(Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans. Unfortunately.)


The village lay close onto the Westwood, the forest gradually thinning until the last few trees stood actually among the stout frame houses. The land sloped gently down to the east. Though not without patches of woods, farms and hedge-bordered fields and pastures quilted the land beyond the village all the way to Waterwood and its tangle of streams and ponds.

Several times Ghorin paused to engage one man or another into brief conversation. Since he and Beast Boy had not been off the farm for weeks, everyone wanted to catch up on how things were out that way. Ghorin spoke of damage from winter storms, each one worse than the last, and stillborn lambs, of brown fields where crops should be sprouting and pastures greening, of ravens flocking in where songbirds had come in years before. Grim talk, with preparatons for Edmond Tine going on all around them, and much shaking of heads. It was the same on all sides.

"I have to get this cart to the inn," Ghorin said, nodding to the barrels in the cart, but the man he had been speaking to stood his ground with a sour expression upon his face.

"What are we going to do about Yneve, Ghorin?" The man demanded. "We can't have a Seer like that for the town."

Ghorin sighed heavily. "It's not our place. The Seer is woman's business."

"Well, we'd better do something, Ghorin. She said we'd have a mild winter. And a good harvest. Now you ask her what she hears on the wind, and she just scowls at you and stomps off."

"If you asked her the way you usally do," Beast Boy said, "you're lucky she dosen't thump you with that stick she carries. We've got to go."

The man paid Beast Boy no attention, and continued his conversation with Ghorin. "Yneve is too young to be Seer, Ghorin. If the Woman's circle won't do something about it, then the Village Council has to."

"What business of yours is the Seer?" roared a woman's voice. The man flinched as his wife marched out of the house. "You try meddling in the Woman's Circle, and see how you like your own cooking."

"But Daise," the man whined, "I was just-"

"If you'll pardon me, Daise," Ghorin said. "The Light shine on you both." He got Bell moving again, leading her around the scrawny fellow. Daise was concentrating on her husband now, but any minute she could realize whom he had been talking to.

Beast Boy stepped along just as quickly as Ghorin, perhaps even more so. He was sometimes cornered when Ghorin was not around, with no way to escape long and unwanted converations unless through rudeness.

Soon the streets opened onto the Green, a broad expanse in the middle of the village. Usually covered with thick grass, the Green showed only a few fresh patches among the yellowish brown of dead grass and the black of bare earth. A double handful of geese waddled about, beadily eyeing the ground but not finding anything worth pecking.

Towards the end of the Green, two low, railed footbridges crossed a clear stream, and one bridge wider than the other and stout enough to bear wagons. The Wagon Bridge marked where the North Road, coming down from Taren Ferry and Wilt Hill, became the Old Road, leading to Devlin Ride. OUtsiders sometimes found it funny that the road had one name to the north and another to the south, but that was the way that it'd been forever. It was a good enough reason for Westwood's people.

Near the Winespring Inn, a score of old women sang softly as they erected the Spring Pole. A knot of younger girls sat cross-legged and watched as the older women cut branches in preparation for Edmond Tine, the celebration of the year.

The whole day of Edmond Tine would be taken up with singing and dancing and feasting, with time out for footraces, and contest in almost anything. Prizes would be given not only in archery, but for the best with a sling, and the quarterstaff. There would be a riddle-solving contest, and puzzles, at the rope tug, and lifting weights, prizes for the best singer, the best dancer, and the best fiddle player, for the quickest to shear a sheep.

Edmond Tine was supposed to come when spring had well and truly arrived, the first lambs born and the first crop cut. Even with the cold hanging on, though, no one had any idea of putting it off. Everyone could use a little singing and dancing. And if the rumors could be beleived a Gleeman would arrive and perform, and fireworks would come with the first peddler. That had been causing considerable talk; it was ten years since the last display of fireworks, and a Gleeman hadn't been to Westwood for 30 years.

