Displacement

The river ran backwards on the day the queen vanished. It had been the worst day of Iver Puck’s life.

He remembered it like it was yesterday. The disappearance of the sovereign had changed many things, but the changing course of the water was what had altered his life forever.

“Do you remember? Wasn’t that the strangest thing?” Bixby clapped him on the back and startled Iver’s eyes open. An image of his father’s body, drowned, ashen, dripping wet, dissolved into the face of his grinning friend.

Iver took in Bix’s raggedy ginger beard, the dried soup collecting as a crust at the corners of his smile, and let out a deep breath. “Yeah. Strangest thing. Where were you when it happened??” He let Bixby launch into a branching harangue of recollections and gesticulations while, himself, lapsing back into silence.

The disappearance of their queen had resulted in several great disturbances of nature, apart from the reversing river. What had caused it? Foreign magics? Those were known to have existed at one point in history. Unnatural sciences at work so greatly attuned to their queen’s presence that nature rioted at her removal from the throne? Iver wondered if others out there had been as impacted as he’d been by the change.

The person he’d been before it had happened wouldn’t have been caught dead with a person like Bixby. Such a raucous laugher and slovenly eater, a man who cursed like a sun-browned merchant after dropping a hammer on his toe? Iver had been too proud and headstrong. Spotlessness, order and duty were what he had lived for. Surely such arrogance in its part had driven him to the peaks over which one crests before tumbling back down to reality’s reserve. Grief had its way of altering pride and coagulating it into the crux of shame. Now, Iver couldn’t imagine seasons passing without the presence of the talkative redhead.

Their first real interaction had been an altercation. Not for any good reason. An inebriated Iver, not long after the queen had vanished, had taken a path that whatever of his mind was left remembered as the way home. But it was home no longer. Bixby, naturally helpful even when there was nothing in it for him, had called out to him across the road. A little uncertainly at first, and then louder when Iver had ignored him. “Hey, Puck! You’re staying at Ida’s Way, remember?” Innocent words with no ill intent.

“M'goin homm,” Iver had slurred.

Thinking back on it, Iver wasn’t completely sure whether Bixby had known to spare him of the sight of the ravaged waterwheel, of the defeated state of the Puck’s damaged home. But he’d known enough to carry a kicking, screaming, gagging and punching Iver back to Ida’s Way, each of them sustaining a black eye in the process.

The image of his father flashed before Iver’s eyes again. He mentally reduced Bixby’s chatter to a drone hovering at the back of his head and this time intentionally tuned into the hum of the tavern around them.

A long day of restorative work at the gristmill having come and gone, he and Bix had traipsed into the local slosh-house after near twelve hours exposed to November cold, intent on eating and drinking some warmth into their bones. This wet evening, it appeared they weren’t the only ones.

A cluster of farmers sat with the blacksmith and his apprentice Lane, a bald woman with a burn scar down the left strip of her cheek and right down to the collarbone. They were playing cards in groups, trading stories and suggestions on improvements to each other’s ways of work. One farmer, as Iver watched, swore loudly and threw his hand of cards onto the table.

A pair of traveling traders were perched up at the bar drinking in silence, their hoods drawn back to show weather-worn, pockmarked faces from their journeys. A few stools down from them, Iver’s cousin Markus leaned against the counter. Iver could tell the honey-haired woman beside him was toying with his affections out of boredom. Markus would be going home alone, to the house his parents had left him when they’d died during the earthly rebellion.

The queen had never reappeared.

The queen consort, Queen Ellane, had ruled in her stead for the three years since, insisting that their monarch would return. The courtiers and the royal council spoke in their chambers long and hard about the wisdom of this; Queen Ellane had never been an intended successor to the crown, and whispers had long been bandied about the twin princes to the crown. As it was, the queen consort had stabilized the kingdom much as she could during the years after her wife’s disappearance. It would seem very strange to be ruled by either prince, neither of whom seemed to exhibit political skill.

Iver blanched, as the realization that Bixby had stopped speaking washed over him. “Huh?”

