Chapter 1. The Meeting
One morning the people of Rin woke to find that the stream that flowed down the Mountain and through their village had slowed to a trickle. By nightfall even that small flow had stopped. The mill wheel lay idle. There was no water to turn its heavy blades. The bukshah drinking pool on the other side of the village was still. No bubbling stream was stirring it into life and keeping it topped up to the brim.
There was no change on the second day, or the third. By the fourth day the water in the pool was thick and brown. The bukshah shook their heavy heads and pawed the ground when they went to drink in the morning and the evening.
After five days the pool was so shallow that even little Annad, who was only five years old, could touch the bottom with her hand without getting her sleeve wet. And still the stream failed to flow.
On the evening of the sixth day the worried people met in the market square to talk. "The bukshah could not drink at all today," said Lann, the oldest person in the village and once the greatest fighter. "If we do not act soon, they will die."
"Not Star," whispered Annad to her brother, who was the keeper of the bukshah. "Star will not die though, will she, Rowan? Because you will give Star water from out well."
"Bukshah cannot drink from out well, Annad," said Rowan. "It is not sweet enough for them. It makes them ill. They can only drink water that flows down from the Mountain. It has always been so. If the stream stays dry, Star will die like all the rest."
Annad began to sob quietly. The children of Rin were not supposed to cry, but Annad was very young, and she loved Star. Rowan stared straight ahead. His eyes were tearless, but his chest and his throat ached with sadness and fear. The sadness was for Star, his friend and the strongest and gentlest of all the bukshah. And for all the other great, humped woolly beasts, each of which he knew by name. But the fear was for himself. For himself and Annad and their mother and indeed for the whole village.
Rowan knew, as Annad did not, that without the bukshah there would be no rich, creamy milk to drink, no cheese, curd, and butter to eat. There would be no help to plow the fields or carry in the harvest. There would be no broad backs to bear the burdens on the long journey down to the coast to trade with the clever, silent Maris folk. The life of Rin depended on the bukshah. Without them, the village, too, would die.
Annad could not imagine the valley without the village. But Rowan could. Reading the old stories in the house of books, listening half asleep to Timon under the teaching tree, and most of all sitting on the grass by the stream while the bukshah grazed around him in the silence of the morning, he had often imagined this place as the first settlers must have seen it.
Hundreds of years ago they had climbed through the hills, carrying the few things they owned on their backs, looking for somewhere in the strange land that they could claim as their own. They had come from far away, across the sea. They had fought a terrible enemy. On the coast they had heard, from the wandering native people they called the Travelers, of a place at the bottom of a forbidden mountain in the high country far inland. They had been tramping for, many, many days in search of it. They were very tired. Some had almost given up hope. Then, one afternoon, they had topped a rise and looked down. There below them, nestled between a towering mountain ahead and the hill on which they stood, was a green, secret valley.
The people stared, speechless. They saw trees loaded with small blue frits and fields of flowers they did not recognize. They saw a stream, and a pool, and a herd of strange gray beasts lifting their heads to stare, horns shining in the sun. They saw silence, stillness, and rich earth, and peace. This would be their home. So they came down and mingled with the big, gentle animals, who were tame and unafraid. The called them the bukshah.
"The stream flows down from the Mountain," said Bronden the furniture maker, her loud voice breaking into Rowan's thoughts. He watched her stab the air with her stubby finger, pointing. "So the problem must be up there. Up there, something is amiss. Something is stopping the flow."
All eyes turned to the Mountain rising high above the village, its tip shrouded as always in the cloud.
"We must climb the Mountain and find out what it is," Bronden went on. "This is our only chance."
"No!" Neel the potter shook his head. "We cannot climb the Mountain. Even the Travelers do not venture there. Terrible dangers await anyone who dares. And at the top—the Dragon."
Bronden sneered at him. "You are talking like a crazy Traveler yourself, Neel! There is no Dragon. The Dragon is a story told to children to make them behave. If there was a Dragon, we would have seen it. It would prey on the bukshah—and on us."
