Waltz

I've only just noticed that the martins have flown
and their music has gone from the wire.
There’s still a good hour for the sun to go down,
but already I'm lighting the fire.
 
Under the low, golden light of the harvest moon, Harper dances in the cleared street. His foot pounds the familiar rhythm as his hands move like liquid over the strings of his lyre. Around him the townsfolk dance in wild spins and twirls, some laughing as they’re lifted into the air. It’s no stately ballroom like the ones he has described to you, but you’re almost sure no courtly airs could compare to the rough but steady steps of a country waltz.
 
And we welcomed the springtime, the martins and I.
Now October will find me alone.
There's a pain in a parting without a goodbye -
I’ve just noticed the martins have flown.
 
Golden lights gleam all around the square. Every inch of every building has been decorated with ribbons and streamers. Villagers of all ages bustle back and forth, arrayed in their brightest, most vibrant clothing. The work is finally done. For the rest of the year they will rest and let their walls protect them from the weight of Rhodena’s wrath. There will be song there, too, in the cold, and the warmth of friendly faces to invite you in from the snow. But the cold has not come yet. For now, the streets run gold with the fruits of the village's labor, and the air is alive with light.
 
Hear the high lonesome call as the wild geese pass o'er
like a freight train way up in the blue,
as the arrows of autumn to a far southern shore
are flying so straight and so true.
 
Harper’s eyes pass over you, then snap back. He grins and throws you a wink without losing his place. You don’t dance - you have never been much of a dancer - but you sway at the edge of the square as you hum along. The song is an old one. It is one of the first he played for you, back when he first explained to you what his place in this world was. He says it’s the best one he’s ever written. Every time you hear it anew, you can’t help but agree, even knowing better than anyone what it means.
 
And we're both birds of passage, the graylag and I,
for the journey is all we have known -
but the long winding road and the vast empty sky
will be there when the wild geese have flown.
 
He whisks off to join the dance. You have always envied the ease with which he carries his barn-side frame. He was forged with broad, brutal hands, made for crushing. For demolishing. For powering a blade through a blow that could fell any being of armored flesh. Yet he carries them with a carefulness even your slender hands can only dream of. His fingers dance up and down the strings of his lyre with ease, and he leaps into the round with the confident abandon of a river roaring over the familiar, exhilarating ledge of a waterfall.
 
And a starburst of chaffinches rise from the wind
and scatter like leaves on the air.
When the summer days end and the autumn begins
is a secret the trees never share.
 
He waited for you to ask.
 
You swore you wouldn’t, this time. You already know the answer - decades on, and it has never changed. It’s part of the cycle, after all. Part of the rolling wheel of the year. Part of the dance that leads him to your pastures every spring, and leads to the inevitable at the end of every fall. But the purple beams of his eyes drilled into the backs of your shoulders as you packed your things for the harvest festival, and you know your place in the cycle just as well as he does.
 
And we'll lean to the leeward, the tall pines and I
when the northerlies cut to the bone,
and the birch and the willow and ash heave a sigh
when the last summer breezes have blown.
 
Your father taught you strength of will, but your mother taught you when to bend. That was what won, in the end. As the two of you stepped out the door of your tiny shepherd’s hut, you reached out to Harper, wrapping a hand around his wrist.
 
As the dance of the seasons goes ‘round and around,
there's a time for all nature to rest,
when the green summer pastures have faded to brown
and the forest with color is blessed.
 
The sheep are in their winter pastures now. The hounds have all been fed and are at rest inside the warm walls of what will be your home for the season. The sprawling farm fields between you and the village lay barren. They have been stripped of their harvest - a harvest that will keep the people you serve and live with and love alive, but has left an open wound on the land, one that will remain raw beneath the bandage of winter’s first snow.
 
“You know I can’t stay,” he says quietly. “But you know I’m glad you always ask, right?”
 
We'll waltz into winter, the autumn and I,
in a flurry of russet and gold
and the swirl of the snowflakes falling down from the sky
while we watch her white blanket unfold.
 
He is larger than life, swinging like a bird on the wing among the small, hardy human and dwarven figures around him. His cloak swings outward like amethyst wings as he glides in and out of the dance, and you know you will keep asking him to stay, as long as he keeps coming back.
 
He will not come back this time.
 
You don’t know that yet.
 
We'll waltz into winter, my sweetheart and I,
in the warmth of the love we have known,
and give thanks for another good year that's rolled by
while the closer together we’ve grown.