Leanne looked on at her husband, trying to see a hint of the weariness that he surely must feel. But there, on his weathered face and in the stubbled set of his jaw, only joy and relief. He was thinner, but then again Adam had never been a heavy man, being borne to leaner southern parents with their dark curls and deep blue-grey eyes. The years had been kind to him; besides from the light grey that swept back from his temples and the slight stoop to his shoulders, his movements were still propelled by the vigour of youth. A sharp nose and a thin mouth gave him a slightly hawkish appearance, one that his son had inherited. His daughters, on the other hand, were fashioned after the image of their northern-borne mother, with light and fair feathers, golden curls and full rosy mouths. They all stood rather tall for their age, though the twins still retained the rotundness of infanthood.

But what Mia might have lacked in physical likeliness to her father, she more than made up for in every other aspect. Lively, quick of eye, keen and easily excitable, she had been a difficult child to keep out of trouble. Jun had always been more silent in comparison, quietly looking on at the playfulness of his sisters, ever ready to intercede in their foolish behaviour. Balanced and serious, Leanne would not know how she would have raised her daughters without him. They twins seemed to have taken after their elder sister more so than either of their parents. The three girls were always together, on one adventure or another, always finding themselves in the most impossible situations. Leanne still remembered vividly the time when they had failed to return home after dark, and the entire village had set out to look for them. It was eventually Jun who had found them trapped in the hollow of a tree they had managed to squirm into, far out on the edge of their isle. Whenever they had gotten lost, it was only ever Jun who could find them. Jun was the one that kept Leanne together when Adam was away.

But finally, Jun could take a break from reining in his sisters, now that they were together again. A stiffness that Leanne had not noticed in her shoulders began to melt away at the sight of Adam sitting in his old oaken chair, surrounded by their children. But with every reunion, so would there be the inevitability of another departure. No, no. Leanne pushed the thought into the darkest corner of her mind. She would allow herself this one perfect night, when the fire cracked merrily, the children were content to sit and stare at their father, and even the sheeting rain seemed to have lightened to a gentle, happy tapping against the window panes.

‘What have you brought us this time Father?’

‘What was Vincidane like? Did you see any snow? Magic? Dragons?’

‘Were there really flowers everywhere? Even in the winter snow?

‘Were there knights there? Ones with white horses? And shining shields?’

Adam laughed easily at their eagerness, and drew them closer to him. This was his favoured part of his travels, watching their eyes light up as he recalled what was to them, the wondrous and infinite world beyond their little village. He drew from his satchel a package carefully wrapped in oil cloth and bound with strong hemp chords while the children danced excitedly around him. The chord snapped with an expectant twang under the sharp of the knife; the children leaned in. the oil cloth fell away to reveal an old wooden chest studded with metal bolts, clasped shut with leather buckles. It had the musty smell of dust and mothballs.

Pandemonium - Homecoming

In some ways, Leanne supposed, she would have had a childhood that was better than the ones her children would ever have. They would never have want for food and shelter, betterment of the mind, or the balanced sensibility that came with careful culture. They had the luxuries they needed, and whatever ones her husband could provide for them beside. Indeed, their gowns, and toys and books were gifts given only in stories in her childhood. All the same, she could not wonder, but for all the hunger, and cold winters, and thirsting summers, if it was worth giving up all the little wonders too. One of her favourite memories, often visited in times of grief or homesickness, was of the county fair that once had run late, into the wet month of August. The ground had been a squelchy sop of brown leaf litter, manure and mud instead of its usual sawdust. The sky had been a steely grey, pregnant with storm clouds. The usually bright cobblestones of the town square had been washed to a dull brown. But even so, the rain was not like the rain they had now, sheeting waves of it flattening grass and tree, washing clear the fields and drowning out the landscape.

After the rains, grasses that had dried in the summer heat and withered with the first frosts of autumn had once again peaked green shoots through the cracks of the stones underfoot. It was like spring come again, and even in the rain, the village had danced in the square, splashing in time to the tinkering of bells and toot of trumpets. The air had smelt earthy, the rain refreshing, and the hot bowls of soup around the bonfire at the end of the night so much warmer than the brightest blazing ingle. When the sun finally cracked through the clouds on the last day, the evening light slanting through the western woods had set the glimmering, quivering dew that showered the fair on fire.  It was decades since Leanne had last seen a fair, and she wondered if she would ever see one again. Everyone had told her that her children would be much happier now in this new world of theirs, strangers to poverty, strangers to envy, enemies of exuberant excess. However, a part of her mourned for the fact that her girls would never know to clasp that first jewelled brooch from a lover just above the heart or that her boys would never know the nervousness of that first gift giving. They had told her it was better this way, but she had never been convinced. The orderly parade of small children clad in grey woollen stockings trudging wetly through the streets only added to her doubts. Leanne bustled towards the linen cupboards- time to lay down some pre-emptive towels before childish boot-prints covered her newly varnished floors.

