Chapter 7 — The Ring
The festival of Ashfeld happened once a year.
It wasn’t a grand affair — no kingdom sponsored it, no official declared it, no religious authority gave it meaning beyond the meaning Ashfeld had given it themselves over generations. It was just the village deciding collectively that this particular day in early autumn, when the harvest was in and the pine hills turned the specific gold that only happened for about two weeks before the cold came, was a day worth celebrating.
Everyone contributed something.
Brenvar brought his best preserved meats from the smokehouse. The baker worked through the night before. The miller’s wife organized the decorations with the focused energy of someone who had been waiting eleven months to organize decorations. Elder Broft gave a speech that was slightly too long and that everyone listened to anyway because Broft was Broft and some things were just part of the texture of the day.
The village square filled up. Music appeared from somewhere — three men with instruments who played together once a year and spent the other three hundred and sixty four days apparently practicing because they were always better than the year before.
And Garren’s Sundry Goods, which sat on the eastern edge of the square and sold everything from lamp oil to fabric to the small carved wooden figures that Garren made himself in the back room during the winter months, was supposed to be the centerpiece of the market portion of the festival.
Was supposed to be.
Ren had noticed Garren three days before the festival.
Not in the dramatic way — not a revelation, not a sudden sharp observation. Just the slow accumulation of small things that happened when you paid attention to people. The way he’d been moving differently when she passed the shop on her morning rounds of the village. Slower. The particular careful quality of someone compensating for something they weren’t mentioning. The inventory he’d been trying to reorganize alone when it would normally take two people. The way he’d looked at the festival banner going up across the square with an expression that was trying to be pleased and underneath was tired.
His wife had passed two years ago.
Ren knew this because Ren knew everything about Ashfeld. Marta Garren had been quiet and sharp-eyed and had run the shop’s accounts with a precision that Mira would have respected. Since she’d gone Garren had been managing alone and managing fine, mostly, in the specific way of people who were fine until something required more than one pair of hands.
The festival required more than one pair of hands.
She’d gone home and found her sisters at dinner and said, in the same tone she used for everything: "Garren needs help tomorrow. We’re going to help him."
Vera had looked up from her food. "All of us."
"All of us."
Mira had set down her fork with the expression of someone already calculating logistics. "What kind of help."
"Setting up. Running the shop during the festival. Whatever he needs."
Syla had looked at her plate. Then quietly: "Should we tell Father."
"Father will try to help himself," Ren said. "He’s guarding the perimeter tomorrow. Let him guard."
A pause around the table.
"Okay," Vera said.
Mira picked her fork back up. "I’ll look at his inventory records tonight if he’ll let me."
"He’ll let you," Ren said. She had already eaten three more bites before she remembered: "Also his daughter Lenne is coming to help. Just — I’m mentioning that."
"Why are you mentioning it like that," Vera said.
"I’m just mentioning it," Ren said serenely.
Lenne Garren was nineteen years old and had opinions.
She was visiting from Drenfall where she worked at a fabric merchant’s — which explained the opinions, and also the way she looked at four ten year old girls who had showed up at her father’s shop at seventh hour of the festival morning and felt something happen behind her eyes that the girls did not immediately recognize as dangerous.
"Oh," Lenne said.
Just that.
Garren, behind the counter, said: "These are Cidd’s girls. They offered to help today."
"Did they," Lenne said, still in that specific tone.
"We can set up the display tables," Mira said, already looking at the inventory with the focused attention of a professional assessor. "Your eastern window isn’t optimized for foot traffic visibility. If we move the fabric bolts to the left side and put the carved figures at eye level for adults you’ll catch more attention from the square."
Garren blinked.
"She’s right," Lenne said, but she wasn’t looking at the display tables. She was looking at Syla’s hair. "Come here."
Syla looked up. "What."
"Your hair. Come here."
"My hair is fine —"
"It’s lovely and it’s doing nothing for you." Lenne was already moving. "All of you. Come here. Papa, where is my bag."
