Part Four
Keeping his head down and walking quickly so that no one would stop him and ask where he was going, the boy turned off the village’s main street and into a narrow lane between two rows of cottages. He was a slightly built child, with too-serious eyes and nut brown hair worn back in a thick braid. The laneway was deserted; this was the time of day when people were at their busiest and no one else was likely to be home. That suited Síladon, he wanted to be alone.
He let himself into the cottage and held his breath, listening in case his mother was there after all, but the space felt empty and there was no sound of movement, no concerned voice asking why he was back from his lesson group so early. He breathed a sigh of relief and put down his bag with the writing implements and the board to rest them on and went through to the tiny kitchen to pour himself a cup of water from the jug on the corner table where Nana prepared food.
He took the cup into the bedroom and sat on his bed under the window where there was a good view of Old Man Oak as he called the tree at the back of the cottage. Usually the tree seemed friendly and reassuring but right now he felt nothing, no connection at all. He crossed his legs and the motion brought his eyes to the pants he was wearing, blue with a hint of white stitching down the side. Hot discomfort flooded him again.
He had been quite excited when he got ready for school that morning, having something new to wear rather than the too-short brown pants that had been his main item of clothing for months now. Things had gone well enough for the first hour while they studied numbers and their relation to the natural order of the universe, but when they took the break between subjects, the trouble started.
He was sitting on his own eating one of the little honey cakes Nan had packed for his lunch when he became aware of the snickering. Tegior and his friends were standing in a circle talking and laughing and throwing glances his way. He had no idea what he might have done this time, so he just kept quiet and pretended not to notice. Boys his age found him boring. He had no idea why, probably something to do with him not being good at swimming or running, terrible at archery and not really all that fond of climbing on top of or over things either. Síladon liked reading and watching the water and listening to the leaves whispering in that language his father told him he would understand when he was older.
Normally this gained him a few derisive hoots of laughter, but otherwise he was ignored, left to his reading and daydreaming. He had a special dream that one day a new family with a boy his age would move to Imladris and the boy would like the things he did, and he would finally have a friend again. He had been very lonely since Gelirgan and his family sailed West. They had always been friends, liked the same things…
“You’re wearing Calareg’s old trousers.” Tegior had arrived without his noticing and was standing over him. He was one of the bigger boys, a warrior’s son and plainly due to follow in his father’s footsteps. He was sneering now as he looked down at Síladon. “Calareg says those are his baby clothes that he outgrew and threw out on the compost heap. And that Lord Glorfindel’s dog peed on them.”
This was greeted with howls of laughter and more pointing as this latest addition to an already good story was repeated. No one knew if Lord Glorfindel even had a dog, but that hardly mattered. “Can you smell it, Tegior?” someone called. “Does it smell like dog pee? Really?”
Tegior had a cup of water in his hand, which he now tilted so that a few drops fell on Síladon before he could move out of the way. “It’s got a wet mark on it, on the leg. That must be where it happened. Or else maybe it was Síladon himself.”
What happened next was inevitable as the boys took up a chorus of ‘Síladon peed in Calareg’s pants, Síladon peed in Calareg’s pants…’
Síladon had got to his feet, half stumbling in his haste, just remembered to grab his bag, and left the open glade where they ate lunch. He managed to do this without running, because he knew he would never live that down, but he walked very fast and kept blinking hard to stop himself from crying. He was almost at the path when he heard Calareg calling. He was usually quite friendly and would often warn Tegior when he was going too far, but Síladon just walked faster, heading for home, a place that smelt of lemon polish and lavender and his father’s hair oil. Home, where he could close the door on the world and feel safe.
The room felt peaceful. Golden light bathed the floor under the window and outlined the leaves of the old oak. The river sang out of sight beyond the trees. His mother would be up to the barracks getting their food portion for the week. Sometimes she helped with things like washing and cleaning, and he had heard Amdirien tell her she should ask for payment for her time and labour. She never would, she liked helping people. Ada teased her about it, told her she had a heart both too big and too sensitive, but he said it with affection and usually she laughed.