The children came in dripping and muddy from ankle down, and one by one were ushered directly to baths. Despites their best efforts, no amount of oilskin cloaks could keep out the rain, and so, many people had abandoned the effort entirely. Everywhere, the smell of wet wool. Leanne had tried everything from scented sandalwood to orange flower, with no luck, and in the end, had simply resorted to confining wool to the back of the house, a little more firewood, and layers of linen and furs inside the house instead. God, she really hoped Adam could bring back some soft leather, or cotton this time. The smell of sheep had begun to ingrain itself into her skin, until even veal had begun to taste like mutton. When each child had been rinsed, scrubbed, dried and dressed, she had set the table with Harriet, the cook, who loaded a huge steaming bowl of beef stew into the centre. No one took note of the empty chair at the head of the table, and the symphonic clatter of cutlery against tableware began. Even now, Leanne marvelled at the ability of such a simple affair as supper to descend into an utter cacophony in a matter of moments, should her attention ever lapse. The children were so engrossed in attacking the stew, that at first, not one noticed that someone new was muddying the rug in front of their door. 

‘Father!’

It was Mia, as always, who spotted him first, dripping in an oiled overcoat, face wound in a scarf and shaded by a broad hat. But there was no mistaking the hunch of the broad shoulders, the set of the deep blue eyes or the wild wave of blue-black hair of Leanne’s husband. In a few frenzied seconds, the table had been abandoned and the family clamoured around him. Only Jun hovered at a respectable distance, regarding his father with keen observation. The two twins, Polly and Cass, had attached themselves, with their white smocks, to their father’s knees. Mia was dragging him by the arm to the table, while helping him pull off the hat and cloak. Cook Harriet had pulled off his boots and set them by the fire to dry while old grandmother Kat tottered towards her usual place by the fire to folder her son into her frail arms.

For Leanne, she was content just to watch their table be completed for the first time in months. 

Pandemonium - Prologue

‘Sad is the man who would fall, with none to mourn him’

It had not stopped raining for twenty days. Big fat drops pelted from the sky and carved through the soft earth, carrying away the topsoil until swollen rivers had run yellow and brown. Others swelled their banks, washing away entire villages in the night, taking houses, people and livestock indiscriminately. Adam had watched helplessly as a herd of sheep were pressed ever tighter on a shrinking island surrounded by the muddy currents, until one by one they had been picked off, swept away and drowned. If he ventured from the inn now, he would no doubt share the same fate. Even as he stood well sheltered under the eaves, he could feel the cold damp spray on his face with each breath of wind. He was late.

                At first he had even welcomed the damned weather, thinking it would be a brief relief from the sweltering summer. But then the hard dirt beneath his feet had begun to ooze and stick, leaving sharp imprints of his every step. The incessant pattering of droplets on the leaf litter had sounded to him like the pitter-patter of a thousand following feet. Every shadow in the hazy distance hid an enemy. At night he shivered in the cold. In the day he trudged unseeing through the damp. A typhoon is no friend to a traveler, just his luck.

                Adam knew he couldn’t stay long in this inn, a tempting prospect as it was. In the short week that he rain had started, even straw mattresses, wooden crate tables and musty sawdust floors had become a small luxury. Plus, there was fire, and hot food. Any traveller who left now would draw the surprise, and the remembrance, of the entire inn. Best to lay low. But he could not help but dream of walking through the door of his own house, to the warmth of his wife’s arms, his children’s laughter and the huge fireplace crackling away. It was only a day’s walk to the border, and then only a night’s travel back to all that he held dear. He could make it, he’s walked the same paths a thousand times. Each step replayed in his mind, each turn, each fording, he knew them all. And yet, every day, he still stood on the same spot on the veranda, looking out into the sheeting rain. Soon. Soon.

***

Mia watched the rain fall outside of her window and pressed her nose to the rivulets running down the glass. If she squinted, the warped windows transformed into landscapes of mountains and the streams running through them into the familiar rivers of their delta home. She could picture her father slowly picking his way through the distant Alps at the top of the window, before being swept up by the rain, down, down and back to her. She rubbed the mist of her breath off the panes. She did not want to miss that first glimpse of him through the trees.

                Leanne watched her eldest daughter tuck her slender legs underneath her skirts and rest her head back against the frame in the alcove. She had always been the one who watched with the most vigilance, while the rest of the family had accepted it for a fact that her husband would walk through that door when he is well and ready, and not a second before. But it was Mia who watched day after day staring off into the encroaching trees when the letters came telling them he was heading home. Leanne feared the encroaching trees would simply swallow her slender little daughter up someday, just as it did her father. Still, the latest letter had only come a week before, and it would be moons until they set his place at the table for supper. Until then, lamps still need to be lit, children washed and supper still needs to be served.

