The bell carried on the wind. Faint, stretched, like someone was ringing it under the river. It wasn't the sharp call of service, not the summons of morning—it was the lazy kind, a reminder without urgency, rolling down the valley until it broke against stone. The sound reached the riverbank, slipped through the trees, and hung there a moment.
Tomas hurled a stone sidearm. It skipped twice, three times, then sank with a loud gulp. He pumped his fist. "Ha! That's five."
"Three," Leor corrected, calm as the water itself. He crouched by the bank, one arm resting on his knee, scanning for a flat stone. His hair had grown longer than Tomas's, falling in uneven curls that he never bothered to trim. He looked patient, almost too patient for a boy of seventeen.
"It hopped twice before it broke," Leor said, finding his stone, weighing it in his palm. "Third was just a dive."
"Still counts." Tomas grinned. His shirt was untucked, his boots scuffed from climbing down the hill. His whole body leaned into the argument like it was a sport. "Dive's still style. Style counts double."
"You made that rule just now."
A frog leapt out of the reeds like a green fist, and Cala tore after it with both hands out, mud up to her shins, ribbon sliding down one side of her head like it had given up. "Come here! I just want to love you!"
"Don't squeeze it," Leor said without looking.
"I'm not-" She was. The frog shot between her fingers anyway and thumped into the shallows, kicking dirt. Cala chased and slipped, popping back up with a gasp and a grin so big it made her cheeks round. "He's fast. He knows my tricks."
"You have tricks," Tomas said gravely, "and yet you throw like a potato." He picked up a stone, kissed it for luck, and flung. It smacked water once and gave up.
Cala burst into pretend horror. "He died of shame."
"Of style," Tomas corrected. "Style can be fatal."
Leor handed Cala a thin, smooth pebble and showed her, palm to palm, how to lay it on the crease of the fingers, how to cut the wrist. "Low," he said. "Don't ask it to fly. Ask it to skim."
She held her breath, did as told. The pebble fluttered twice and disappeared.
"Two!" she cried, and flung both arms at the sky. "I am a hawk."
"A hawk that lives underwater," Tomas said.
Cala marched into the shallows to her ankles and declared the river state property. "This is my kingdom. Taxes are friendship. Paying is mandatory."
Leor, who paid any tax asked without blinking, surrendered a smile. He sat back in the grass and let his eyes rest where they always went when she started making laws: her hands, busy and soft; her bare feet too brave; the way trouble ran to meet her like a dog that knew its name.
They stayed too long. The bell must have rung again somewhere between dragonfly and cloud, but out here it was all leaves and light and the small wet sounds of a river thinking out loud. Tomas lay with his arms behind his head and named shapes out of nothing—"that one's a horse, obviously," "that one's the same horse, but upside down," "that one's my math grade drowning"—and Leor corrected him because that was the rhythm of them. Cala gave herself a reed crown and made them bow and then revoked Tomas's bowing privileges for laughter violations.
A mother and daughter passed along the path, a basket steady between them. The mother tugged a leaf from the girl's hair, smoothed it back behind her ear, then patted her head. The girl smiled without slowing, and the basket kept its pace.
Cala watched without turning her head. Her thumb worried at the frayed edge of her ribbon until it came loose entirely and she had to loop it back, clumsy and determined.
"Why don't we have a mom and dad like everyone else?" she asked, not loud, not small. Just the question set down on the ground between them.
The warmth thinned. The day didn't change—sun still fat, water still lovely—but a hush moved under the grass, and even the horse-shaped cloud forgot its shape and went to pieces.
"They were sick," Leor said. He kept his voice steady because steady is safe.
"Lots of people get sick," she said. "In this whole stupid village, only ours went away."
Tomas sat up too fast, grass on his back. "Lots of people don't have parents."
She didn't look at him. "Do you?"
He shut his mouth and chewed his answer like a weed stem.
Leor stretched his legs until his heels touched water. "Sometimes the river takes what it wants," he said.
"That's dumb," Cala said, and he didn't disagree.
"Agreed," Tomas announced, leaping to his feet. "If it tries to take you, I'll punch its mouth." He stomped into ankle-deep and swung both fists at liquid, splashing himself, her, the sky. "Square up!"
