Ashvale was still dark when Harold began checking the wagon.
A damp spring wind moved through the valley. Behind the shuttered windows of the longhouses, only a few hearths showed signs of life.
Harold walked once around the wagon, inspecting the wheels, traces, and cargo.
Cured pelts.
Dried venison.
Carved wooden tools.
Several coarse sacks of rock salt for barter.
Kaelen had already checked the harness three times.
Harold noticed him reaching for it again.
“You've done that.”
Kaelen grinned. “A fourth time won't hurt.”
“It won't help either.”
Kaelen checked it anyway.
Harold shook his head.
Aether had slept little himself.
But while Kaelen had spent half the night thinking about hunters, bows, traps, and whatever might be traded at the fair, Aether had been thinking about names.
Riverbend.
Pinewood Ridge.
Windhill.
Places he had heard travelers mention around the fire.
Places that had existed, until now, only in his imagination.
In eleven winters, Aether had never gone beyond the country surrounding Ashvale.
Today he would.
When the first gray light appeared above the eastern ridge, Harold climbed onto the wagon.
“Up.”
Kaelen was already there.
Aether followed.
Harold flicked the reins.
The wagon rolled through the gate and onto the Old Stone Road.
***
Spring had changed the valley.
The great snowdrifts had collapsed into dark banks of slush. Water ran beside the road, carrying twigs and dead leaves toward the lower ground. Birds called from the timber.
Aether sat high on the wagon bench and watched everything.
Before long, they began passing other travelers.
A shepherd drove a small flock of mountain sheep along the shoulder of the road.
Two men pushed a handcart loaded with iron pots and tools.
Hunters came out of narrow tracks between the trees with bundles of fur across their backs.
All of them were going the same way.
Aether watched one group join the road from the north, then another from a wooded hollow farther east.
The road was gathering people.
Harold knew some of them.
He raised a hand to one shepherd and exchanged a few words with an older hunter. Others he greeted only with a nod.
Aether looked back.
More travelers had appeared behind them.
For most of his life, the Old Stone Road had seemed empty.
Today it was alive.
***
Near midday, the wagon climbed the last ridge.
Harold pulled the team to a slower pace.
Aether looked ahead.
Then forgot to breathe.
The land opened into a broad basin below them.
People were everywhere.
Dozens of wagons stood around the clearing. Hundreds of men, women, and children moved among them. A dark river curved along one side of the basin, and at its center stood three enormous oaks whose branches spread over much of the gathering.
Blankets and tables had been arranged beneath them.
Goods covered nearly every surface.
Iron tools.
Bundles of wool.
Salt fish.
Furs.
Clay pots.
Leather.
Baskets.
Things Aether could not name.
The noise reached them even from the ridge.
Voices.
Animals.
Laughter.
Hammering.
Children shouting.
Aether stared.
He had never seen so many people in one place.
Beside him, Kaelen leaned forward.
“Look at those bows.”
Aether barely heard him.
“The hunters by the middle tree,” Kaelen said. “Look at the limbs. Those are longer than ours.”
Aether glanced over.
Kaelen's eyes were fixed on a group of hunters.
“Southern yew, maybe.”
Aether turned back toward the crowd.
He was looking at faces.
Some people wore cloaks dyed in colors he had never seen in Ashvale. Others spoke with accents that made familiar words sound strange. A woman passed carrying a basket of silver-scaled fish. Two children ran after her, laughing.
Aether watched them disappear into the crowd.
The world was not empty beyond Ashvale.
It was crowded.
***
Once the wagon was secured, several traders called Harold away.
Before leaving, he looked at the boys.
“Stay inside the tree line.”
Kaelen nodded.
“So do I have to say the rest?”
“No.”
Harold looked at Aether.
Aether sighed.
“Don't wander off.”
“Good.”
Harold left.
For a moment, the brothers stood together.
Then Kaelen looked toward the hunters.
Aether looked toward everything else.
They separated without a word.
Aether wandered slowly through the fair.
He did not buy anything.
Mostly, he listened.
People from Riverbend had brought crates of dried fish.
