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The Eagle’s Walkway is a pass that tempts few traders because few would ever be foolish enough to take it. It may be a great way to cut several days off of the journey from the Lower Valley to the Southern Plains, but often, the cost for those days ends up being a whole lot of trouble.
That’s not to say that Roderick was being a complete fool when he left for the pass a few days ago. Really, he was just being ambitious. He knew what risks the pass would present, especially considering the extra weight he had packed in his wagon, but he also knew that he could do very well in the southern lands if he didn’t waste a moment. The imperial invasion left most people low on basic supplies and in need of currency. This resulted in a lot of good deals for the young tradesman as he rushed from town to town.
He realizes now, however, that the gamble hasn’t been worth the reward as he withdraws his head from beneath his wagon after examining a weakened and cracked axle. Deep down, he feels that he is getting what he deserves anyway. Not simply because he had overburdened his trade cart and animals, but because of the greediness that had caused him to acquire so much merchandise in the first place.
“There’s no room for a heart in business,” his father always used to tell him. “When people are desperate, that is when they are willing to give a lot for just a little. It’s not your fault for their misfortunes. That’s just the market.”
His mother would then usually interrupt and scold the two of them for being so selfish. Whenever Roderick heard such talk from his father, his mother was always there to remind him that it was wrong to prey on people’s needs so callously. Even though she’s gone now, he still feels her disapproval like a disgruntled angel on his shoulder, but business has been so good that he just can’t get himself to stop despite the nagging guilt.
“I promise this will be the last time,” he says to the sky, sure that his mother can hear him and will help him out of this jam if he is penitent.
He says this every time something goes wrong. He’ll do it again, and he knows it. Where there is a deal to be had, he is going to make it. He’s already saved up a small fortune, which he had luckily deposited in a number of banks around Western Eretsfel before the war, meaning he didn’t lose much in the chaos. He plans to keep on trading until he has enough money to establish a trade company of his own from the ground up. Maybe then he’ll have time for a family.
Before his mother died, she made him swear that he would eventually settle down and start one, but he only half-promised, telling her that he just needed to save up enough money to be able to have a proper home to support a wife and children. Deep down, both of them knew that it would take a miracle for that to happen.
Accepting what he has to do to ensure that he’ll be able to arrive at the next town without his cart breaking down, Roderick hastily moves to the back of the wagon and begins searching for a shovel. Moving this and that to the side for several moments, he finally locates it submerged deep below almost everything else.
Returning to the road, he looks around to judge his prospects. The ground this high in the pass is sure to be rocky and shallow, but he needs to find somewhere he can unload and bury some of the heavier goods he is transporting. That way, he can reduce the pressure on the cracked axle, which will only get worse carrying so much.
‘No one will come this way for a while,’ he thinks to himself. ‘Even if I bury it all shallowly, I’ll probably be the first person back even a month from now.’
Still, he surveys the ground, walking a ways off the beaten path to find a less conspicuous location. To his surprise, he locates what turns out being a surprisingly soft spot of soil hidden behind some trees and immediately begins digging.
An hour later, the hole is plenty deep, and he starts unloading items one at a time into the large cavity he dug. The sun above him beats down oppressively as he works, gradually draining him of his strength, but at long last, he finishes up and covers everything with a pile of dirt.
Roderick sits down on top of the pile, which now rises an extra foot above the ground from all that he buried. At first, he just sits and lets his breathing relax. The trees cast cooling shade on him, protecting him from the summer heat, and so he just stares off blankly toward the lower parts of the pass to collect himself. Something peculiar then catches his attention.
On a boulder not far from where he sits rests what appears to be a small, strangely colored pebble of some sort. The boulder itself is on a high point of a ridge, and it does not seem that the pebble could have fallen onto it from anywhere. It had to have been placed there.
Fascinated, Roderick gets up and wanders over to examine the pebble, but when he picks it up, he realizes that it is not a pebble at all. Rather, it is a seed of some kind, not like any he has seen before, and he is no stranger to seeds. A tradesman comes across many diverse things, after all. There isn’t a seed Roderick hasn’t before encountered, or so he would have sworn. Yet, this seed is different.
It is not simply one color, but many. The colors wrap around each other in strange designs seemingly too beautiful and elegant to have not been designed by some artist. Maybe that’s all it is, just an ordinary seed that has been painted.
To test this, he scratches the surface slightly with his fingernail, just enough to see if the design peels off. Instead, the nail scuffs the seed’s delicate skin, which he immediately rubs with his thumb to try and smooth it over.
‘Wow, the colors are natural,’ he thinks, ‘maybe I can sell it.’
No sooner does that idea come, however, than a dark feeling enters his heart and something else enters his mind. What his mother taught him about spirits and angels.
See, being kind to others was just one of many things that Roderick’s mother had tried to embed in his heart. Among the others was a belief that angels sometimes come down to help people or tell them things they need to hear. Sometimes, they even leave strange gifts for people to find, things that are somehow meant to guide them, or so she would say.
She told him many stories as a child about the gifts angels had left for those who had needed them, and for the most part, Roderick believed her like any impressionable child would. But as he grew older, the tales began to seem like nonsense to him, and so he eventually dismissed them.
Holding this seed in his hand, however, Roderick begins to feel something stirring in his heart. That unquestionable conviction of belief that he once possessed, the one that he had cast out partly because of the many times his father had ridiculed such things much to his mother’s chagrin.
