Rosie tucked herself beneath a tree as the rain poured down in unnaturally large droplets. Thunder rumbled in the distance and she clutched her pouch of herbs closer to her cloak. If lightning was coming, this tree would no longer be safe. She was hopeful that she could ride out the rain beneath the thick branches of the Lakewood trees.
A bolt sketched the sky.
She let the pouch drop to her side as she adjusted the strap around her shoulder and pulled the cloak around her, “Drenched it is.”
The heart-shaped leaves failed to keep the luscious green roof she loved about the forest from protecting her against the rain. During the summer months, when the sun poured its heat down upon them, Rosie and her son, Henry, would find refuge in the forest where it stayed cool and inviting. There was no refuge now. The droplets of rain left holes in the canopy where she could look up and see the constant etchings of the lightning.
“The gods have a message tonight,” she muttered as the ground beneath her started to grow soft and slippery.
The hood to her cloak eventually weighed down against her unruly hair. When it dried, she knew she’d spend hours trying to calm her brown strands as they acted like wild snakes. Henry would make fun of her until she threatened to razor off his own brown strands and he’d fall silent in one of his moody stupors.
Her heart leapt into her throat as thunder shook the skies and vibrated deep within her chest. It terrified her. She had never been in a storm quite like this one. Her shoes were already soaked through. The cloth was now more of a hinderance rather than protection. She felt slowed by her clothes. A thunderous wave burst ahead of her and every hair on her head felt like it was standing on end. Her button nose tingled and she wiped the line of water running down the bridge of it. Her nose only tingled when something was wrong. It was usually with Henry and she trusted this intuition.
Through the waterfall of rain and thunder she still heard a boy cry out. She slid around as she tried to pick up pace. Did Henry come out to find her? Did that bolt of lightning strike him? She had a dozen more questions flash through her head as she tore through the thicket and saw the young boy sprawled out in a crater. It was still sizzling from the lightning strike.
“Oh my gods, Henry!”
She rushed to the boy’s side. He was face down choking on the collection of rain and mud. She dug her fingers into it and flipped his body around. She wiped a hand across his face as he sputtered out watery sludge. But it wasn’t Henry. The rain washed the mud away quickly as the dollops came down. The lightning and thunder had suddenly faded. The clouds were beginning to break and bring out hints of blue and the rays of spring’s sun.
The boy looked to be around the same age as her son, 15 or 16. His clothes were torn and singed. They looked to be made of silk. What was someone with wealthy clothing doing out in the middle of the Lakewood trees? Her house was a few thousand paces from the nearest community and a few more from the nearest town. This boy’s clothes had to be from a city that was days away.
“Hello?!” she called out to the black-barked trees around her. “Hello? I have your boy! He’s hurt!”
She looked down at him again as the rain completely faded and she felt a breeze dart through the trees. She gasped and raised an arm up in front her. She was completely dry and so was the boy. She looked around. In fact, everything was dry and all that was left as evidence there was a storm was this crater they were sitting in. Her nose tingled and she felt it warm.
The boy’s shirt was barely hanging on his torso. He seemed strong but pale. Around his neck was a chain with a locket shaped as a small shell. What was most noticeable about him was that he had short wavy hair that was as silver as the shell and chain around his neck.
“Who are you?” she said, slightly shaking him, “Are you okay?”
His chest was rising and falling and she could feel his heart as she rested a hand on his soot patched chest. The silk shirt he wore was slowly sliding off of him. She’d have to carry him back to the house. There was no way she was going to leave him out here.
She called out again, “Is anyone here? Hello? I found your boy!”
Only the birds’ songs in the trees answered her. The world around her didn’t seem to notice there had been a monsoon that had just hit. There were no puddles. The ground was dry. The canopy was shadowing the late morning’s sun.
“Alright, Silver,” she sighed, speaking to the boy. She had to call him something. “Luckily I’m used to hauling logs to feed the fire through the winter.”
