A Hare's Tale: The Blade of Highleaf (Chapter 2)

Well, I've been a bit pre-occupied with things this past week, but funny enough I've managed to push out another chapter. Anywho, in this installment of "A Hare's Tale: The Blade of Highleaf": Agatha must find out what Mayor Middleton has to say about her encounter with the Middleton children! Now, enjoy the exciting conclusion of A Hare's Tale: The Blade of Highleaf! An adventure of cute furry animals! Enjoy! (This time, there is much more consistency within the character names and such... Hopefully better than last chapter.)

Agatha Oakeyes could hardly believe that Richard had the time to fish with Autumn drawing so near and Winter only a stone's drop away after that, but she knew that he had other ways of making money. Rumors poured into her mind, memories of gibbering gobs and flapping mouths from when the hare first came to the town. Some spoke of words like: "sellsword" or "assassin" even one child had gone so far as to concoct a story of a hoard of gold sitting in the basement of his hovel. Granted, no one had ever set foot inside Mr. Richard Camp's hovel, nor did anyone know where he was from, nor how he came to live in Highleaf, nor even how old the hare was. With a neatly trimmed face, groomed whiskers, and a fine color to his fur, one might assume he was barely in his thirties or even twenties, but that was hardly the case, Agatha herself assumed the hare to be at least in his late thirties, but was not closed to other assumptions.

As Agatha marched herself down the winding cart road towards the center of the village, the soft breeze picked up, blowing against her striped face as the leaves chimed in to sing her a merry tune. She sighed as she heard the dreadfully loud shouts of the mayor and her father as he neared their home. A massive live oak tree that had found itself half-buried in the side of a hill was prime housing for her father and her, the leaves still a verdant green in the evening sun made the badger smile as she stepped up to the solidly wooden door, turning the knob and pulling it to her though netted Agatha the full brunt of the rage enclosed.

"Damn you, Agatha!!!” screamed a portly hare looking grey than the sky does on most rainy days. A one-size-too-small silk vest pulled tight around his belly doing little to flatter his rotund belly, and a fuming tobacco pipe sitting in the corner of the hares mouth reassured Agatha that it was indeed Mayor Middleton of Highleaf.

"Yes, Mayor, how can I be your 'humble servant' today?" Agatha said in her most sarcastic tone she could muster.

"This is the last straw! You struck my children!"

"Someone best! They go around like sneak thieves along the river and they might get gutted by curs!"

"That very well may be, but my children are not yours to punish!! This is the last straw! Time that you dare harm my children!! The constable will be spoken to about this!"

Agatha heaved a sigh as she listened to the usual rant of honor, dignity, and order, her eyes rolling in their sockets till they fell on the weathered face of her father. Agnar Oakeyes, once the mightiest warrior in the Kingdom of Arimus, Lord Grand Marshal over the armies of the King, The Badger known as Diremaw, widower, and now aging legend was to be added to his most recent of titles. The old Badger was even bigger than Agatha, standing a foot taller than most hares would with ears high, but his body was stooped from age, his brown eyes had long since lost their blood lust, and had grown into a soft shade of maple. While Agnar may have been growing older he had never stopped growing wiser or stronger, but he hid those facts well, save for the wisdom, which he shared to all that would listen. Agatha even remembered the time when Prince Hagen, now King Hagen came to have tea with her father, discussing what they should do concerning an issue with diplomatic issues.

Agnar heaved a sigh and clapped a large paw on Mayor Middleton's back. His paw dwarfing the poor Mayor's body as the old badger spoke in his softest, yet most authoritative tone, "Charles... We've been through this forever; we both know that if you simply talk to me about the situation, then I can insure that this never happens again."

Agnar turned his steely gaze from Agatha's eyes, glaring almost like a bear staring down a predator that had wandered into his cave. It sent a cold shiver down Agatha’s spine, but still they both maintained their emotions, despite Agatha knowing that her father was far from pleased. Mayor Middleton sighed heavily as he began to pace about the small breezeway just inside the doorway of the Oakeyes home. His lips sucking and puffing out clouds of smoke before finally he spoke again, “Ahh…I’m not mad at Agatha, Agnar, it’s just that I don’t know what to do anymore…”

Mayor Middleton turned his gaze back to Agatha, heaving another sigh, his grey eyes now soft and placid rather than filled with rage as they had been moments before, “Agatha, it’s not that I don’t want you punishing my children, nor do I want you to not teach them a lesson…Hell! I want you to get those hellions in line, but Agatha, my wife is the one who keeps telling me that you are dangerous…”

Agatha hardly knew what to say; this was the first time that Mayor Middleton’s wife had ever been brought up in conversation concerning Agatha’s relationship with the Middleton children. Even Agnar appeared to be taken aback by this new turn of events, but the old rabbit continued as he took his pipe in hand, running a furry finger along the pipe’s extravagantly carved stem, eyeing the smoking tobacco stuffed in the horn of the pipe like it were something mesmerizing. The silence was thick, tangible, and very awkward as the three stood in the Oakeyes home with no one intending speak first till Agnar spoke up in his soft yet booming voice, “Charles, tell me what you want done and we will do well to repair any hurt feelings, Agatha, if need be, will apologize and make reparations.”

