"Resurrecting the Scarlet Avenger, Ch. 1.1" by Jon Midget

Chapter 1: Homecoming

They hadn't even moved his body.

Even in the half-light before sunrise, I could see it there, a charred, blackened husk, in the middle of what had once been the Moonshined Coon. My father's inn. His home. His entire life. And now there was nothing left except a few scraps of burnt brick and ashes. Whatever had been left from the fire had been ripped apart and taken away.

It had once been my home, too.

I couldn't look anymore. I was dizzy. I collapsed to my knees. The ashes, damp from the early morning dew, smeared all over my pants and boots. I pressed my face into my hands, letting the silent tears run down my face and arms.

And it passed. I stood again and forced myself to look at the body. A gust of wind whipped across my face, and my cheeks and eyes were dry.

The sun rose past the mountains. Squinting through the light, my eyes followed the routes of the shadows to the stone fireplace standing ini the middle of the ruins. I hadn't noticed it before. It was still standing. Everything else had been torn apart, but it was still standing.

I slowly walked toward it. Forcing myself to breath, I walked until I was maybe ten or fifteen feet away. The rocks were black, covered with soot and ash. Most of it had toppled over, but the remains still stood more than ten feet high—more than half the height the two-story inn had been.

From the corner of my eye, I saw something move. A bird. A carrion bird. It had landed on my father's body and was picking at it. I made a step toward it, to shoo it away, but before I could go further I realized where I was.

The walls of the inn seemed to materialize around me, phantoms and shadows drifted back and forth until they became people. The quiet of the early morning disappeared amid the rumble of conversation, and I could suddenly smell beef stew.

I was a boy again, standing just behind the doorway to the back hall, looking out at the main room. Just as I always had. The fireplace was ten or fifteen feet away, and my father sat in his rocking chair on the other side. Eight round tables were spread around the room. They were mostly filled with men, playing cards or telling jokes or drinking ale. Two servers, a young woman and an older man, weaved in and out. Every now and then one of the men would notice my father and nod in his direction. Each time, my father nodded back.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them the inn, the smells, and the phantoms were all gone again. But my father's body was still there, exactly where he had always sat in his rocking chair. He must have been sitting in it when the inn had caught fire. He must have been sitting there the entire time, watching the flames envelop the whole building, watching the smoke gather around the ceiling, watching his entire life burn away into nothing.

"Martin."

I spun around. A man stood at the side of the road, between me and the rising sun. I squinted but couldn't see anything more than a silhouette. I stepped toward him. He didn't move. I still couldn't see—the sun was too strong. I stepped to the side, and the silhouette became a man—a grey-haired, clean shaven man with a scar to the side of one eye and a spotless black vest. A man I knew very well. A man whose disapproving stare I had endured more than I cared to remember. Tom Ghundie, the mayor of Alcon Valley.

"We knew you would come by eventually," he spoke, "but we didn't expect to see you so soon."

"And when did you expect me?" I snapped.

Tom smiled tightly. "Well, who could say really," he said, his voice never wavering from his slow, deliberate, calculated tone. "Maybe a week or so. Maybe a few months. Maybe in a few years, when you could have turned it into a pilgrimage of sorts. But three days? You must have already been on your way. That's heartbreaking—"

"Mayor," I cut him off, "what happened to ...? This was my home."

He chuckled and narrowed his eyes at me, apparently puzzled. "Well that's not true, now is it," he said, still laughing. "This hasn't been your home for quite some time. A few years, if I remember right. How could you possibly—"

"Stop it!" I shouted at him. "I lived here. I grew up here. It was his–our–it was my home! I want to know what the hell happened."

The mayor took in a deep breath and exhaled dramatically. He put his hand on my shoulder. "Martin," he said, "we can't rewrite the past. What's done is done."

I brushed his hand off and stepped back. "And I want to know who did it."

"Now son," he said in the same slow, calm voice, "I know you're upset. That's understandable, given the circumstances, but let's try to calm down."

"I've been plenty calm," I snapped.

The mayor stepped back and folded his arms. His brow creased, and his eyes narrowed as they stared at me.

"I guess you're not interested in being civilized," he said. "Fine." He gestured to the body. "Your father has been burned into a gruesome black husk, and I think it would be best if you left. Permanently."

My breathing slowed. I bit my lip. A chill swept over my body, and I pulled my cloak still tighter with my shaking hands.

He stepped next to me flicked my ear. My damn, pointed, elvish ear.

"You never were one of us," he said.

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked. "My father was one of you, and we can all see how that ended up."

"He hadn't been one of us since he came back with you."

And he left. I don't remember seeing him walk away, but I remember the dust, stirred up by his boots, hanging in the air and settling to the road again. The sun was climbing overhead. The ground was cool and damp. The wind died down, and a few dead leaves, blown in from the canyon, rested at the foot of that great stone fireplace standing in the middle of the ashes.

I reached a hand out to the fireplace, and several rocks and bits of mortar crumbled at the first slight touch. It was on the verge of collapsing. I was shocked that the wind hadn't already done the job. Looking around the ashes again, I saw only what I had already seen. Everything else—every doorknob, every brick, every scrap of metal—it had all been ripped down and taken away. But they had left the body and the fireplace where they were. The last monuments to a dead, forgotten life.

My father had built the rocking chair for me. When he had returned from the war, walking back into his hometown carrying a strange, dark-haired infant with elvish ears, it had been the only thing he had known to do. And I suddenly wondered if he had been thinking about me as he sat in the chair for the last time, watching the fire kill him. Did he remember that night, twenty-five years ago, when he held that infant in his arms and wept—because he didn't know what to do except to build a rocking chair to lull the child to sleep?

I like to think that he remembered.

But as I stood there it was all gone. Whatever thoughts were in his mind had long since blown away with the ashes. All lost. The gods never tell us what has been forgotten.

I turned away—away from the body, from the ashes, from the fireplace, from everything—and walked away. The street was long and straight, but I never looked back.