The Eight Walls of Rogar

The Rocaren clan had known theValleyofPlentyas home for fourteen generations, and Andaris was its youngest.  He had been named for an older brother who had died at birth, and for the last seventeen years had lived under the shadow of that loss, feeling most at ease when he was alone, free from all the hopes and expectations of his parents, free to be himself.

As a boy, he had dreamt of adventure and far-off lands.  It was difficult not to, what with the unbroken line of peaks ringing the expansive valley.  Omnipresent, they defined the town’s world—his world—the known and the unknown.  How many afternoons had he spent behind the rusted plow, thudding absently over the packed red earth of his father’s fields, squinting under the hot sun and hanging dust at the hazy range in the blue distance?  He couldn’t begin to count.

It wasn’t that Andaris hated or even dislikedFairhaven.  If he did, leaving would not have been so painful.  Neighbors waving from fences, the smell of cook fires drifting on the wind, the glow of windows at night across the fields—the pleasure of it at times had quickened his breath.

But even so, with each passing day, he’d grown more restless.  During the weeks leading up to his departure, the dinner bell had often reached him as nothing more than a faint echo as he wistfully wandered the limits of his father’s land.  There was something important lacking from his life, something that he had finally come to accept he was not going to find inFairhaven.

It was not until the evening of his seventeenth name day, however, sitting on the woven stool by the ceremonial bonfire, that he realized what that something was.  With his family gathered round to hear his granduncle repeat yet another of his many longwinded tales, it had struck him like the morning sunlight through his window—it was the comfort itself that needled him.

The old men’s stories all spoke of one world.  Andaris had heard them his entire life, every variation from every gray-bearded elder of every clan.  Entire lives, whole generations, passed through time in the valley, lived and died, and nothing changed.  Sons became fathers, daughters became mothers, apprentices became masters, and still everything remained as it had always been, the seasons drifting by like clouds across a summer sky.  The truth was plain and much too simple: Life inFairhavenwas a mere role to be filled.

If he returned, he knew what would be waiting.  He could see his future coalescing in front of him, the map of his life drawing itself in straight, unalterable lines.  Each day would be the same, from the next to the last, until the day that he died.

My path is here, he thought.  I need only take the first step.  His life had to be his, not one predetermined for him.  To eat and sleep and breathe simply wasn’t enough—he had to live.  Without risk there is only stagnation.  With stagnation there is only death.  Truly live, he thought.  Truly live!  The words resonated through him, infusing his limbs with new strength.

And so it was, just as the sun was dipping behind the broken spine of the mountains that Andaris stepped into the dense wall of trees, raising his newfound conviction before him like a shield.  One night, he promised himself.  I can at least do that much.  Tomorrow will take care of itself.