Agatha’s gae shot to her father as her face took on a look of shock and disbelief as her jaw dropped open then snapped shut before standing tall, she was a clever girl, clever enough to know when she needed to shut up and take her medicine and when to protest or speak her mind. A trait, her father said, that she got from her mother. Her dark brown eyes turned a placid and calm gaze towards Mayor Middleton before Boeing her head, "I submit to any decision you make of my punishment."

While it was quite often that Mayors would pass judgment upon crimes in most small communities, Highleaf was far from small, but not at all big. As Mayor Middleton had put it in one of his long winded but ever poetic mid-summer's festival speeches, "We meager people of this humbly-meager township do well to see the failures of the metropolis and the greatness of the hamlets". Highleaf had its magistrate and it's judge and even it's guardsmen, but it was no match for a city the likes of Pinewall to the East or even Dun Moraspian in the North. King’s Peak was the closest of cities with major authority, but even that was a two day hike even when taking the shortcut through the Deadwoods to the North-West. Mayor Middleton put the mouthpiece of his pipe back between his lips, sucking softly on the wooden tube as he thought for a long moment before looking back to Agnar with a strong gaze.

“Agatha Oakeyes, I hereby sentence you to serve as tutor and lady-in-waiting to my children for the next two months. During this time, you will serve them with all the patience of your lineage and hopefully teach them of the necessity of manners and respect.”

Agatha could feel her heart begin to race as she gripped tightly at the air by her sides, her fists clenching around invisible, incorporeal clubs that she wished would manifest physically for a moment. Her anger subsided almost immediately as her fathers calm, collected voice filled her ears, “Hah! A wise man’s punishment if I ever heard one, Charles! Both sides benefit from the other, but no one really loses anything save for her sanity! Bwahaha!!”

The old badger’s booming laughter filled the house as the aging hare nodded with a satisfied smile, “Oh! But it will be even better than that. Agatha, dear, I’ll pay you for every day of work, I promise you that… You’ll not come out of this experience empty-handed, but I want you to also try and teach my children some… Errr… Self-defense…”

Agnar’s booming laugh fled the house as he turned his gaze back to the rotund rabbit, “Are you certain of that, Charles? Agatha’s not unprepared or without knowledge of fighting, but don’t you think it a might bit early for your children to learn the ways of war?”

There was a pause in the room, Agatha was still looking between the two old men, seeing who would speak first in the silence of the house, Agnar simply stared into the old hare’s eyes, and Mayor Middleton simply stared back.

“I think it best… These days, with the Wolves coming down from Hound’s Hill, I doubt that anyone would be safe without even a basic knowledge of fighting… Seems like everyday we are drawing closer and closer to war…”

The rabbit’s voice was cut off by a gruff cough from the old badger as he raised a paw to his old friend, “Of course, Charles, she will teach them and keep them safe for now, but now’s not the time to get into the worries of old foxes. What time shall she begin her work?”

As if coming out of a daze, Mayor Middle ton shook his head and looked up to Agnar’s hulking frame one last time before stuttering out a reply to his question, turning his head to Agatha as he spoke, “I expect her… you over promptly at ten, any later and I might be forced to take this matter up with the magistrate.”

Agatha nodded her head then bowed low to Mayor Middleton, “Of course, Mayor, I will be there as the sun is right in the sky.”

Mayor Middleton turned and patted Agatha on the shoulder just as she began to right herself, smiling to her as he passed and lit his pipe with his free hand, “Agatha, I thank you for this. You are a much better person than I could ever be.”

Her eyes flashed a soft glint of annoyance over shadowed by understanding before smiling to the hare, “You do me great honor with your words, I simply hope that I live up to them.”

With that, Mayor Middleton said his goodbye to Agnar and flopped his large feet out of the house, Agatha taking the sudden departure as her chance to heave a sigh of relief and turn back towards her father who was breathing heavily.

“Father?!”

Rushing to his side, Agatha held his paw in her much smaller hands and looked into his eyes as his other paw crossed over his chest, “Urrrk… Damndable rabbit… His yelling about the Magistrate and my baby girl got my heart pumping… Fetch me some water, Honey Suckle.”

Agatha smiled at the nickname, knowing that if her father used her nickname rather than her real name it meant he was far from being angry or upset with her. She quickly walked towards the rather deeply dug cavern of a room that served as the kitchen and pulled from a shelf a clay pot with a leather handle strapped around it’s lid, noting that it’s contents were almost completely full as she brought it into the dining room where her father sat in a large arm chair, “Father! You haven’t been taking the medicine that Father Andrew prepared for you!”

