Shadows of Myth. Rachel Lee

      Young Tom Downey should have been asleep. He’d been up most of the night, opening the gate for the trappers who straggled in by ones and twos, not wanting to spend another night out on the ground in a fur sleep sack when they could walk a few more miles and have a pint of ale, a hot meal and a comfortable bed at the Deepwell Inn. By all rights he should have been exhausted and snug in his bed, catching up on his rest so he could enjoy the festival tonight.

      But then there was Sara. He’d promised to help her set up tables and torches in the inn’s courtyard, not so much because she wanted or needed his help—she came from big-boned, Whitewater stock and was strong as most men—but because it was a good excuse to spend a day with her. The opportunity to look into her deep blue eyes, to see the broad smile break out on her oval face, to hear the flowing music in her idle humming. Faced with that, well, sleep came in at a far-distant second place.

      The sun was well past high, and they had almost finished hanging the lanterns and decorations that crisscrossed the courtyard. Next they would build the firepit and, while the flames burned down, begin to carry out the long serving tables and stack the pewter flagons, bowls and spoons. By the time they had finished those tasks, the coals should be ready for them to heft the soup cauldron and bring it out from the kitchen. Another two or three hours.

      Another two or three hours of Sara’s almost sole attention, a rare treat indeed. She was usually too busy taking care of patrons at the inn for him to get more than a few words in edgewise, and that only when he wasn’t busy with his mother’s garden, or minding the gate for his father. In truth, he lived for a day like this.

      “A bit tighter,” Sara said, as he pulled the last line of lanterns over a tree limb. “There. Perfect.”

      He tied off the line and looked up at their work. Gaily painted pinecones and lanterns formed a canopy over the courtyard. Tonight, with the fires lit and the stars winking overhead, the place would seem almost magical.

      “Looks great,” Young Tom said. “It will be beautiful tonight.” Then, after a momentary pause, he added, “And I can’t wait for your mutton stew.”

      She nodded, her features darkened by a passing thought. “I just hope people will come.”

      Yes, they’d lost some crops this year to the cold. Yes, the trap lines were lean, and the river trout had moved downstream to warmer waters earlier than usual. But this was still the harvest festival, a last chance to celebrate the warmth of summer and growing things before ice crusted the river, and the fields and trees and gardens and roofs donned a white blanket of snow. And Young Tom was determined to enjoy it, if for no other reason than that it was one of the few times of the year when he felt any sense of wonder, of adventure.

      After dinner, while the children scattered across the commons and around the town in search of the harvest lamb, while mothers clucked and tsked at their charges and gossiped about their husbands, the men would gather in the public room and swap stories. For the townsfolk, the tales were largely embellishments of mundane activities. For in Whitewater, and especially at harvest festival, it was unmannerly to simply state that one’s tomatoes had grown well this summer.

      Instead the tilling and seeding, the watering, weeding, nurturing and, finally, picking, became an epic, often comic, battle of man against nature, where the storyteller was both conquering hero and court jester. He would be spurred on by the interjections and objections of those listening, until the tale dissolved in gales of laughter. Sometimes the stories would loop back to others told in past years—Young Tom’s first attempt to milk a goat was by now the stuff of legend, first told by his father and repeated countless times since, to his endless embarrassment—and the whole became the living history of Whitewater, high points and low, to be carried on in the years to come.

      But as amusing as those tales could be, for Young Tom the highlight of the evening would come when a trapper or, better yet, a trader would take his place by the roaring fire. Eyes alight with excitement and tongue loosened by Bandylegs’ ale, he would talk of strange lands and faraway cities. There were stories of noblemen and guild masters, of fortunes won and lost on a hand of tiles, of street thieves skulking in alleys, of merchant sailors and pirates. And always, always, of the shimmering white streets of Bozandar, where anything that one could want—and much that one ought not to have—could be bought and sold in the markets and streets and on the docks.

      It was these stories that held Young Tom rapt. Stories of places that didn’t smell like sheep and drying pelts, places where a man could make his mark on the larger world. Places Young Tom would never see.

      He would never see them, quite simply, because he could never imagine taking himself away from Sara. Sure, he dreamed of carving his life on the stone of the world, preserved forever for all to see. But the truth was that he was a simple Whitewater lad, madly in love with a simple Whitewater lass. Someday, if the gods could instill courage in him, he would find the words to tell her that. He would ask her to marry him. She would say yes. And he would spend the rest of his days here, with her. With not a single regret for the places he did not see and the things he did not do.

      “You are dreaming again, Young Tom Downey,” Sara said, looking over at him with that playful smile that almost dared him to disagree or, worse, tell her of his dreams.

      He stammered for the right words and instead resigned himself to a clumsy nod. After a moment, he added, “I’ll just get another stack of bowls,” as if by focusing on the task at hand he could slow the beat of his heart or will the quiver