“As the summer ends, the days will begin to grow colder. And as the days grow colder, we must ask the Powers for their protection from the weather to keep us warm while the air chills. But, since the sun is still hot and bright, and will be for the next few weeks, we must thank the Powers for keeping us cool and providing us with the river.”

Before a crowd of Nentatharins, Hadhod stood on a raised platform under the sun. Behind him flowed the River Siranim, splashing around the roots of the Willow, which grew with reaching green branches over the water. He turned his palms toward the sky and dropped his chin to his chest.

Morfindel, with the rest of the Nentatharins, dropped her head, put her palms flat on the ground, and closed her eyes. As the sun beat down on her black hair she murmured thanks to Serïa, the goddess of water, for the cool, clear liquid that would quench her thirst and rescue her from the heavy heat of the sun.

“You may rise,” Hadhod said, lowering his arms. “You are dismissed.”

The murmuring stopped and the townspeople got up.

Amid the townspeople leaving the square, Morfindel looked around for Belegorn. She had not seen him all day, not since last night when he came into her and Adurant’s tavern with his friends looking for a drink. A year or so ago he and those same trouble-making friends of his had had five too many drinks and had started a fight from which Belegorn received a black eye. He still bragged about the eye, saying that was all his opponent could give him while he himself beat the other man unconscious without breaking a sweat. Not actually true, but no one believed Belegorn anyway.

Since the fight, though, Morfindel and her husband restricted Belegorn from having more than a pint a night. At first, Belegorn had tried getting drinks at other taverns, but there weren’t many in town and word spread fast. No tavern, pub or inn would let him have more than a pint. He had vowed revenge, but Morfindel didn’t worry. He was her cousin, and no one believed Belegorn anyway.

She craned her neck over the crowd, searching for Belegorn’s brown hair and arrogant grin that had grown so familiar to her in the past twenty years since he was born. She could spot it instantly through the thickest flood of Belegorn look-alikes. But that self-centered smirk was nowhere to be found, not here at least.

“Morfindel,” Hadhod said, approaching, “wife of Adurant. You look troubled.” The stout old Adani, the religious leader, was dressed in a green robe with blue sleeves, a brown collar, a red hem with white borders, and a black sash—the religious dress. Each color was dedicated to a Power, green being the most used because it was the color of Cuivië, the goddess of life. “How is your husband?”

“Well, Adani,” Morfindel said. “Business is good.”

“Still no children? You’re twenty-five years old now, Morfindel. It’s getting late.”

“No, Adani. Adurant and I…we prefer life the way it is now. Have you seen Belegorn?”

Hadhod thought a moment. “No,” he said. “Not in four days.”

Her eyes narrowed. This was the fourth worship in a row he had missed. Did he want Serïa, the goddess of water, to drown him in the river? Or Kemenon, the god of the earth, to hurl rocks upon him? Her mouth set in a grim line, Morfindel stormed off in the direction of the hill on which Hadhod’s house stood. She knew where Belegorn was, and she knew why he was there.

~ : ~

“Belegorn!”

Belegorn turned away from his friends. Usually, when he heard a female voice calling his name, he would put on his arrogant grin and try to recall the nearest barn or field where they wouldn’t be disturbed. But this female voice meant business; and even if it didn’t, he knew whose voice it was. His arrogant grin was replaced with a grimace.

“Belegorn, you idiot,” Morfindel said, coming up the hill. “That’s four worships in a row you’ve missed. Instead of being with everyone else, I find you here? Trying to sneak into Aranna’s room?”

“No, I wasn’t!” Belegorn said. “I promise! We were just…”

“Just what?”

“Just…”

Morfindel grabbed his shirt and nailed him to the side of the house. He paled. “Don’t you lie to me, Belegorn.”

“I’m not lying!”

She let go of his shirt. After an eternity, she broke their staring match and trudged down the hill, the grass a bright green against the rippling dark blue of her skirt and her black hair waving in the breeze.

The color returned to Belegorn’s face and he straightened his shirt. He faced his chuckling friends.

“I could have taken her,” he said, “but I won’t hit a girl, even if she’s five years my senior.”

“Yeah,” Ramar, a tall, bulky boy, said. “Just like you could have gone into the forest those twelve years ago, but you’d preferred to run and scream like a little girl.”

Belegorn fixed him with a sharp glare. “Shut up.”

His friends just laughed. “Chicken,” Ramar said, snorting and snickering down the hill.

Belegorn watched his friends leave. When they disappeared over between the houses at the foot of the hill, he slumped against the house and rubbed his eyes. Damn them. It was twelve years ago he was dared by Ramar to go a few steps into the forest. Instead he had gotten scared and ran into the arms of his mother. Twelve years, and they still hadn’t forgotten. Never mind. They didn’t matter. They didn’t understand him. No one did. Not even Morfindel.