"Perhaps it takes its prey elsewhere. We do not know, Bronden." Allun the baker's light, pleasant voice rose above the muttering of the crowd. "But if you will excuse me for talking like a crazy Traveler-remembering that my father was one and it is only to be expected—let me remind you of what we do know." His usually smiling face was grim as he stared Bronden down. "We do know that we hear it roar almost every morning and every night. And that we see its fire in the cloud."
Bronden rolled her eyes disdainfully, but Rowan shivered. Tending the bukshah in the cold and dark of the winter mornings and in the evenings when the sun had slipped behind the Mountain, he had heard the sound of the Dragon. He had seen its fire, too, in the sky above the cloud. The bukshah swayed and grew restless at these times. The calves bellowed, and the bigger beasts pawed the ground, flared their nostrils, and huddled together in fear. Even Star moaned when the Dragon roared, and when he stroked her neck to calm her, he would feel the nerves jumping under her long, soft wool.
Suddenly he realized something no one else seemed to have thought of. He must speak. Nervously he rose to his feet. The villagers stared curiously at him. What could the boy Rowan, the shy, timid herder of the bukshah, have to say?
"The Dragon has not roared since the stream dried up," said Rowan. "Not in the mornings, and not at night." He spoke as loudly as he could, but his voice sounded small in the silence. He sank back to his place.
"Is this so?" Allun looked around the circle. "Is the boy mistaken?"
"No, he is not," said Bronden slowly. "I recall it now. Indeed, there has been no sound from the Mountain for days." She lifted her head. "So I am right. There is something amiss, high above us. I have told you what we must do."
"But we cannot do it," insisted Neel with dread. "The Mountain is too steep, too dangerous. We cannot climb it."
"Has anyone ever tried?" inquired Allun.
"Yes!" said tall, straight-backed Marlie, the weaver and dyer of cloth. "In times gone by some people did climb the Mountain, to look for new fruits to plant in our orchard. But they never returned. After that, people of Rin heeded the warning and left the Mountain alone."
"You see?" Neel burst out. "You see? If we climb the Mountain, we will die."
"Bronden is right. We must make our choice," said Strong Jonn, who was the keeper of the orchard. "We remain here and hope the stream begins running again of its own accord, or we climb the Mountain and try to remove whatever is stopping the water from flowing down to us. Both ways are dangerous. What is our decision? To go, or to stay?"
"We must go," Marlie replied. "We cannot simply stand by and let death slowly come to our village. I vote to go."
"And I," shouted Bronden.
"I vote yes!" said Strong Jonn.
"I, too," added Allun lightly.
"Yes! We agree!" growled mighty Val the miller, who had stood silently listening in the shadows, shoulder to shoulder as always with Ellis, her twin brother. Val and Ellis toiled together in the mill, grinding the grain into flour, endlessly cleaning the great stone building so that not a speck of dirt or the tiniest spider web could be seen within its walls. Jiller, Rowan's mother, said that since childhood no one had ever seen them apart.
"Yes!" "Yes!" "Yes!" One by one the villagers stood up. Rowan looked around at the familiar faces, now so serious and so stern. Maise, the keeper of the books, was standing, with her son and daughter. So were Timon, the teacher, and Bree and Hanna from the gardens. White-haired Lann leaned on her stick beside them. And even fat, soft Solla, who made sweet toffees and cakes and never could resist his own cooking, had struggled to his feet. Then Rowan saw Jiller rise slowly and join them. His heart thudding with fear, he scrambled to his beside her.
Soon Neel the potter and four others were the only ones still seated.
"So it is decided," cried Bronden triumphantly. "We will arm ourselves and set out at dawn."
"Wait!" said Marlie. "We must not go without consulting Sheba."
"That mad old hag? That spinner of children's nightmares and curer of pains in the belly? The one with a creepy granddaughter? What has she got to do with this?"
"Sheba is old, Bronden, but she is not mad," said Marlie firmly. "As anyone has been cured of illness by her remedies will tell you, Sheba knows more than herbs and spells. Even her granddaughter knows of what would happen in the future even she does not tell us what it could be. She and her granddaughter understand the Mountain as you and I never will. The secret way she was taught by the Wise Woman before her. We must ask Sheba to help us as well as her granddaughter if she would help us."