Shepherds from Pinewood Ridge traded bundles of coarse gray wool.
Men from the northern slopes carried raw iron and flint.
Around the cook fires, people argued about the late frost, wolves in the western draws, and whether spring runoff would make the lower crossings impassable.
Aether listened to names.
Windhill.
Stone Bridge.
Blackrock Crossing.
Whitetail Slope.
The Vale of the Long River.
He repeated them quietly to himself.
Every name belonged somewhere.
Every somewhere had people.
Ashvale, he began to understand, was only one of them.
That realization did not make home seem smaller.
It made the world seem larger.
***
Near sunset, Kaelen appeared out of the crowd and grabbed Aether by the sleeve.
“Come.”
“What?”
“You need to see this.”
Kaelen pulled him around the far side of the great oaks.
Several older woodsmen sat in a circle on the packed earth.
Between them lay a large piece of elk hide, darkened by years of grease and handling.
Lines had been scratched across its surface.
Hundreds of them.
Aether stopped.
“Is that—”
One of the hunters looked up.
“A map.”
Kaelen was already kneeling.
Aether dropped beside him.
The hunter used a short wooden pointer to indicate a series of marks.
“Whitetail Slope.”
He moved the pointer.
“Wolf runs here.”
Another mark.
“We took a large bear near this creek two winters ago.”
He traced a line farther south.
“And don't bring horses through this canyon before summer. Spring water turns the bottom into a bog.”
Another hunter leaned over.
“That creek doesn't run there anymore.”
“It did last year.”
“Last year isn't this year.”
The first hunter grunted.
A third man took a piece of charcoal and altered the line.
“The deer moved north too.”
“Because of the wolves.”
“Because you fools hunted the southern herd too hard.”
The men began arguing.
Kaelen listened with complete attention.
Aether barely heard them.
He was staring at the hide.
Rivers.
Ridges.
Paths.
Places where animals gathered.
Places where people camped.
The map was crude. Some lines had been rubbed out and redrawn. Others were little more than scratches.
But Aether understood what he was looking at.
Someone had walked those places.
Then come back and made marks so another person could find them.
He thought of his pine boards.
The Old Stone Road.
The fallen pillars.
Garan's carving.
Kaelen's words returned to him.
It looks like a map.
Aether leaned closer to the elk hide.
If these hunters could mark their small part of the wilderness—
What had the people who carved the stones been trying to mark?
***
Kaelen talked almost the entire way home.
“That northern hunter said the stags beyond the eastern ridge are nearly twice the size of ours.”
Harold grunted.
“And did he mention how far you'd have to carry one after killing it?”
Kaelen ignored that.
“And those traps—did you see the double springs? If we made two or three, we could set them along the upper draw before winter.”
Harold glanced at him.
“We?”
Kaelen hesitated.
“You.”
“Better.”
Aether sat beside them, looking out at the passing trees.
His thoughts remained with the map.
By the time the wagon entered Ashvale, darkness had settled across the valley.
Harold began unloading.
Kaelen helped with the pelts.
Aether carried two sacks inside, then disappeared into the longhouse.
He lit a small tallow candle.
One by one, he spread his pine boards across the floor.
Then he found a clean piece of wood.
From memory, he began drawing the hunter's map.
The river first.
Then the ridge.
The crossing.
The camps.
He forgot details.
Some lines were probably wrong.
More than once he stopped, trying to remember whether a creek had turned north or south.
But he kept drawing.
When he finished, he placed the new board beside the others.
The difference was obvious.
The hunters' map was rough and practical. It showed a small piece of land they knew well.
The ancient markings were something else.
Larger.
More complicated.
Perhaps Kaelen had been right.
Perhaps they were maps.
Perhaps they were not.
Aether still could not read them.
But now he understood something he had not understood before.
A map was not the land itself.
It was what someone remembered about the land.
Aether looked at the boards spread around him.
Someone had remembered these places.
Someone had thought they were worth marking.
The candle burned lower.
Aether picked up his charcoal again.
At the top of the newest board, he carefully wrote the first name he had ever placed on a map.
Ashvale.