Page 27 of Ties of Legacy

“We stopped for a rest break, and I wandered off.” Avery’s lips curled upward. “I found an abandoned tree house high in some branches and decided to climb the ladder nailed to the trunk and have a look inside.”

“In Stonyfell?” Elliot shook his head.

“I was seven, remember!” Avery cried. “It was the first time we’d been there in two years, and I barely remembered our previous visit.”

“So you got trapped, of course,” Elliot finished for her.

The Halbury Legacy loved trapping people. The locals all knew not to end up alone anywhere either remote or high up. He was betting Avery had been the first child to ever climb into the tree house on her own.

“The ladder just disappeared!” Avery cried. “And I could have sworn half the branches did, too. It was easy to climb up, but climbing down…” She shook her head. “I was stuck there for three days.”

“Three days?!” Elliot laughed before quickly stifling it and throwing a guilty look sideways. “You must have been scared.”

Avery was still smiling, though. “I actually liked it. There was a rope and a bucket, and I suggested using the rope to climb down, but my parents said the Legacy would probably make it snap. They told me to use it to send the bucket down for supplies instead. I didn’t argue because I secretly liked being up there.” She smiled reminiscently. “Normal children pretend to run away from home and go on adventures. I played at setting up a house. I made that tree house into my own cozy home.”

Elliot smiled, imagining seven-year-old Avery happily settling into the tree house while her parents ran around in a panic working out how to rescue her. He had never considered the idea that a roving merchant might dream of settling down, but he liked the idea that Avery might feel that way.

“Just because you can travel freely doesn’t mean you have to,” he said aloud. “If you like the idea of settling down, have you considered finding a place to do so? Or is that frowned upon for roving merchants?”

“Oh no, not at all. In fact, most settle eventually.” Avery paused, her thoughts clearly far away. After a moment she sighed before turning back to him. “My mother was the one who was born a roving merchant, and traveling with her meant my father had to endure the burden of being away from his homekingdom. His symptoms were light compared to many which is the reason they made it work. But not all roving merchants fall in love with people who bear with travel so easily. And even those who have a light burden from their Legacy usually end up tiring of the constant travel eventually. After my parents died, I traveled with my aunt and uncle and cousins for a couple of years, but they settled in Glandore two years ago.”

“So you started traveling alone after that?” Elliot asked softly. He hadn’t realized she was alone because her parents were both dead.

Avery nodded.

“Were you not welcome to stay and live with them?” Elliot asked even more gently.

“What?” Avery turned slightly to look at him, her expression puzzled. “Of course I was welcome. They’re my family. I was the one who had no interest in settling down.”

“Oh.” Elliot frowned down into his lap. She had been offered the opportunity that had been ripped from him, and she had rejected it.

“They bought a house in Glandore because my aunt was sick of traveling,” Avery continued. “She endured it for twenty years for the sake of my uncle, and now he says it’s his turn to sacrifice for her. One of my cousins begged to be allowed to come with me, but I was already young to go off alone at seventeen, and she’s two years younger, so her parents insisted she stay with them.” She smiled brightly. “She’ll probably join me in a year or two, though.”

“And what about your other cousin?” Elliot asked, trying to keep his own feelings on the topic from leaching into his voice.

“He was perfectly happy to settle in Glandore,” she said in a tone that implied she couldn’t understand his choice. “Like you said, just because someone can travel doesn’t mean they want to.”

“I wish someone had told my mother that,” Elliot muttered, earning a curious look from Avery. But just as he hadn’t asked further questions about her parents, she didn’t push him to explain himself. Circumstances had forced them together, but they were still virtual strangers.

Silence fell between them, and he spoke abruptly to fill it. “Getting stuck in a tree house is nothing. The first time I visited Halbury, I was fourteen years old, and some of the youths thought it would be amusing to give me a ‘local drink.’”

Avery gave a gasp that transformed into a giggle halfway through. “It was actually a hair tonic, wasn’t it?” she asked.

Elliot ran a hand through his hair, adopting an expression of exaggerated pain. “Of course it was. I was way too trusting back then, and naturally I drank the whole thing.”

Her eyes widened and another giggle slipped out. “The whole thing? So you were…I can picture…” She dissolved into proper laughter while Elliot sat in dignified silence, feeling secretly pleased with himself.

“Are you done?” he asked her eventually. “Or do you intend to laugh at my discomfort all day?”

She sobered, although her lips kept twitching. “I’m sorry.”

She pressed her lips together to still them, glancing up at him from under her lashes in a way that made his heart thump. With annoyance at her laugher, obviously.

“Did it grow all the way to your feet?” she asked in a slightly strangled voice.

He sighed heavily. “It was past my feet every morning. For a month. My mother would cut it off, of course, but it would be well past my waist by lunchtime. We blunted at least two pairs of scissors before the effect wore off.”

“You’re only supposed to have a sip of those hair tonics, you know,” Avery said. “Every child knows that.”

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