Chapter Text
It was a beautiful and lonely place where Riannon Waters called home.
The stone cottage nestled deep within the Kingswood forest, so hidden, that few knew of its existence. The lush green woods seemed to understand this too, for they were constantly encroaching on the moss-covered limestone.
Riannon knew the pathways and valleys and little streams that surrounded the only home she could remember as well as she knew the beat of her own heart.
She knew it took ninety steps from the nearest, sweetest tasting stream to the cottage. One-hundred-and-eleven if she was carrying two buckets.
She knew exactly the best place to harvest wild garlic was two valleys over, but to get there fast as the other creatures of the forest knew it well too. More than once had she gone to harvest only to interrupt a family of bears feasting on the tangy herb bulbs, too intent on their meal to notice her calmly turn on her heel and walk in the other direction.
Alfrud told her that she seventeen years old.
Her nameday nestled in the autumn, so when the leaves of the forest changed from their rainbow of green to the burnished red and brown shades which were her favourite, she knew she would soon be a year older.
Alfrud would celebrate by going into the hills, catching an elusive sheep that rarely ventured down from the Red Mountains, south of the Kingswood. They would stew the mutton for hours with rosemary that Riannon grew in the herb garden, and salt that Alfrud bought on his rare trips to the villages that inhabited the vast forest.
It was an infrequent treat, the thought of it made Riannon’s mouth water as she scrubbed one of dresses, sitting on a tree stump long cut down and scrapping the wool against the side of the wooden bucket filled with lye soap which made her hands cracked and dry. The dying embers of the sun cast enough light for her to see what she was doing. She drank in as much sunlight as she could, soon she would retire inside the cottage, bolt the doors and the shutters, stoke the fire and sparingly light the tallow candles.
An infrequent treat, as Riannon and Alfrud mostly lived off what they could forage in the forest and any fish they could catch in the rivers.
They did not oft go hungry.
She felt strong.
Strong enough to repair a hole in the thatched roof for most of the day whilst Afrud was away. She could climb any tree she happened across, dangling from a branch, holding herself up by her own weight for minutes.
And she could beat Myra, her dear only friend, in any race. On land or in the lakes which Alfrud and Myra’s father did not know they swam in.
Myra’s father preferred to keep his family buried in the depths of the woods, too. They lived close enough that Riannon and Myra could meet each other after only a morning’s walk.
The girls clung to each other, desperate for someone their own age to share secrets, tells stories and pretend to have adventures with.
As Riannon grew older, she began to feel those were the only adventures she would have, the pretend ones.
It had been a difficult goodbye with Alfrud.
Riannon had pleaded with him to take her with him, to have some small taste of civilisation. To see walls that did not belong to the cottage. Alfrud had always brought her books back from his sporadic trips and Riannon pored over them, reading every word a thousand times over, demanding any word’s meaning she did not know from Alfrud. Suspicious when he appeared to conjure it up on the spot.
She had read of far off kingdoms, of people who spoke different tongues, whose skins were dark and olive rather than her own pale white, of cities that glittered in the sun, the jewels that formed their riches embedded in the manses and palaces that formed their vast settlements. She read of creatures with thick hides and pointed ivory tusks, of birds with feathers colours she had not even heard of, let alone seen.
Alfrud had firmly reminded her that the outside world was not safe for her. There were people who would do her harm. They would hunt her to the ends of the earth.
Riannon had finally snapped, done what she never had and asked why.
Why would these faceless, nameless people hate her so much to want to hurt her? That nowhere in the world was safe for her to step without these people finding her?
Alfrud, the gruff old man that he was with strong hands and a beard of tangled thick grey whiskers, never pretended to be her father. He had always been Alfrud and he gently corrected her with soft, wistful eyes
Her last name was Waters, she was a bastard. Whoever her parents had been, they did not care enough to marry each other and give her a proper last name.
What had the world ever cared about a bastard?
The old man, Riannon and Myra’s family were not the only inhabitants of the forests. There were little villages and settlements, but buried perhaps deeper than Alfrud and Riannon, always on the move, were the outlaws.
Most recently, a group of those outlaws had been making a name for themselves, Riannon knew from gossip passed down from Myra who had heard it from her mother. These outlaws were mostly men who had fought in some rebellion against the King when Riannon was very little. They had been harrying nobleman and traders passing through the Kingswood, stealing plunder before disappearing into the safety of the dense woods.
The outlaws were protected by those in the forest who they swore never to harm.
Occasionally, in the past few years, the men would come to the cottage to trade a few things with Alfrud. He would always send her inside at their coming, making her wait upstairs.
