Marissa Cobalt, the young mercenary sorceress, is hired by a young man to be his "fiance" at his family reunion
Family Reunion
An Early Adventure in Sorcery
Mini AiS #21
Part 1
I sat at a table in the back of a dimly lit little tavern in an out of the way little town called Pict that I’d come across while wandering in the northern areas of Frisia. It was getting late and I’d grown hungry, so I ducked into the first place I found that would have food. As soon as I’d sat down at the table a waiter hurried over to me, and not ten minutes later I was enjoying my order: soup, salad, rack of lamb, roasted potatoes, and a slice of minced meat pie for dessert. It was delicious, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That is, until he showed up and ruined it. Who is this “he”, you ask? My would-be fiance. What’s that you say? How could Marissa Cobalt, the infamous mercernary sorceress, whose reputation leaves her a loner, have a would-be fiance? Let me tell you.
I had taken a swig of ale to wash down some lamb, and as I lowered the tankard, there he was, sitting in the chair across from me. The handsome blonde youth, who I gauged to be not much older than my fifteen years of age, had placed his elbows on the table and rested his chin in the palm of his hands and was just staring at me with his big blue eyes.
I sat the tankard down on the table. “Uh, may I help you?” I asked.
The young man sat up straight and smiled at me. “Yes, you’ll do nicely,” he said, more to himself than to me.
“E...Excuse me?” I said, totally taken aback. “What in Dumarh’s name are you blabbering about over there?”
“Miss Marissa,” he said excitedly, “I want you to be my fiancee!”
“W...What?! “ I said as my mouth fell open. “I don’t think so! Check, please!” I said as I quickly stood up and scanned the tavern for my waiter.
The young man grabbed my hand. “No, wait, Miss Marissa. Please, hear me out.”
I looked down at him, and saw a desperate, beseeching look on his face. Against my better judgement, I sat back down. “Okay,” I said, “talk.”
“My name is Jacen Holstad and I’m in a bit of a predicament and need your help.”
“What does that have to do with me being your fiancee?”
“That’s what I need you to help me with. I want you to pose as my fiancee at my family’s reunion tomorrow. You see, my father sent me a letter last week saying he’d found a girl for me to marry and that he’s going to bring her to the reunion to meet me. In the past, he’s tried to get me married off to a girl, and all his candidates have been not very attractive and lacking in personality. When I couldn’t take his pressuring me to get married any more, I left home and settled here. Anyways, in order to avoid another of my father’s fix-up fiascoes, and since I’m not ready to get married yet, I wrote back and told him I already had a fiancee. I recieved a letter today saying he’s looking forward to meeting my fiancee, but he’s going to bring the girl he found anyway, just in case my fiancee doesn’t meet is approval. Miss Marissa, the whole family will be here for the reunion, and I don’t have a fiancee to present to them. Hence the reason I need your help.”
I nibbled on a piece of lamb as I considered the situation. “The reunion is tomorrow, you said?” I finally said as I swallowed the bit of meat.
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t leave me much time to get ready.”
“So you’ll do it? You’ll pose as my fiancee?”
“Yes. But it’ll cost you, you know.”
“Of course.” He handed me a leather bag that clinked with the sound of metal as it moved. “There are forty gold pieces in there. Is that enough?”
I opened the bag to check what he said, and my blue eyes widened at the sight of a pile of gold coins. I shook my head of blue hair enthusiastically. “More than enough, Jacen,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t sound to greedily happy.
“Good. Then I’ll pick you up tomorrow about noon, okay? Where are you staying?”
I told him which inn I was staying at and then he left. I finished my dinner quickly, paid my tab, and left the tavern as well. I had the inklings of a plan for the next day, so I stopped into a nearby haberdashery just before it could close and found and purchased a wig of long blonde hair. Then I made my way to the inn I was staying at to work out the rest of my plan and rest for what I was sure was going to be a very long day.
To be continued.
Part Two
As he’d promised, Jacen arrived precisely at noon to pick me up. He gaped at me in shock when he saw me wearing a blonde wig and a simple little pink cotton dress that I’d “borrowed” earlier in the morning from another girl staying at the inn.
“Miss Marissa, you look absolutely beautiful!” he said.
“Why, thank you, Jacen,” I said, blushing slightly and giving him a small smile.
“May I ask you something, Miss Marissa?”
“Sure.”
He dropped down to one knee in front of me. “Would you marry me for real?”
I frowned and narrowed my eyes at him. Instinctively, my hands balled up into fists. He noticed and, quickly getting the message, stood back up. “Right, then. I’m sorry. Let me ask you something else, then. What’s with the wig and dress?”
“I thought that things would go a lot more smoothly at the reunion if I hid my blue hair and didn’t wear my mercenary outfit so that your family wouldn’t know who I really am.” Being the only person in the whole world of Andor with blue hair has its drawbacks, you know. Sure, it’s good for becoming famous. But it makes it hard to do undercover work. And buying wigs all the time gets old fast. If only I could use my magic to change the color of my hair. But that’s one thing I’ve never been able to do ever since it turned blue that fateful day.
“Oh, right,” Jacen said. “Good idea. Well, are you ready to go?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
Jacen escorted me from the inn and led me to a park near the outskirts of the town. There I found the grounds littered with mulitcolored pavillions and scattered picnic tables. A throng of about thirty or forty men, women, and children milled about the place, either chatting, eating, or horsing around. Horse-drawn carriages had been parked a ways back from the festivities and the drivers took the opportunity to lounge around and enjoy the nice weather as well as some jugs of ale. I just stood where I was and gawked at the scene while Jacen continued walking on ahead of me. After a couple of moments, he realized I had fallen behind. He returned to me and dragged me along after him towards the crowd of his family members.
