Highfold

Highfold sits on a high green shelf on the eastern peninsula, held between two crag ridges like a cup between two hands. One track climbs to it from the shore east of the river-mouth falls. It winds up through stone-walled fields and comes out among a few dozen low farmhouses with turf roofs, an orchard of wind-bent apple trees, and a green where the sheep are counted every evening. To the north the shelf ends at a grassy lip, and beyond it there is nothing but open water and sky.

It is a herders' town. Sheep and goats graze the slopes of both ridges, and every family keeps a flock, a dog and an opinion about the other families' dogs. The cellars under the houses are cut into the rock and full of rounds of cheese, and Highfold crag cheese is sold as far away as Briarbrook. Wool is carded, spun and dyed in the long Shearing House on the green. In spring the bales go down the track on handcarts to the shore, where boats carry them across the bay to Veilmere's market.

On the northern lip stands the Watch Cairn, a tall pile of stones with a beacon basket on top and a bench at its foot. Someone from the town sits there every day, by turns, watching the water. They watch for boats in trouble, for weather coming in and for anything else worth knowing. In all the years anyone remembers, the beacon has only been lit for Midwinter and for weddings.

Travellers sleep in the loft of the Shearing House, on clean straw and spare fleeces, and nobody charges them for it. Visitors who stay a few days are fed, asked their news, and quietly expected to help with whatever is being carried. Doors are left on the latch. The ridges keep the worst winds off, the track keeps out anyone in a hurry, and people who come to Highfold usually find they sleep better than they have in months.