Cala shrieked and attacked him with splashes that reached exactly nowhere, and Leor grinned at the idiocy of loyalty and let the question go—not gone, never gone, but out past the reeds for a while, where it could sit in the shade and watch them be children.
They ate the lunch they weren't supposed to have out here: two smashed rolls Leor had begged off a baker yesterday, a handful of small apples Tomas had "borrowed" as they passed a wagon, a paper twist of salt Cala had stolen fair and square from herself when she remembered she'd hidden it in her pocket last week in case they ever found a miracle tomato. She salted everything. Even the air.
"Do you ever think about leaving?" Cala asked with her mouth full of bread and salt, like the question had always been in the bread.
Leor swallowed. "When?"
"Like, when you're old. Or now." She looked across the river as if the far bank were already a different country. "If we followed this, where would it go?"
"Out," Tomas said decisively. "To adventure. To a place where a person can splash in peace without getting criticized by the fish."
Leor smoothed the twist of paper until it lay flat against his knee. "It goes to the wide river. Then the sea, I think. Or a lake so big it has waves and the wind doesn't remember your name."
"What do they call people there?" Cala asked.
"Whatever you tell them," Tomas said.
"Good." She nodded, satisfied, then leaned too far trying to see small silver things nosing the mud and nearly went in face-first. Leor's hand found the back of her shirt and held without looking like he'd always meant to do it. She kept leaning. "They're like knives! The fish, I mean."
"Anchovies," Tomas said confidently, because he liked to be in charge of nouns.
Leor was still looking at the place where the mother's fingers had moved through hair. "Minnows," he said absently.
"Bless you," Tomas told him.
They stayed until the day tasted like apples left in a bag too long: sweet, faintly warm with something that might go wrong if you didn't eat it soon. Then they cut through the small oaks and the taller weeds and followed the footpath out to the road.
The road escorted them to the market. Stalls under patched awnings, fish hung silver with their eyes resigned, cloth in careful stacks. Smells in fists: yeast, sun-soft apples, onions, the throat of a goat, someone's long-simmered bones. People with their hands full of errands.
"Bread," Leor said. "Then class tomorrow, we agree."
"Bread," Tomas said, like a sacred vow he would break at first opportunity.
They stopped at Tavin's stall. Tavin had a beard that had decided two years ago what shape it wanted and had never reconsidered. He recognized Leor the same way a cat recognizes a broom: a thing he had opinions about but would not dignify with a glance.
"Two loaves," Leor said, coins steady on his palm.
Tavin plucked one up, rolled it between his fingers. "Oh, generous. What's this supposed to be, charity?"
Leor kept his voice even. "It's fair."
"Fair?" Tavin chuckled, dropped the coin back like it was dirty. "Feels light. Try again when it grows up."
Tomas slammed his coin down. "Karel paid the same yesterday. You didn't blink. Unless bread costs more for us-"
Tavin's smile showed teeth. "It does."
Leor slid Tomas's coin closer, calm as stone. "Then take both and call it even."
The patience in his voice left no grip for Tavin's malice to catch.
For a beat, Tavin's smirk lingered, daring Tomas to snap. Then he bagged the loaves without a word, the sneer still hanging in the air long after the bread changed hands.
Leor took the bag. "Thank you," he said, because he always did.
They walked. Kindness came with arm's length. A woman bent down, offered Cala a slice of apple, then drew her hand back quick, like she might catch something if she lingered too close.
Cala held the fruit up between her palms. "She acted like I bite."
"You do," Tomas said.
"Not strangers."
"Fair point," Tomas muttered, smirking.
A boy Tomas's age fell in step for a breath, nodding at him. "Your shoulder still bad?"
"Nothing I can't win with," Tomas said, rolling it once like proof.
The boy grinned at that—then looked right past Leor as if he hadn't been there at all, peeling away to join another group.
Leor didn't say anything. He didn't need to. The silence carried the weight.
Then an old man called to his back, voice cracked but steady: "How's your sister then?"
The words hung—half question, half warning.
