Soon, Tom found out the address of the Scarborough Fair, a fair that had been set up by the Vikings. They used to come into England and plunder, but they also traded normally, and a regular fair was formed in Scarborough in the autumn of each year, lasting a month and a half.
This market has been held for centuries and even the Vikings do not attack the place during the market.
Scarborough Fair was some forty or fifty miles away, and your legs would have been broken if you had gone there alone. Then Hermione looked at Tom.
"You still have your powers, don't you?"
"Of course!" As soon as the words were spoken, a sleek male unicorn appeared before Hermione's eyes, his beautiful silver fur immediately caught her attention, so beautiful that she didn't want to look away.
Looking at the unicorn's shiny silver fur, Hermione couldn't help but reach out to him and stroke his back, feeling his satiny touch. However, she suddenly remembered the unicorn's original form and blushed.
She hopped onto the unicorn's back and followed it all the way to Scarborough Fair.
There was a reason he didn't use his phoenix form. It was a long way, and if he had been Fawkes, he could have gotten there quickly, but Tom, being a replica, had not mastered the magic of teleportation and would have had to fly, and it would have taken at least twenty minutes to get to Scarborough Fair. Tom would have to fly high so as not to be seen, and what if Hermione fell during the flight?
So it was better to become a unicorn and let him carry Hermione, and as a unicorn, Tom was inexplicably comfortable when Hermione was near him, especially when Hermione stroked his back, which was nicer than any kind of massage. It was a shame that Hermione only touched him for a little while before she stopped.
The unicorn's speed in the forest is no less than that of a horse, and its endurance is far superior to that of a normal horse. About two hours later, Tom took Hermione to the Scarborough fair.
The market was much larger than the one in the small town, probably a hundred times larger, and was filled with vendors selling their wares, as well as elite merchants selling their wares and buying specialties.
Tom had his first contact with the medieval world.
At the market, they easily found the spice merchant and bought the four spices. The merchant was kind enough to wrap the four spices together for them. Tom learned that the four spices represented the sweetness of love, strength, loyalty and courage.
After purchasing the spices, they headed south of the market, asking for Benn's address as they went. Finally, they found Benn in a small village south of the market.
Benn appeared to be a young man in his early twenties, solidly built and long-limbed. His family had some land and employed a dozen men to help him farm it. After accepting the packet of spices, he cast a sad look.
He thought a while and said to Tom, "Please take a message to me and tell Elaine to make me a fine linen shirt, but when it is finished it must be washed in a dry well and dried on a blade of dry grass, and when it is finished it must be able to cover water without a drop escaping. If we can do these things, we will be together again and be true lovers to each other."
Tom and Hermione: "..."
By the time they got back to town, it was late.
Elaine was at the entrance of the village waiting for them.
Hearing Benn's reply, Elaine stomped her foot, "How could you do such a thing to yourself?! why be so mean when you just had a fight with him?!"
She got a little angry, "Then please pass the word, I have a request for him too. I want him to take the leather scythe and harvest the grain, then slam it against the wall, but not a single seed must fall on the ground, and if he can do that, then we can be together again, and be true lovers!"
Tom could already see that the young couple were arguing. But the message had to be carried, Tom knew that the couple was the key to completing this dungeon.
"Alright, I'll relay your message, but if you want, my good friend can help you with the shirt."
Benn's request was a bit outrageous, but a wizard didn't find it difficult to make it happen.
"Really?" Elaine looked up in surprise, "Can you really make a shirt like that?"
"Of course, we're travelers from afar." Tom sketched a smile, "But if you really like Benn, you'd better get back to him as soon as possible, the two of you need to tolerate each other."
Elaine lowered her head and said nothing.
Tom took Hermione aside and whispered to her what had occurred to him. He then set off for Scarborough Fair. Luckily, somehow, Tom wasn't the least bit hungry after running for most of the day.
A day later, Elaine had finished the fine linen shirt Benn had asked for. She gave it to Hermione, who took it to a dry well.
