The Mountain Queen

Chapter Three: The Town

The town in which my brothers and I had grown up was really no more than a village—a cluster of a hundred or so modest, unpainted wooden structures nestled in a small valley between low and grassy hills.  A brook ran through it, and sloping green pastures rolled outwards on every side.  It was a place where wealth was measured in livestock, and that made my family poor—but rich and poor were much together in a place like this, and there was no room for boastfulness on the one side nor bitterness on the other; the place was too small for that.  It was said that some great king a thousand miles south claimed our valley as a part of his dominions, but in truth we were much too remote for him to bother with.  Our town was forgotten, and we liked it that way.

The town's public structures could be counted on two fingers; they were a large store, and a tiny church.  The church was little more than a ruin, built of stone at a time when the gods were bountiful, and left to decay when the gods withdrew.  Still, a handful of Worshippers—there were six, the last time I counted—still made their way up the hill every day, in the hour just before dawn, and still greeted the rising sun with a soaring tumult of melodious prayers.

In the old days, their prayers would have been full of hope, and even expectation—prayers for health, for wealth, for good wives and husbands, for a plentiful herd.  Now they were only prayers of thanks—thanks for their health, poor as it was; for their possessions, meager as they were; for the gift of matrimony or the gift of solitude; for the indulgent neighbor who let them milk his cow once a week.  Where religion had once been a tool, it was now a devotion, almost a penance.  No one alive could remember the last time a prayer had been answered.

The attitude of the other townsfolk toward the Worshippers was a curious blend of pity and admiration.  They were regarded as filthy (which they generally were), faintly comical, and unquestionably sacred.  They were offered sincere charity, and gentle ridicule.  Their tales—which they told avidly to anyone who would listen—were full of wonders and miracles, and as a child I had delighted in them, even as my mother cautioned me that they were only stories.  On the whole, these few devout villagers were something akin to communal pets—and yet an unmistakable aura of reverence surrounded them, and we would have been very sorry to see them leave.

Cressock cast a curious glance up at the church as we strode past it.  But our business lay elsewhere.

*          *          *

Mother's house was at the far end of town, tucked in a hollow between two looming hills.  Father had built it himself, in the days before Shamus's birth, assisted by the men of the town, who always came in a flock when something needed building.  It was a crude but sturdy house, two stories tall and with a small garden on three sides.  The place had been my home for fourteen of my fifteen years, and seeing it now gave me a pang of longing, which I firmly fought down.  I was no longer a child.  I was strong.  I was determined to be strong.

Father halted just outside the garden gate.  I could see the tension in his neck and shoulders as he gazed at the house he had made.  Father rarely came to town these days—and almost never all the way to the house.

"Wait here," he said, not shifting his gaze.  We stood and waited.  It was another long moment before Father moved.

As Father passed through the gate into the little garden, I glanced up at Cressock.  He returned the glance, his eyes asking a question.  I looked away.

Another moment dragged by in silence—and then the door to the house burst open, and two colorful blurs of movement shot through the garden toward us.

One blur hit me in the stomach, almost knocking me backward, and the other piled in behind it, squealing and bumping and jockeying for position.  I hoisted the first up into the air, and the second crowded in instantly, wrapping its tiny arms around my waist.