Little Boy Of The Mountain L
--L--
The little lad reached the crossroads. The larger way, the High Path, was a gravel road that ran east-west. It was wide enough for a wagon to pass along, and there was a wide lawn on either side. It ran quite straight in either direction for a quarter-mile or so and then bent around trees and boulder outcrops following the marching contours of the foothills. There was a large and very worn marker stone that presided over the crossroads. In times long past it had been a perfectly cylindrical worked pillar with a metal cap, identical to thousands of others than declared the roadways of the ancients. Coming nearer, he saw that propped against the marker stone was a small shepherds crook.
He peered about him, looking left and then right on the High Path, and indeed, he caught a glimpse in the distance of three young children passing round the bend on the western way to the right, surrounded by trailing numbers of a herd of sheep they were goading along the road. They disappeared from view. If he had arrived but a moment later he would not had seen them. Strange to see so many people moving about on this dreary day. One of them must have left their crook here and forgotten it in their idyll.
Suddenly there was a loud piping of little birds in the bushes to his left, and these were answered a moment later by some others across the Path and to the right. The boy jumped off the donkey and ran to fetch the implement laying against the crossing-stone. Quickly he returned to his steed, remounted, and urged the beast along the High Path, following westward after the herd boys.
He was feeling hungry now, but he hurried along the track and arrived at the rightward bend that had hidden the sheep and their minders from view. He turned the corner, which arced around a large embankment covered in fine bushes with little red flowers. On the left another valley opened below him and it's mists hovered beyond the road like a foaming sea. He heard laughter and shouts, and he saw that he had caught up with the herders. It was three little boys from a farm across the next valley, whom he did not know too well. He was not sure of their names, but he approached, greeted them, and held up the crook that he had rescued.
The eyes of the smallest boy lit up as he realized simultaneously his mistake and his luck. He ran over to Clipper and spoke with the rider. These three were hastening back home before the weather got any worse, having been minding their small herd near the lake to the north-east, where friends of theirs were lodged. Quite a long journey they were making, perhaps seven or eight miles.
Feeling pleased with himself, the little boy said goodbye to the sheep-minders and their flock, and returned to the cross-roads. The breeze had shifted again, beginning now to blow from the mountains, and a light drizzle began, but the skies still seemed quite undecided. The boy was not yet perturbed however. He turned right off the wide track and continued downward on the valley path. It began to zig-zag as it descended, the first tight bend turning left around a smooth-cut treestump, where there were some small steps to ease the traversal - though not too high or close to dismay Clipper.
The boy astride his steed was nearing the river, going deeper into the trees of the dell following the ever-twisting path. He could hear the gurglings and splashings clearly now below, and saw hints of light reflecting off moving waters glinting through the thickly-planted trees. He was in the last open glade before the deepest section of the valley and it's dense riverine forest. Yet further south, there were steep and treacherous stone gorges with sheer sides that dropped away to the plains below. The little river there shot out into space, turning into a fine mist as it fell, before it reached the large and deep pools below. To these pools it was perhaps impossible to reach, from above or below, but they could be viewed from certain high vantage points within the valley. The boy had once seen a large swan gliding on the lake from afar. Beyond, southwards, the forests picked up again and followed the river out into the wide spaces of the plains for some distance, but then the trees failed as the stream, gaining size and becoming more sluggish, wound it's way like a great serpent towards the village-lands and cornfields beyond.
None of this could the lad see from where he now rode, on the little track torn by twisted tree roots that made his donkey's footing somewhat perilous. Aha!...
There it is! The boy had spotted his favourite staff lying on a small shaded greensward to his right. It must indeed have fallen loose from the donkey's saddlepack bindings, when he was hunting for mushrooms between the tentacle-like tree roots on his previous trip.
He noticed as he dismounted to fetch it that where the southward path entered the arch of dense trees into the valley proper and the deeper forest, that the sun was shining through the leaves at a curious angle for the time of day, casting a bright beam that crossed the dappled darkness beyond. In the misty sky above the tree arch, there was a small rainbow that seemed to spring from the beam and arch into the sky to the west spreading into it's seven famous colours.
The boy turned north to look back at what he could see of the mountain peaks, but they were now veiled in thick billowing cloud, at least from where he stood. In the grey-white glare above him, the exact position of the sun was hard to tell. A small spattering of proper rain began just then, but it was not yet enough to deter the him and his donkey.
He mounted, and after tying his sling to his belt, took up his staff. The pair entered beneath the arch of trees, passing through the beam of sunlight. Through a tight avenue of gnarled lichen-covered trees they wove. Little wren-birds leapt about on the mossy branches above their heads, enjoying a bath of lightly-dripping water. There was a steep section, where Clipper found it easier to leave the path and navigate around some boulder-steps rather than make use of them.