"This is a good idea," agreed Strong Jonn.
The people murmured. Many did not trust the Wise Woman, Sheba as well as her granddaughter Althea. They lived alone beyond the orchard, Sheba gathering herbs and other growing things and selling the medicines, ointments, and dyes she made from them while Althea on the other hand just take naps near the bukshah's field where a big tree stands. Or she would either read on that tree. She is an emotionless person and children fear her for that even Rowan of her age. They both rarely spoke to anyone other than each other and those whom they traded to. If Sheba speaks though it was seldom pleasant. Althea on the other when she speak she speaks softly and firmly. The children of Rin were a hardly crew, like their entire race. But they were afraid of Sheba and Althea and Sheba was not called Wise Woman to them but a Witch. And Althea is called the Shadow because of her quietness and her clothing which is all black except her chocker.
"Oh, come! What harm can it do?" called Allun, grinning. "If the old one can tell us anything, which I doubt, then all the better. If she cannot, we have lost nothing."
"Travelers' foolishness!" snapped Bronden. "This is not a game, Allun the baker. Why don't you—"
"Enough!" cried old Lann. She glanced at Bronden, who scowled. "We are going into the unknown," she said sternly. "And time is precious. We cannot afford to miss a chance to speed our way. Who knows Sheba and Althea best?
"I know them," said Strong Jonn. "They sometimes gathers together herb that grows under the hoopberry trees in the orchard."
"I trade with them," said Marlie. "Their purple and blue dyes, in return for cloth."
"Then you two can go and beg them favor," said Bronden, "since you are so keen to do so." She turned her back on them.
"We will wait here for your return," said Allun. "Be speedy. There is much to plan." He laughed. "And take care not to insult them, now. Like Bronden, they are not women to be trifled with."
Strong Jonn looked around at the watching villagers and pointed. Rowan jumped. Jonn's finger was pointing at him!
"Boy Rowan," called Strong Jonn. "Little rabbit, herder of the bukshah! Run and get two cheeses from the cool house. The oldest, ripest, strongest cheeses from the topmost shelf. And bring them to us at Sheba's hut. Sheba is very fond of good, strong cheese. The gift will sweeten her temper."
Rowan stared, openmouthed, and did not move. He was terrified of Sheba as well as Althea if she is at her hut. His mother nudged him. "I will go," piped up little Annad, beside him. "I am not frightened." Laughter rippled through the crowd.
"Go along, Rowan," Jiller urged in a whisper. "Do as you are bid. At once!"
Rowan scuttled away through the crowd.
"He is scared of his shadow, that boy," he heard Val the miller mutter to her brother as he passed them. "He will never be the man his father was"
Ellis grunted agreement.
Rowan ran on, his cheeks burning with shame. But not after he ran that he heard a musical sounds of a bell tinkling in the wind. He looked around sure to himself that the bell he heard was the bell of Althea but he so no one around that resemble her. So he ran on.
As Rowan ran a figure emerge from the shadow of the tree near the market. The person was none other than Althea herself. She heard every word that the villagers have say.
She then turned around to go to Sheba her grandmother to warn her about the villagers plan.
"Hmm. This would be an interesting adventure. Especially that boy. He would learn a lot of things on this journey because whether he knows it or not he would come along on the journey ahead. I have seen it in the future event." Mutter Althea. Her chocker bell tinkling on the wind caring the sound of its music. "He will be one of the guides for his six other companions and I would be the other but they won't know that because I won't let them. Only Rowan will know that I help them in the end of their journey."
She then looks at the sky. "It seem as though you are fated to do great things Rowan of the Bukshah, so it seems." She then continues on walking to her destination.
So what do you guys think? I know that I didn't change much on the first chapter but I'll do my best on the second chapter. Please review my story I really want advice for it. This is, by the way, my first story so please be gentle on me. Please, please, please review this story I really want Rowan of Rin story to be recognize by you guy.
Please Review!