Local History

Issue No. 1 | Season One | The Founding of the Valley

On This Day

The Founding, the Reigns & the Old Book

The Fourth of April, 1210 — Six hundred years gone this spring, King Aldritch Westler set his name upon this valley and called the fighting done. The day is kept still as Founders Day — though the families of the high mountains have never much cared for the keeping of it.

The wall raised across the valley in 1209 — The wall, raised in 1209 and standing yet.

The Founding of the Valley

The War of Westler

In the year 1209, the valley had no name recorded by the crown. To those who worked it, it was the Ryelands. King Aldritch Westler crossed the eastern ridge with eight hundred men at arms. The Ryeland clan met them in the lower fields with pitchforks and scythes. They fought well and were beaten badly.

The survivors retreated into the high mountains. Rather than pursue, the king raised a wall across the valley, stone hauled from the riverbed, cutting them off from their grain and cattle below. They lasted a single season before surrendering the valley to the crown.

King Westler gave the valley his name and ordered the wall left standing, not as a defence, but as a monument to his own achievement. It stands to this day, as does the valley of Westler.

The Seat of the Crown

Castle Aldritch

King Aldritch Westler did not build in the valley, where a king might sit close to his people. He built high in the mountains, on the ground where the last of the Ryeland clan held out and finally surrendered.

It was a message. Every family below could look up and see their king standing on the place the old clan died.

But he did not take that height for spite alone. From those windows he could see the whole of his kingdom, the wall across the valley, the northern pastures, and season after season, he enjoyed the view of the golden fields.

He took his supper by that window, tasting the valley one harvest at a time.

The Turning of the Line

How the Line of Coles Came to Reign

The Westler line held the valley for four hundred years. The wall became a thing children climbed, and the valley forgot it had ever been taken.

Then, six generations on, King Edward Westler had a younger brother, Rowan, who wanted the crown and would never have it. So Rowan crossed the water to a foreign land and found a king who could take what he could not. He smuggled intelligence out through letters, naming the weak gates and the thin hours of the watch. He was promised the throne for it.

The fleet came in autumn. Rowan opened the gate, and the fighting spilled through the streets and up to the castle doors. Somewhere in it, Rowan took a fatal wound.

The foreign king took the valley and held it. But the valley kept the Westler name. It was known across the world for its harvest, and a name that sells grain is not one a new king throws away. His consolation was the line of kings itself, which became Cole, and has been ever since.

The Old Wives' Tales of Westler

Kept by the settlers, copied by their daughters, and sworn by yet

Tales of the Ryeland Clan

The Ryeland Dance

Long before the king took the valley, the Ryelands danced each spring in the turned earth. Barefoot, one step in and two steps back, weaving past one another in a ring, right hand then left, and at every turn hands thrown high and shaken at the sky.

The harvest came in so bountiful that word crossed the ridge, and a king came to take it.

They danced the night before the fighting. It did not save them.

But the harvest never faltered. Go to any wedding in Westler and you'll see folks take the floor, hands high and shaking, one step in and two steps back, not one able to say why they do it.

And every autumn the carts still groan under the weight of what this valley gives.

It seems the dance still works.

From the Old Book

Remedies for the Season

For a cough that will not quit Honey warmed with thyme, taken by the spoon at bedtime.

For a burn from the stove A slice of cold potato bound on with a strip of cloth.

For a child who will not sleep A goose feather laid beneath the mattress, pointed north. Should the child wake regardless, the feather has turned. Find it and turn it back.

Matta calls the whole book old wives' hooey. She keeps a copy on the shelf all the same.