Paper Boats

Written by Charlie
I have been to the bridge before. The stone arches where the Greenmont path crosses the stream. The boundary on oneside of the house between Fox Hollow and the rest of the Greenmont lands.

While walking there Lann had told me of making brilliantly coloured paper boats with his siblings; they'd spend all morning folding and preparing only to set the little vessels up stream and watching them run the course, around the muddy pebbles and weeds, down to the bridge then under it, out the other side and then tumbling down off the drop off. The water makes its way from the stream to the river and then out to the Dornish Sea, he had explained.

Lann continued the story, staring out over the valley; he and Rylon had imagined the twigs and debris in the path of their boats had been pirates or marauders, that after the boats had tumbled into the valley they would go out to fight marauders from the free cities. He admitted more quietly that sometimes they imagined their boats were the pirates, he had just been a child and pirates had seemed to lead much more interesting lives than he did here on the mountain. Children are foolish sometimes, he seemed to be chastising himself. He was quiet for a while, thinking again, thinking about the rebellion. We didn't talk about that.

Eventually he broke the silence to talk again of paper boats. When Mara had been six or seven, he had brought her down to race boats. Instead of coloured paper she had fashioned hers out of a letter. He'd watched it sail as he had all the others and seen her satisfaction as it had tumbled with the Brook down the rocks. He'd congratulated her and walked her home.

He had gone back out later and climbed down the rocking drop off to retrieve the sodden note, curious to about the note his sister had been so protective of, so pleased to have set on its way. I was curious too and asked whom the note had been for, thinking still of pirates and free cities.

My own childhood fancies had not been so creative.

It was a letter for Symon, he had explained, his youngest brother. Apparently Mara had wanted to send the letter with a rider to Old Town but Lord Lucos had refused. Lann imagined Mara was being impatient and had heard only 'no', their father would probably have sent the note with the next batch of messages for The Reach. So, with the stream Mara had believed to have found her own way to get her note to her brother.

His sister knew that Old Town was a long way away and so were the Free Cities so to her the stream led to everywhere far away. The ink of the letter had run and been half washed away but Lann had done his best to rewrite it and had tucked it in with the other notes the next time a scout was sent out. The Greenmonts always find a way, he told me. He then explained the story of Florys and her four husbands; mischief in his features wondering if he could scandalise me with the story. I blushed only when he finally spoke of Danaelle, Florys' truest friend and love. Though the whole of The Reach lay between them, the devotion kept them close.

He crossed the bridge to look at the stream, the water line was low and from the banks bloomed great swathes of flowering weeds.

I asked if I should send him letters when he went down into The Reach and he went back to that place in his mind saved for the serious thoughts he didn't share with me. He shook his head. There would be no sense in it, he told me and climbed over the low wall splashing down with his boots. I walked around to the bank to watch him, for the briefest of moments wondering if he were about to lay down in the water and just let it carry him away. Instead he collected a handful of small blue and white blooms and held them out to me.

There was no time to make boats and letters don't always go where we intend but the Greenmonts had their words.

We sent the flowers down the stream and out into the world whispering the little edict to each 'forget me not'.