“I’ll break my neck. This does not look solid.”
“It has stood for a few centuries, it can stand one more day for us. You’ll get soaked if you stay there,” Nina said, and disappeared inside.
He looked up at the tower, which was square in shape and rose five stories above the ground. One could almost hear the stones groaning with exhaustion. Atop its entrance was carved the image of a lamb and a word that had been smudged with time, perhaps her family’s name? This must be a tower house, an independent structure and not a part of a manor in times past, though the ones he’d seen before were usually by the sea.
He wished to remain outside, with his melancholy.
Instead, Hector followed Nina up a spiral staircase.
“What is up there?” he asked, curious despite himself.
“You’ll see.”
“I can’t see, that is the problem.”
“Don’t be afraid now, I’ll catch you if you fall,” she joked.
He was right to be cautious about entering the tower. The steps were narrow, it was dark, and there was no proper banister, but soon they reached the top floor.
The tower had been uninhabited for a great deal of time and the chamber they walked into did not have a stitch of cloth or furniture left. But there was a tall window—its shutters long crumbled into dust—on the east wall. The builders of the tower had carved stone seats to contemplate the scenery with ease. This was the prize.
“See,” Nina said, rushing to the window and looking out.
The land spread beneath them, green and alive. Hector could see the river they had visited, its waters gleaming, and farther away, tall mountains. The ground was a chaos, sloping up here then down there; it was not neatly flat as in the north, and the air smelled of wet earth. Flocks of sheep grazed not far from the tower. Water and wood, this was her world,while he was forged in the city, on the road. He breathed in slowly, feeling better.
“Those are all ours. That’s our flock,” she told him, pointing down.
“There’s a sheep carved above the entrance of the tower. Is that a heraldic symbol of some sort?”
“We’ve never been nobility, no,” she said. “It’s supposed to be lucky. I know a lot of rhymes about lambs—we learn them by the dozen when we are children.”
“Appropriate, I suppose.”
He had learned the bawdy songs of taverns; there was precious little time for rhymes. At the age she was being first fitted with corsets, he was making a living going from town to town, his voice thin as he announced himself and took off his cap, promising to show the audience miracles for a few coins.
“Do you like it here?” she asked.
“I do. It’s peaceful.”
“Have you ever been to Bosegnan?”
“No.”
“It’s by the sea. It’s warmer there and the sun bakes the sands until they are white, whiter than any lady’s linen. The fishermen have tiny boats, all painted red and lacquered as is tradition, and everything tastes like salt. You’ll eat fish every day and drink sweet wine every evening with the Lémys.”
She had a way of talking that he enjoyed because there was often merriment in her words.
“Will you write once you leave with your friends next week? I’ll miss you if you don’t,” she told him.
Nina moved from the window, her right hand brushing the stone walls of the tower and looked at Hector.
“You won’t miss me, not for a moment,” he said, smiling.
“You could stop by on your way back.”
She rested her back against the wall. It was cold, as if summer had been erased, the wind blowing and carrying droplets of rain into the tower.
“I don’t think I can,” he said.