My young blonde escort led me to the biggest pavillion, located in the center of all the activity. We walked up to a crowded, long table in the middle. At our approach, a big, burly middle-aged man with shoulder-length blonde hair stood up at the head of the table and waved us over to two empty chairs directly to his right. Jacen smiled and dragged me over. We didn’t sit down immediately. Instead we stood behind our chairs. To my right an elderly man eyed me with a rather unscrupulous glint in his dull blue eyes, and I do believe I saw drool from his mouth. I shuddered slightly and turned my attention back to Jacen and the man that I took to be his father.
“Jacen, my boy,” said the man, giving the youngster a big grin and a hearty handshake. “It’s good to see you again. You look well.”
“And you, Father,” said Jacen.
“And who is this lovely young lady you have with you? Is she the one you mentioned?”
“Yes, she is. Father, allow me to introduce my fiancee, Mari...” He stopped quickly, realizing he was about to say my name and we’d never discussed what my name was going to be. I quickly covered for him, pulling from my memory the last alias I had used, since there was no time to get creative.
I plastered a big grin on my face and reached over and shook Jacen’s father’s hand. “Maria Conchita Allehandra Consuela. It’s a mouthful, I know. You can call me Mari. Everyone else does. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you at last, Father Holstad.”
“Thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet you, as well.” He paused briefly. “Maria Conchita...That name sounds familiar. Are you the one who won that cooking contest in Monnterre?”
[author's note: see the short story "Iron Riss"]
My eyes widened in surprise. “You...you know about that?!”
“Naturally. I fancy myself a gourmet cook, and like to keep up with all the happenings in the cooking world. Perhaps we could have a friendly little cookoff ourselves sometime, hm?”
“I...I’d love to, sir...AIEEE!” I turned quickly to look at the old man beside me just in time to see his hand leaving my butt. I smacked him upside the head as I screamed, “JUST WHAT IN DUMARH’S NAME DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, YOU PERVERTED OLD COOT?!” He raised his hand to his face, to the bright red imprint of my hand. He wasn’t upset or anything, though. Instead, there was a smile of serene satisfaction on his cracked lips.
The whole table fell silent at my outburst, and all heads turned to look at me. My face grew warm and I slowly sat down in my chair, folded my hands in my lap, and stared at the tabletop. “S...Sorry,” I murmurred.
Jacen’s father chuckled. “Looks like you’ve found yourself a winner, my boy. Congratulations. I guess there’s no need to introduce you to my choice for you. But I might as well, since she came all this way to see you.” He motioned with his arm to a redheaded girl seated directly to his left. She was staring at the tabletop, just as she had been when we arrived. I don’t think she’d moved an inch the entire time. But now, slowly, she stood up, though keeping her head still down. “Jacen,” said the young man’s father, “this is the girl I had picked out for you. I really thought she’d be perfect for you. But it seems you’ve made your own choice.”
Slowly, the girl lifted her head to look at Jacen. I and my “fiance” both gasped. The girl appeared to be about Jacen’s age of sixteen, and was very pretty. Not at all what I was expecting, given what Jacen had told me about his father’s penchant for picking...homely girls .
“Hello, Jacen,” she said softly and with a small smile. “Long time no see.”
“D...D...Dru??” he said in total surprise, then sat down hard in his chair beside me.
“I take it you know her, then?” I asked.
“I do. We grew up together.”
“Childhood friends, huh?”
“Yeah. But back then, she was just your average little girl. I...I never thought she’d...”
“Turn out so pretty?”
“Yeah,” he said with a soft sigh.
I couldn’t help but notice that neither Jacen nor Dru had taken their eyes off each other and were smiling fondly at each other. I also noticed that Jacen's father had noticed the same things, too, and had a small, pleased smile on his lips.
Suddenly a little boy and a little girl ran by behind me, chasing each other playfully. One of them tripped right behind my chair and grabbed hold of my wig of long blonde hair in their attempt to stop falling. It didn’t work, though, and both the child and my wig ended up on the floor. A collective gasp sounded from the entire table as my blue hair, and thus my true identity, was revealed.
“Marissa Cobalt?!” most of the people at the table said in shock.
I quickly stood up. “S...sorry for the deceit, folks,” I said. “I...I’d better go now.”
I turned to leave, but a word from Jacen’s father stopped me in my tracks.
“Wait,” he said.
I turned back around to face him. “Yes?”
“Don’t go. You’re more than welcome to join us, Miss Marissa.”
I blinked a couple of times. “I...I am?”
“Yes. You must help celebrate this.” He waved a hand at Jacen and Dru, who were now holding hands across the table and staring deeply into each other’s eyes. “You did have a small part in it, after all. Right?”
I smiled. “Right.”
“And besides,” he added. “We still have a cooking contest to hold.”
“Uh, right.” I sat back down in my chair. I caught sight of the old man next to me eyeing me hungrily again. I narrowed my eyes and silently called up a small Fireball into the palm of my hand. “I dare you try anything funny again,” I told him acidly. He gulped and turned his attention back to the plate of food before him.
Smiling with statisfaction, I let the Fireball die out then turned my attention to the plate of food in front of me. The food looked delicious, and my smile grew bigger. I was no longer “engaged” and I now had a good meal to enjoy. And what was better was that the meal was free. This day had turned out a lot better than I’d thought it would.
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