Seven Falls, French Territory
July 1707
They’d been meeting in secret for a year, and for a year they’d feared their families discovering them together. Their families were known enemies, but, somehow, their children had fallen in love with each other. Their relationship had begun as friendship and secretly evolved into more.
Now, both twenty years of age, they’d meet behind a different waterfall each night, and each night they would dream together of a future away from Seven Falls. The seven waterfalls that their town had been named for were the perfect meeting-place for the pair of lovers and held all of their secrets and plans. The New World was expanding westward and, perhaps, they, too, would join the colonists moving west. For now, though, they were content in Seven Falls, with each other.
When the barking of dogs was heard not fifty yards from the waterfall they had met in this night, they panicked. How had they been found out? Had someone seen them and sent word to their families?
He pulled her to her feet. “We must run or else they’ll surely tear us apart. Forever.”
“Let us leave then,” she agreed, choking back the fear that clogged her throat and made it difficult to breathe in the balmy July air.
Unable to see what it was they were running through, they stumbled over rocks and roots of trees. Not caring that thorns were scratching them, bloodying their clothes, ripping into skin, they ran, knowing with sheer certainty that, if caught, their very lives would be in danger. They were the prized children of two enemies but could easily be discarded in the brutal war that waged in Seven Falls.
When the lantern shone in their eyes, they froze.
“Well, well, well. Look who we have here.” The man who spoke was tall, menacing and held a large hunting rifle. “It’s our pretty cousin, isn’t it?”
“I wonder what she was doing out here, in the dark with…oh my. Look who it is, gentlemen,” a second man leered in their faces.
“I’m sure our loving aunt and uncle would appreciate if we properly disciplined our dear, wayward cousin, don’t you agree?” Murmurs of assent were heard through the group of six men. “Well, then. You first, boy.”
***
She stared at the man who had been her son. Tears of rage overpowered the tears of anguish in her eyes, in her heart. Rage turned her heart cold now, made her want to lash out at someone, anyone. How he could have dallied with that trollop was beyond her, but, here she was, looking at their lifeless corpses.
“You loved her enough to forsake family for her,” she spoke angrily to her son’s graying face. “I hope she was worth your life. For I know the both of you are worthy of my wrath.” She felt the power build within her, the same power that had flowed through her family’s bloodline. Now, it was vengeful power. “For your folly, your souls will not rest. Never rest,” she whispered harshly as a thick fog rolled in around her, and thunder rumbled. “By the power that is in me, these two shall remain by their beloved waterfalls for a hundred years times three. They shall have no respite and, at the end of three hundred years, if others have not found their love, they shall be torn from each other. As I will, so it shall be.”
A single bolt of lightning split the sky, and wind whipped around her. Kicking the dirt at her son’s feet, she vowed never to weep over her only child. He had chosen his way and would now reap the consequences. Unable to look any longer, she turned and walked away.
Author's Chapter Notes:
The prologue explains the legend...sort of. So stick with me through it even though the Boys aren't in it...yet.