Ada had been away for four moons now, and Síladon missed him all the time. Nan was loving and warm and kind and fussed over him, but Ada was the one who listened about his lessons and explained things, Ada was the one who took him walking along the river bank and showed him flowers and birds. It was Ada who always managed to find money for a book on his begetting day, and had even borrowed a few for him from Master Erestor, a personage so important that Síladon would never dare have approached him. Ada would have listened now and he would have understood.
He had asked Nan several times when Ada would be coming home, and to begin with she said soon, very soon, but recently her face had grown tight and she said more slowly that she didn’t know, when the army came back, she supposed, and he knew to stop asking. Lacking close friends did not mean he never heard the boys whispering or the men in the square where they gathered to talk and sing at day’s end. He knew they were all starting to wonder not when but if the warriors would return.
The thought made him restless and he looked around for something to distract him. It had been strange sharing the room with Nan at first, and he had worried that somehow the other boys would find out, but he knew she was lonely with Ada gone. The alcove in the main room felt very alone without his father’s presence in the cottage, so he had been grateful when she said they might both feel better for the company. She had left Ada’s things out to begin with, his shoes and his other hairbrush and such, but they were put away after the last new moon as though she knew something she was not yet ready to share with him.
The sun shone on the edge of a small wooden box that was sitting atop one of the storage baskets in the corner. He knew it was the box his parents kept their small store of personal jewellery in and stared, wondering what it was doing there. He supposed Nan must have been looking for something earlier and forgot to put it away. Getting up he crossed the room, meaning to put it in the basket where he knew it belonged. Instead he took it and went back to sit on the bed in the sunshine under the window and opened it.
The sun glinted and sparkled off the contents, mainly strands of gems to be worn in the hair on special occasions like the harvest festival that was happening in a few nights. He remembered the last one, his father wearing the garnets, his mother’s hair studded with the tiny pearls, dancing together and laughing near the big fire. Unshed tears sparkled on his lashes. He moved things around, picked up a broach shaped like a leaf to look at it, took out a pair of gold earrings made of dancing hoops and crescent moons that he had never seen before. He held them up to the sun, watching them flash fire at him, then reluctantly put them back.
He was almost ready to close the box when he saw the ring. It lay half hidden within the coils of a string of amber beads, and to begin with all he could see was the gold band. Reaching in, he lifted it out and sat with it in the palm of his hand, watching the sun chase across the strange, multicoloured stone. The light made the colours shift and drift almost as though they moved. Síladon had never seen this ring before, but it was a man’s design and he knew instinctively that it belonged to his father. It had a ‘feel’ of him about it, as though it had barely left his hand and still carried something of his essence with it.
The cottage felt very lonely. He liked to pretend that Ada would come back just as they sat down to the evening meal, but he knew it was pretend, knew it with a part of him that was aware of things that had no words. Feeling very quiet inside, he put everything else back neatly in the box, replaced the lid and returned it to the top of the basket. Then, taking the ring, he went inside to where his bag still lay and rummaged around inside it.
The pouch was soft leather with a tie made of thin strips of hide braided together and knotted at just the right length for Síladon to wear it round his neck. Fortune bags were popular with very young children, and held good luck finds like feathers, pretty stones, or unusual beads. Siladon had not quite outgrown this fancy yet, though lately he had taken to carrying the pouch more discreetly.
Opening the drawstring he dropped the contents into his hand, examined them, finally discarding two stones. The ring fitted and everything else went back with a little prodding and shifting, including one of the stones. Síladon held the pouch for a minute, conscious of the added weight. He took the other stone into the bedroom, placing it on the windowsill where he could see it. It was a piece of yellow quartz he had found one day out walking with Gelirgan, and it seemed happy to be out in the sunlight and fresh air. His mood lifted a little; he was glad it liked its new home.
Slipping the pouch over his head and around his neck, he fetched his lesson bag and sorted out the pens, the carefully stoppered little bottle of ink, the wax tablet, the strips of wood for practice writing and class work because paper was valuable and only the older students got to write on it. Putting everything together tidily on the table as though he had done practice work, he wondered what the chances were Nan wouldn’t find out he had left school half way through the day, and what he would say should she ask.
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Beta: Red Lasbelin