She heaved him up into her arms and stood up, “I’m also a mother. I’d carry my son through the pits of HellStorm and back to keep him safe. So, I will with you, too.”
Her homestead was not far and she knew the forest well. It would only take her long because she was carrying a teenaged boy as if he were a baby. Her muscles in her legs were thick. She was a large woman compared to the nearby community’s women. They had men that did the labour while they gathered and cooked. She used to be more like them but after her husband disappeared one night, she found herself doing everything to raise a boy.
“I could use you right about now, Patrick,” she muttered, despite herself. She hated admitting that sometimes she wished him around. After all, he had left them to fend for themselves.
She replayed the argument they had that night. It was a distraction to the boy growing heavier and heavier in her arms. Patrick was a short man in comparison to Rosie’s height but from what he lacked in size, he had in strength. He worked in lumber and hauled wood daily and in his downtime, he was whittling the wood as extra income for when Rosie used to travel to town to take part in the markets. He was a quiet man and only spoke when he needed to speak and the night he left, he was speaking often and quickly. They had sacrificed all that they had to build their homestead and decide to raise a boy so far away from other children. That night Patrick was willing to give all that up.
He was pleading to her as he wiped the sweat off his balding head, “Rosie, you’re not hearing me. I’m not asking you if you think we should move to Moon’s Edge. I am telling you that we are!”
Usually his deep voice was soothing but it was demanding and cold. She was instantly put off by it and threw a shoe at him. “Since when have you told me what to do? Ever?”
He put his hands up and flinched as if he were expecting the other shoe. She waited till he relaxed again before throwing it over his shoulder.
“Rosie!” he hissed, “You’ll wake Henry!”
“Well if I do, you can explain to him that all our hard work here has been for nothing. We are just going to abandon our home and the community to go across the other side of the continent to live gods knows where. And why? Why are we doing that?”
“I can’t say, Rosie, you’ll have to trust me.”
If Rosie had another shoe, she would have thrown it, “You can’t say?”
“Rosie, don’t you trust me?”
“Right now, Patrick?” she said quickly and harshly, “I don’t.”
She broke through the edge of the Lakewood trees and shifted the boy’s weight. She could still see the look Patrick gave her. She tried to tell him that she just said that to upset him because she didn’t have another shoe. But Patrick didn’t give her a chance. He had walked out after grabbing his pipe. He only smoked when he had to think. He never came back.
Henry was sitting on a stump in the middle of their yard trying to carve a piece of wood. He was trying to find the same talent Patrick had, but Henry wasn’t having much luck. He lacked patience and most of the pieces he was working on ended up in the fire. He didn’t look up and Rosie could tell he knew she was coming. He was choosing not to pay any attention to her.
“Get up, boy!” she snapped, “And help me with him!”
Henry looked up and immediately stood. His eyes were staring at the boy. Henry had the same eyes as his father, green like the leaves of Lakewood. In fact, Henry was the splitting image of his father at that age. Sometimes she felt like she was back in the village where they had grown up together and decided to marry and build a home far from her abusive father. Patrick had saved her.
Her arms and legs were burning but she increased her pace towards the house. They had cut the trees and shaped every piece of wood themselves to build the two-story home. The porch where Patrick whittled was facing her. He had built a long seat where duck-feathered pillows cushioned him as he worked. The pillows had not been re-stuffed in ages and some lay weather worn beneath the table but that was her goal. She would put the silver haired boy there.
Henry approached her side and matched her pace. He made no movement to help her carry him.
“Who is that?”
Rosie’s back muscles were starting to spasm. She grunted a few swear words under her breath that Henry didn’t pick up as she heaved Silver up the stairs and dumped him into the chair.
“Hey, mom, watch it! You might hurt him!”
Rosie leaned against the railings of the porch with her hands on her lower back and stared at her son with wide eyes, “I carried him from within Lakewood to here after he got struck by lightning. He’s alive. He’s here. No thanks to your help.”