Maybe she did understand him a little, said the voice in the back of his head. But only because she had lived with him all his life.

He stood up.

“I don’t need to be understood,” he said.

He rounded back on the house. It was a tall building, for a house. It was two storeys with a shingled roof. Belegorn had always wondered what it would be like to live in so monstrous a house. The rest of the village lived in little cottages with leaky roofs and the occasional dirt floor, depending on how poor you were. Hadhod was the richest man in Nentathar, and the seventh richest man in the northern region. Of course, he didn’t even compare to the rich men in Dor Lorelin, the city by the water, the main trading center on this side of the mountains and the capitol of the southern region. But he was like a god as far as Belegorn was concerned.

Yes, riches were good. A rich man could buy rugs, a soft bed, warm blankets, paintings, furniture. He could afford to paint his house every so often before the old paint began to peel, and reshingle his roof so the rain wouldn’t leak in. But riches weren’t everything.

Belegorn looked up at the rectangular window with green shutters on the second floor: Aranna’s window. He had never seen her himself, but everyone knew she was as beautiful as her father Hadhod was rich. Everyone knew her eyes were as blue as a clear summer morning, her cheeks as pink as the blossoms that would color this hill in the spring, her hair like the gold in the mystic mountain city of Loslonde. Yes, like gold, just like what her father had piles of.

Belegorn pulled himself up to Aranna’s windowsill by stepping up onto the frame of the lower floor window. He put his fingers on the green shutters over the window of Aranna’s room, asking himself if he should. If he did, Morfindel might find out, and that would probably mean the end of his life at the hands of his older cousin. But if he didn’t, he would have no chance at Aranna…or her money. Once again he asked himself if he should.

“Yes,” he said, and gripped the shutters. He tugged, ripping the wooden frame free of the house, exposing the window to the world. He found the window unlocked and he swung the rectangular piece of glass inward. He climbed in and dropped onto a red and yellow carpet, sending a cloud of dust flying. Belegorn coughed and waved the dust away unsuccessfully. It settled like snow on his head and shoulders.

“Aranna?” he said.

No answer came. Belegorn wondered if she was deaf; that could be why Hadhod kept her locked up.

A wooden dresser stood in one corner of the dark, dusty room and a bed, made with dull red sheets and a pale yellow blanket, was located opposite. Belegorn approached the dresser slowly, hoping nothing, or no one, was inside to jump out and scare him. The door was tightly closed, and Belegorn had to pull hard to open it. It did open, though, and the force sent Belegorn sprawling once more onto the carpet, letting loose another cloud of dust.

The dresser was filled with dresses hanging on clothes hangers. A blue and gold dress made of silk and soft velvet hung separate from the others. He touched the shoulder gently with two fingers. When his fingers came away they were covered with dust.

There came the sound of footsteps from outside the door. Belegorn swiveled toward the door. The lock clicked and the doorknob turned. He searched frantically for a place to hide. Not a second before the door opened, he jumped into the dresser, shutting it behind him. Someone came into the room, their footfalls muted by the carpet. Despite the carpet, the steps seemed to grow louder, closer.

Belegorn held his breath.

The dresser door on the opposite side from Belegorn opened. Light shone through the dust on the back of the dresser between the shadows of the dresses that stood like dark pillars on the wood. He heard breathing. He closed his eyes and felt like his lungs would burst. He saw the shadow of a hand reaching for the dresser, but he couldn’t tell whose hand. He prayed to Cuivie, Maegurth, Mellonde, any Power he could think of, to let him live. He silently apologized to Morfindel for not listening. He knew she didn’t approve of his ways, and promised to change if he could just live.

Then the hand stopped. His lungs burned, his eyes bulged, he resisted the urge to breathe. The hand withdrew and the dresser door closed. The muffled footsteps grew softer. Belegorn heard the door of the room open, the footsteps leave, the door close.

He let out all the air he was holding in his chest and gasped for breath, then coughed on the dust. He tumbled out of the dresser, his face white. He breathed, his heard pounding, and thanked the Powers for letting him live.

“I told you, Morfindel,” he said. “I can take care of myself.”

He was almost too preoccupied with congratulating himself to hear the footsteps returning. Almost, but not quite. The lock clicked again.

Belegorn darted to the window and nearly leaped out as if the house were on fire. He felt himself begin to fall and suddenly the ground seemed ten floors down instead of two. He was in open space, nothing between him and the blue, cloudless sky. Then his fingers found the windowsill and his fall was halted.

But he wasn’t allowed a rest because his face was itchy with dust and his sweaty fingertips started to slip, and he fell again. He dropped into the bushes below, twigs stabbing at his sides. He winced, stood, and, spitting leaves out of his mouth, began to run down the hill, only looking back once to see a silhouetted figure in the window, watching him.