Leor kept walking. "Fine," he said, even though no one had asked for truth.
The man chuckled under his breath. "Good. Keep her that way."
Cala frowned, clutching the apple. "Why do they always talk like that?"
"Because they're cowards," Tomas said flatly. Then, louder, over his shoulder: "If you've got something worth saying, old man, you can say it out here instead of hiding it in riddles."
The old man didn't answer. He never did.
Leor shifted the bread bag in his hand, eyes still forward. "Ignore it."
"Ignore it?" Tomas spat. "They'll pretend you're invisible until they want to remind you what you're not allowed to be. How long are we supposed to just—"
"Long enough," Leor cut in. His tone wasn't sharp, just final.
Leor carried the loaves the way you hold something that just proved it doesn't belong to you: by the string, away from his chest, but carefully.
They passed a shrine, half-forgotten, half-fed. The stone face was rubbed down to a blur, more shadow than saint. In the bowl sat a few stubborn relics: a rusted nail, a length of frayed ribbon, a small, broken lantern no bigger than a fist. Someone had added a button, polished smooth by thumb, as if that made it matter.
Cala crouched to tie the ribbon tighter so it wouldn't blow away.
Tomas squinted at the offerings. "A nail, a lantern, a string? That's it? What are we praying for here, a hardware store?"
Cala stuck her tongue out. "You never take anything seriously."
"Because it's junk," he said, jabbing a finger at the bowl. "If wishes were made out of garbage, this whole village would be holy."
Leor didn't laugh. His eyes stayed on the lantern, the nail, the ribbon. "Maybe that's the point," he murmured. "What's thrown away still means something to someone."
Cala closed her eyes and made a wish under her breath.
"What did you ask for?" Tomas said.
"A frog that likes me," she said, then wrinkled her nose. "And that my ribbon will listen when I tell it to stay."
"And?"
"And that we don't have to sit where nobody wants us."
Tomas opened his mouth and closed it. Leor reached over and, without looking, tightened the knot Cala had made with his own fingers so it would never come undone by accident.
The next day, they went to class because the world had rules and they tried, now and then, on purpose, to stand inside them. The hall smelled like chalk and boiled linens. The slate chalked off on fingers exactly the way it always did. The benches were slightly too tall for the youngest legs and exactly right for the grown boys who pretended they didn't notice.
"Good morning," Master Hobb said. He had a voice like someone sanding wood. When he smiled it was with his words, not his face. "Copy the headings, please."
Cala raised her hand before anyone else.
Master Hobb pointed at a boy two rows over. "Yes, Karel."
Cala kept her arm up until it hurt, then put it down and drew the headings anyway with furious care. She made the g longer than it needed to be and the r with a little shoulder for comfort.
At break, Tomas got dragged into a circle of boys playing knucklebones. He was good at it—good at all the small skills that mattered more than the ones Master Hobb graded. His laugh was a currency. He spent it freely. He didn't look over as much as he should have.
Cala found a worm. She named him Prince and then set him down very gently because princes get busy quickly and you have to let them. Two girls walked past her and did not step on the prince; they were very careful not to step near anything of hers at all.
Leor sat with his back to the wall, hands loose, eyes sharp. Ellion passed by, voice pitched to no one in particular. "Weird one. Should've stuck them with the broom closet."
Tomas's head turned like it had been pulled on a string. "Say that again."
Ellion stopped because that voice was for fighting and Tomas did not use it often. The circle of boys pretending to keep playing knucklebones pretended harder.
"I didn't—" Ellion began.
"You did," Tomas said. "You said it in the way that makes a person hear it twice."
Ellion tried to smile. "It's a joke."
"Then make it funny." Tomas didn't move. He didn't need to. His posture did the moving for him. "Go on. Get to the punchline."
Ellion's mouth made a small, wrong shape and then he remembered he had left something far away and had to go there immediately. The game started up loud to fill the hole his retreat left.
Cala didn't look up. She had found a second worm and was officiating a wedding. Leor let a tight breath out of his nose, like he was warming his hands on it.
"Want to skip the rest?" Tomas said later, pretending the question was a joke so Leor could pretend it was one when he said no.