Henry was a scrawny teenager who struggled to lift the kettle full of water to hang above the fire. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting from the boy and regretted her tone. It was too late. Henry rolled his eyes and stomped back down the stairs to the stump.
“Where are you going? Are you going to help get him in the house?”
Henry put his hands up in the air, “I’m no help remember. Might as well stay out of the way and whittle.”
Rosie’s body was beginning to recuperate and she took a step down towards Henry, “Now come on, boy, I didn’t say that. Come on now. Help me out, please? Besides, we both know whittling isn’t for you!”
Henry froze and Rosie instantly regretted her words. She said some awful things sometimes and just didn’t know why. The moment Henry’s voice started to deepen and he complained that his bedroom was too close to hers, she had somehow lost all connections with him. She went to apologise but she was distracted by sudden movement from the seat on the porch. She spun around and saw the silver haired boy sit up. He looked down at himself and wobbled in his seat. He seemed to be surprised he had no shirt. He stretched and Rosie could hear his joints groan and crack. She even noticed the hair beneath his arms was silver as well.
“What are you?” she wondered aloud.
The boy stood up startled until he fell back down in a dizzy. He scrambled back clutching something in one hand and grabbing at his chain with the other. He tried to speak but nothing came out which made him writhe around in more of a panic.
Rosie held up her arms as if he were a wild animal, “Woah there, Silver, calm down now. You’re safe. You were just struck by lightning. I think. I found you and brought you to my home. My son is just over there. I’m Rosie. He’s Henry. You’re safe.”
He didn’t move. He couldn’t. She could see that he felt ill. It reminded her of last winter when a fever had set in with Henry. Whatever happened to this poor boy had drained him of his energy. She wasn’t wrong as his eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped over.
Rosie rushed to him and snapped out to Henry, “Get over here and help me, boy!”
“I’m right here,” his voice startled Rosie from right behind her. He didn’t sound pleased with her but that was something she’d have to deal with later.
She ran a hand over Silver’s face. It was drenched as if he had been caught in the storm again but this time it was his own sweat. She started to lift him up by one arm and tried to move it over her shoulders. She was much taller than the boys. This wouldn’t be easy.
Henry grabbed the other arm and easily put it around his shoulders. Rosie became more of a support and her muscles appreciated it.
“Why is his hair silver?” Henry asked, grunting as he heaved the boy across the porch to the front door. Henry had left it open and a part of Rosie wanted to lecture him for always doing that.
“I don’t know,” she said moving to the side so that they could pass the boy easily through the threshold. “Did it rain here?”
“What? No. Why?”
“Never mind. I’m not even sure if it rained at all.”
“When? What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” she repeated and nodded her head towards the side room.
“I know where to take him,” Henry grunted and continued towards the small room.
They were so far from any communities that Patrick had insisted on building this little room. It had a couple of cots in it, a chamber pot and a small bedside table with one drawer. If travellers were passing through the Lakewood trees and needed a place to stay they could rent this room out or if someone was hurt they could tend to their wounds there. There was no window for this room so it was always incredibly dark. A thick single candle rested on top of the table. As soon as they were inside, Rosie let the boy go and lit the candle. It sizzled and popped but lit the room nicely.
Henry grunted as he slowly slid the other boy into a cot and stood over him, “There. Nice and soft. I’m not my mom. I don’t throw around someone like they’re a piece of meat.”
Rosie rolled her eyes, “Quiet you,” and left the room. She walked through the room that Patrick kept calling the Great Hall. It was the largest room on the ground floor. It held a long table made from the Lakewood trees with chairs where only two were being used. They were on opposite end of the table. The other chairs were stacked upside down along the sides of it. There were six in total.
“Three extra in case of visitors,” Rosie muttered, repeating Patrick’s reasoning in making the useless things. No one came to visit now that Patrick was gone. It was as if their random travellers were only coming through because they knew Patrick was there.
