The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1

The boy soon presented himself and the basket before his unsuspecting Aunt Athiel, who was sitting inside the door in the most pleasant part of the tree, which served as the family room. The balmy summer air, the restful quiet, the pleasant odor of the cedar, and the drowsing murmur of the bees had their effect. She was nodding off over her knitting, for she had no company but a squirrel, and it was stealing nuts from the guest bowl. No doubt, she thought the boy had left his work long ago, and so when she looked up, surprise caught her at seeing him place himself in her power again in this deliberate way.

He said, “Auntie, might I play now?”

“What, already? How much work have you done?”

“It’s all done.”

“Don’t lie to me, boy.”

“I’m not. The work is all done.”

Knowing him as she did, Athiel placed small trust in such claims. She got up to have a look in the basket herself, and she would have been content to find it a quarter full. When she found the entire basket full and not only full but rinsed (the boy had gone swimming), her astonishment was almost unspeakable.

“Well, I never!” she said. “You did! By gosh, you can do work when you’ve got a mind to. Let me get you a reward. ”

So she took him into the pantry and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him, along with a lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat takes on when it’s honestly earned without stealing but obtained by virtuous effort; And while she closed this sermon, he stole another.

Then he skipped out and headed for the dance stump, which served as the public square of the village, and where a great war was about to be fought by pre-arrangement. A mighty battle between elves and trolls was planned, with the boy and Old Joe’s human son, Young Joe, being the trolls and Benoth Roth and Darth Lowellen being the elves. They planned a swift victory, the satyr and the human boy quickly found they stood no chance against the elves, and they were both soon peppered with pointless arrows. Even with the rule that it took twenty arrows to kill a troll, that only took about twenty seconds and a great victory was soon won for the elves. Young Joe took defeat well, the boy less so as sarcasm came to him as second nature and so a challenge for a rematch was issued, the date set, and the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon—the key point being, as the boy insisted “everybody knows” it takes forty arrows to kill a troll.

Yet it was clearly evident the boy was going to have to make more changes than this to their battle plan if any progress was truly to be made in the conflict. He set about undertaking the duty now.

The boy was panting after a hard day’s work of toting stolen watermelons out of Farmer Potter’s field. He had taken more than his normal hard-earned share of Potter’s crop, but then he had an apprentice that was just learning the art of the trade: Young Joe.

Now, Young Joe, with his scruffy dark hair, bare feet, and a perpetually vague glint in his brown eyes, wasn’t the brightest human, His clothes were a patchwork of mismatched fabrics, and the faint traces of dirt on his face told the tale of his latest escapade where it certainly hadn’t taken the elves long to deliver him his share of twenty arrows in the troll battle. It was clearly evident to the boy that, if he was to have any chance at all in winning the next war, he was going to have to take this lad under his wing and train him in the finer techniques of skullduggery.

The boy and Young Joe stealthily entered Farmer Potter’s field, a vast expanse of cornstalks standing tall like a green army awaiting orders. In the distance, a scarecrow, worn and weather-beaten, stood as a silent guardian of the farmer’s bounty. The field seemed to stretch on forever, an endless sea of green. The earthy scent of freshly turned soil enveloped them as they waded deeper into its labyrinth of crops. The rustling of the leaves provided a soundtrack to their mischievous endeavors.

Potter’s field made a good training ground for several reasons. First, because the crops there offered cover. You can’t go sneaking up on elves over open ground. They’ll see you long before you see them. So you need cover to hide in, but that same cover that hides you also produces noise when you move. If you go a stomping and thrashing through a cornfield, an elf doesn’t need to see you. He’ll hear you.

Unfortunately, to the boy's disappointment, Young Joe took to being quiet about as well as two cats do in a catfight. He not only stomped and thrashed his way through the cornfield, he got himself lost in it and not just once–but four times. The only good that came out of it was they ended up with a goodly supply of corn cobs that Joe had stomped under, which the boy made Joe shuck for their eating as his punishment in making so much noise and getting himself lost in the first place.

But it wasn't all punishment. They didn’t just have a store of watermelon and corn to enjoy but also a store of pipe tobacco. The latter didn’t come from Farmer Potter, but Old Joe himself. As a primer for Young Joe’s learning career, the boy showed him the fine art of pickpocketing. “Pickpocketing” is when you steal a person’s pipe or tobacco, or anything else they’ve got of value, right out of their pocket, while they’re awake, and with them right in front of you—but without them knowing it. This happens when you accidentally on purpose bump into somebody while reaching into their pocket. They’ll feel the bump more than the hand in their pocket and miss the fact that their pocket has just been lightened of its valuables altogether. The boy demonstrated the technique for Young Joe by bumping into Old Joe to relieve him of the unnecessary burden of his tobacco pouch and then clasped an arm around him to distract him as he also stole his pipe. Later on, when they got back to Joe’s house, the boy would accidentally “bump” into Old Joe again and return the missing items.

For today, the boy was teaching young Joe how to steal in moderation–only two watermelons at a time. Never steal more than you can carry when being chased by the owner from behind. Fortunately, it fit pretty well with Young Joe’s abilities, since he could only count to three. So it fit two-thirds of his thinking already.

But today also held a brand new experience for both of them, their first exposure to pipe tobacco. Having seen the wonders Graybeard could do with smoke, the boy was eager to give it a try.

And they set about now to learn how to do it, wanting to know what it was like and about to get their first lesson.