Coronach Of The Bell

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THERE is a spruce, a skeleton, that stands above a forest in a mountain valley, and from its tip, a bell hangs high and lone, moaning in the wind.

There is a pass into that valley, but the sides are sharp and jagged—torn and twisted, blackened granite. One slip means death.

Once a clan lived there, when the spruce was quick with resin and fields of maize filled half the valley. There was no pass between the mountains then, for a granite bridge once joined them. But that bridge was hollow, gutted out by adze and pick, honeycombed into a home for Manninglore.

Manninglore, bald and bearded, hunchbacked, stunted, muscle-bound, stooping from his years of toil.

Manninglore, born old.

The wrinkles of birth never left his face; hair never grew upon his scalp. "Changeling!" the children called him. He did not dare protest, for his bandy legs could scarcely run and his bulging arms were much too slow for fighting.

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