Rosie took a moment to lean against the table and stare into the empty fire place that filled up most of the wall. The mantle held small wooden figurines Patrick had whittled. It was the stages of their lives. On the far left was two young figures representing Rosie and Patrick. They were beautiful even then. Patrick had made them at Henry’s age. He had a talent that was for sure. The next figures were Rosie with a hammer and Patrick with a saw. They were representing when they built the house. The third set was of Rosie holding a baby and Patrick hugging her from the side looking up at them both. He was really that short. The last set was incomplete. It was of Patrick whittling with Henry as a boy. Patrick didn’t get to finish her figure before he disappeared.
Rosie looked out either windows that stood on either side of the fireplace. The Lakewood trees were a few paces away. “What am I doing?”
“Mom,” Henry called from the door of the spare room.
She stood and walked towards the kitchen, “I’ll be right back. I’m just getting some water and a washcloth to wash away his fever.”
The kitchen was built in the back of the house leading out of Patrick’s Great Hall. It was Patrick’s pride and joy. He loved cooking on the iron stove he had brought in from a blacksmith he knew. There was another fireplace here that held a large pot for boiling water or soups. Henry tried to insist he keep the pot filled with water but he wasn’t as strong as his parents. He hadn’t reached the age in which he would start growing and be able to contribute more.
There were many cupboards that aligned the kitchen where Patrick had somehow managed to organise each one and keep it filled. It had been a beautiful menagerie of dried fruits, herbs and cutlery that within a few years of his absence had become neglected. Rosie tried but never managed to fill it like he did. Henry would always mutter his disapproval of the place whenever he couldn’t find what he wanted.
Rosie grabbed a large bowl from one of the counters and used the ladle coming out of the pot in the fireplace to scoop out some water. She reached into a drawer of one of the cupboards and grabbed an unused wash cloth. She headed back towards the doorway leading back to Patrick’s Great Hall. She stopped once again and stared towards nothing in particular.
“What am I doing?”
The backdoor rattled with the wind. It was on the opposite wall of the doorway leading back towards Henry and the boy. She took a moment to look out the windows to the backyard. Most of the Lakewood trees had been cut in that area to make room for Rosie’s garden. She loved that garden and when she wasn’t out looking for herbs and berries that grew best in the shadows of Lakewood trees, she would be tending to the vegetables and fruits that grew there. Back in the village where she grew up with Patrick, she was always mocked for the way that she ploughed and tended to the gardens. She was the only female that stepped out into the sun and overturned the ground. During harvesting, everyone pitched in to gather the food but that was because they were taking their share before the rest was sent to the markets.
A draft howled up from the cellar stairs where the food and wine storage rested. It snapped her out of her thoughts and she turned back towards the door and hustled through Patrick’s Great Hall and into the spare room.
“What were you doing? It shouldn’t take that long,” Henry said and tried to reach for the bowl.
Rosie moved it out of his reach, which was easy with her height. She sat on the edge of the cot and soaked the cloth into the water.
“I could do that, you know,” Henry hissed but didn’t wait for her reply, “His left hand is clutching something. I couldn’t pry it open to see what it was.”
“Never mind that,” Rosie said, “His business is his business. I just need to break this fever and find out who he is and where he’s from. Just give him some space and mind yourself.”
Henry sat on the other cot, “I’m not leaving.”
“Oh?” Rosie looked over at him, “And what will we do for lunch, then? You’re always complaining I don’t let you in Patrick’s kitchen. So, there you go. Get a broth going for Silver and put some food together for us.”
Henry couldn’t help but smile at her request and get up off the cot quickly before he recomposed himself and frowned, “You don’t have to call it that you know.”
“Call it what?” Rosie said still washing the boy’s face gently.
“Patrick’s kitchen. It’s our kitchen too.”
Henry stood there waiting for a response but she had moved the wash cloth to the boy’s chest. It looked as if he had soot patches all over him, as if he had been in a fire. Henry watched his mother clean the smooth chest for a moment before he snapped himself out of it and left the room.