"Aguamenti!" Hermione's wand came to life and, with the water in the dry well, she managed to wash the shirt at the bottom of the well. The washed shirt was placed on a patch of dry grass, and Hermione used a levitation spell to keep the shirt and the dry grass floating in the air. Soon, a distant mountain breeze dried the shirt.
Finally, Hermione called for a candle, as Tom had told her, and applied it again and again over the surface of the shirt, and when she was done, she rolled a hot pebble over the shirt and the wax melted into the seams of the fabric. This caused the shirt, even when a glass of water was poured on it, not to drip.
When the shirt was finished, Elaine asked Hermione to hand it to her and see if Benn had harvested the grain as she had requested.
Hermione shook her head, thinking that the pair were a bit interesting: they were obviously attracted to each other, but neither would give in to the other, and they gave each other a hard time, so they gave each other trouble.
However, Hermione was sure that Tom would find a good solution.
With a bit of anticipation, Hermione set off for the Scarborough Fair.
Meanwhile, Tom was already on Benn's land.
"Great, how did you do that? You can make a leather scythe as hard as a rock."
Tom: "..."
It was nothing, some of the big guys could even make a knife out of a grain of rice, but Tom didn't have the skills, he had to settle for a petrification spell.
As for beating the grain into the wall, Tom's solution was to lay a layer of cloth on the floor. And to keep the wind from blowing the grain away, he also put a veil on the outside.
This allowed him to stand on the wall and not a single grain fell to the ground.
By the time the last grain had been taken care of, Benn was so tired that he almost fainted. He staggered over the wall and approached Tom, "Please go and tell Elaine I've done it! Let's get back together."
Tom nodded and set off for home again.
This time, he met Hermione halfway and, after some discussion, they decided it would be best to take Elaine with them to see Benn; the couple had had an argument and, as the saying goes, you have to unring the bell, so it saved Tom a round trip.
But when they returned to the small town, an unexpected scene arose.
It was not a busy town, but there were at least a few hundred people living there, and it had a great vitality. But when Tom returned, the town was in ruins, and even the tallest church was in ruins. The rest of the houses, moreover, had been reduced to heaps of rubble and charcoal, buried by a wild growth of weeds. Occasionally hollow skulls could be seen among the undergrowth.
Tom went to Elaine's house from memory and found it, like the rest of the town, charred, and he picked up a crown of brown hair from the underbrush and gently dusted it off.
"Tom, here... Why? I don't understand...," Hermione said incredulously, looking at this strange but familiar scene, "We've only been gone for half a day!"
"Back with Benn." Tom immediately returned with his crown of hair, and this time the small village south of Scarborough Fair was still there, but as soon as Tom entered it seemed to him that everything had subtly changed: the houses and fields still looked familiar, but the details were out of place, and even the villagers seemed to have changed.
He reached Benn's house, but found it also long abandoned.
Tom stopped an old farmer who was passing by, "Do you know where the owner of this house has gone?"
The old farmer's misty eyes flashed with a look of remembrance, "This house belonged to a man named Benn, back in the early days, when the Vikings were so violent that many northern towns were razed to the ground. He volunteered to fight the Vikings at the Lord's request, but never returned, and only came back with an altar.... This was decades ago.... Why do you ask these things?"
"Nothing," Tom shook his head, "Do you know where Benn was last buried?"
"Yes!" The old farmer pointed towards the house, buried at the back of his house, under the oak tree.
Tom and Hermione walked through the collapsed gate and into the ruins of Benn's house, and under the oak tree in the backyard, they saw a small grave almost buried in the undergrowth, with only a half-meter square stone in front of it, with Benn's name carved on it. Beneath it was a necklace with a cross on it.
Tom took the linen clothes from Hermione's arms without a word, but the clothes quickly rotted and turned to fly ash as soon as they came in contact with the air.
Tom gently extracted the necklace and entangled it with the chaplet.
[Double dungeon: Scarborough Fair!]
[Mission accomplished: fulfill Elaine and Benn's wish]
[Subtitle Reward: Divination Talent +1]
[Divination: 4 (Top Talent)]