I am taking a break from posting "M'aine" for a while; here is chapter one of another novel I'm working on, a fantasy currently without a name. Hence, I am calling it "Roh" for short and for now. Please comment! God bless, ~PIP~

Rohald Appichello laid her sun browned face against the smoothed wooden fiddle. The young woman breathed in the fresh mountain air deeply, and with it came the all-too-distant smell of cheese and mint. Her father’s special smell. Was he fond of chewing on mint while playing? wondered Rohald wistfully. I remember nothing about him…nothing but his good smell. This one strange memory had stayed with her because her rough linen pants and vest were her father’s and they all smelled of cheese and mint. Roh smiled to herself as she drew the yellowed horsehair bow over the old strings. The fiddle was battered and worn from many winter nights of cheery ballads and many a song played for a wedding or square festival, but it still made the most beautiful music of any fiddle in the village. Roh’s father had been a greatly loved and respected man in the tiny village nestled to the breast of the mountain. But that had been many years ago. Now only his fading essence, remained with his oldest daughter, his only child.

Rohald sat under her shady tree and watched her flock. As she played, she looked at each wooly sheep, making sure they bore no injuries or seemed ill at ease. She raised the best flock in the village, and the people depended on her for meat and good wool. One newer ewe flicked her ears cautiously in Roh’s direction. The shepherdess laughed. Her playing must be upsetting it. No matter how hard she tried, Rohald Appichello could get nothing from her father’s fiddle than haunting music. Sometimes, when she played under her tree in the green, rich pasture, the music came so deep and lonesome that tears would roll down her ruddy cheeks. She was good, too good, at playing her dead father’s fiddle. Miss Appichello was clumsy, everyone said so; she was tall and strong-muscled, and could have been mistaken for a boy except for her long cascade of curly red gold hair. Her brown eyes were nearly always good-natured, except when a person crossed her. Then her eyes would snap and flash, and even young men several years older than her had been known to quaver. The girl had her father’s spirit, that was for sure. She was respected as an equal in the village. But she was nearly nineteen and nothing had come of her hidden strength except several fistfights and a good, healthy flock. The villagers naturally wondered if perhaps she wasn’t the one who would free them from the terrible marauders than prowled the mountains. Maybe her little waif brother Thring would grow up to be a mighty war leader and rally the fearful people into a rebellion against the snowy peaks of the surrounding mountains themselves…but Thring was a runny-nosed child, and his idea of courage during one especially animated scuffle had been to run and hide behind a bush. It took several minutes for Roh to convince him to face his peers again. Rohald's adopted mother despised him, loathed her own son. Maybe Roh would too, if not for the love that had been stripped away from both of them several years ago. Surely to grow up without a mother’s true love was a dreadful thing indeed. At least Rohald had been able to cherish her own mother’s presence for a time before…before…

Roh stopped playing. Her chest tightened as she laid down the fiddle and grasped at the silver locket about her brown neck. Right before her mother had disappeared, she had given her daughter the locket. Roh remembered her dear mother’s words well. They had been whispered in her ear when they were out in a sunny garden. Her father had been so young and merry, his gray hairs could be counted upon one hand. Roh had been a mere child as her mother had pressed the sealed locket into her chubby pink hand and kissed her forehead.

“Only use it during a time when your very heart is dying and your life’s blood is seeping out, when the darkness has consumed the light and the hope has fled before an oncoming evil. Only then shall this locket prove worth opening.”

Not long after that, exploding right in the middle of a quiet autumn, Rohald became victim of a nightmare-come-true. Roh could not summon very distinct memories from that bewitching midnight; loud, harsh voices, the villagers screaming and the sound of pounding feet. Someone’s baby had been carelessly left in the cradle and had cried. Rohald remembered running out her cottage door towards the sound of the baby. She did not understand at the time that she should have stayed in the house; her parents were out planting grass seed on the high pasture that sloped up to the misty mountain peaks…but that baby’s cries were so helpless and small, so lost. Roh could not have carried her head high all these years later if she had not scooped up the child and then run out the stark open doorway as a crash exploded behind her. There had been a metallic ring to it, almost as if someone had swung a sword.

Roh and the wailing baby had fled deep into the dense woods, desperately inhaling the sharp scents of cedar and pine so that it hurt her chest. From behind her, she could hear crashing and screaming. Her mind had been dazed, she did not think to look back. She just kept running and running until they had come to a mountain stream and she had tripped and cut her head.

A few days later she found herself in her old village, her head bandaged. In her nostrils had been the smell of melting tar and charred wood. A few more days and she came to acknowledge her unfamiliar surroundings. She discovered that the baby had been the son of an old widow, a selfish crone who cared for no soul save her own. In an attempt to save her wrinkled skin she had left Thring sobbing in his cedar cradle.

