OF ROSES AND ROGUES, PREVIEW

Jonah Wolf had been on this road for days, and he’d seen his fair share of weathered old farmers, toothless old beggars, and all the wives and widows they could manage between the lot of them. It seemed every person he’d encountered had one foot in the grave, and he was beginning to wonder if he’d ever see something resembling civilization again or if he too was doomed to a life of rattling coins in a tin cup.

These spiraling thoughts were probably what made him notice the girl ahead the moment she came into view. Among all of the faces he’d seen recently, hers was a welcome change.

He’d been told by the last three weathered old men that there were bustling fishing towns ahead, a whole line of them along the coast all the way down to Woodsea. He hadn’t come upon a town yet, but this girl gave him hope that he was close.

She hadn’t noticed him yet, though there were hardly many distractions around. She was busy looking down at the wicker basket swinging from her arm, counting whatever it was she had hidden under the cloth. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, which he thought was funny, considering her dress suggested even to his untrained eye that she wasn’t poor. She was fair, he noted, but also fairly ordinary. One pretty lass was the same as another, yet he kept his eyes trained on her until they were close enough that she finally looked up.

Her soft brown eyes met his, and Jonah Wolf nearly stumbled over his own feet. She gave him a smile, which he returned with a nod of his head. It was only a moment of time, barely the span of a breath, but he noticed how her nut brown hair framed her ordinary face prettier than gold around a portrait. The scarlet of her dress made her cheeks look rosy, and the way her eyes lit up made it seem as though she’d just told a riddle you wanted to know the answer to.

She was gone almost as soon as she was there, and Jonah Wolf stopped to watch her disappear over the next hill. She’d just left his sight when he heard a chuckle.

“Pretty, ain’t she?” someone said.

Jonah Wolf turned to the old man, only briefly wondering how he hadn’t seen him before. The man was so thin and brown and still, he might as well be one of the tree roots he was laying among. The tree itself looked ready to topple, but the old man looked as comfortable napping there as any lord would in a feather bed.

“Who is she?” Jonah Wolf asked.

The old man sank further into the roots as he shifted and smiled a great grin of pride. “She’s the star of the shire, that’s what. There’s not a young man around who hasn’t tried to win her over.”

“But who is she?”

“You ever heard of Johnny McCann?”

Jonah Wolf shook his head.

“A hero, that one,” said the man. “That there’s his daughter. The gem of Mossley Bay.”

“The daughter of a hero, aye?”

The old man nodded. “But it’s not her father’s fame nor her own beauty that has them coming back, is it? She’s got a way about her. Makes a man feel like it’s possible to climb right up to the sky and steal a star.”

Jonah Wolf tilted his head. “Why’d a person want to go and do a daft thing like that? The star would disappear as soon as the sun rose.”

The old man whistled. “Give it one more smile, and you’ll be doing things more foolish than that for the likes of Rosie McCann.”

Jonah Wolf looked at the road ahead of him, leading off to all the seaside towns with their busy ports and ships that needed wanderers like him for crewman. Then he looked back to the spanning stretch of forest behind the old man. One thing was certain: nothing good could come from going back there.

“Where you headed, boy?” the old man asked.

Jonah Wolf smiled. “Well, Mossley Bay, now.”

OF ROSES AND ROGUES

CHELSEA BERGHOEFER