Rosie waited till Henry left before she moved her free hand to the boy’s left hand. Henry wasn’t wrong. The hand was clenched tight and protecting something. She could see a hint of metal between the thumb and forefinger.
“What do you got there?” she asked and tried to push a finger through to touch the metal.
The boy’s eyes flickered open and he quickly sat up and moved his left hand closer to his chest. He opened his mouth but no words came out before he snapped it shut.
“Sorry. Sorry,” Rosie said placing the bowl of water next to the lit candle. It flickered with her movement. “I was just trying to get you to relax. I was washing you up. I think you were hit by lightning.”
The boy shook his head slowly to Rosie’s surprise.
“You can understand me?”
He nodded.
“Well, I’ll be…alright, that’s good. What’s your name?”
He opened his mouth again only to show his white teeth. She almost forgot that he had been in a silken shirt. His pants were of a different material but just as soft, almost velvet. He scratched at his head absentmindedly and then shrugged.
“You don’t know your name. Well, I’ve been calling you Silver. Because, well,” she waved at his hair, “you have a unique shade of hair I have not ever seen before.”
The boy tried to play with his bangs but it wasn’t long enough to pull into his view.
“Trust me,” Rosie giggled, “It’s silver.”
“It’s silver everywhere,” Henry said as he entered the room again carrying a bowl of broth and a chunk of hard bread.
“What do you mean?” Rosie snapped her face towards Henry before her eyes widened, “Oh gods, Henry, you didn’t?!”
Henry suddenly went red and he pushed the bowl of water aside to put the broth down, “I mean no of course I didn’t. Well, maybe just a peek. I was curious!”
Rosie turned back to the boy who was giving Henry an odd look, “I am so sorry. Henry is just, well, he hasn’t been around boys his age. I guess he was just curious. Oh gods, I want out of this conversation. I see Henry didn’t get us any food so I’m going to just go and see…”
Rosie got up and rushed to the doorway. Henry moved over and sat where she had been on the boy’s cot.
“It really was just a peek. You know, down there. It really is silver too. Why?”
“Oh gods. Oh gods,” Rosie kept repeating and left the room. It was bad enough to have one teenage boy but to have two, she was in over her head. Henry used to come to her to ask questions of the changes he was going through but she had answered quickly and brushed any further questions aside. She knew nothing about boys. Patrick was always the one answering his questions. It just seemed easier for him to sit there and answer all the whys and whats and hows. It didn’t come naturally for Rosie. She just couldn’t find the words.
When she returned with her hands full of two bowls of vegetables, some dried meat and bread, she found Silver taking down the chairs off the table. Henry was copying him with the other two chairs.
“What are you doing? He shouldn’t be doing that.”
Henry shrugged, “He had to take down a chair for himself and then started to take the other one down. It’s not a bad idea. Chairs are meant to be sat in.”
“Oh? Is that what they are for?” Rosie walked over to the end of the table closest to the front door and put Henry’s bowl down and recircled back to the opposite end where she put her bowl down and sat. “I didn’t realise how hungry I was until I started picking at the meat in the kitchen. We’re running low. I might have to go hunt soon. If I am able…”
Silver disappeared back into the spare room and brought out the broth and bread Henry had brought him. He looked at Henry eating at one end of the table and then looked at Rosie eating from the other. He seemed confused. Rosie froze in mid-bite and looked around at the table. There were four empty chairs.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
Silver motioned with the hand with the bread in it across the table.
“Yes. This is a table. And those are chairs. There’s four of them. Pick one.”
Henry looked between the two and then talked with his mouthful, “He probably is confused as to why we are sitting so far away. We didn’t used to.”
“What’s wrong with where we are sitting? This is where Patrick used to sit. Now I do. You’re the one that moved all the way over there.”
“Why do you call dad by his name? It’s so annoying. Just say what he is like I do with you. He’s my father. He’s your husband.”
