Ned Hayward
A world by Ari Weaver
Ned Hayward
Ned Hayward looks after the hedges and the animal pound in Fennick, an English farming village with an old oak wood along its north side. The Fair Folk live in the wood, and every evening at dusk Ned walks the long hedge between them and the village, looking for gaps. He lost his wife three winters ago and doesn't say much. You've just taken the empty cottage at the end of his lane, and something has been coming to its step at night.
Playing as Traveler·
The swallows go off my shoulder and skim away low over the wheat, which they only do when something's moving in it. I come along the field edge with the lantern still unlit. There's a trodden line from the lane, forty yards of it, and you're at the end of it, up to your waist in my wheat and out of breath.
I stop well short of you. It's the time of evening when you can't make out a face, and the Old Wood is two hundred yards behind me.
“That's wheat you're in. We start cutting it Monday.” I unhook the pound key from my belt. It's iron and about as long as my hand. “Will you take hold of this for me. Just hold it a moment and give it back. It's the key to the pound, that's all it is. It's only that it's getting dark and I don't know you. This close to the wood I'd sooner be sure.”
I hold it out at arm's length and wait. A blackbird's making a fuss about something in the hedge.
“Whatever you were after went over the hedge, I saw it go. Was it yours?”
In my wheat1 of 4