Enar's Vacation - Open Beta

Chapter 10

3577 Words

This is a beta version of Enar's Vacation. Changes can - and probably will - be made as a result of reader feedback. I hope you'll enjoy it and I hope you'll take the time to give me some feedback. It will help me make this story the best it can be.

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Far away up on the porch the bell rang as the gate pulled shut behind them. The unexpected sound silenced the birds, but only for a moment and soon they sang once more, as if nothing had happened.

"Handy thing that." Rolf turned right and started walking up the road. "This way, it's not far to the crossroads."

"Is that where the village itself is?" Enar asked. He remembered coming past a crossroad last night on the cart, but couldn't recall seeing anything that looked like a village.

Hasse had yelled a greeting to someone sitting on a bench by the roadside. The person had yelled back, but they hadn't stopped and Enar hadn't thought much more about it. He'd been rather tired at the time.

"No, but the inn and the field are just around the bend from there and the cider-house is just a little further."

"Where's the village then?" Enar asked.

"The village?" Rolf laughed, "oh, I see what you mean now. You came through Ballyroed on the way here and now you're wondering where the big gathering of burrows is?"

"Well, yes, isn't that what a village is? A group of burrows together in the same spot."

Rolf grinned and started to say something, but stopped himself. He walked a few steps in silence and then cleared his throat. "To be fair my friend, in most places you'd be right, like in Ballyroed. They all live around that lake they got there, close together. Here though, there's no central place like that. I guess we could all live around the field, but that wouldn't be the same, and also, we need space for our orchards."

"I see," said Enar, "the inn and the field are the central locations and then the 'village' is spread out over the nearby hills?"

"Indeed. You're not too slow for a city folk after all my friend." Rolf laughed and slapped him on the back in that cheerful, companionable way people in cheesy old movies did, only for real.

For a while they walked in silence. The road wound its way along the forested hillside, here warmed by the mid-morning sun, there shaded by the leafs and needles of the surrounding trees. Life was good.

Rolf pointed out a rare flower growing by the side of the road and Enar asked about a tree he recognized from a park back home but hadn't seen anywhere else.

They talked about the weather; Enar complained about the rain back home, and Rolf pointed out what a beautiful day it was here on his vacation.

They talked about the children; Enar wondered at about how Eric and Linnea seemed to be doing most of the managing of the household, and Rolf explained it was to prepare them for adult life - and only during the weekends.

They talked about work; Enar ranted about the new system for cataloguing observation documentation at work, and Rolf let go a tirade about the new schedule for what household was to look after the village's flock of sheep each week.

As they walked, the forest around them changed. Firs and pines gave way to birches and the occasional oak and on the ground, tall green grass replaced thorns and bushes. The woods opened up enough as to be almost a meadow. Here and there, big moss covered troll's marbles nestled in the hillside, and far down in the valley, a lake could be glimpsed, shimmering between the trees.