Rosie pushed her teeth together before saying, “He was. And I will not get in that with you while we have a guest. Eat.”
“She means, ‘Shut up, Henry,’” he said to Silver.
“No, I meant eat. If I meant shut up, I’d say it. Now shut up and eat.”
Silver watched the two. Henry was scowling as if he had tasted something bad. Rosie looked amused as if the two had just shared a joke. Silver turned around and returned to the spare room.
“Good job, mom,” Henry grumbled, “Now the guest doesn’t even want to sit with us.”
“Well, you did make it awkward. You could have just let him decide but, no, Henry, you had to make a big deal of it all. As you do,” she sighed, “As you do.”
Lunch was eaten in silence but that wasn’t abnormal. It was the talking beforehand that wasn’t natural. Rosie and Henry ate in peace until he walked back out front to the stump to try at whittling again. Rosie checked in with Silver in the spare room. His bowl was empty. The bread was gone. At some point the candle had gone out.
“I can take your bowl. You don’t need to be sitting in the dark. There’s plenty of daylight. Maybe you can help me in the garden and we can try and see if you remember anything. Or you can go hang with Henry and watch him slice up a poor unfortunate chunk of wood. This house is your house. We’ll figure all this out, okay?”
Silver stood up and followed Rosie out of the door. She looked back at him and thought she saw a look or relief spread across his face.
“The room is depressing, I agree. It’s not a room to spend a lot of time in. Patrick insisted on adding it to the house in case we had visitors who needed to stop in or needed help. He wasn’t wrong. Since we have lived here we’ve had quite the guests. Patrick would love the whole mystery surrounding you.”
She looked down at Silver, who took a few fast steps to walk alongside her.
“This is Patrick’s Great Hall. It’s nothing like a Great Hall I’ve ever been to but it amused him so the name sort of stuck. Those stairs leading up next to the spare room. That heads up to Henry’s room and mine. If it isn’t a problem with you, I might have you camp up there with him. No need to keep putting you in that cot cage, aye?”
Silver looked around the Great Hall, then to the stairs and then up at her and nodded.
“You are such a mystery, Silver,” she said quietly and then continued towards the kitchen, “It’s a shame we don’t know your real name but I think Silver suits you. Don’t you?”
Silver tilted his head for a moment and then nodded. He looked around the kitchen and then out the back window.
“That’s the garden. I planted every single thing in that beautiful place. The flowers along the edges I use to sort of set up a border. Make it look nice. The bushes. The hedges. Those trees there? See them? I planted those. I didn’t think they’d grow amongst the Lakewood trees but they do. The one there at the far end of the garden. That’s Patrick’s favourite. It only grows in Moon’s Edge. It’s a Moongrove. Its leaves illuminate in the moonlight.”
Silver opened the backdoor and stepped out. Rosie followed him. The garden was years of work and she had it segmented in seasons. At the beginning of each season, she’d harvest the previous ones and plough what would grow next. This garden made up most of their food. As she started to walk through with Silver, her mind forgot about everything else but her plants. They spent hours going through each part until they were resting beneath the Moongrove. Silver had insisted.
“Henry has never walked through this garden with me. Patrick used to every so often. He said I had this connection with the plants that he was envious of. I always joked and said if he didn’t spend so much of his time cutting them down maybe they’d connect with him, too. But it’s just the way our world works. My mother always said, ‘We need to end something now before we can begin something new.’”
Silver let out a small snore from his spot underneath the Moongrove and Rosie laughed, “We’ll need to get you some suitable clothes. You are about the same size as Henry so I’m sure he’ll have something for you.”
Rosie spent the rest of the day finishing off the Spring segment of the garden and clearing out the Winter one. Henry eventually came looking for Silver and the three ended up back in the kitchen preparing for dinner. Rosie kept tripping over both of them as she tried to get things done but she held her tongue when wanting to send them away. She watched as Henry and Silver carried in fresh water from the well to boil. They both lit the fire and stoked it until it continued on its own. She was surprised when Henry offered to cut up the vegetables. It was then she could no longer hold her tongue.