Again, the ginger beard slid back into focus. “You know, sometimes I feel like you don’t listen to a word I say.” Bixby's expression was good-humored.

Iver ducked his head and hid behind a spoonful of soup, his cheeks growing hot. He swallowed. “That’s cause you take a mile to get to where you’re going. Can’t blame a man for losing focus when a destination isn’t in sight.”

“Guess not.” Bixby gave a full-bellied sigh and leaned back in his chair, swiveling to prop his feet up against the seat next to him. Mud from his boots slid down his soles and onto the wood. Iver wished he would put them down. “But I remembered.”

“Remembered what?”

“Where I was when the queen died.”

“Nobody knows she’s dead.”

“She’s as good as. Dunno what they’re thinking not just giving the title to highness Ellane.” Bixby scratched at the back of his head and sniffed his fingers. “Ugh. There’s mud mixed up in there too. You wanting to head home soon?”

“No, I’ll wait a bit. You can go on.” Iver’s eyes darted back over to the group playing cards. “I need to talk to Lane about those bellows. Clay mentioned he’s interested in setting up a wheel for the smith. Just don’t know if we can take that on while we’re fixing the…”

“Oi!” Each of them started and looked over Bixby’s shoulder. A thin man was advancing upon them, shaking a dirty dishrag. Denard, the tavern owner, with a seeding bald spot nested above thinning black hair, squawked with anger. “Feet off the chair, Bixby!” He threw the rag and Bixby caught it, looked for a clean corner and wiped his beard on it. “Thanks, Denard!”

“You’ll be cleaning that up, Bixby, or I’ll serve it back to you in your next beer!”

A ripple of laughter passed through the tavern. Iver grinned with them, swallowing the last of his dinner and lowering his spoon. Bixby rolled his eyes and took a few half-hearted swipes at the victimized chair. “You betcha, Denard.”

Iver sat up and stretched. The muscles in his back groaned silently as they shifted beneath his skin, hard-worked sinews that glowed with sore heat. “See you tomorrow?” He said to the still swabbing Bixby. His friend nodded and bade him farewell. Iver stood and crossed to where the cardplayers huddled.

Pushing between a few chairs, he knelt down beside Lane – on the side unscarred – and tapped her shoulder. She smiled when she looked at him. “You here to play, or talk shop?” She knew there’d rarely be any other reason for him to come over. There might have been at one point, but since taking on the gristmill all thoughts of ‘anything else’ had since faded away.

He nodded to the cards in her hand. “You winnin’?”

“Clay knows all my tricks, I’ve gotta learn some new ones. You’re here about those bellows then.” She tossed a card into the pile ahead of her, to a miserable groan from some around the table.

“Yeah. Listen, we can get it done, but we can’t taken on another project until we’re finished the gristmill.”

Lane’s brows lowered. “And how long will that take? Are you worried about money? The town will pay. It’s an investment, expanding the smithy.”

“I’d say the gristmill’s about six months away.” Even as his guts churned to admit it, he knew he was right. The end would come about sooner or later. They would have to test the wheel.

“That’s a long time.” The apprentice blew out a concerned breath, her cheeks ballooning from its force. “Don’t know if we can wait that long.”

“You’ll have to,” Iver shrugged unhelpfully, “we’re the only waterwheelers in town.”

“And there’s no way to pause work on the gristmill?”

He shook his head. Beside them, Clay picked up a card and grinned widely, revealing a missing canine. Nobody ever knew what that smile meant. Some nights the burly blacksmith intentionally played to lose. His glee was infectious, and everyone smiled with him whether conscious of it or not. Iver rubbed at a sore spot on the back of his neck. “We’re at an important step of the build, and we’ve only got the carpenter’s guild helping for the next few weeks. They can’t pause with us.”

“Guess that’s it then.” Lane paused to examine her cards and tossed another one into center table with a frown.

“What’s it?” Iver leaned in to look at what was at stake. Further down the table sat a plump looking bag of what he thought to be gold, a compass, an army knife and a brass badge.

