A Pilgrim

It was past noon, and the dogs of Beechham were barking fit to burst. Dorian Smith stopped his work on the broken chain. Wiping his hands on a stained and sooty old rag, he left the heat and smoke of the smithy and strode out into the street, taking in a great breath of clean air as he did so. 

In the middle of the dirt track that ran through the town and away into the wider world, a man was fending off the more aggressive of the village dogs with a wooden staff as children watched and clamored in excitement. Unlike most who were bothered by the dogs, he wasn’t striking out at them, but was merely blocking them and shouting stern rebukes. He held his ground, feet planted, seemingly unafraid. Dorian watched a few moments more, arms crossed, measuring the stranger.

The stranger was of middling height, not as tall as Dorian himself, nor yet as short as the shortest of the townsmen. The stranger’s long, dark hooded cloak was stained and briar-torn. On his back, a small pack, a bow, and a quiver of arrows jostled for space. Dorian eyed the long knife that swung on the stranger’s belt, and concluded that the weapons were for hunting and bushcraft, not robbing. The smith shouted at the dogs to be still. 

“My thanks, master smith,” the stranger said, eyes flicking warily back and forth from Dorian to the dogs slinking with their tails between their legs. 

The brawny smith stepped forward to meet the man with his hand extended, shooing the dogs farther away as he did so. “Greetings, stranger.” 

The stranger planted his staff with his left hand and grasped Dorian’s hand with his right, looking him in the eyes and smiling as he did so. 

“These worthy dogs,” the man said, gesturing with his staff, “have given me a similarly worthy welcome, have they not?” His brown eyes were glinting with a mirth and cheer which Dorian didn’t understand. 

“So they do to all,” the smith replied, taking a step back. “It is well to be alerted to the approach of strangers. One knows not what their business might be, and whether it be honest.”

The stranger laughed again. “And so the good smith is wondering what my business is, and whether it is honest, and perhaps he is ready to set the dogs on me again if he does not like my answer.” 

Baffled, Dorian tried to find a truth other than the one the stranger had just put forth so bluntly, but could think of nothing else truthful. Finally, he nodded. 

“I am a traveler,” the man said, sobering somewhat. “I am sore weary from journeying on the road, and I am seeking shelter and rest for a time. This looks a pleasant place to stop.” He waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed the entire village and surrounding farmlands. 

Dorian crossed his arms again. “Folks here have little to spare. You’re unlikely to find a bed or food unless you can compensate.” It was an opinion of the town that no one here was well-off enough to simply give anything away. It was another opinion of the town that outsiders should not be allowed to take away from the town without giving something back; whether they gave back in good, coin, or service was their own business.

“Perhaps someone will allow me the use of a shed or stable,” the stranger shrugged. “Other travelers relieved me of all my coin before I came here.” 

The fire in the smithy must be tended soon, Dorian knew, else it would lose its strength, and he would lose time stoking it when he could have been working. “I have my work to attend,” he told the stranger. “If you will lend me a hand, I can repay you.” The smith turned and reentered the close, hot air of his smithy, laid hands on the bellows, and pumped them. Air rushed, the fire flared, and he took up tongs to move the broken chain into the flames. 

The bellows wheezed slightly, and Dorian looked up to see the stranger grasping the handles and watching him. He gave a grunt of acknowledgement and began shaping a new link for the broken chain, nodding as he wanted another contribution from the leathern bellows. “I am Dorian,” he informed the stranger.

“My name is Phillip,” the man replied, the fire shining in his dark eyes. 

The next morning after they had breakfasted, Phillip accompanied Dorian back into the smithy, where the traveler had spent the night. Dorian gave him a coin, and said, "If you will take this chain to the house you see there—" he pointed—"I would appreciate it."

"Gladly," Phillip replied, and shouldered the tools. Dorian began to stoke the sunken fire.

Some time later, Dorian came out again when he heard a cry outside in the street. He saw Phillip kneeling and speaking to some children. From the moment he had appeared, they had been fascinated with him, following the stranger about and watching him. Children in Beechham were known round about as scamps, and it was rumored that they would take what they could when grown folk weren’t looking. 

“Now, I saw you take it,” Phillip was saying as Dorian approached. “Shouldn’t you give it back to her?” 

Thomas, a friend of Dorian’s son, had his hand thrust deep into his pocket, and was shaking his head. A little girl who looked close to tears was standing near. 

“I didn’t take it,” Thomas said, “she gave it me.”

"But did she mean for you to keep it? I thought you asked to see it."

"Be still, stranger!" Dorian's son John stepped between his friend and Phillip and squared himself, glaring the grown man in the face. "What we do is none of your business. Come, Thomas!"

The two boys ran off, and Phillip got to his feet. Dorian's face was redder than when he was at work in the smithy. Phillip turned, saw him, and smiled sadly.

"What happened?" Dorian asked.

"A little copper whistle has apparently changed hands," Phillip replied.

"If John—" the smith started.

