Unwillingly Summoned: Chapter 7 – The Verdant Field

The inside of The Verdant Field was, well, it looked like one of those restaurant slash bars back on earth. There was the bar itself and a number of heavy wooden tables that were mostly empty. The few people sitting at the tables gave James a moment of pause. He didn’t quite know what to make of them. They didn’t come off like laborers or craftspeople. There was a hard edge to their glances that left him feeling a little cold. He was relieved that none of them gave him more than a passing look. He supposed that they either weren’t interested in him or didn’t see him as a threat, which he was a-okay with. There was a dark-haired woman behind the bar who smiled at him.

“Hi there. Welcome to The Verdant Field. You looking for food? A room?”

“Both,” he said and walked over to the bar.

“Well, you get food with a room, so that works out. How long you looking to stay?”

James had debated about that with himself on the way there. He needed something like a home base, at least until he got his feet under him in this city or decided to leave it.

“Why don’t we start with a week,” he said.

“That’ll run you a silver,” said the woman with a hint of warning in her voice.

James had put a little money into a pouch that he hung on his belt the way he’d seen other people doing it. It mostly held bronze coins, but he’d put a few silver coins in there just to be safe. He pulled one out and slid it across the bar. While the woman stashed the coin somewhere and dug around beneath the bar, James noticed a couple of faces peeking out of a door that led into what he assumed was the kitchen. They looked like the teenagers that seemed to work at most restaurants, but he thought they were a bit young to be working in a bar. Maybe they called them taverns here, he thought.

“Follow me,” said the dark-haired woman as she held up a key.

James dutifully followed the woman up a narrow set of stairs to a second floor. There was a hall with several doors, and each had a number stenciled onto it. He was led to room four, which at the far end of the hall. The woman unlocked the door and then handed him the key.

“Your home for the next week,” she said with a small smile.

“Thanks,” said James. “Is this your place?”

“It is,” said the woman. “Why?”

“I was just curious. Your brother recommended it to me.”

“Did he?” she asked, looking pleased.

“He did. Is that strange?”

“He’s always telling me that he tells people not to come here because the service is so terrible.”

James paused at that and something about his expression made the woman laugh.

“He thinks he’s funny. Obviously, that’s not true,” clarified the woman. “I’m Enrica, by the way.”

“James.”

“James? What an unusual name.”

“I blame my parents.”

“I suppose they are responsible,” said Enrica with a smirk. “Anyway, we start serving dinner in about half an hour. You’ll probably want to grab your seat sooner than later. It tends to get busy.”

“Thanks for the warning,” said James.

Enrica gave him a smile and a half-wave as she walked back down the hall. James went into the room and discovered that, yes, it was indeed small. There was a bed, a table that was just about big enough for his sack, and some kind of pseudo-closet cabinet built into one wall. There was another door that led into a room that it took him a minute to identify. When he realized it was a bathroom, he felt a sudden surge of relief. The palace had them in each room, but that was the palace. Of course, they would have running water and bathrooms. It had not been a certainty that anyone else would.

The toilet was an odd contraption, but simple enough to operate. There wasn’t a shower, just a copper tub that was just about big enough for him to sit in, but at least it had a drain. I guess I’m a bath guy now, thought James. Why are there never showers in these worlds? It rains here, right? Shouldn’t it be an obvious sort of thing to have? He supposed it was just something he’d learn to live with. It seemed like a dreadful waste of water to take a bath every single day, but he supposed water conservation and broad ecology probably weren’t things they worried about that much. For all he knew, the water was created and disposed of with magic, which would make that whole conservation concern disappear. He frowned at that idea. It seemed a bit off to him, but he immediately dropped that to very bottom of his list of concerns. It was an academic problem. Those could wait for a time when he wasn’t trying to figure out how to freaking live in this world.

