Surely, if anyone could find and destroy the Enemy of Weld, Dirk could. His strength and courage made him a natural leader. He had been made a Foreman after only two years on the Wall and, young as he was, he was respected by his men. How many times had Rye heard his mother say that their father would have been proud to see how closely his eldest son had followed in his footsteps?
“Our home and our people would be safe!” Dirk was rushing on. “And in time I would be Warden!”
“On condition that you marry the present Warden’s daughter,” Sholto reminded him drily. “Oh, our Warden may be a coward, terrified of new ideas, and slow to act. But he is cunning.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rye. He was so troubled that he was finding it hard to think clearly.
Sholto laughed shortly. “Why, do you not see it? By offering his daughter’s hand in marriage to the hero who becomes his heir, the Warden has ensured that his descendants will continue to rule Weld!”
“I admit that the Warden’s daughter is the fly in the honey,” Dirk said ruefully. “I have no wish to marry someone I have never seen. But perhaps it would not be so bad. Perhaps the Warden’s daughter is kind, clever, and beautiful!”
“Perhaps she is spiteful, stupid, and ugly!” Sholto smirked. “What then?”
Dirk laughed. “Then I will say that I will become the heir but will not take the daughter! If I come home triumphant, the Warden will not dare to refuse me.”
Again he ruffled Rye’s hair, his broad, handsome face alive with hope.
“Imagine it, Rye! Imagine if I was Warden of Weld! Think of the good we could do! Think of the changes we could make! How often have we talked of it?”
Rye felt hot, treacherous tears burning behind his eyes. “But that was only … talk!” he cried. “I never thought it was real!”
Dirk’s hand dropped from Rye’s head onto his shoulder.
“Then you did not understand, Rye,” he said soberly. “It was very real. Mother knows this. She will understand that I must go.”
And so it proved. The next morning, with his mother’s blessing, Dirk marched away from Southwall, his father’s skimmer hook over his shoulder and the cheers of his neighbors ringing in his ears. Joliffe, Crell, and a handful of other brave men went with him.
The volunteers were singing as they swung along the broad, straight road that led west to the Keep. Those they had left behind stood watching until they were out of sight.
“We should feel very proud,” said Lisbeth, putting her arm around Rye’s shoulders. “Dirk is doing what must be done, to save us all.”
But watching the small band of marchers disappearing into the distance, Rye felt only terrible fear, and an aching sense of loss.
A few days later, Crell slunk back into Southwall with a rag tied around his leg. He said he had hurt his ankle at the Keep, so had been forced to come home. He was certainly limping, sometimes more and sometimes less, but he refused to see Tallus the healer. Few believed in his injury, though no one said so aloud.
Shamed and sullen, Crell said little in answer to the townspeople’s eager questions. The Keep had been crowded with volunteers from every part of the city. The group from Northwall had been the largest and noisiest of all. Crell had lost sight of Dirk, Joliffe, and the others from Southwall. He had not been shown the secret way out of Weld.
He retreated to his home and stayed out of sight for days. His mother, who was Lisbeth’s friend, clearly felt disgraced. But Rye could see, deep in her shadowed eyes, a flicker of relief.
The house seemed very empty without Dirk. His cheerful whistling no longer brightened the early mornings. Dinners around the table were dull without his whispered talk, teasing, and laughter. And at night, Rye lay listening to the sounds of the skimmers with only the silent Sholto for company. Dirk’s empty, neatly made bed seemed to dominate the hot, still room.
Lisbeth and Sholto went on with their lives just as they had before Dirk left. Lisbeth tended her bees and sold the honey at her market stall. Sholto continued grinding powders and mixing potions for Tallus the healer, examining dead skimmers in Tallus’s workroom, and studying his books in every spare moment.
Rye did not understand how they could. He missed Dirk so much! He dreamed of him every night, and every morning woke to the misery of his brother’s absence. It was as if a great hole had been torn in his world, and it changed everything.
School lessons seemed pointless. Games seemed pointless. His friends talked constantly about the adventures Dirk, Joliffe, and the others must be having beyond the Wall. Their chatter seemed to rasp on Rye’s nerves like sandpaper, and he began to spend more time alone.
“You must have courage, Rye,” Lisbeth murmured to her youngest son when she found him moping in the shade of the bell tree one afternoon. “We all miss Dirk, my dear, but what must be, must be.”
Rye looked up into her face and saw how pale she was. He saw the shadows beneath her eyes, and a line between her brows that he had never noticed before. With a pang, he at last understood that Lisbeth was suffering even more than he was, but was bearing her pain bravely, for all their sakes.
He nodded and forced a smile, suddenly feeling much older.
“There will be news of Dirk very soon, I am sure of it,” his mother told him.
“I am sure of it, too,” Rye replied as firmly as he could.
But the weeks slipped by, and no news came.
The fruit on the bell tree ripened. Rye picked the juicy yellow bells, Lisbeth preserved them, and the pantry filled with jars of golden sweetness.
Usually, Lisbeth kept some jars for the family’s use, and took the rest to the market. This year, all the jars would have to be sold. Sholto earned very little from Tallus because he was still learning the healer’s art, and now that Dirk’s wages were no longer flowing in, the family needed every coin it could get.
The skimmers kept coming. More crops were lost, more beasts perished, and more people died.
Then, as the heat slowly became less, the attacks became fewer, and at last, stopped altogether. In Lisbeth’s garden, the leaves of the bell tree colored and fell, and the bare, pruned branches were stubby and stark against the white of the beehives.
And still Dirk did not return. Nor did any of the other men who had marched, singing, away from Southwall. Lisbeth’s eyes grew more shadowed. Sholto became more silent than ever.
The Warden’s notice remained on the wall of the meetinghouse in the square like a memorial to those who had gone, growing more faded with every passing day.
At last, the air began to warm once more, and the sun shone strongly in the misty skies of Weld. The bell tree sprouted and became a glorious umbrella of yellow blossoms, humming with bees. Then the blossoms fell to form a perfect golden circle on the ground and tiny green fruit began to form.
And as the fruit swelled and ripened, the skimmer invasions began again.
Just over a year after Dirk left, Rye and Sholto came home to find Lisbeth sitting in her chair by the fireplace, staring at the cold ashes in the grate.
Her hands were on her lap. In one, she held a gold brooch in the shape of a flower. The other clutched a small scroll. Tight-lipped, Sholto freed the scroll from her fingers. As he unrolled it, Rye pushed close so he, too, could read what was written upon it.
“Our precious Warden must have sent out many of these today,” Sholto muttered, looking down his nose at the scroll. “So many, indeed, that it would have taken too long for him to write each note individually. Most of this message was written for him. He has simply filled in the spaces and signed at the bottom!”