Rohald stroked her cheek. Perhaps it would have been better if she had fled the household and had not remained in her destroyed village. But that first night when her head had not been hurting as fiercely, she had seen the widow beating Thring because he had spilled some soup down his clean white shirt. Roh grinned, recalling how she had jumped from her uncomfortable cot and had seized the widow’s hand. The spiteful old woman had slapped Roh, but the widow had been surprised to find that the feisty girl made no outcry. Instead, her brown eyes had flashed and in a shaky voice she begged the widow to leave Thring alone. Roh had gained a tiny amount of respect from the widow that day, but Thring remained unloved and malnourished. She’d had to stay; otherwise Thring might die. Over the years she had helped her old friends, many of them childless, fatherless, motherless or all three, to rebuild their little village. She’d bred a flock of white wooly sheep and one day, among the ashes of her dear old home, she’d found her father’s fiddle. It had been overlooked by the rubbish-stealers because several strings had been broken and the hot ashes had scorched it in some places. But Roh recognized it. A thousand memories had rushed in with the first note she had played on the repaired fiddle, a thousand sweet summer nights of roast pork and good stories; a thousand wintry snowflakes; a thousand spring rains purring against their thatched roofs...her father’s special smell. But the fiddle never brought memories of autumn, for surely the deep of the season was haunted by the screams of the dying and the smell of burning houses.

Rohald shivered and drew her coarse red vest closer to her. Her long clumsy fingers caught in the locket and she held it up. It was faded silver, worn away by years of curious rubbing. It felt warm from her chest. She was picking up her fiddle once more when she heard a tiny, phlegmy voice called up the green slopes.

“Roh! Rooohaaald!” She recognized Thring. Catching up her bow, she gave her flock a sweeping look and bounded down the hill. She loved the feel of the late autumn breezes cooling her warm ruddy cheek, slipping icy fingers through her long hair. Sometimes the autumn of the year was magical, when it didn’t bring back memories.

Roh finally stumbled along the bottom of the slopes and ran into Thring. He fell on the dusty ground and winced.

“Greetings to you, little brother!” she shouted merrily. Thring smiled weakly as she gave him her big calloused hand. “What have you and your mother made for my dinner?” She always called the widow “mother” when she was around Thring.

“Carrot stew with chunks of beef and some parsley.”

Roh groaned as her stomach growled. “That sounds delicious, I just hope there is enough!” She laid a steady arm around his thin shoulders.

“Oh, we are well acquainted with your hearty appetite by this time, Roh!” Thring laughed. Roh guffawed cheerily as they walked through the village. After the marauders, the cottages had been built back up, the gardens replanted and the people had grown closer. Many became gentler towards Thring because his adopted sister protected him so. She was willing to knock down any taunting lass or brawny lad who did him a wrong. They had learned to respect her temper and make merry with her easy happiness.

The adopted siblings walked through the open doorway, Rohald stooping a little. She laid her father’s fiddle carefully on the mantel shelf and turned towards the crackling cherry wood fire.

“Ah,” said the widow in a bitter, cracked voice, “you’ve finally decided to leave off those smelly animals and have dinner.” She was stirring a bubbling cauldron and the firelight flickered mysteriously on her wizened, puckered face. She was nearly two feet shorter than Roh and had thrice the acid in her tongue.

“You say that every night at the evening meal. Come, let us feast. It was a good day, no sign of hindrances.” Roh made for the table and reached for a steaming biscuit, but the widow spanked her fingers with a wooden spoon.

“No one touches those light, fluffy creations with filthy hands! Go wash yourself.”

Grumbling in jest, Roh went to the rain barrel outside as the widow and Thring sat down. She dabbled her hands in the cold water and looked around at the village. She could see the tiny village square, the blacksmith and the healer’s shack, hung with drying herbs and fake charms. Past some cottages and the baker’s cozy hut was the butcher’s shop and a little glassmaker’s business. Beyond that were the woods and then the mountains rising steep and ancient.

Roh was drying off her hands when her sharp ears caught the sounds of something sickeningly familiar. Clashing metal, hoarse shouting. A faint smell of fire and it’s smoke. Rohald spun around and saw black shadows streaming down from the green slopes. Her first thought was that her sheep had been frightened by loneliness, but she knew deep down that it could not be so. Her flock was stout and brave and did not get spooked by being left alone. Roh peered closer and distinguished dark riders driving their mounts down the slippery grass, spilling like blackened blood from the recesses of the forest.

“Marauders!” she cried and ran into the cottage. “Hurry, take Thring into the woods! I must sound the alarm!” She could already hear the confused muttering of men torn from their dinners by curiosity.

The widow began grabbing up vital belongings and Thring, staring stupidly, spilled biscuit crumbs on the rough dirt floor. Roh ran inside and locked her father’s fiddle inside a cedar chest. She dropped the key into the rain barrel and then knelt before her quivering brother.

“Thring, I love you and you must be brave for me today. Take care of your mother in the woods until we drive the marauders out. Do not come close and do not cross the southern mountain pass, for our feared enemies the Sankatties dwell there. Your mother has packed enough food to last you a few days. You must be strong! Will you do this?” Roh gripped his thin shoulders. Thring was sobbing, but he nodded.

“Make haste!” the widow snapped. She looked fearfully to the approaching riders, still far off on the pastures but coming closer every second.

Roh quickly hugged Thring and then pushed him toward the woods. The widow caught up his little hand and dragged him behind her into the shadows.

Rohald rushed into her room, screaming “Marauders!” in the wailing, high-pitched alarm. She scrabbled under her bed and drew out a sheathed sword. Wrenching the sword from its scabbard, Roh ran out the door to face the marauders. Memories flooded her mind and she felt sick to her stomach, but at the same time she felt brave enough to fight the intruder. The sealed silver locket burned cold against her thrumming heart.