For a time in the Bree-lands, the Harvestmath Festival was held every year at the Thornley farm for it was the most prosperous, with the largest fields and the choicest soil, and its lands boasted the deepest wells and the best grazing. Broad yards allowed many barn raisings and invited neighboring farmers to trade, commiserate, and celebrate. The men would swap boasts about the past growing season, the women would swap gossip about the men, and the children would play and learn about men and women. And, of course, all would gather for music and dance, most joyously around the nightly bonfires.
Cliques were common amongst the children, for the tribal nature of Men was ever strongest in them, being young and not yet yoked to all the social ways of the Bree-landers. The Circle was one such little tribe, centering around Cutch Crane, a smallish boy from the Wildwood. He was not a leader in the usual sense, but his tender heart and kind ways welcomed other children who were receptive to such things. The Circle numbered four, with Claywick and Calder Cob, brothers, and Caladna Greenlake rounding them out. Clay and Cal were from Archet, their father a leatherworker, and Callie from the Greenlake farm that bordered the Thornley’s to the south and was nearly as prosperous. Orbiting the Circle, Torrance Greenlake kept a close eye on his younger sister, as was his self-assigned duty.
Cutch, in his fourteenth year, gathered with the Circle around their own little fire under the stars at the edge of the festival and made a momentous announcement.
“I’m leaving.”
He said this quietly, sitting crossed-legged and staring into the fire as he pointlessly poked at it with a stick. He’d been sitting very still, and his friends knew to leave him be in such reflective moments. He would soon emerge when the stirring within him settled, and then make a little joke, or a curiously bemused insight, or offer some oddly angled question, and the Circle would again be rolling, the flat spot left by his absence once more filled.
“What do you mean, leaving?”, Clay asked, since he was Cutch’s best friend and the one to ask first while the others listened. “Back to your folks place in the Wildwood? Alone at night?”
“Cloth-headed, Crane”, Cal tossed in, being the cynical one in the Circle.
Cutch shook his head quietly, and Callie blinked away her disbelief, muttering, “No, that’s not what he means. He means he’s really leaving. Going away.” She gently laid a hand on Cutch’s shoulder as he nodded and returned both his gaze and stirring stick to the fire. “Is this still about Mavis, the nasty little….?” she started to ask but stopped when Cutch shot her an uncharacteristically sharp look.
“No. More than that”, he sullenly muttered. “It’s just …. time.”
“Time for what, Crane?” Torrance, more a young man than an older boy, demanded as he stepped into the firelight. “Time to leave your parents tending the homestead where they raised you? Alone, with no more of your help? Fine thing…. Little Man”.
Cutch huddled closer to the fire, his face lining with anger at Torry’s abusive use of the nickname. It was once a sweet compliment, when Cutch had no more then ten seasons, but for at least two years, since Mavis left, it felt demeaning, and at times hurtful when he remembered the girl chiding him with it.
“Shut your gob, Torry”, Callie growled at her brother, who returned a departing sneer as he strode off. She turned back to Cutch, a worried frown crouching on her brow as she tried to find words for him.
As he was leaving, Torry was surprised by another who’d been sitting in the shadows, quietly smoking a pipe, facing away from the Circle but easily in earshot. It was Andreg, a familiar face around the Bree-land farms, although some were leery of him, for he seemed to just come and go and had no visible livelihood. To them, he appeared as just another “boot-knife bum”. Others held him in esteem for he was not averse to assisting folks along the road between Trestlebridge and Bree. He was even rumored to have been seen as far away as the Gatson farm in the North Downs, as if on some sort of patrol. He always seemed to be riding somewhere … else.
Drawing himself up by his burgeoning manhood, Torry sauntered over to Andreg and suppressed a cough as he passed through the man’s cloud of exhaled smoke. Andreg regarded the young fellow with a kindly smirk as Torry said, with an exaggeratedly familiar tone, “The boy is daft, eh? Just going to wander off and leave his responsibilities behind like that?”
Andreg tapped out his pipe out against the boulder upon which he perched, toeing out the embers, and nodded with a serious frown attempting to wipe away his smirk. “Aye, old man. You’re right of course. Perhaps one of us should try to keep an eye on him…eh?” The man rose and stood close to Torry with thumbs hooked in his belt.
Torry blinked and took a step back, apprehension in his eyes as they darted over Andreg’s face. “Well…. not me! I have chores and … the forge to work … and chores …”.
“Ahhh…yes…yes, of course, old man. You’re an important fellow, Mister Greenlake. Can’t be babysitting the children any more….so perhaps I might check on him…from time to time? What do you think?”
Torry’s ears reddened with the suspicion that he was being played with. “Yes”, he answered as his heavily muscled body stiffened and he locked gazes with Andreg. “Excellent idea…old man. You don’t seem to have any other business except occasionally helping others, as rumors say. You’d be the perfect choice.”
Andreg lifted a brow. The boy was almost as grown as his height and forge-hardened frame would imply. They nodded at each other with a quiet understanding. Torry strode back to the music and dance, and Andreg stayed, watching the Circle continue to argue about Cutch’s announcement.
The man sat back down on the boulder, again facing away from them, but listening. As he spied, his thoughts pulled him back to a similar moment in his own life, when he was Cutch’s age, sitting by a night campfire with his own father, and in that private moment the man revealed to his son the secret promise that had been made to keep an eye on Cutch, then just an infant.
Andreg peeked over his shoulder at the Circle, focusing on Little Man hunched over the fire. The truth about the boy could not be seen just by his appearance, but that truth was important enough to make the promise and keep it secret.
Nodding to himself, Andreg muttered, “Yes, father, I’ll keep your vow.”
