Ham looked Martin up and down. This was the most startling thing he had heard. Martin didn’t look crazy. Somehow he knew Ham’s and Hal’s names and had come looking for them. Ham hadn’t known that he would be going on his journey until shortly before he set out, and certainly there was no way that someone from a distant village could know anything about it.
“Why would you be looking for me… for us?”
Martin looked up from beneath his bushy white brows, once again, and seemed to consider. His eyes were different, somehow. As Ham thought about this, he realized that Martin’s eyes were blue. Ham had never seen a Huddler with blue eyes before.
Of all the oddities and strangenesses that he had encountered thus far, this might be the oddest and strangest.
He found himself staring into Martin’s surprising eyes, as if he might find some answers hidden in their depths. He became so intent, so focused, that he was surprised when Martin started speaking…
“I’ll answer your question with a question. Why are you out here wandering around?”
Ham didn’t have to think about this. He knew why he was out wandering around. Although he wouldn’t have called it “wandering around”.
“I had a dream, a vision. In that dream, I saw a man – that man was different from anyone I’d ever known – taller, stronger, more confident. His eyes were a bit different, and his hair was a bit different, and the way he walked – well – it was different too.
“One day, I realized two things about this man. First, that he was called the Lightbringer. Second, I had to go find him.
“I don’t know exactly how I knew, I just knew.”
Martin looked at him from beneath the clouds of his brows, and smiled. “You just knew. And I just knew.”
There was a moment of silence in which Ham suddenly felt… connected to Martin. He looked at Hal, and sure enough Hal’s head was tilted to the left, while he looked at Martin. Then Hal looked toward Ham, and his head tilted to the right. And he gave a small, quiet smile, and said “…just knew.”
The three of them stood there, with the breeze tickling their ears and the birds chirping gently in the trees, while the branches and the leaves of the trees created a sweet soothing sound.
“Martin,” Ham said softly, almost as thought speaking to himself, “just knew…”
“We’re heading east,” said Ham, “looking for the Lightbringer. Since you seem to have found us, are you coming with us?”
Martin cackled gently, straightened his back just a bit, and said “Well, of course, young searcher. Would I come all this way only to say hello and then go home again?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what you’d do,” said Ham, with just a little bit of frustration slipping into his voice. “I don’t know you, and don’t know why you’re here. I don’t even really know why I’m here!”
“Young Ham, you are following a dream, a vision, maybe a message from the gods. There are few higher purposes than that.”
Ham was thunderstruck by this. It had never occurred to him, until that very moment, that his dreams and visions might be messages from gods. Ham sat down in the dirt, somewhat abruptly. Hal, looking confused, sat down beside him. Martin found a rock nearby, and slowly creaked his way down onto that rock.
“Gods? A message from the gods? Could it be?”
“And why not? Who are we to say what does or does not come from the gods? All I know is that I knew I had to find you, I knew your names as soon as I saw you, and I know that I’m supposed to travel with you while you search for the Lightbringer. I can wonder and worry about where that knowing comes from, or I can follow where it leads me. I’m old, I’ve lived a full if somewhat boring life, and I’m ready and willing to follow along.
“Is that okay with you, Young Ham?”
Ham just sat and stared and stared and sat. This was so far outside of what he had ever known that he didn’t even know where to begin.
Gods and knowing and journeying. Just ten days ago, this would never even have occurred to him. And yet, here he was, with Hal – whom he had just met and who kept cocking his head from side to side like a curious bird – and Martin, the oldest man he’d ever seen, who said the queerest things as if to say “isn’t it a nice day?”
And he still felt like he was just Ham, the woodchopper, from Dusk.
