of Vdekshi “a seedy area of town.” But those hopes were dashed because this dullard couldn’t even get that right. He could feel all hope for hidden entertainment or delight evaporate like the moisture in paint left to dry on an outhouse door. There was nothing left of him with the energy to resist the mundane miasma emanating from Lord Haughlt, so he gave in and just let the words seep into his brain like the juices from an overcooked vegetable soaking into an innocent piece of bread left carelessly too close on the same plate.

“What everyone has failed to recognize however,” said Haughlt, “is that the words of the verses actually correspond to some very specific expenditures recorded nearly three centuries ago. Not only that, but some extraordinary unpaid tax invoices seem to be tied to the same series of events, and the estimated values used to calculate those sums follows a pattern that matches the same exponential growth as the expense reports.”

Toj felt his eyes flutter and his head began to nod against his will. For the briefest of moments, he was afraid that he was falling under a spell of lethargy cast by the most cunning sorcerer in the world, disguised as this painfully boring man. But Toj was too drained of energy to even care anymore. The fluttering of his eyelids increased.

“For example,” Haughlt went on, “the first verse begins, ‘Ten knights, Twenty knights, Forty knights more. The king sent eighty to settle the score.’ But obviously those first three groups of knights only total seventy, so that group of eighty must be referring to an entirely new group, rather than the sum of the first three. So clearly we see a pattern of the king in this story choosing to double the number of knights he sends each time to collect the taxes due to him. But who ever heard of such a thing?”

Toj was fading fast. His breath was becoming slow and deep. He could only pray that Lady Aluanna would be able to defend herself against this diabolical foe.

“And yet,” Haughlt went on, “just such a ludicrous series of expenses was made, right here on this very ledger. As you can see, the plaintiff in the record was the monarch of the time, while the claim was made against a farmer recorded simply as…”

As sleep overcame Toj, he felt himself floating through a void of darkness that was pitch black, yet felt strangely of bubbly water. It was very unlike the usual lively and vividly colored dreams that satyrs usually experienced. It wasn’t even like the spectacularly terrifying nightmares he occasionally had. This was something different.

The sensation of bubbliness increased as the wateriness of the sensation decreased, and the scene around him grew gradually lighter until he found himself standing in the middle of a wide field of golden wheat. Not far from where he stood, he could see a man harvesting the wheat with a long scythe. The man stopped his reaping, turned, and began walking forward. Toj felt he had seen the man before, but couldn’t quite match his face with anyone he could remember. Then Toj remembered Seth who had sent Aluanna searching for information about the Sword of Wheat in the first place. As the man stepped right in front of Toj, he realized that this farmer bore a striking resemblance to the young man.

“Hello there,” said the farmer. “Forgive my surprise, but we don’t often get visitors out in these parts. It’s nice to meet you.” The farmer extended a hand in greeting. “Most folks around here just call me Friendly Seth.”