Chapter 10 - Marshall

“Oil,” Marshall muttered.

Rayne reached for a can, hesitated, and grabbed a different one, handing it to her grandfather. He nodded, his long gray hair falling into his face. He drizzled a small amount of oil onto an old piece of cloth and began to polish his swords.

Marshall’s room was small, cluttered with bags and weaponry and gems. All things he had picked up on his journeys. Rayne sat on the edge of his bed, entranced, her hands in her lap, gaze bouncing from the swords in his hands to the glint of them in his eyes. When the blades were polished, he sheathed them and buckled them across his back.

“Are you going out?” Rayne asked.

“I am,” he said with a deep exhale from his nose.

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I never do.”

“What if I don’t want you to go?”

Marshall turned, and despite his age, his body was tall, strong, and muscled. He knelt, and the collar of his shirt shifted to reveal the tattoo snaking up his neck. It looked like a tower, broken into pieces.

“I’m an Explorer, Maralyn,” he said, a smile quirking his thick mustache and beard. He reached out with calloused fingers and wiped away a tear threatening to run down her cheek. “Do you really want me to not go?”

“I . . .” Rayne bit her lip. “I don’t . . . I don’t want you to go, but I don’t want to . . .” She hesitated again, trying not to cry. “But I don’t want to stop you either.”

“Do you remember me telling you what Explorers do?”

“They go on adventures.” She wiped her eyes.

“It’s not so simple,” he replied. “I go out, and I look for chaos. I do my best to take that chaos and turn it into order, because if I don’t, that chaos will spread, and it will spread like . . . like vines in the garden.”

“We get a gardener for the vines,” Rayne said with a huff. “Why can’t you do the same with your . . . chaos?”

“Because I am the gardener,” Marshall answered. “Because it’s all about balance, Maralyn, and it’s my job to protect that balance.”

“I don’t understand.” Rayne crossed her arms. “I just don’t get it.”

“And that’s okay,” her grandfather said gently. “It’s kind of like hunting, if you will. If you don’t hunt, the deer will grow and grow until they destroy their own environment, and then they will die. However, if we hunt them, and we hunt too many, we offset the balance, and they all die, and we have no food.”

“So you only kill some,” Rayne said, and Marshall nodded.

“But even that isn’t the best example, I don’t think,” he muttered, more to himself than anything. “Chaos comes in many forms. It’s a part of everything, an aspect of nature.” He took a good look at Rayne, his old eyes still bright and full of life.

“Can . . .” Rayne looked up at him. “Can I come with you?”

“I don’t know if you’re ready yet,” he said after a long moment of silence. “But maybe one day.”

“How will I know when I’m ready?” Rayne asked, almost a whine.

“I don’t know.” Marshall shook his head. “I don’t know when that time will be, but . . .” He turned away and drew an old worn journal—his journal—from his bag. He tore out a page, shoved it into the bag, and turned back to Rayne.

“Here,” he said, offering her the journal. “Hold on to this for me. You might be able to find some use for it, and maybe one day you’ll be ready.”

Rayne took the journal and held it close to her chest. Her grandfather reached out and cupped her cheek in his rough hand, and her vision blurred with tears.

Marshall pulled away and went back to grab his satchel. Before he could reach it, the bedroom door opened. Rayne’s father stood in the doorway, his hair windblown, chest heaving like he’d run to get there.

“So this is it,” her father said, and he didn’t quite sound like her father. The anger, the tone—it was different. “You’re just going to go away. Fayr it all, you’re just going to leave again? We talked about this, Dad. I thought we talked about this, and you said . . . you said that you wouldn’t.” The look in her father’s eyes was a mixture of anger and fear.

“I found something,” Marshall answered with another exhale from his nose. His voice was calm, tempered. “I have to find it. If I do, then I can—”

“No, no, no, no!” Rayne’s father roared. “There is no then. There is no end to your . . . your adventures. It’s only one excuse after another to leave your family behind. What about Maralyn? Because she adores you, and if you do this, then—” 

Aaron looked past his father, and his gaze landed on Rayne, whose tears were flowing freely now.

His face contorted into a mixture of rage and repression. Eyes glistening, he shook his head as though he seemed to understand something.

“I see,” Aaron said, his voice quieter but still brimming with emotion. He pushed past Marshall and scooped Rayne into his arms. 

“Goodbye, Dad,” he said without looking at his father as he walked out of the room.

Rayne reached for him as they passed, and Marshall held her hand until her fingers slipped out of his.

She didn’t say anything, and neither did he. And that was the last time she saw him.