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In late summer the peddler Merrin returned to the village of Adon. He strode with a noticeable limp alongside his grizzled ass, which pulled an old wooden wagon rattling with spun-sugar candies, apples, second-hand jewelry, third-hand daggers, dried tobacco, cheap farm tools, bolts of exotic cloth, and sundry other knick-knacks, delicacies, and treasures from the far reaches of Cadr. Upon seeing the man and the ass crest the eastern hills, the children of the village flocked to their parents and begged for coppers that they might spend on a candy, or an apple. The poor families shooed their children back to the fields and turned their backs to the peddler, but the richer parents gradually relented and scattered coins over their children’s grasping hands. The children streamed towards him from different angles, pouring through the fields of greengold wheat, while their parents remarked amongst themselves, concerned, that Merrin’s face looked more weathered, his limp more pronounced, than it had in early spring. As their children approached the peddler, however, they watched his cracked face fold into a familiar, wizened smile, and they felt themselves smiling as they returned to their work and tried to gauge whether they ought to pay for the small stools, new cups, or replacement pipes that they had been longing for.
Of all the men, women, and children of Adon, none were happier to see Merrin than Kevin Pike, eight year old son of Rorik Pike and Merrin’s sworn friend. Twice a year, for as long as he could remember, he had listened to Merrin’s adventures, his brushes with danger and with nobility, his tall tales and his ghost stories. For the four days that Merrin generally spent in Adon, Kevin saw all of Cadr through his eyes, and for the rest of the year, he mourned the old man’s absence. His mother had told him that this was the last year he would have to follow Merrin around – beginning next spring, his father would need him in the fields each day. Kevin approached the cackling peddler, surrounded by little hands proffering coppers, with a mixture of eagerness and bashful trepidation. This would be their last true visit.
Folded in a dusty russet tunic and a dark brown, weather-beaten cloak, Merrin flicked candies deftly around him, catching coins and performing sleight of hand tricks as he fielded the requests and demands of the infantile mob. Gradually, the children trickled away, plastering their cheeks with the sticky syrup of melting candy, and Merrin spotted Kevin. Screwing his old face into a mask of feigned non-recognition, he asked “Is that my old partner, Kevin Pike?”
“Yes Merrin,” rejoined Kevin, unable to suppress a smile. The old traveler flung down his staff, sunk to a knee and grinned broadly as he opened his arms. Kevin raced into them, hugged the peddler tightly, and asked, immediately, for a story.
