One
I have never left the village, not even as far as the ones to the east and west of us, the ones that deliver us our tithes, our due as part of the pact. Never in all my long, long life. We stay here and we will die here, that is the Vow we made, and with that I was content.
Until many years ago, not long after the famine that killed him off, I found an attic full of old books, and maps, in Caleb’s house. I knew without asking the others, not even my brother and sister, David and Rhona, that these were forbidden. More than even the books, the maps were my favourite things. For the first time I saw our small village, marked by Caleb with a circle of paled ink and I saw, like the hawk circling high above us, our world from above. How small it was. How much else there was outside it. The books too, showed wondrous things. Things that excited and frightened me in equal measure.
Even on the oldest maps, our valley is called the Dark Valley, with good reason. Towering mountain ranges close in above us and block the sun’s rays, so we live in almost perpetual shadow. Winter arrives early and is reluctant to leave, clinging on long after other villages further up and down the valley are enjoying the first blooms of spring. Instead, we keep the silvered outlines of trees and grass, as the morning frost hangs on. The village is squeezed into this cleft, cleaving to the steep slopes in two halves, separated by the river and a railway line that doesn’t pause for us. The river greedily occupies most of the small flat land we have, leaving just enough room for our fields.