“We’ll have to wait. We’re not hiring out-town for this, it’s gotta be local or bust.” Lane smiled half-heartedly up at him. “Even if it means we’ll lose some work in the meantime.”

“With the wheel we can build you, you’ll get more work than you can handle,” Iver said.

“That’d better be a promise boy,” Clay muttered, and played his final hand. Lane swore. The farmers swore. Denard swore that he’d chuck the lot of them out of his establishment if they didn’t keep their voices down.

Iver left a small tip behind, enough that it earned him a smile from the thin-lipped tavern owner. The relationship between a barkeep and his clients was sacred. Denard had served him plenty of food and spirits over the years, particularly in the aftermath of Queen Hinh’s disappearance. After losing his father, Iver had drank more than he’d slept, ate, or lived. The general support of the townsfolk along with lessons he’d needed to learn along the way had brought him through it, but not so much as the tough love of the balding man with the dirty dishrag. He’d kept Iver from drowning in tears.

Shrugging his coat on, he buttoned himself right up to the chin and pulled his cap tightly on before pushing outside.

The path back to what he called home nowadays wasn’t far. Bixby would have had to walk past him to get to his own. A room in the boarding house right next to Ida’s Way, managed by a stout man with an uncommonly fat upper lip.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough. As he was, he didn’t require much but what strength he had in him. And that in itself was altogether waning too frequently for his own comfort. Bixby had told him he needed to eat more, but it was still difficult. The restoration of the gristmill was a direct confrontation of every terror Iver had ever felt. It made his palms sweat to think about it.

Iver wiped his hands on his pants and turned one corner, and then another. Inwardly, he began to berate himself. Every shadow was becoming a threat, quickening the beat of his heart, and he knew it had all to do with his earlier thoughts of the past. Maybe he should have considered walking with Bixby. He inhaled, held the air, and then blew it out into the cold air to rise as a fog. He was jumpy. He was afraid to close his eyes.

He hastened his steps a little as he neared the boarding house. To be indoors again would suppress some of the hauntings trying to force their way back into his mind. Iver tried to keep from blinking so the images would stay away.

Whispers. His father's shouts.

His heartbeat became a thundering, a roaring in his ears. The more attention he paid to it, the more it became the sound of rushing water, and panic vignetted his vision.

Water. Rushing water. Backwards, rushing, pouring, flooding—

The Ida Way sign hanging out before the door squeaked, pushed by the evening breeze.

Crunching wood. Screeching. Breaking—

Covering his ears, Iver broke into a dash for the last hundred feet, and didn’t breathe again until he’d darted into the lobby of the boarding house and slammed the door shut behind him.

“What the—!” Grumman and his lip poked out from his office and peered down the hall. “Puck, are you alright?”

“Yes,” Iver panted, hands on his knees. “Fine, Grumman. Sorry.” He straightened and tried to smile. “Bit chilly out, didn’t want to let the cold air in.”

“Ah, well…” The piggish man nodded. “Quite. There’s mail for you.” He waved a short arm in the direction of the lobby mailbox and disappeared again, leaving Iver to stare helplessly at the wall and contemplate the darkness he’d ascend the stairs to.

He wouldn’t sleep tonight. Not with grisly images of his loved ones circulating in his brain. Typical. The days he worked the hardest to fix what was broken, the days he hoped he’d be so tired as to forget, were when they returned to him.

The altered flow of the river meant little to those who didn’t live by the shore, but to him it meant everything. Iver pushed himself up the stairs, fumbling in his pocket for his key. The thought of returning to the mill the next day to begin another round of restorative work filled him with mixed dread and determination.

After he’d lit the lamps in his room and thrown his dirty clothes down by the tub, Iver settled down with his back against his bed and stared out of a dirty window into the night. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and brought his knees to his chest, and tried to keep his eyes open.

Maybe when it was all over everything would fade away. Maybe when the work had been completed his nightmares and terror would graciously acknowledge his work and leave him to whatever sense he had left.

But, as did the fear linger, so too did the question that lodged itself in a very private corner of his mind: What if, after everything was finally mended and the world had become accustomed to the change in nature, the vanished queen returned?