“Well, I’ve got hair to spare, as my ma always said,” laughed Hannah. This wasn’t at all in dispute; Hannah’s hair went down to the small of her back when unfurled, but it was also very voluminous, making her head appear larger than it really was. “And a bear’s a fine creature, but they’re not healers by any stretch.”
“Why was I a cat?” asked Isra, who had been fairly quiet. She now carried two bows on her back. Her pack was full, mostly with whatever pipes were too long to fit within the book.
“I was thinking you were a silent, slinking creature,” said Verity. “A diamond-eyed stalker in the night waiting to pounce at exactly the right moment.”
Isra nodded. She looked lost in thought. Alfric had been pleased that she’d joined the applause.
“What was I?” asked Mizuki. “A dog, a cat, a rabbit, a bear, and a songbird? And I was… the songbird?”
Verity gave a high, delighted giggle, and Mizuki grinned at her.
“Wait,” said Alfric. “I think I actually have matching keys.” He went into a pocket, where he’d put the keys, and pulled them out, handing them to Verity.
She looked through them one by one. “The bird isn’t a songbird, the dog is a wolf, and there’s no bear.”
“What are these?” asked Hannah, coming over to look at the keys. “These were in the dungeon?”
“Henlings,” said Alfric, though he assumed Hannah already knew the term. “There would have been more, but a lot of it was destroyed in the battle, which is a shame. Technically, a henling is anything that’s distinctive enough that it seems like it’s got a story behind it, though of course it doesn’t. Sometimes people use the term broadly, to mean anything mundane you pull out, even something like rope.” He felt a bit of ire toward people who used the broad definition, as they were ruining a perfectly good word.
“I could be a raccoon instead of a bear,” said Hannah, taking one of the keys for herself and passing the rest off to Mizuki.
“Raccoons are noted healers, are they?” asked Verity. “Also, I’d have to completely rework the song.”
“I know nothing about raccoons,” said Hannah. “But if no one tells me otherwise, I’m going to assume they’re masters of the healin’ arts.”
“A raccoon is a clever beast,” said Isra. “More clever than a fox. They’re adaptable and fastidiously clean.”
“Weren’t we just comparing those monsters to raccoons?” asked Mizuki.
“And also, they were
“I’d prefer to keep my mind off it, frankly,” said Verity.
“Better not to dwell on the battle,” added Alfric, though it was going to be hard to avoid, especially if he wanted to interest them in a second dungeon.
“Well,” said Hannah. “I suppose that’ll do.” She took her own key and distributed the rest to the others. “Makes me feel bad about the raccoon comparison.”
“What are these keys
“They’re not ‘to’ anything, they’re just… pulled from the aether,” said Alfric. “That was how it was always described to me, at least. Some people have a fascination with henlings and with things pulled from the dungeons. The books we have might be translated with enough time, attention, and magic, and sometimes there’s readable stuff in them. But they’re not ‘from’ anywhere, they’re just a product of the hex, the conditions, the magic, and the people entering the dungeon, along with other stuff we know nothing about.”
“Kind of creepy, when you think about it,” said Mizuki.
Alfric tightened. “I suppose we don’t need to think about it, then,” he said.
“What do we do with the other two?” asked Hannah, holding the two spare keys, one of a snake, the other of a bee.
“I wasn’t going to do anything with them,” said Alfric. “They’re not really valuable.”
“Well they are
“Parties only go to five,” said Verity, frowning. Alfric was watching her the most closely, because she was the most on the fence, aside from Mizuki. She was also the entire reason he’d come to Pucklechurch.
“Well, I didn’t mean to put a damper on things, but accidents happen, ay?” asked Hannah, being a little too flippant for Alfric’s tastes. “We went through that nicely, if I do say so myself, quick and clean with not too much to patch up after, but it could have been different, ay? We could have lost one. That’s something to keep in mind, when you’re doin’ a thing like this.”
That killed the conversation for a moment and brought silence down on the group. Alfric focused his eyes on his steps while he tried to think about how to change the course of the conversation. There were things he could tell them that would help assure them that they were in safe hands, but revealing too much at this stage, especially with Verity on the fence, seemed like the wrong move.
