The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities by Jeffrey Quyle Page A

Lake.”
    “Alec!  That’s the region my village is in!  I came from a place near Boundary Lake,” Aja told him.
    “Do you want to go back there?” Alec asked, suddenly remembering that he had no real solution for what to do with Aja; his only goal had been to help her leave Birnam Forest, and already they were in Moriadoc.  She didn’t seem ready to be left alone by him, and he wasn’t ready to part company with the charming girl.
    “I don’t want to go back to Dryden, my village, and I don’t want to stop traveling with you!” she cried.  “You won’t make me leave you, will you?”
    “I was just thinking that I would not want to see you leave yet,” Alec confessed, bringing a warm smile to Aja’s face.  “I will soon reach a time when I will be in battle, and you will not be safe to stay with me though, Aja.  I don’t know what to do with you.”
    “I had no plan when we left the women’s village,” she replied, her hand reaching out to touch his on the table.   “I still don’t; but whatever could happen, these three days with you have been blissful.  I’ve had sight and vision!  I’ve had the safety of the protection of the greatest hero ever known!  And I’ve had a good friend,” she told him, and squeezed his hand affectionately.
    “May I sing now?” she asked.  “I feel happy and ready to sing.”
    Alec looked around the room.  The corner by the fireplace appeared to be a spot from which others had entertained the patrons of the establishment, judging by the stools set against the wall there.
    He left a copper pence tip for their waiter, then escorted Aja over to the stools, and took one for himself in a location from which he could lean against the wall and watch the crowd.  Aja stood a little in front of him and to his left.  The waiter from their table picked up the tip off the wooden surface, then looked up at Alec with a puzzled expression, for just a moment, before Aja began to sing.
    Her first song on this evening was not the boisterous drinking song she’d begun with the night before.  Tonight she seemed to judge correctly the quality of her audience, and she began with a song about a daughter telling her father thank you, just before her wedding ceremony beginning.  It was a sentimental tune, one which appealed to the men of the crowd, who both remembered their own weddings and saw the pending arrivals of weddings for daughters; they were appreciative in their applause when her tune ended.
    The cook came out to look inquisitively at the songstress in the dining room, but only shrugged his shoulders when his eyes met Alec’s, and he went back to the kitchen.
    Aja launched into a second song, a more boisterous song about a ne’er-do-well apprentice whose master was coping with increasingly greater potential disaster s in ever new verse , to great comical effect.  The occupants of the room laughed and stomped their feet and applauded at the end, but only for a second before Aja began her next song.  And so she held the audience in the palm of her hand for nearly two hours of music, as the room grew full, then crowded, then stuffed to overflowing, as more and more people entered, while few left the room.
    She took a break to drink water, and stood next to Alec.  “It gives me such energy to sing to an appreciative crowd!” she said.  “I know we’ve been here a long time; would you like to leave now?” she asked him.
    “Sing a couple more songs to tell them good bye,” Alec encouraged her, “then we’ll get going.”  He felt badly about pulling her away from an audience tha t clearly enjoyed her voice; he enjoyed the pl easure she brought to life, and contemplated the prospect of retaining her with him throughout the upcoming adventures, and then on the trip back to Ridgeclimb to return Kriste to her home when the long chase was over.  They’d have time then to travel slowly, and to spend nights at inns where the girl could sing to her heart’s