A world told one house at a time — a half-forgotten order of enchanted rest-houses strung along one great road, each kept by someone who once carried the very weariness they now ease in others. No dark lord, no war to win. Kindness is the quest.
Written or in the works — not published yet, so there is nothing to click. The list tells you when each one lands.
Marga kept the col-house for the better part of a lifetime before Toll, and she is the one who took him in when he arrived at the top of the pass…
Toll keeps the col-house — the highest, hardest, most necessary rest-house on the mountain road — and he keeps it almost entirely with his hands. He…
Brix is a young traveller who comes over the col burned out, his walking-party gone on ahead without him, and stays the summer at the col-house while…
Caer is the road-warden who first comes to survey the newly-built house at the top of the col, back in its founding days. Procedural, careful, and…
Fenwick is the mapmaker who crosses the col each spring and autumn — the col-house's newspaper and its window on the wider road. It was travellers'…
Hetty keeps the col-house supplied, hauling barley and stores up the pass twice a season and refusing, most times, to be thanked for it. Practical…
Oswyn is the founder — the road-builder who raised the col-house from a shepherd's ruined shelter and became its first keeper. Weary at the end of a…
The dented copper kettle on the south-window hook is the col-house's namesake and its heart. It was carried over the road for years before it was…
The long pine table runs down the centre of the col-house kitchen, and it is Marga's — the table she set for Toll the night he came up the col with…
The south-window fire-cradle is the small iron mechanism of the kept light: a handful of coals held at a low heat beneath the copper kettle so it can…
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