Fuzzy indeed. After they fled down the mountain yesterday, they had finally stopped for respite once the lower slopes of Mount Vengeance were well and truly behind them. Ainsworth had asked if Honey could share anything about the curse with him as they mustered up the energy to return to the inn, a white spot in the distance. He did not pester her—she had said it was private, and he respected that—but in the end she found she could talk more openly about it than she thought.
Ainsworth took a deep breath. “My progress with the attic documents is going well, thanks to Ruraidh’s assistance. In my brief inspection, I have found what I believe are diaries. An—extremely!—quick skim revealed a few dates similar to the licensing request I first found, meaning they belong to, I think—”
“They are leather-bound and tied with thin red ribbons?” Honey’s eyes were wide, and a hand shot to her mouth.
“Well, if there were ribbons, they are long gone. But yes, leather-bound, and I believe they belong to Beatrice—”
She jumped down from the wall and turned to him. “I— You have read them?”
“No!” he cried, hoping her accusatory voice would not float over to Ashe. The last thing he needed was another confrontation with her about hurting Honey’s feelings. “I merely—briefly!—inspected a few pages to see what they were. Handwritten—they are difficult to make out—but a few dates were clear as day. That is why I am here. To seek permission to read these diaries and get a firsthand account of the dragon’s curse.”
“And that…counts as research? Reading the musings of someone who is long, long gone?”
Ainsworth grinned. “Indeed. Historians rely on such findings, and scholars in the arts thrive on material such as letters and other correspondence between significant figures.”
“But that’s personal!” Honey said, aghast. “People don’t write letters assuming they will be read by people other than the intended recipient!”
“Well, I suppose. But when there’s public interest…”
He found himself wishing to quickly dispel Honey of the panic-stricken look and the horrors of academic liberty. It was why scholars with strong magical ability, such as Enach, had to go through extra-stringent ethics processes, since they could potentially force someone’s hand to gain access to private materials in the pursuit of their projects. “There is no need for alarm, Honey. I don’t have to read the journals. I can give them to you instead.”
She hesitated. “I…Was my account of the dragon’s curse not enough?”
“It isn’t that!” Ainsworth amended quickly. “And I’m sorry—it must have been difficult to share, and I appreciate that.”
“Oh well. I suppose itwasdifficult to recount, yes.”
Ainsworth resisted the urge to reach out and give her hand a squeeze. He was not even sure if the other staff at the inn knew of the curse—the curse that had split Honey’s grandmother’s self and condemned her to a life trapped within the vicinity of Mount Vengeance.
As the sun set yesterday, Honey had recounted how Beatrice, the founder of the Misnich Inn, had encountered the dragon when she came upon the mountain on her travels.
“She…faced the dragon, then? As an adventurer?” Ainsworth had asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t say she faced it exactly. She…” Honey looked up and closed her eyes. “Lost a bet, or something. It was very foolish.”
“She bet on something with…a dragon?” Ainsworth had sputtered.
“A stranger bet her that he could scale Mount Vengeance faster than she could.”
“You’re joking!” Ainsworth gaped. What a foolish quest!
Honey looked away. “Yup. I presume her pride as an adventurer made her accept the challenge. They headed to the foot of the mountain together, but it turned out it was some sort of illusion magic—for suddenly a dragon stood next to her instead, and then flew to the top of the mountain. Of course, she could not hope to win, but she tried anyway. The dragon took the ambition and arrogance from her and immortalized it in the spot where she stood when it flew down to claim its prize. That’s the ‘statue’ we saw. That part of her, left behind. The dragon bid her never to leave this territory again, and she didn’t.”
Honey had given this simple account. And Ainsworth, although brimming with questions, had decided to keep a lid on them—in part inspired by Ashe’s previous outbursts.
Honey said Beatrice had never tried to leave the area again. She had accepted she would have to stay, and so she did—which, to Ainsworth, seemed the perfect motivation for establishing an inn and letting the world come to her. Could this be the case?
As for the curse, Ainsworth was convinced this was also passed down through the generations, for why else would Honey be content to stay here? Content never to explore, never to make something of herself? Alas, he knew she would not want to hear that. Nor would any of the other staff. But he imagined how he would feel if he had been told he could not leave the village he grew up in. While it was a charming place, he would have been crushed. It was not that he did not respect those who stayed—it was agoodlife, and he was proud of his hardworking family. But he would not have been happy. He had always been brimming with curiosity and a desire for knowledge, and so his parents had sent him off with all the coin they could gather to seek scholarships at whatever school would take him. It was Ainsworth who had decided to aim for the top, to seek the Skarrow Library. It had taken a lot of sacrifice to allow himto follow that path, but he had been given a chance to walk it. If Honey was afflicted by this curse, she would never have had such a chance.
Ainsworth let what he thought was a reasonable silence stretch before he continued on with his request. “It’s just that there might be more detail in the diaries. And—perhaps clues.”
“Clues?”
“On how to break the dragon’s curse.” As well as the “curse” on the Misnich Inn, if all went to plan.
“Break…the curse?”
It was not like Honey to merely puppet his words back to him. He must truly have rattled her. “Why, yes. Wouldn’t it be good to perhaps leave here someday? I mean, I would like to keep in touch, once this is all over. And I should like to show you Hinslyth, and the towers of the Skarrow Library.”