Phillip held up a hand. "It was not John who took it,” he said quietly. "He only defended Thomas. I suppose it's what he's heard his elders do." Phillip turned to the teary-eyed little girl. "It was only a whistle," he said softly, "and because you've lost it, you can have—" he reached into his pocket—"this." He held out a coin. The one Dorian had given him not an hour ago.

The little girl snatched the gift and scampered away.

Dorian decided he needed to have a word with his son. “My thanks, Phillip,” he said quietly.

Phillip nodded. “The forge needs tending, I suppose; I can do so, if you wish.” Dorian gave his consent, and started after John. Phillip was patiently working the bellows and adding wood to the fire when Dorian finally returned.

Days passed. Once it was seen that Phillip was more than willing to do a work before receiving any return, more work was given him, though his reward was always pitifully small. For a general rule of the town was that unless more was demanded, less was usually given. But Phillip seemed content with that less. He was alway lending a hand before he was asked, and smiling as he did so. 

One man never warmed up to him, though. “The last time a stranger came into this town, I lost my horse,” said Roland the trapper. No one bothered trying to convince him that it was his own fault, leaving his horse loose outside that night and being too drunk to remember to stable it. It had been gone ere sunrise, and he blamed the traveler who had passed through the week before as a thief. Roland insisted, “No good can come of strangers.” And so he watched Phillip, and jeered at him if he happened to pass him in the street, and his tobacco juice aimed at the ground landed close enough to splatter on the strangers’ boots. The day Phillip carried some mended kitchen utensils out to the shack in the woods, the man had come out of the shack ordering the wanderer off his property. Upon displaying the things Dorian had sent him with and telling who had sent him, Roland still didn’t believe him for some time. When he was finally convinced, he sneered at Phillip as he walked away.

Dorian’s wife shook him awake in the night. “Listen! Something’s happening.” Faint shouts reached the smith’s ears, a single discernable word repeated over and over. He hurled himself out of bed. “Something is burning,” Dorian said as he ran. 

Outside in the street, the cry of “Fire!” pounded in Dorian’s ears. At the well, he found a single man hauling up the bucket, and he joined in. “Whose house is it?” he asked as pulled the rope up hand over hand. 

“Roland’s.”

At the shack set in the woods, many people, men and women, were throwing the contents of every bucket the village could find into the blaze. Smoke choked the air and quickly teared Dorian’s eyes.

“Here now—what do you think you’re doing?” 

Squinting against the glare of the flames, Dorian turned to see one figure swinging crazily at another with a bucket, silhouetted by the burning house. Others were backing away. The defendant grabbed at the bucket as he dodged. Dorian rushed towards the fray, and recognized Phillip and Roland just in time to watch the trapper strike Phillip in the face with a clenched fist. 

Phillip staggered back, hand to his nose. When he took it away, Dorian saw something dark on Phillip’s face and hand. 

Then Roland came after him again. “Filthy stranger! Get off my property!” 

“Stop!” Dorian stepped between the two. “Can you not see he is trying to help?” 

“It’s my property,” Roland said with a curse, “and he’ll get off if I say so!” With that, Roland swung his bucket at Phillip again. Dorian intercepted it, and the trapper’s face contorted in rage. He cursed again, pulled a knife from the sheathe on his belt, and went after Dorian. “Taking up with strangers—now see what’s come to you!” 

A dark shape lurched in front of Dorian. He was shocked; Roland was most likely drunk, and no one dared tangle with him when he was in a mood like this. 

Roland clutched the interfer’s shirt and lifted the knife high. 

Dorian grabbed for the knife. 

Roland plunged the weapon toward Dorian. 

Something slammed into Roland, throwing him off his feet. He went down screaming, and after a moment of writhing and wrestling, the dark mass pulled away, separating into several men of the town. One held the knife. 

“Treacherous knaves, all of you!” Roland howled, scrambling to his feet. 

“If he doesn’t want the help that’s given him,” someone said, “we might as well leave.”

“I shall help,” Phillip said, “whether he thinks he wants it or not. He is not in his right mind.” 

There was sullen muttering through the crowd, but finally everyone went to work once more. Phillip went at it hardest, with Dorian behind him. In the end, the fire was quenched, though the overpowering smell of wood smoke, stronger than from a normal fire, lingered in the early morning and followed the tired villagers home. 

Late in the morning, after the sun had risen, smoke was still lingering in the air when Dorian rose to stoke the forge fire. A shadow fell into the smithy as he worked, and he looked up.

Phillip stood in the road, clad in his cloak, staff in hand, pack, bow, and quiver on his back. He looked the same as the first day he’d come into town. “Farewell, Dorian. I am continuing my travels now.” 

Dorian wanted to protest, but judging Phillip’s bearing and the look on his face, it would be futile. Instead, Dorian stepped forward and held his hand out. Phillip grasped it. 

“Farewell, friend,” Dorian said. 

Phillip smiled. “Friend? Not stranger?”

“No. You are no longer a stranger.”

Phillip smiled again, and set off down the road. The children followed him to the edge of town, and stood calling goodbye to him as he grew more and more distant.