"Lenne —"
"The brown bag, Papa."
What followed was something that Ren would later describe to Cidd as a ambush and that Lenne would later describe as a public service.
She had a bag.
The bag contained things — ribbons and pins and small decorative elements and fabric pieces and other objects whose purpose became clear as she deployed them with the focused efficiency of someone who had been waiting for exactly this opportunity without knowing it.
Vera submitted to this process with the expression of a soldier accepting a necessary inconvenience.
Syla went pink immediately and stayed pink.
Mira assessed the situation, determined resistance was inefficient, and held still with the cooperative patience of someone who had decided to let this happen and was spending the time thinking about display table optimization.
Ren had already known this was coming and was enjoying it.
"You have incredible hair," Lenne told Syla, who went a deeper shade of pink. "Why is it just — sitting there. Here." Pins appeared. Hair was moved. Syla made a small sound. "There. Look."
She produced a small mirror.
Syla looked.
Looked away immediately.
"It’s nice," Vera told her. Vera was wearing a small ribbon that she had already decided she was keeping. "You look nice Syla."
"I look —" Syla touched her hair carefully. "It’s too much."
"It’s exactly right," Lenne said firmly, and moved on to Ren.
Ren sat for her turn with complete serenity, watching Lenne work in the mirror with the interested attention she gave to any skillful thing. Lenne’s hands were quick and certain. She knew what she was doing.
"You," Lenne said, "have a face that does everything by itself. I’m just going to not ruin it." She adjusted something. Stepped back. "Yes. Like that."
"Thank you," Ren said sincerely.
"Don’t thank me, thank your father’s genes." She moved to Mira.
Mira was already looking at her. The specific look.
Lenne paused for just a moment. Then, professionally: "You’re the serious one."
"I’m practical," Mira said.
"Same thing." Lenne studied her for a moment. Made a single adjustment — one pin, one ribbon, precisely placed. "There. It doesn’t fight what you are."
Mira looked in the mirror. "Efficient," she said.
"That’s the highest compliment you give, isn’t it."
"Yes."
Lenne smiled. Then she got to Vera.
Vera had the ribbon. Lenne looked at her — at the training-straight posture, the focused eyes, the general air of someone who could probably pick up the display table she was standing next to.
"You’re going to be terrifying when you grow up," Lenne said.
"I know," Vera said.
"Good." She adjusted the ribbon. Added nothing else. "You don’t need decoration. You need framing." She stepped back. "Done."
Garren had watched all of this from behind the counter with the expression of a man who had raised Lenne for nineteen years and still occasionally found her surprising.
"Right," Mira said, turning back to the display tables with her single precisely placed ribbon. "The fabric bolts. I’ll need someone tall for the left side."
"I’ll do it," Vera said immediately.
"Vera is our tallest," Ren explained to Lenne.
"She’s ten."
"She’s been training since she could walk," Ren said. "She moved a fence post last month."
Lenne looked at Vera.
Vera looked back.
"The left side," Vera said, and went to move fabric bolts.
The shop ran.
This was the only way to describe it — it simply ran, the way things run when the right people are in the right places doing the right things. Mira had reorganized the display in forty minutes and the result was immediately visible in how festival-goers moved through the square, eyes catching on Garren’s window display and then coming in. Syla handled the customers who came in looking uncertain — she was quiet and precise and somehow made people feel like they’d made a good decision before they’d decided anything, which was a gift she didn’t know she had. Vera managed anything physical — restocking, rearranging, carrying things that needed carrying with an ease that made Garren wince slightly because he’d been struggling with the same boxes for a week.
And Ren talked to people.
This was her primary contribution and it was not a small one. She stood near the door and talked to everyone who passed — not selling, not pushing, just talking, because Ren talking to someone was an experience that made them feel like the most interesting person at the festival and people who felt interesting wanted to be near whatever made them feel that way and what was near them was Garren’s shop.
It worked.
By midday Garren’s shop was doing three times its usual festival business.
