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They came to the village one wild winter night, when a storm rolled through that couldn't decide if it was thunder or snow, the kind you don't see but once every thirty years. Makes this blizzard look like a little spring rain.
I know, right, it's hard to believe? But I'm telling the truth.
So on this crazy winter night I hear someone come a-knocking, and I open the door to a scrawny guy with a desperate look in his eyes, the kind you get when you're hanging by one finger off the edge of a cliff and you'd do anything for whoever pulled you up. He was shaking like a wind chime, and he said something like, "Look, look, I know I look crazy, and I know I've got these weird horns, but don't hold it against me, my little sister's sick."
I don't remember exactly what he said, how he said it. He has that funny accent of his that sounds like something out of a two-hundred-year-old story or whatever. But that was the gist of it, and well, I can't abide leaving someone's kid brother or sister out sick in a thundersnow or any snow for that matter, you hear? So I tossed on my coat and Shila put some more wood and stew on the fire, and I followed him out into it. It was a bad night, I tell you. Flakes as big as your thumb, and every so often we'd hear the thunder rumbling. But he's a hunter and a tracker and I think he always has been, and he lead us right to Ico and Yorda. They were, I think... oh, fifteen, sixteen at the time?
Oh, right, you wouldn't have seen them on account of their living on the other side of town. Ico's the man of the house, has horns like Wander, but they're smaller, maybe on account of his being younger. They've got one boy who has these little nubs like a goat kid or a baby calf. Always completely full of beans, he is, lots more outgoing than the rest of his family.
But anyway. There they were, huddled together in the lee of a tree, which wasn't giving them much shelter. Wander said one thing to Ico that I understood, something like "Come on, up up up, I got us some help," then something else in his and Yorda's language. Never have found out exactly where they all came from, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, Ico gets up and poor Yorda was barely responding right then; Wander ended up scooping her up and carrying her like a princess while I took 'em all back to the house.
As you can imagine, Shila just doted on Yorda, you know? Let our youngest sleep in our room again for a little so's she could have his bed. I mean, I didn't object to laying out some spare blankets for him either; Yorda was pale as death and breathing all shallow. I talked to the men as much as I could while Shila was seeing to her; I got, ha, maybe ten words out of the both of them. They were both scared stiff and trying to hide it, just as much because of them being 'round a bunch of strangers as because of how sick Yorda was. Just looking at those three you could tell they'd been wrung out and were probably running from something.
I didn't ask about the horns; figured it could wait until later. I did ask for names. Never forgot that. Ico gave his easy, and he gave Yorda's easy, too, on account of how sick she was of course, but Wander got real quiet. Even more than he had been. You know what he said? He said, "I don't have a name."
I told him, "Well, shoot, can't just call you 'hey you' all the time."
And he was quiet for a while again before saying, "You can use 'Wander' if you need something." So I guess he still doesn't have a name, but that's what everyone around here's always called him. I still don't understand it, but I guess it's a thing in some countries. Gods getting smitey enough to kill someone's name, usually if they do something heinous or just tick them off, I guess.
Anyway. Whatever his name is or isn't, I don't think Wander slept a wink that first night. At any rate he was sat up next to Yorda's bed, meaning my youngest's bed, wrapped in a bearfur when I left him, and he was still sat up in the exact same place the next morning. And still super twitchy.
I don't recall exactly what old Sonal the healer said was wrong with her. Some kind of pneumonia, I think it was. First she said it might take her a week or so to recover, but that passed, and we moved her to the healer's house and she said it might take another week. But that passed, then three weeks, and soon enough she was laid up most of the season. And I have to tell you, that had been a bad year anyway. We were all on lean times ourselves, and there was murmuring from the gossips, you know? I won't name names, they know who they are. But there was murmuring and mumbling that we didn't need three more mouths to feed, especially not when two of them were attached to heads with horns like that and the one who wasn't was so sick.