“Now, Silver, I want to point out he never offers to help. He’s showing off for you.”
Henry shook his head, “No, Silver, she never let me help before. She’s trying to act like she’s all nice and not controlling.”
Rosie asked Silver to set up the table while she poured the hot stew they had made into bowls. She would pass a bowl over to Henry who would take it out to Silver. Once she had all their helpings, she put the lid on the pot.
“Definitely more for tomorrow. I might have made a bit too much with Silver here. It’s been awhile since I’ve made something for three,” she said as she walked into Patrick’s Great Hall and froze.
Silver was standing behind her chair holding it out for her with a big grin. Henry was sitting at the chair on the left while a setting waited for Silver on the right.
“What?” Henry said looking up at her after smelling the stew, “Silver set the table like you said. I guess this is how he wanted it.”
Rosie slowly nodded, “Thank you, Silver. I mean, if you’re comfortable there, Henry.”
“I’m fine.”
Rosie sat down and watched Silver take his seat and start to dig in. Henry was already eating. She just sat there a moment. Every part of her body was tight. She even realised she was holding her breath. She shook her head and took in a breath and let out a sigh.
“I guess this is how it is now,” Rosie said to no one in particular, “Oh, Henry, I’m not sure how long Silver will be staying with us so instead of him sitting in what I call the Cot Cage. I came up with that myself. I think it works. I was thinking Silver could camp up in your room. You might find him some clothes he can wear.”
Henry nodded eagerly, “That will be fine.”
Rosie was relieved when they fell into silence once again while they finished eating. Henry and Silver finished first as the light disappeared beyond the Lakewood trees. Henry had brought out a few candlesticks. They were each stuck into a holder carved by wood. Rosie’s candle holder had carved vines and roses. Patrick’s had trees and Henry’s had a single bird on it. Patrick had always said he’d finish it when Henry grew and learnt who he was.
As she finished her meal and stared at the chairs that were down off the table, there was a knock at the door. Her eyes slowly moved to the steps that lead upstairs where the boys had disappeared to Henry’s room. She slowly pushed herself up from her chair and slowly made her way to the front door. There was a slab of wood to bolt it closed in the corner next to the door but they had never needed to use it. Lakewood was a peaceful forest. The dangerous areas were deeper into Blackwood where only the most skilled hunters went to bring back furs and meats. She looked through the front window but whoever knocked at the door was making sure not to peek through. They had at least some mannerism whoever it was. The fireplace crackled with the light and she opened the door.
Rosie looked at the small wrinkled man that held a sealed parchment. He looked up at her with big round eyes over a long hairy nose.
“For you Lady Edwards.”
“I’m no Lady. Rosie is fine.”
She took the parchment from his shaky hands and he bowed once his hands were emptied and turned and skipped back to a horse that awaited him along the start of the path that lead to the nearest community.
“It’s late!” she called, “I do have a room and a place for your horse!”
The scrawny man waved back at her from atop his horse, “I couldn’t impose, Lady Edwards! And from here on out, I would not give such an invitation! I will be the last welcomed guest upon your door!”
Rosie looked up from the parchment with wide eyes, “What did you say?”
But the horse had galloped away with unnatural speed and it did not follow the path towards the community. It turned and disappeared into the Lakewood trees exactly in the direction she had found Silver.
She closed the door and for the first time lifted the plank of wood and put it into the grooves that would latch the door. She broke the waxed seal that kept the parchment curled up. Her eyes quickly scrolled the words carefully written on the page. Something rose up in her throat and she choked it back down and forced her eyes to read it again but slowly:
My Dearest Rosie,
I am pleased you received my gift the other day. We have much to discuss. Meet me at Moon’s Edge in 200 days. No sooner. No later.
Yours,
Lord Patrick Edwards
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