The Girl in the River

Chapter 5

Her new skirt felt delicious to walk in. It swished and rippled and danced on its own with the slightest movement. Sage felt self conscious to be this well dressed for the first time. Walking alone towards the growing crowd at the festival like this felt like being eighteen feet tall instead of eighteen years old.

    She was grateful to reach her parents and duck behind their table. It was piled high with the mugs and the money box so she could hide a little from the growing crowd. Everyone in the village was arriving from all the other streets and gathering around wooden tables. Milling around the dance floor, complaining about how good all the food smelled, laughing together. She watched with shining eyes from a private angle, enjoying the children's antics and the snippets of overheard conversation. There was Brooks, surrounded by girls near the chieftain's table. He deserved the attention, as far as Sage could tell. Handsome and pleasant, and a good son too. She sold roots and herbs to his mother sometimes and had heard many highly complimentary stories about him from her.

    If she stopped to think about it, she had to admit that she'd been a little... something, when she heard about his expected marriage. It wasn't fair to be sad over a boy she knew so little , but she had felt something. And then something again when she realised he was back. With a flinch she suddenly ducked behind the mugs. He had glanced her way.

    "You'd better go find the others now, Sage, I see people making room."

    She let her father pat her head and then slipped out. Taking a winding path to the meeting place, she managed to avoid the thick parts of the crowd and found with a sinking regret that she was there first. The other girls joined one by one, and they all had something nice to say about her skirt. Well, mostly nice. Cammy had said "it looks awfully expensive, Sage, is that why you never had a new one before?"

    Finally, they were all there, and the music could start, and the last stragglers move off the dance floor, and the first girl step shyly out onto it. Sage waited every year for the dancing. All winter she'd think of it while cooped up in their dark little cottage. All summer she'd comfort herself about the new winter approaching with the promise of another night's dancing before it came.

    The girls moved in a row onto the floor and wove around into a circle. They followed the music and spun together, moving in and out, cutting through and weaving around. Shell stumbled once and Ellie missed a turn, but Sage barely noticed. She was focused on the way the torches lighted all around them cast a yellow glow on the ground, and the way their skirts swirled like the butterflies from the day before.

    She never felt shy while dancing, somehow, and she never grew sick of it. When the girls' dance was over and everyone had clapped and cheered, the music changed and others ran in to dance too. Some of the girls pushed their way out to sit down, but not Sage. She stayed, and stayed. She danced while the people around her came and went, sometimes little children came near her and would hang onto her hands and skirt, and other times she was alone in the crowd. She laughed when the music carried her feet too fast and she'd have to skip to keep up. This had to be the sweetest joy there was.

    Finally she gave into her aching feet, stumbled off the floor, and collapsed down onto the nearest bench. It was next to a table so she leaned back on it. Sweaty, sore, and happy. Soon she'd go to her parents for some tea.

    "Would you like one?" Someone had sat down at the other side of her table.

    Sage jumped a little, turned, and it was Brooks. He was holding out a folded paper cup full of the sugary fried dumplings they always made for festivals.

    "One of those?" she asked, panicking.

    "Yes, what else?" he smiled.

    "Can I really?"