Side story 8

Side story 8: Life of Babida the lumberjack abroad (Read part 1)
Babida P.O.V.
So I just killed the Monster of the forbidden mountain and had to leave my homeland to fulfill the pact that I signed with the ancestors.
I pledged to let them harness my plot of land for ten years as payment for healing my wounds on the battlefield against the evil giant bird of the cursed hill.
Indeed after the ancestors' vital intervention, while I was on the ground writhing in pain due to the savage windy attack of the Monster, I was invigorated and could defeat it by first smashing its leg with my Herculean steel axe and then cutting its head off.
Now it was the time to back my word toward the forefathers. I hence left the Batang empire and traveled to the neighboring land on the west border, the Batumba empire.
I was unknown there and that was just fine for me because I liked to go unnoticed and live a quiet life, something that I would have never been able to avail as a celebrity.
However, I had a big problem. I had no job and the only thing I could do was to transform raw wood into logs or timbers.
So I looked for fellow woodcutters in the region and met an old man by the name of Baba. He was a septuagenarian and had worked as a woodsman since the age of fifteen years.
Of course, he had lost his youth's freshness and could no longer lift an axe to cut wood but he was wise and a good adviser.
He told me to open a shop in Batumba's downtown market as he did in the past to supply fagots.
I thus listened to the old man and rented a store with the prize money that I had received from Emperor Batang IV as a reward for slaying the Monster of the forbidden mountain and bringing the devilish creature's head to him on a silver platter.
Barely one week after the store's opening, I was flooded with clients' orders. Overwhelmed by my rapid success, I had to swiftly hire two young and strong men like me to help me cut the wood in the forest and take the bundles of sticks to the shop.
The two young brothers had no experience, so I trained them and thank the ancestors, they were brave and fast learners.
In the following months, the business flourished even more, and consequently, I had to recruit two new young apprentices and showed them the arcane of the job as I did with the first ones.
They were also courageous and learning fast. Unfortunately one of the recruits made a mistake by not wearing protective hand gloves and carrying the fagots with bare hands.
A thin chunk of a wooden stick stung him on the index finger and got stuck inside, causing paronychia. The brother was treated by a native doctor but because of the trauma that he suffered from this bad experience, he stopped the woodcutter job and went for another endeavor.
I replaced him with a new one and became stricter on the safety rules. Thank the ancestors it worked out, for we never got again a serious case of injury.
My popularity grew considerably and the Batumba people nicknamed me 'The Batang Merchant'. Nevertheless, my success didn't please everybody. Some locals thought that I was a foreigner from a very rich land who came to steal from their table.
The people of the Batumba empire like those of other lands envied the Batang empire which was very prosperous. So It was hard for some inhabitants to swallow that I left my wealthy homeland to come to take the little they had in their not-so-rich country.
My worst enemies spread the rumor that I was a fugitive from the Batang empire and hence could not go back before the reigning Emperor Batang IV was dead or I would be thrown in jail on hung.
Others said that I was banished from my country for having betrayed the Emperor, though they could not explain how.
I was only able to survive the hatred and gossip because Emperor Batang IV had signed treaties of nonaggression and brotherhood with my host country.
So my enemies, though they disliked me, feared that they would be punished by their Emperor His Majesty Batumba III if they dared harm a citizen of an ally.
Having noticed this, I carried out my fagot business unworried. However, my Herculean steel axe was never far away from me.
Shall one of these haters made the mistake to lay a hand on me, surely I would have buried my patience and tolerance, and turned the unlucky one into the wood before knocking the head off with the sharp blade of my axe.
But goodness, I prayed that this would never happen because the vast majority of the Batumba people were very kind to me.
They always invited me to their yearly traditional ceremony the 'Kwinta' during which they invoked their ancestors so the latter poured upon them all sorts of benedictions.
After the ritual, they organized a big feast where I could taste all the divine delicacies of the land. I was particularly fond of their grilled and spicy snake that I ate so much and often got diarrhea for days.
I couldn't work then and my store in my absence was managed by my older collaborator who had gained experience and was now a senior woodsman.
A few years flew by and I turned twenty-five. I found real love for the first time: a pretty Batumba woman, nineteen years of age and whose name was Sabrina.
We loved each other and had planned to marry but that was out of the question for her father, a conservative Batumba man for whom a non-Batumba citizen could never get wed to his only daughter.
Though I was strong and successful, it wasn't enough to change the reactionary dad. In bad posture and by the way in a foreign land, I preferred to give up on my love for the young Sabrina and move on as if nothing had ever happened.
All that mattered to me from that heartbreak onward was the fagot store that I cherished like a baby and it helped me find the strength to resist till the end of the ten years I engaged myself to spend out of the Batang empire while the ancestors exploited my land.
Finally, the ten years were reached. Nonetheless, it was complicated to leave the Batumba empire right away. I was established and it had also become a second home to me.
My fagot business was still doing good and in a certain way, I had some apprehension regarding my return to the Batang empire.
My uncle Doda had long passed away and he was my sole relative. Moreover, I had abandoned my plot of land to the ancestors and didn't know in what condition I would find it.
Maybe it was unfruitful now and I had to start from scratch before it was going to be productive again.
I had been out of the country for ten years and things had certainly evolved. Not feeling ready to face the reality, I postponed my return to my homeland.
I met some time after another refined Batumba beauty. We got in love and I proposed to marry her but she hesitated to introduce me to her family, conscious of the traditional barriers that didn't allow a local to tie the knot with a foreigner.
I was twenty-nine years old and was devastated by the unfairness of love. I decided to lock my heart to any woman again and to live solitary.
My fagot store became even more the center of all my attention. Nothing else mattered to me. I had been disappointed by everything except by the fagot shop that instead had given me pride, wealth, and fame, though notoriety had never been something I looked for.
Ultimately the time to leave the Batumba empire arrived. I was now thirty-one years of age and melancholic about my homeland.
I no longer feared any eventuality and I was geared up to face reality no matter how terrible it could be. I said to myself if I had to start from zero, then it shall be so.
However, I wanted to go from my host country without people being aware of it because I was certain that some of them would try to convince me to stay or to go to the Batang empire just for a visit and come back.
Anyway, I sensed that they would come up with all sorts of incentives or reasons for me to remain in their land, especially my collaborators at the shop.
We had become very good brothers over the years and we were a kind of a recomposed family.
So instead of selling the shop, I decided to take just the cash reserves and leave the goods to my brothers, knowing that they would be able to make sales and reinvest in the business that they would now own.
I wrote a letter of explanation that I dropped on the store counter. Then I went back to my small home in the east of the capital city Bunu, packed my belongings, and overnight began the journey to my beloved homeland, the Batang empire.