The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1
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In glorious triumph, the boy returned, expecting a grand welcoming from his aunt when he came in, still alive from his adventures. Yet, while she was greatly relieved to see him, there was someone else waiting there for him as well, the unexpected presence of another figure—Graybeard.

The last person he expected to see was the old keeper, who was drinking his aunt’s mead at the table. Yet the boy was delighted when he also poured him a cup in greeting.

“I see you still have your knife,” Graybeard noted.

“He never takes it off,” said his aunt.

“He even sleeps with it,” added Sith.

“Good!” said Graybeard. “That’s exactly what I intended. So?” he asked the boy. “Shall we head down to the river with our fishing poles for a smoke? We have men business to discuss.”

The boy had hoped to glorify himself a bit longer in the knowledge that someone had actually missed him when thinking him dead. But he also liked the idea of heading down to the riverbank and drinking and smoking with the elves’ keeper (Who this time let him partake in his most excellent tobacco.). Besides, he had said “men business”, implying the boy was a man. No one had ever said that about him before. It made him feel very important.

So, stuffed with self-importance and filled with “men business” he accompanied the keeper out the door, noting Sith’s look of pure envy.

Of course, every elf they passed on the way to the river stopped in their tracks to see the satyr and their keeper together. Some even rubbed their eyes in disbelief and the boy reveled in it. The keeper didn’t bestow this honor on any of them.

The boy sat down beside him on the river bank as if the two of them did this every day. Together, they baited their hooks and tossed out their lines. Graybeard stoked up a pipe load, lit it, and shared it with him, pouring each of them a cup of mead.

The boy found the mead deliciously sweet, as it is wine made from honey. Like the tobacco, it had its own heavenly ambrosia.

They took turns blowing a few smoke rings and then Graybeard said, “So? Going to be a robber, are you?”

The boy coughed in mid puff and looked at him, startled. How did he know that?

The old keeper just smiled at his surprise. “What? You thought I didn’t know? Why is it that everyone around here thinks I know nothing?”

“How did you know?” the boy's mouth fell open in surprise.

“Word gets to me,” the ancient keeper said. “The wind carries it. The trees whisper it and the birds sing it. You have formed yourself a gang.”

The boy’s mouth fell open. This had only happened yesterday!

“Oh! Don’t worry,” old Graybeard told him. “Your secret’s safe with me. I approve. I had hopes of you becoming a writer of plays but a robber? I can see that, too. It suits you. Yes! It suits you rather well. Too well, perhaps.”

The boy was not happy. He was mortified. Graybeard was almost certainly going to forbid him from robbing the Light Elves, whom he looked after.

“Somebody ought to steal from these elves,” the old keeper said instead, reading his mind with a thoughtful glance. “It might serve to keep them on their toes.”

“You don’t mind?” the boy asked, amazed to hear this.

“Oh! Heavens no!” Graybeard said. “It’s not for me to approve, anyway. I’m not your keeper. You are free to do as you will. As a matter of fact,” he added, “I stopped by today to see if I might join your gang?”

“You?” gasped the boy in disbelief. “You want to join my gang?”

“I would,” said Graybeard. “I should like to be your captain of Intelligence and Wizardry. Has the position been taken?”

The boy shook his head. It hadn’t.

“Have any others in line for it?”

The boy shook his head again. No, he did not have any.

“Well! I can at least temporarily serve the position until someone better comes along.”

The boy waited, still in shock, to hear more.

“I do get two shares, don’t I?” he asked the boy through his old Grey-blue eyes, “one for being a member of the gang and one for being your captain of Intelligence and Wizardry?”

The boy nodded dumbly. The keeper even knew about the shares?

“I suppose you’ll need a week to get ready to leave,” Graybeard was saying. “Ronthiel has not finished your bow, although almost, and you have to finish his flute.”

The boy blinked in amazement. The keeper knew about that, too?

“And you have to give time for the others we’re leaving as well,” Graybeard reminded him. “Young Joe and the dwarf need to make their farewell plans, too.”

The boy’s head was spinning. Perhaps it was the tobacco or the mead, but all this was making him dizzy.

“Leaving?” he repeated. Where to?

“Certainly!” replied Graybeard. “If you’re going to rob, you have to go where the treasure’s at and, in order to do so, you have to leave where you are at in order to get there. Doesn’t that make sense to you?”

The boy nodded. He supposed it did. What didn’t make sense was Graybeard joining him.

“Besides,” said the elves’ keeper, “by leaving, you will put yourself out of reach of that displacer beast and that’s not a minor consideration either. Consider that as my first advice as your Captain of Intelligence and Wizardry.”

“Where are we leaving for?”

“You’re keeping that a secret,” said Graybeard with a wink, “even from me, but you’ll know it as soon as I advise you. So you need to set a day and place for all of us to meet. When will that be, my captain?”

The boy suspected some kind of trick or deceit. “Are you serious?”

“But, of course!” the other said. “I’ve never been more serious! Set the day and place and I shall be there. Oh! And I shall be bringing two more members to join the gang with me.”

“Who are they?”

“I have no idea,” said Graybeard, his fish pole tugging with a catch. “I’m as interested in that as you are. Likewise, you are also to get another member.”

“Why do I need to do that?”

“We need to be seven,” the old keeper replied, bringing in his fish. “It’s a magic number of deliberate design. Everything is designed around the number seven. That’s why there seven days in a week, seven holes in your head, seven spots on a ladybug, and seven colors of a rainbow… We have to be seven. It’s our lucky number. Here, see this fish? It has two eyes, one mouth, and two gills. That’s the number five, which is the wrong number. So he was unlucky enough to get caught. Whereas we,” he said, “with seven holes in our head, were lucky enough to catch him.”

The boy nodded slowly but uncertainly.

“Who do I get?” he asked.

“Someone you can trust,” said Graybeard, “the same as me.”

“Can you give me a hint of just who I should get?”

“I can’t even give myself a hint as to the two I should get. We just get them and then let the number seven take care of itself,” Graybeard answered. “So when do we leave?”