Riannon would peek out of the gap in the shutters at the band of men with scoping gazes and practiced hands that never strayed far from their weapons.
Riannon would stare into their faces, finding little handsome in most of their features, but dreaming that one day an outlaw would join them who would be her age. Youthful and lean, she always pictured in her mind’s eye, and he would take her far away on grand adventures.
Alfrud was a man of few words, a steady man who rose from bed in the morn and did not sit down until he returned to that bed long past sundown, and he was slow to rouse in a temper.
But anger sparked in his light brown eyes when she asked that simple but so complicated why?
“Do not ever ask me that question again,” he had told her.
That answer had infuriated Riannon.
Riannon who never asked questions. Riannon who lived her life contained to the trees and the cottage. Riannon who never asked Alfrud questions about her mother, her father, why Alfrud had been the one to raise her, to nurse her cuts and teach her everything she knew.
Her entire existence felt like a huge question to Riannon, every day she denied the why.
What would happen when the dreaded day came that Alfrud returned to the Seven? Was Riannon to live her life alone? Some day even Myra would go out and find a husband and leave her. Was Riannon to grow old and die in the forest with no one to even bury her? Would she rot where she lay forever? A life little lived?
Buried deep inside of her, Riannon knew her sweet old Alfrud shared these fears. She saw it when he struggled to stand from kneeling on the floor, wincing at his ageing, stiff knees. Recently, he had driven home to her what she must do in his absence. If ever the day came where he did not return to her, or something happened…
No.
She did not want to think upon such things, not when their parting had been so bitter. She regretted that now.
What if she never saw him again?
What if another band of outlaws, crueller men than the ones who visited the cottage, set upon him?
Usually, Riannon walked with him as far as he would let her during their goodbyes. It would get to the point, always sooner than she hoped, when he would make her turn back with an encouraging smile and shooing hands.
This time, Riannon had stayed in the cottage, stubbornly pretending to read a book in her room, listening as his footsteps disappeared up the path.
She pushed away these thoughts, her stomach twisting as she tipped out the bucket onto the soil and headed inside the cottage.
She hoped he would come back soon, that it would be a short trip.
The fire she had lit burned low in the hearth, Riannon stoked it and added a few more pieces of wood.
The bottom floor of the cottage was entirely one room, half of it taken up by a vast wooden table that Alfrud had built with his own hands years ago.
There were dried flowers and herbs hanging off every inch of the stone walls, an effort by Riannon to decorate but also with purposes for food and medicine.
She drew out the tin bath from where it hung next to the entrance to the stairs, which lead up to the two bedrooms.
Riannon had collected enough water throughout the day in the barrel outside so she could take a bath. The burnished tin plate she used as a mirror told her that morn it was time to dye her hair, her light roots a dead giveaway against the deep brown dye.
The powder she used to form into a paste had almost ran out, another reason why Alfrud had left, to buy some more.
Alfrud had insisted on her dying her hair for as long as she could remember. He used to do it for her when she was very little, but as womanhood encroached, Riannon took over.
She climbed into the bath as close to the fire as it could possibly sit, the chill water sending gooseflesh over her skin, and was grateful Alfrud was not there. Now she could spend as long as she liked sitting in the water, soon warming from the fire, without feeling guilty at Alfrud being banished to his room to wait until she finished.
Riannon propped up the tin plate on the chair and used it as a gauge to where she needed to apply the paste, taking care not to get any on her forehead so it would not be stained for days.
Large violet eyes peered back at Riannon, set in a face with high cheekbones, full lips and a small, refined nose with a pointed tip.
According to Myra, Riannon was a great beauty.
She did not see it herself.
She longed for Myra’s freckles and warm green eyes.
Her friend had a woman’s shape, but Riannon felt thin and boyish.
But she liked her eyes, at least.
When she was finished, Riannon methodically returned the bathwater to the barrel used for anything other than drinking or cooking. There was little cause to waste when almost everything had several purposes here where resource was so scarce.
After eating a dinner of salt beef and boiled potatoes, Riannon sat in front of the mirror again and brushed her half-dry hair until it shone, it fell to her waist in thick, tumbling waves. Tying her hair into a long braid with a leather strap at the end, Riannon dressed in her nightshift and climbed into bed, snuffing out the candle and tucking herself up warm.
There was little for her to fear as she lay listening to the sounds of the forest on her bed stuffed with goosefeathers, her legs and arms tired from the work of the day, more to be done whilst Alfrud was away.
She could hear the low hum of the bugs, the scattering of woodmice and low, whistling calls of the owls.
It was a natural lullaby, her eyes soon growing too heavy to keep open as sleep pulled her into its warm depths.