With the room fully “explored,” he decided that he should heed Enrica’s warning to get a seat early for dinner. He had been worried about leaving his bag of holding sitting around where anyone could find it, but the palace servant had assuaged him of those worries. It seemed that once James put it down somewhere, the magic would lock it in place. It literally couldn’t be moved or opened by anyone. He’d been momentarily baffled by that until sanity chimed in. Considering that most of his worldly possessions were in his bag, it stood to reason that the same would be true of everyone else. The damn things would be getting stolen all the time without something like that immovability feature to prevent it.

Granted, it wasn’t foolproof. If he, for example, was gruesomely murdered, the connection would be broken and anyone could open the bag. There was also nothing to stop someone from beating him until he opened it for them. Still, there was only so much heavy lifting he could expect the bag itself to do on the security front. Leaving an immovable bag in a locked room seemed like a fairly safe bet. He went back downstairs and found that half of the available seats were already occupied. He managed to find one in a corner and sat down. He wasn’t especially paranoid by nature and most of the people he met just seemed like people. They were flawed but okay.

Even so, he figured a little extra caution wouldn’t hurt anything. There were bound to be some less-than-savory people around, just like there were back on Earth. Now that he considered it, there were probably more of them in a place like this where violence was more commonplace. The ones who did their best to pass as normal back home could be the violent asshats they really wanted to be here. That joyless train of thought was derailed when one of the girls he’d seen peeking out of the kitchen came over to where he was sitting. She had that willowy thinness he recognized as meaning she was probably in the middle of growth spurt. Judging by her age, it was probably her last. She gave him the distant professional smile of someone who dealt with dozens of people every day.

“Did you want dinner?” she asked.

“What is dinner today?” he asked.

“Well, there’s some fish, some chicken, a noodle dish, and we always have a beef stew on the stove.”

Something his mother had told him rose in James’s mind. He’d told her he was worried about feeling homesick at college.

“Anytime you’re feeling homesick, you should have some soup. Soup is like a hug you give yourself.”

Recalling that caused actually pain in his chest for a moment, but he powered through. What else was there to do? He’d eaten a lot of soup that first semester. He figured that this situation was about million times worse. Seeing as how stew was soup’s bigger, badder, older brother, having a bowl of it felt appropriate. He nodded to himself.

“I’ll have the stew, please,” he said.

He did a bit of half-ass people watching as he waited for his food. Most of the people who came and went looked like they were coming off a day of one kind of physical labor or another. He didn’t know enough about what kinds of work happened in the city to guess what they’re occupations were. Except for the guy who came in with what looked a lot like sawdust in his hair. James felt pretty confident that guy was a carpenter or something closely related. The girl came back with a large bowl of stew, a small loaf of bread, and cup of water. She deposited them on the table.

“If you want something else to drink, you’ll have to ask Enrica for it,” she said with a look toward the bar.

James nodded his understanding and said, “Water is fine for me.”

He’d want something with caffeine in it tomorrow, but he was steering clear of anything alcoholic for the foreseeable future. He didn’t feel close to comfortable enough to be getting even a little drunk. He dug into the food. The stew was thick and loaded with vegetables and some spices he didn’t immediately recognize. The bread was dense and had a thick, chewy crust. He’d rarely encountered anything other than basic sliced bread, save for the garlic bread his parents used to make when they had pasta. Even that had been made with pretty fluffy Italian bread. He thought that was what it had been made from at any rate. By the time he was getting near the bottom of the bowl, the bread was gone and he was feeling full. He kept eating anyway because he had no idea where or even if he’d be able to buy snacks. Plus, it all tasted good.

He leaned back after he barely managed to swallow the last spoonful of stew. He hadn’t noticed while he was eating, but something had changed in the place. There was a sense of… He struggled to put his finger on it. Grumpiness, maybe? There were a fair number of unhappy looking people sitting around, and the girl bringing out the food looked very stressed. He glanced around and saw that there were empty plates and bowls on most of the table. Oh, he thought as his own time working in restaurants came back to him. I get it. Someone didn’t show up for work. As the waiting customers grew increasingly unruly, James made his way over to the bar. Enrica wore a strained smile as she looked to him.

“Yes?” she asked.

James looked around the dining area one last time before he asked, “Do you need some help?”