                While her husband had managed to command silence and order at the table, meals had always been a pandemonium without him. Leanne, red faced and puffing was trying to feed baby Zach in one hand whilst untangling the twins with the other. Mia was trying to sneak tid bits to Teddy the puppy, while he whined and licked her fingers with a coarse tongue, before nuzzling his snout between her feet. So much for no animals at the table, but at this moment the twins had started flinging broiled cabbage between them. Their laughter punctuated with squeals of disgust as the green globs settled in two mops of golden hair and stained their satin smocks. Her eldest boy, Junius, sat straight backed in the great oak chair between them and ate with a solemn dignity unbefitting his thirteen years. Even as she wrestled the twins apart and back into their chairs, Leanne found herself wishing her husband would reappear in her arms so that she might watch his eyes bulge as she strangled him. Just as quickly, the wave of anger passed into longing. She gathered up her skirts and stepped over the dog, taking her place at the head of the table. Quietly, she began to eat amidst the din.

***

‘You know that your father is a criminal right?’

‘What do you know?’

‘My mum said she saw your dad sneaking around in the middle of the night, and had a great big rucksack over his shoulder bulging with bad things! He’s going to get a-arr-arrested’

‘Well your mum’s a liar, my dad is a trader! He goes to other countries and brings back food for us’

‘Ha, a smuggler more like. You’re a thief too!... Ah!’

Mia looked at the thin boy splattered in the mud, his plain cotton overalls stained gravy brown. Bits of twigs stuck in his hair, and a leaf was caught between his lips. He blew it out, and proceeded to smudge much over his eyes as he cried. Mia felt oddly ashamed of herself, standing over the boy like that. Though he was a year older, she felt like it was her baby brother she had pushed into the puddle. She watched him sob for a while, but his shrill cries and hiccoughing began to grow tedious very quickly. She turned from the half muttered insults and headed up her veranda. Mia could never understand why her mother wanted her to play with the neighbour’s son so much, she much rather enjoyed her books and the company of her siblings. At least she didn’t have to put up with the insults of her father, whom she adored.

                It was the same at school. When the schoolmaster would deliver his daily speech about the evils of excess, the devils within all humans that make us all greedy, wanting more, more, more by taking from those who do not have, those who drink the blood of their peers and line their pockets with the skin of others, there would be the odd snigger and nudge directed her way. Her teacher didn’t like her much either. She’d always be picked as an example, paraded in front of her school if her hair ties were too colourful, her faux leather shoes too real, her jacket too new or her bag too big. She’ll grow up to be a consumerist, they had said, a vane, shallow and selfish person who gives in to their own hedonistic desires at the sacrifice of all else. It was such a waste in a girl so young they said, it wasn’t wholesome. Finding no fault in Mia herself, a cloud of speculation and rumour had surrounded her family ever since. But Mia had never quite enjoyed talking to the people around her anyway, so it was no great loss for her that they kept their distance from then on.

***

                Junius, or Jun, as everyone called him, believed himself to be a sensible child. From his earliest youth, his father had been absent, often for months at a time, and had only spent short weeks before leaving again. While he loved his father very much, and he truly did, he grew up knowing that he would have to fill the chink where his father should have been. His place was in the home, with his mother and his siblings. His duty was to help his mother tend the field; adhere to his studies, and to join a guild when he became of age in order to pursue a life skill. And yet, deep down, he was a romantic too. A question that had plagued him since he knew how to question that never left his mind. What kind of occupation had so enraptured his father that overwhelmed even the desire for the warmth of home? Though he was told that his father was a merchant he was too old to be fooled by that. The big families that had come discreetly through their doors in coaches, clinking with gold and left with heavy trunks and a lighter purse had informed him otherwise. His father was no ordinary trader.

His home was different too. While on the surface, it was modelled after the bare hovel standard of sawdust floors, rough wooden furniture and stuffed straw, little forbidden luxuries were tucked away in spring cupboards built into the warm brick walls. Pop-up mirrors and small glass trinkets were released from the top of drawers through a simple crank lever. They had down quilts for freezing winter nights. There was even a miniature crystal vase tucked inside a small wooden box for snowdrops in spring. Seven feet under the floor, there was even supposed to be a secret buried cellar. Of course, no one had ever bothered to dig it up. While Jun appreciated these creature comforts and how happy they had made the womenfolk, he could not help but wondering if this was corrupting the principles that had been drummed into their brains since birth. Excess is evil. Squander is sin. Repeat…