Garren himself stood behind the counter with the expression of a man watching something he didn’t fully understand but was deeply grateful for.
Lenne brought him tea.
"Papa," she said quietly.
"I know," he said.
"Marta would have liked them."
He was quiet for a moment. "She would have adopted all four of them."
"She would have adopted their father too, knowing Mama." Lenne watched Ren talking to a farmer and his wife outside, both of them laughing at something. "They’re good girls."
"They’re Cidd’s girls," Garren said. As if that explained it. Which in Ashfeld, it did.
In the middle of the afternoon Syla noticed.
She was between customers, straightening a display of small household items near the back of the shop, when she saw Garren at the counter with a bolt of fabric that needed to go to the upper shelf.
He was looking at the shelf.
Then at the bolt.
Then at the step stool that would get him close but not close enough, not safely, not with his knee the way it had been since the cold came in last month.
He didn’t ask for help. He just looked at the problem with the patient expression of a man calculating how to solve it alone.
Syla put down what she was holding.
Walked over.
Took the fabric bolt from his hands without saying anything.
He looked at her.
She looked at the shelf. Then at Vera across the room.
"Vera," she said, quietly.
Vera was there in four steps. Took the bolt from Syla. Put it on the upper shelf with the ease of someone for whom upper shelves were not a concept that held meaning. Came back down.
Garren stood for a moment.
"Thank you," he said. To both of them. In the voice of someone who had been not-asking for help for two years and had just been helped anyway.
Syla nodded once and went back to the display.
Vera went back to the restocking.
Neither of them made anything of it.
The festival wound down in the way festivals did — slowly, reluctantly, the square emptying by degrees as the afternoon gold went to evening pink and the music played its last few songs and the children were collected and the food stalls counted what was left.
Garren’s shop had done more business in one day than it usually did in a week.
He was sitting on the stool behind the counter when the girls finished the last of the tidying — Mira had insisted on tidying, had in fact produced a system for the tidying that Lenne had written down to implement permanently — and came to stand in front of him.
He looked at them.
Four girls. Flour on Ren’s sleeve from somewhere. Vera’s ribbon slightly askew. Syla’s festival hair mostly intact, one pin having migrated. Mira with her ledger of the day’s sales that she’d kept without being asked and was now holding out to him.
"You made four times your usual festival income," Mira said. "Your highest selling items were the carved figures and the seasonal fabric. I’d suggest doubling your stock of both for next year."
He took the ledger. Looked at it. Looked at her.
"Four times," he said.
"Approximately. The exact figure is on the second page."
He turned to the second page.
Sat with it for a moment.
Then he put the ledger down and reached under the counter.
He held something in his closed hand for a moment. Just held it. The girls waited.
Then he opened his hand.
A ring.
Simple. Silver, or something like silver — a metal with a slight warmth to it that silver didn’t usually have. A small stone set in it, pale green, the color of new leaves or shallow water over river stones. Not elaborate. Not flashy. The kind of thing made by someone who cared more about the object lasting than about the object impressing.
"This was Marta’s," he said. "She wore it every day for thirty one years." He looked at it in his palm. "She’d have wanted it to go somewhere it meant something."
The shop was very quiet.
"We can’t take that," Syla said. Her voice was careful. "It’s yours."
"It’s Marta’s," he said. "And Marta would tell me she’s not here to wear it and it’s doing no one any good sitting under a counter." He looked at the four of them. "You came today because you noticed. Not because you were asked. Marta always said the people who notice before they’re asked are the people worth keeping."
Ren had gone still in the particular way she went still when something was moving her and she was deciding what to do with it.
Mira was looking at the ring with an expression that had gone quiet in a way that had nothing to do with calculation.
Vera was looking at Garren with the direct steady gaze she used when something had her full attention.
Syla had both hands folded in front of her and was looking at the ring and very carefully not looking at anything else.
"One of you take it," Garren said. "Or all of you fight over it. That seems more appropriate for this group."
A beat.
Then Ren laughed.