The mayor caught wind of it, and I found out later he pulled Wander aside - he seemed to be their leader on account of being the big brother, right? - and laid it out for him. And it took a couple of days, but soon enough he'd laid out a big old elk stag for us.
Damnedest thing you ever saw. Didn't even need a sled to haul it back, just went out, shot it, and came back carrying it on his shoulder. And it was a big deer. Still don't know where he found it, or how he'd found it; the game had been getting away from even our best and we were down to eating our breeding stock. So anyway, that shut the gossips up. For the winter, anyway, while Yorda was recuperating. Wander and Ico stayed with her as much as they could, but they did odd jobs for the whole village to earn their keep. Mostly Ico did the jobs in the village, though Wander helped when he wasn't out hunting for us.
By the end of the season most people were more charitable towards the three of them, but you know, it's a small village and we don't get much traffic. The mumbling started back up again, like, who were these three, really? What was with the horns? Why'd they just happen to show up during the worst storm in the worst winter anyone could remember? And what had set them a-running? No name on the big brother, you know, that's a bad business in some places. What if they were cursed, or murderers, or something? Blah blah blah.
So our mayor called a village meeting to have them plead their case. I think he was a little worried that if they didn't, some of the gossips would take it into their heads to do something wicked, even if they ended up heading back on the road.
Wander did most of the talking. And I tell you, he's shy and he doesn't make friends easy, but when he gets a-going, he's hard to stop listening to. He admitted he hadn't quite been straight with everyone when he said he was Yorda's big brother and Ico was some fella down on his luck that they'd picked up. I mean, the bit about Ico was true, but Wander wasn't Yorda's big brother, he was in fact her father. And yeah, he said, that's gotta look weird since he looks maybe five years her elder, how's that work?
Well, he said, a long time ago - a really long time ago - he'd struck some bargain with a foreign god called Dormin. He didn't say what the bargain was or even what the terms were or anything, just that he had, and it sounded like it was painful to even say that much. But something about it got messed up and he got his soul all mixed up with this Dormin, and it made it so he has those horns and he doesn't age. From what he said, Ico's a little mixed up with Dormin, too, so he has horns, but he doesn't have as big a connection as Wander or something, so he ages like normal.
None of us had heard of such a god before, but later the healer backed him up. She's mostly the one who handles god-business here, you know, one of her jobs, and she said our gods backed up the story. And everyone has heard of weird effects when mortal people ask for divine favours. Anyway, Wander says, I'm a follower of Dormin, all three of us are, They're all right, but They're not popular back in their homeland, so I guess they got run out of one too many towns for it and ended up all the way out here. That's why they'd been living rough and it took Yorda getting sick and the thundersnow to get them to ask for help.
I got the feeling later that maybe they were running from Yorda's mother, too. All they've ever said anywhere I've heard is that she's dead and then they change the subject. Maybe that's what got them wandering away from where Dormin's worshipped, who knows; I've never pried at it.
Either way, maybe what explanation we got left us more mysteries, but it explained too much for anyone to want to run them out of town anymore, especially after several people, myself included, piped in with how hard they'd been working over that awful winter. We ended up building them a house, the one Ico and Yorda and their boy live in, and Wander did too at first, but I guess he's just a lone wolf or something. Gets twitchy living with people, even family. So that's why he's got that little cabin a bit away from everyone these days.
So, I mean, yeah, I see why he kind of made you nervous when you bumped into him. He can be a little off-putting if you don't know him, you know, gives the impression he might as soon boil your bones if you cross him or something. I know those bull-horns don't help his first impressions, either. But he doesn't mean any harm. I can tell you that after ten years of him and his family living here, they're completely harmless. Unless you're a game animal, I guess.
Aw, shoot, look at me! I've been jabbering on about local eccentrics and you've got to be on your way in the morning, running those messages. You get some rest, and we'll get you resupplied and on your way as soon as the weather clears itself up a mite.
At least it isn't thundering out there.