After the Evening Bells

1

As was her habit every month on Feast Day, that evening—after the meal was done and the dishes were washed and put away, after her prayers to the Forefathers were recited before the altar in the front room of her family's small yet immaculate house—Kellah put on her blue celebration dress and departed for Amin's. Megah accompanied her on the excursion and, during the fifteen-minute walk up the road and through the town gates, the two best friends gossiped about who they thought might be in attendance that night. In truth, there was only one person Kellah was eager to see, and he, as was the plan, would not be inside the music hall.

When the girls arrived at the one-level sandstone building, they sat at their usual table in back. In the middle of the room a harpist and two fiddlers played a song the girls knew well.

Several of the long stone-slab tables near the musicians were occupied by a contingent of Redcloaks—each dressed in his matching gray uniform. In the nine months since the fighting had stopped it wasn't unusual to see Imperial soldiers at Amin's.

Many of the locals of Bajiran, including Kellah's father and elder brother, hated having foreign soldiers stationed in town so long after war's end. Their country, they'd say, was not part of the Empire and being occupied by foreign soldiers was an affront to their nation's sovereignty. The counter to this was that there was no "occupation," and that these very soldiers were still around to prevent someone from occupying. Kellah didn't much care either way. She didn't love the idea of the Redcloaks as a permanent fixture in town, but they weren't that bad, and she'd never known them to be anything but polite.

The two girls hadn't yet been served tea, when a local boy Kellah knew from the market approached their table and asked her to dance. Since the boys of Bajiran had returned from the war, they seemed to have become bolder in the way they'd approach her. Just the other day when she was in town buying soap, one of Megah's cousins stopped her in the street to proposition marriage to her. When she asked him, unable to contain her laughter, if he was serious, he assured her that, on his life, he was.

She told the boy from the market she didn't want to dance, and he turned to Megah. Megah was pretty in her own right, and the daughter of a family that had grown well-to-do during the war; Kellah wondered if her friend resented her for being most boys' first choice while she was relegated to consolation prize. Then again, it wasn't her fault she was beautiful, was it? If Megah was annoyed this evening, she showed no sign of it, and she smiled at the boy before taking his hand and walking to the faintly lit center of the room where a dozen or so pairs danced to the music.

Just like the last three months, after another half hour or so of sitting at her table—making sure to be seen by anyone who might know her brother or father—she would, at the sounding of the evening bells, steal away outside, behind the slaughterhouse shed where Haman would be waiting.

She blushed at the memory of what had happened two months ago and again last month: how they had gone out of the town via the side gates, which were no longer manned now that the fighting had ended, and walked through the dry grass under the guidance of the full moon until they were far enough away that the torches on the town walls were flickering sparks in the distance. And she remembered how he'd helped her take off her dress, fold it, and set it aside so that it didn't get wrinkled or soiled, and how when this was done, he'd removed his own clothes and laid down on the blanket he'd unfurled upon the grass. It wasn't the usual thing for the woman to be above the man, he'd told her, but he made an exception since he didn't want his lady getting dirty. She hadn't found it exactly pleasurable that first time, nor really the second either, but there was a kind of loveliness in the act and she liked the feeling of him moving beneath her, her hands gliding along the smooth skin of his chest.

On both occasions, she'd been nervous about accidentally becoming with child, but Haman had assured her that so long as she moved off him when he told her, and he left his seed in the grass beside them, she had nothing to fear.

She tried to conjure up his image in her mind: his angular, handsome face, long dark hair, his earliest beginnings of a beard, which suggested the man he was to become even though he was still just sixteen, the same as her. How lucky was she to have, at such a young age, found a beloved that gave her such joy! She must remember to thank the Forefathers again at tomorrow's prayers.

Kellah was so lost in thoughts of her beloved that she didn't notice the soldier approaching her table until he was right in front of her.

"Excuse me," he said. When she didn't respond, he spoke up over the music and waved his hand in front of her face. "Excuse me!"

When she finally noticed him, inches away from her, she flinched from the shock of it and sat upright.

"What's your name?" he said. He was young, maybe the age of her older brother, and was dressed in the same uniform as all the others except he had a special insignia, a gold bird of some sort, pinned to his chest.

"What's yours?" she said, having regained her composure. He might be older than her and a soldier, yet it didn't escape her that he had gotten out of his seat and walked over to talk to her.

"Joram, at your service." He bowed. He wasn't particularly handsome. His nose was too flat and too wide and his small ears stuck out from his head.

"I need no service. We already have a waiter bringing our tea."

He laughed. "I like you."

"Because of my wit?"

He coughed. "Perhaps you will allow me to serve you in some way other than fetching your tea. I could dance with you, for instance. You appear to be good dancers in these parts, and I am not. But I would like to give it a try, if you dare." He extended a cordial hand toward her.

"I don't," she said, her arms bolted to her sides. "I just come to listen."

A disconcerted look flashed across his face. "Very well," he said before bowing again and backing away. "Next time." He turned to rejoin his compatriots a few tables down before swiveling back around. "I almost forgot. I didn't get your name."

"What's that?" she said. "Oh, Megah."

"A pleasure to meet you, Omega. A beautiful name." She laughed now. He went back to his table. She could hear all the soldiers ribbing him when he returned, and, although she'd never admit it, this made her happy.