It broke whatever had been holding the moment and the others felt it break — Vera’s shoulders dropping, Mira’s expression returning from wherever it had gone, Syla touching her folded hands together once.
"We’ll give it to Father," Ren said. "It’s his birthday in three days."
Garren looked at her. "I didn’t know that."
"He doesn’t celebrate it," Ren said. "We found his diary."
Something moved through Garren’s expression. "Ah," he said. Just that.
He set the ring on the counter.
"Then give it to him from Marta," he said. "She’d like that."
They walked home through the festival’s last light — the square emptying around them, the pine hills going dark at the tops, the particular quality of tired that came from a full day well spent.
Ren had the ring.
She was holding it carefully, not dramatically, just with the attention of someone carrying something that required attention.
"Who gives it to him," Vera said.
"All of us," Syla said, immediately, which closed the topic.
Vera accepted this. "What do we say."
"The truth," Mira said. "That we worked for it and we got it for him and it belonged to someone who would have liked him."
They walked in silence for a moment.
"He’s going to do the expression," Ren said.
"Which one," Vera said.
"The one at the edges. The one he doesn’t know he’s making."
Syla looked at the ring in Ren’s hand. "He’s never had a birthday before," she said. Not a question.
"He’s never had anyone to have one with," Ren said.
The pine hills were dark now. Ashfeld’s lights were coming on in windows, the warm scattered gold of a village settling into evening. Ahead their house sat at the edge of everything with its own light on, the study lamp, which meant Mira would need to check on that later, and the kitchen which meant he was probably in there, which meant he’d been there a while, which meant he’d noticed they’d been gone all day and was doing something useful with his hands in the kitchen instead of worrying.
He was always doing something useful with his hands instead of worrying.
They all knew what that meant now.
"After dinner," Vera said. "We give it to him after dinner."
"After dinner," the others agreed.
They went inside.
He was in the kitchen.
Making the goldbroth noodles.
All four of them stopped in the doorway.
He looked at them over his shoulder. "You were out all day."
"Festival," Ren said.
"Mm." He turned back to the pot. "You helped Garren."
Not a question. He always knew.
"Yes," Syla said.
He nodded. Kept cooking.
They came in and set the table and the kitchen filled with the smell that meant something in him had wanted to do something good for them today and this was how he did it, the goldbroth noodles, the thing from his other world, the thing that had no name until they gave it one.
They ate.
The table was loud and warm and full and Ren kept the ring in her pocket the whole time, a small warm weight against her hip.
After dinner.
After the bowls were cleared and the table wiped and the kitchen settled into its evening quiet, Syla made tea and set it in front of him and Ren put the ring on the table.
Just put it there.
He looked at it.
Then at them.
"It belonged to Garren’s wife," Ren said. "He gave it to us as payment. We worked in his shop today." She paused. "It’s your birthday in three days. We know because of the diary. We’re sorry we read it and we’re not sorry we know."
Vera said: "We wanted to give you something we earned."
Syla said nothing. Just looked at the ring on the table and then at him with the specific expression she used when she’d already said everything she could in the ways she knew how.
Mira said: "Garren said to tell you it’s from Marta. He said she’d have liked you."
He looked at the ring for a long time.
Then he picked it up.
Held it the way Garren had held it — in his closed hand, just for a moment.
Then he put it on.
The girls watched.
He looked at it on his hand. Then at the table. Then, briefly, at each of them.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t need to.
They had read his diary. They knew what it meant that he didn’t say anything. They knew what the expression at the edges of his face meant when it was there.
They let it be there.
Ren picked up her tea.
Vera stole the last piece of bread.
Mira opened her ledger — not the business one, her own — and wrote something in it that she didn’t show anyone.
Syla looked at the ring on his hand and looked at her tea and allowed herself, just briefly, in the warm kitchen with the festival outside finally fully quiet, to feel the thing she couldn’t say yet with the full force of it.
He was wearing something they’d earned for him.
He was wearing it right now.
That was enough for tonight.
That was more than enough.