The old badger scoffed at the mention of medicine, patting his chest with a fist before letting out a cough, “This badger is strong enough to take on five hundred wolves without breaking a sweat! He doesn’t need medicine, he need battle!”

Agatha rolled her eyes at the stubborn nature of her father, knowing that she had inherited this dreadful side of her father and mother with double it’s effectiveness as she pressed the jug of medicine into the large paw of her father, “Drink up, you old fool, that’s what you told Father Andrew when he was here last time, and what happened?”

The two looked to each other and spoke the exact same thing at the exact same time, “He gave me medicine.”

Both badgers chuckled at their awkward relationship as Agatha gently rubbed a clawed paw through her father’s thick grey fur on the back of his arm, “Come on now, Papa, you have to drink the medicine… For me.”

Now there was a moment of silence as father and daughter smiled at one another with the love only such devoted of fathers have for such caring of daughters and vice-versa, till Agnar heaved a heavy sigh and smiled, “Aye, you know, Honey Suckle, you remind me more and more everyday of your mother. Ancestors rest her spirit. I hope you find a good man one day, one that will take better care of you than your father did of your mother…”

Agatha’s paw caressed her father’s paw, consoling the old badger as she shook her head, “Now, now, none of that, you old fool, you know what happens when you start crying…”

Agnar raised the jug of medicine to his lips and tossed it back into his mouth, drinking the bitter juice with a disgusted look contorted across his face as he attempted to shake the taste from his mouth by shaking his whole head. Agatha giggled at her father before patting the back of his paw and turning back away from him, wiping her eyes free of the tears that had begun to gather just in her eyelids.

“Agatha, I want you to teach those children everything I taught you, but I want you to do one thing… I want you to teach them The Way of the Sword; I fear that teaching them The Way of the Stone will only get them hurt if they do try to learn it…”

Agatha turned on her heels, staring at her father with a look of slight disbelief as she heard her father coddling the two hellions of Highleaf. “Are you sure? The Way of the Stone will be much easier…”

Agnar’s booming voice rose up as he shot a silencing glance to Agatha, “Do as I say, Agatha!”

Agatha took a step back, bumping her backside against the wooden table in the center of the room as she stared up at her father’s hulking form before he continued what he was saying earlier, “The Way of the Stone is for us Badgers, only we are strong enough to handle it, but Rabbits… They are weak, better suited for arrows and swords than for maces, axes, and hammers. Now, off to bed, Honey Suckle.”

Agatha lowered her gaze from her father’s and gave a nod, “Yes, Papa, good night.”

Agnar heaved a soft sigh of weariness as he watched his only daughter descend the ladder next to the entryway down to her room under the roots of the live oak, “Good night, Honey Suckle.”

Many miles away, in King’s Peak, trouble seemed to already be brewing as the moon rose high in the night sky, King Peter VI, the Swift, lay in his room, his head resting upon a pillow of the finest of silks as his grey fur was cloaked in the wolf skin blankets of his royal bed. His dreams plagued of terrible sights: of villages burning, his citizens being slaughted by wolves, but even worse than that, he also dreamt of his youngest son, Demeter, running for his life. The old Fox-King trembled and shook before finally jolting awake and looking to the heavy pine doors of his bedchamber, his wife, Scarlett starting awake just as he did comforted him with a nuzzle of her head against her King’s neck, her soft voice whispering soft words to him as he breathed heavily, “It’s nothing but a dream, my King, nothing at all but night terrors…”

King Peter sat on the edge of his bed and heaved a heavy sigh before looking up to his wife’s face, “I’m sorry, my Queen, but it just all seemed so real and so frightening…”

There was a moment of silence as the two embraced one another, the moon filtering in through the slender window granting enough light to see the worry in King Peter’s eyes before his wife buried his head in the fur of her chest and whispered softly into his ear, “Tell me what was so frightening in your dream, my love.”

King Peter thought a moment before pulling his head from his wife’s loving bosom and stared her in the eyes, adoring those beautiful green eyes that sparkled like emeralds in any light at all, the reason he had fallen in love with her in the first place, and smiled.

“I dreamt that my kingdom was burning, that my citizens were being slaughtered like sheep, and that my Demeter was in danger.”

Queen Scarlett giggled as she stared down into her husband’s blue eyes and shook her head, “Who in all of Esterel, would dare strike at the Kingdom of Peter Arimus the Swift, the sixth of his name? We are the mightiest in the land, our armies could strike at any point we choose in a matter of days.”

King Peter’s brow furled as he lowered his gaze to the stones just past his wife’s body, his mind thinking diligently at the thoughts that had been produced by his dream before looking back up to his wife, “The Wolves of Hound’s Hill.”