Page 47 of Silverbow
The farmer climbed down from the seat of the wagon and knuckled his back. “Light, I swear the ride gets longer every year.”
“It is the same, Da. You just get older,” Kenon said with a grin. The lanky, brown haired youth worked quickly to unhitch the team.
“That I may be,” Berral Kenara sighed, pulling a sack from behind the wagon seat. “But still, the wool must go to market.”
Enya inched back into her shabby little camp. “You are from afar?” She asked cautiously.
“Just a day’s ride to the north,” the farmer answered. “You’d have passed right by us if you’ve been following the river.”
“Where are you from, Ansel?” Peras asked. He wore brown hair and blue eyes that matched his brother’s.
Enya blinked, scrambling for a lie that wouldn’t give her away. “A little place near Greenridge.”
“You’re heading to Trout Run?”
Enya swallowed. Trout Run wasn’t a map dot she knew either, but it sounded like it lay south so she nodded. “Is it far?”
“Leave here at dawn and you’d make it by mid day on that horse of yours,” Master Kenara answered.
He started unpacking a spread from the sack behind the wagon seat and laid out bread with cheese and jams, canned olives and pickles, and salt beef. Seeing the horses hobbled, his boys came to join him. He pulled a split log from the depths of the wagon, and added it to her scant pile of sticks in a shower of sparks.
“What are you doing out here all alone?” Peras asked wonderingly.
“Heading downriver,” Enya said, forming up a story in her mind. “I have an aunt near Bridgewater. She’s offered to take me in since…” She couldn’t bring herself to form the lie of her lost family.
“You didn’t have a suitor?” Kenon asked around a mouthful.
“Kenon,” his father hissed.
“None that I liked,” she answered with a small smile.A suitor, light.It seemed so long ago she was lamenting their attention. The farmer gave her an apologetic look, whether for his son, or her prospects, she wasn’t sure.
“Peras here is all but promised to Elsa Nygren,” Kenon said quickly, and spots of pink appeared on his brother’s cheeks.
“I am not,” the older boy grumbled.
“You are to.”
“Kenon has never even danced with a girl on feast days,” Peras snipped.
“I have!”
Despite the things so precariously packed away, Enya laughed. It was so…normal, the sound almost felt like a betrayal and she quickly wiped the joy from her face.
“Forgive my lads, Miss Ansel. They don’t oft leave the farm.”
“It’s alright, Master Kenara,” she answered, watching the flame that grew larger and warmer than her usual fires. In the pocket of her cloak, her fingers brushed over Liam’s horse head carving. She knew every inch of it by touch - every grain, every score of the knife, just as she knew her list.
***
The hiss and pop of the fire jerked Enya awaked in the gray light of dawn. Berral Kenara was already tending a teapot, his boys still sleeping lumps beneath their wagon. She pulled her cloak around her as she settled in the dirt.
He nodded a greeting and glanced toward the sources of the soft snores that drifted their way. “You’re welcome to ride with us today, Miss Ansel, if you do not mind being slowed. Tales of trouble come from the west. Hard to know what the road might bring.”
“I should ride on alone,” Enya said.
“You got papers, girl?”
Enya stiffened.