The Winespring Inn stood at the east end of the Green, hard beside the Wagon Bridge. The first floor of the inn was river rock, though the goundation was of older stone.

"Here we are, lad." Ghorin reached for Bell's harness, but she stopped in front of the inn before his hand touched the leather. "Knows the way better than I," he chuckled.

The innkeeper stepped lightly from his domain, despite the size of his girth. A smile split his round face, which was topped by a sparse fringe of gray hair. He was in shirtsleeves despite the chill, with a spotless white apron wrapped around him. A sliver medallion in the form of a set of balance scales hung on his chest.

The medallion, along with the full-size set of scales used to weigh coins of the merchants, was the symbol of the Mayor's office.

"Ghorin!" the Mayor shouted as he hurried toward them. "The Light shine on me, it's good to see you at last. And you Garfeild, how are you my boy?"

"Fine, Master Vere," Beast Boy replied. "And you?" But Vere's attention was back on Ghorin.

A quick tug at Beast Boy's sleeve and a voice pitched low, for his ear alone, distracted him from the older men's talk. "Come on, BB, while they're talking. Before they put you to work."

Beast Boy glanced down, and had to grin. Cyborg crouched beside the cart so Ghorin and vere couldn't see him, his body contorted like a stork trying to bend itself double. Beast Boy smiled, the smile filled with mischeif, as usual.

"Dav and I caught a badger. We're going to set it loose on the girls on the Green, come on," Cyborg urged. Besat Boy's smile broadened; finally, some fun. He took a quick look at his grandfather who was still talking.

He and Cyborg sprinted a short distance. "We had strangers in the village last evening."

For an instant Beast Boy stopped breathing. "A man on foot?" he asked intently. "A man in a black cloak that doesn't move in the wind?"

Cyborg swallowed his grin, and his voice dropped to an even hoarser whisper. "You say him, too? I thought I was the only one. Don't laugh BB, but he scared me."

"I'm not laughing. I could swear he hated me, that he wanted to kill me." Beast Boy shivered. Until that day he had never thought of anyone wanting to kill him, really wanting to kill him. That sort of thing didn't happen in Westwood. A fist fight, or a wrestling match, but not killing.

"I don't know about killing. I thought he was odd enough anyway. I looked away for just a moment, and then he was gone! It's been three days." Cyborg attempted a laugh that came out as a croak. "I thought- for just a minute- that it was the Dark One."

"My grandfather thinks I was jumping at shadows."

"I told Dav, and he's been watching like a hawk since, but hasn't seen anything. Now he thinks I was trying to trick him." He lapsed into affronted silence.

Beast Boy rubbed the top of his head briskly, wondering what to say. Ghorin called out, "Lad! Help me move these caskets, so you can see the Gleeman."

"Gleeman!" Cyborg exclaimed at the same moment that Beast Boy asked, "When will he get here?"

"Arrived in the dead of the night, he did." The innkeeper shock his head in disapproval. "Pounded on the door til he woke the whole inn. If not for the Festival, I'd have turned him away."

"He dosn't wear a black cloak, does he?" cyborg asked.

The innkeeper's belly shook with his chuckle. "Black! His cloak is every Gleeman's cloak I've seen. More patches than cloak, and more colors than I can think of."

Beast Boy startled himself by laughing out loud, a laugh of pure releif. He clapped a hand over his mouth in embarrassment.

cyborg and Beast Boy carried the first barrels through the common room, Master Vere was already filling a pair of mugs with his best brown beer, his own make. Scratch, the inn's cat wrapped his tail around Beast Boy's feet. He tripped and nearly dropped his side of the barrels. With Beast Boy limping slightly, they put down the load and went to get the rest.

Before they even set down the last casket, they rushed to see the Gleeman. Little did they know that two other strangers waited to meet them.


(A/N: Okay, so, here's your only hint about who the two strangers are...not Robin, Star, or Raven. I haven't gotten any reveiws yet...sniffle Is this story unwanted? Please reveiw!

With luff,
H.H.M.)