Leor didn't say no. He answered the one after. "After we buy ink for her slate."
They did, and the woman at the stall asked Leor if he was sure he wanted black and not blue, because blue is friendlier, and then sold him black anyway.
They went back to the river because the river did not require them to explain themselves. Coins of sunlight floated on the water's skin, breaking apart the moment you reached for them. The breeze put its hands in their hair and didn't try to own them.
Cala turned a jar into a lantern by asking fireflies nicely. She cupped three, then two escaped, then all three were back because that is how joy works when you don't hold it by the neck. "Little lights," she whispered. "Don't go out."
"Don't put them in your mouth," Tomas said.
"I wasn't going to!"
"You absolutely were."
She scowled at him on principle and then beamed again because Leor had found a stick perfectly shaped for drawing in wet sand. He carved a river into riverbank: their bend, the big bend past the willow, the old fallen log that had decided it was a bridge. Past that he drew what he imagined, not what he knew: a long line that leaned, a fatter ribbon joining, a set of lines like waves where the line became something so big the air forgot the names for it.
Cala dropped to her knees beside his map. "That's where it goes?"
"Maybe." He looked up, following the picture into the world. Light laid itself on his face the way light does on someone who has already decided to stand up.
Tomas watched him and made the kind of face he made when he wanted to grin and didn't trust it. "You're serious."
"Yes."
"Like—really serious."
"Yes," Leor said again, without apology. "I don't want her to wake up to bells and people counting our coins for us. I don't want to sit in rooms where we aren't allowed to raise our hands and call that an education. I don't want to walk through a market where every 'good morning' has a lid on it. I can't make this place love us. I can leave it."
Cala placed one of her small palms over the wide water part of his drawing and left it there as if to say mine. "When do we go?"
"Soon," Leor said.
Tomas laughed because he didn't have another tool handy. "Soon like when the fish learn to talk? Soon like when Master Hobb gives me a prize for punctuality?"
Leor's mouth tugged. "Soon like when I find two good pairs of shoes and one pair that refuses to be good no matter what I say to it."
Cala sighed extravagantly. "Mine."
"Yours," Leor agreed. "You'll need a bag."
"I have one. It's small." She held hands apart to show the exact size of a small disaster.
"You'll put important things in it," he said. "Ribbon. Jar. The first worm who wanted to get married."
"Prince," she said, solemn.
"Prince," he said back, just as solemn.
Tomas sat on his heels and drew a box around the wide water to keep it from spilling off the edge of Leor's map. "If we do it, we do it right. I'm not carrying all your rocks."
"Who said I'm bringing rocks?" Cala asked, already offended.
"You," Tomas said. "With your entire existence."
She considered this and conceded the point with a shrug.
Leor ran the stick along the line he'd made and thought his thoughts out loud so they could hear them and make them lighter. "We follow the bank. Sleep near water so we don't wake up thirsty. Trade stories for bread. Trade small work for bigger food. When it rains, we wait it out under good trees and don't try to be brave. If anyone asks, we tell them the truth we can carry."
"What truth is that?" Tomas asked. The bravado in his question let Leor be honest with the answer.
"That we're leaving."
"Leaving and going where?"
"Where the bell sounds different," Leor said, and didn't know until he said it that he had been waiting to say exactly that.
Cala folded herself into him, her jar making a small bump between them. "I can run fast," she said into his shirt. "So if we're late for anything, I'll get there on time for us both."
He pressed his chin into her hair. "Perfect."
They stayed until the light went into the grass to rest. The road home took them along the long wall where ivy forgot itself every year and had to be told, The dogs sleep behind that gate, not in front. Boys Tomas's age leaned on barrels and talked with their hands; their gestures made space where Leor and Cala were not. A woman's laugh cut short when she saw who was hearing it. The bell at the chapel drowsed itself into evening, one small note to say it still existed.
A man stood in the dry shade where the arch made a stone evening of its own. A ring made a small sun on his hand when the last angle of light found it and then there was no more light to find. He watched the road like a fisherman looks at a line that hasn't tugged yet but will. He had the sort of patience that doesn't need to move to hunt.
