Chapter Fourteen

Thus passed the following days, weeks and months.

Will had learned a lot in his time here, he was now proficient in reading and writing the human language. He could also understand speech, but since he didn't practice much, he couldn't tell how good he was at speaking it.

This made him almost go mad, he had kept silent for so long. Sneaking around without getting noticed or making a sound, not speaking to anyone. If it wasn't for the nun's soothing voice every now and then, Will would probably have gone crazy by now. Even when he was alone in the forest, he couldn't speak to himself in fear of either getting noticed by random humans or scaring off his prey. He had also learned the nun's name was Lina. The kids called her Aunty Lina, and the ȧduŀts called her Sister Lina. She wasn't young, maybe in her mid thirties, but she had a clean ivory face, with almost no wrinkles.

Will's routine was as follows: On weekdays he would listen in on the morning classes, he had managed to finally sneak into the church itself through a trap door he had created under the kitchen table. He would borrow books at night, and put them back in the morning. There had been times he had fallen asleep while reading, but luckily no one noticed the missing books before he managed to put it back.

At night he would go watch the blacksmith teach his apprentice. The old man went by the name Gregorius, but everyone just called him Grumpy Greg. He obviously didn't like this, but didn't complain openly about it. The kid was called Kyle, and was constantly verbally abused by his master. Will had even heard Kyle complain about the customers teasing him as well.

Twice a week he would sneak into the forest for food, furs and leather. His arm had finally regained some mobility, it wasn't as strong as before, but Will wasn't disabled at least. He had created his own little 'workstation' in a cave he had found on a hillside in the forest. It had some smaller tools he had stolen from the various shops in the town. He never took much. At first he thought about leaving some coins behind, however he didn't really know the value of things. So Will figured it didn't matter if he took it without paying. Maybe someday he could pay them back in another way.

The only new thing he had added to his routine, was doing some odd jobs around the church. Since he had access to the inside now he would help Sister Lina, not directly of course. Sometimes he would weed the garden, other times he would organize the books and papers in the classroom. He would even sweep the floors when he was sure Sister Lina wouldn't wake up. Any small jobs he could do around the church, he would do.

Will's home had become even cozier now. Over the weeks he had managed to cover the entire floor in either planks or furs. He had a small wooden basin with water for washing his feet and hands. His bed was layered with furs so it was soft and comfortable. And his Mushroom corner was flourishing. Life was good.

Will had spent almost the entire summer building a life for himself here in this small town. Now that the leaves were falling though, he had started worrying. There were two reasons for this. The first reason was that once winter came, it would be a lot harder sneaking around if the snow settled. He knew that even at night, it would be easy to spot someone on the white snow, no matter how good Will was at sneaking. It would also reflect the light of the moon, which would increase visibility in general.

The second reason was that Will had overheard from more than one person, that mid fall, a large caravan of new settlers would arrive. They were bringing almost 300 new people, in addition to supplies for the winter. They still had some farms on the outskirts of town, but they weren't enough yet to keep the whole village fed. And with the new influx of people, the town would get crowded and rowdy. It would be hard for Will to sneak around, even at night.

From his sneaking around, and paying attention in classes. Will had learned that the kingdom this town was a part of, was a feudal monarchy. The hierarchy had the king at the top, followed by the nobles, and then came knights and commoners. The kingdom of Rothfeld, named after the royal family, considered itself a civilized and learned kingdom. To Will's surprise and relief they were civilized enough to have diplomacy with demi-humans, and even abolished slavery. Although this made Will happy, he had no illusions about Goblins. Even if they were a type of demi-human, he wasn't sure, Goblins were probably too barbaric to even be considered for such alliances.

So with all these worries in mind, Will decided to prepare for the caravans arrival. He needed to gather enough food and furs to survive the winter, while leaving his home as little as possible. He wanted to avoid stealing food from the church if he could. Sister Lina had left him with plenty of good memories. So Will added a change to his routine, by spending two extra days in the forest to hunt and gather more resources.

And after two more weeks of this, he finally saw the large caravan arriving one of the nights he was heading back into town from the forest. It was enormous, he didn't know exactly how many carriages there were, but probably fifty to seventy carriages. A lot of the carriages were being pulled by bulls and mules instead of horses, which made sense since they needed more beasts of burden for their day to day activities.

Luckily he wasn't spotted, since most of the guards were busy tending to the new arrivals. However once he entered town it was a different situation. People were leaving their houses, even though it was dark, people were curious about the commotion. Will took almost an extra hour getting home sneaking through alleyways and ducking into shadows.

Once he got home, he unpacked his newly created handbag that was filled to the brim with meat and furs. He then fell on his bed out of exhaustion and quickly dozing off.