Cala pointed at a sparrow instead and told it, "We're naming you Soup," and the sparrow forgave her because birds forgive easily.
"Tomorrow," Tomas said as they peeled off toward their separate roofs. "I'm not saying I'll be on time, but I will appear in the vicinity of time."
"Bring the coin," Leor said, lifting the bread by its string.
Cala held her jar up between them like a lantern and made them both walk under it for luck. "Say it," she demanded.
"What?" Tomas said.
"The thing," she said, as if they had always had a thing to say at the end of days and had just forgotten the words.
Leor didn't smile when he said it. That made it sound like a promise, not a game. "We won't be here forever."
"Say the rest," she insisted, even though there wasn't a rest.
Leor looked at Tomas. Tomas looked at Leor. For once his grin had no mischief under it; for once his joking agreed to stand very still and let something else speak.
"We'll go," Tomas said. He meant, I'll go if you do. He meant, I will not make you make me. He meant, I'm scared. He meant, I'm not scared enough to let you go alone.
Cala nodded, satisfied, and blew at her fireflies like she could cool them if they got too bright.
They split at the crooked post where the road remembered it used to be a path. Tomas jogged backward for a few steps and pointed at his own eyes and then at Leor's face and then at his own eyes again to let Leor know he would be watching him all night by sheer force of personality. Leor bowed as if that were a blessing. Cala skipped the way children do who believe skipping gets you there quicker.
In the square, someone snuffed two candles on a windowsill with the flat of their palm, and smoke climbed like writing you couldn't read unless you stood directly under it. The man with the cane stood where he had stood and watched the stretch of empty road that had just held three laughing shapes. He did not smile. He did not frown. He did not announce himself as anything at all. A ring on his finger marked the last of the light, and then that, too, went out.
Back at the riverbank the stones kept their own counsel. The marks Leor had traced near the water blurred and disappeared as the edge lapped and lapped and decided it knew better than boys where rivers go. If you had been there to look, you would have said the map was ruined. If you had been there to listen, you might have heard the river say: Not ruined. Memorized.
And if you had stood in the path of the bell, when it turned its tongue again somewhere far away and let one slow note loose to test the dark, you might have sworn it sounded smaller than usual, like it had a far road to travel before anyone would answer it.
Leor slept with his boots by the bed and his eyes taking a while longer than his body to believe it was safe to close. Cala slept curled around a jar that didn't need a lid anymore because the light inside it was tired and had decided to trust her. Tomas lay awake and wrote lists in his head: shoes, bread, the good joke saved for a hard minute, a story to trade at the first farm when the farmer is kind but doesn't know how, a punch for the river if it gets ideas.
He did not write a list of reasons to stay. He could have, easily. He didn't. He had friends to follow and a promise to carry, and some promises fit the hand so well it feels wrong to open the fingers.
Morning would bring the bell again, sharper, nearer, doing its job. Morning would bring Master Hobb and ink and the careful cruelty of markets and jokes said just loud enough to deny. Morning would bring the same path and the same stones and the same water pretending to be the same water. But tonight belonged to three children who had decided to say out loud what they had only thought before: we will not be here forever.
The night agreed, the way nights do when they know more than you and cannot tell you without changing what you will become. It put a cool hand on their foreheads and kept the wolves that live in thought from finding a way in past the door.
Somewhere in the square, a cane tapped once against stone, and the ring that had collected the last of the light collected the first of its own reflections in a pane of darkened glass. Somewhere in the river reeds, a frog judged a crown and found it acceptable. Somewhere in a little shrine, a ribbon held a wish like a fish on a line and did not let go.
And in the small quiet place behind Leor's ribs where plans go to be fed, a map kept writing itself. Not ruined. Memorized. Steps counted not in miles but in moments: her small hand in his, Tomas's voice making a torch out of a laugh, a bend in the river that the water itself would point at when they asked it which way to turn.
He would say it again tomorrow because she would make him; he would say it until the words stopped being a dare and became a door. We won't be here forever.
The valley let the sentence sit. It did not argue. The bell, for tonight, was only a bell.