It’s said in the north country of Lauchtenland that the sea has a song and love blooms from the earth the same as flora and fauna. It perfumes the air and touches lives in ways no one quite understands.
Beware then, if you travel north to Dalholm, County Northton, where the wind sings through the Highcrest Mountains. Expect a bit of fairy dust on your heart. Expect to fall in love. Yes, even you.
For Taffron Björk, love saved him. If the tales of love amounted to nothing more than folklore, he’d still be a believer. He’d be forever grateful to his hometown’s legend of love. To his wife, Eileen, and their sixty years of marriage.
Where would he be without her?
On this fine morning of his eighty-second birthday, Taffron woke with a dagger of sunlight in his eye and the song of spring birds in his ears. Eileen had let him slumber too long, lounge in bed like a lazybones.
Will something good happen today?
He moved from his bed to the water closet with a spring in his step. Showered and shaved, nicking his jiggling jowls as he hurried over his whiskers with a straight edge. Tended the wound with a bit of cotton, and dressed in slacks, pressed shirt, and tie.
He may be nothing more than a simple tailor, but he must always give the appearance of a man of means, like the designer he’d wanted to be. The designer he’d once been. A shooting star across the world of fashion—ever so briefly.
Checking his nick before heading downstairs—the aroma of breakfast teased his senses—he regarded his lined reflection.
Age and time hadn’t dulled his blue-eyed sparkle. Well, not much. And the unruly mop of gray hair atop his head remained full.
Thanks to Eileen’s pestering about brushing, he still had a good set of teeth. Some might laugh, but these things mattered to the aged. His hearing lacked for nothing either.
Still, what had he done important in life? Did his existence matter? Had he made a difference? Touched someone’s life in a way that they would remember him?
Eileen would insist, “Of course, you silly jester. You made her gown. Princess Louisa’s.” His wife was only indulging him. Seems she’d pledged to do so in their wedding vows.
Yes, he’d designed a wedding gown for a princess, but he’d not seen her since the wedding. She was a mother herself with a married princess daughter. Yet Taffron’s phone did not ring. He’d not been invited to be a part of the daughter’s day.
Taffron wagged a finger at his reflection. “Get over yourself, old man. You had your chance. Your one day.”
What a day it was too. Chosen in 1898 to design the wedding gown for Princess Louisa, eldest daughter of King Rein III of the House of Blue. Together they created a unique and timeless dress. And for a brief moment, the poor boy from Dalholm, County Northton, Lauchtenland, was a star.
But he’d been reminded stars don’t shine forever. They burn with all their might, then poof! Vanish into nothing.
Taffron blazed onto the fashion scene with a stunning gown for a royal wedding, convinced he’d finally, finally arrived. Made his mark. Yet within a year of the princess’s wedding, his name and face faded from the fashion world’s view.
For the past forty years he put food on the table by marking and penning men’s suits and sewing ladies’ dress hems.
“Morning, wife.” He kissed Eileen, who hovered over the cooker in the warm and bright kitchen.
Her eyes laughed as she picked away his cotton swab and handed him his cup of tea. “Sharpen your razor, love. That’s the third time this week.” She combed her slender fingers through his hair. “Happy birthday. Eighty-two and still as handsome as ever.”
“Eighty-two and old, you mean. Love, where’s the time gone?” Setting his tea aside, he stepped from the kitchen onto the porch and faced the wind and the North Sea channel.
His gaze drifted along the rim of a shredded red sky toward the foothills, then around to the cliffs high above the water, to the cleft known as the Hand of God, carved into the stone by time, wind, and rain.
The last time he navigated the steep pathway cut into the granite wall to sit in the grassy cleft, he’d been a much younger man. A desperate man.
But he’d found answers. If he could, he’d climb again. But his legs were too shaky. His knees too weak.
Behind him the screen door creaked. “Birthdays tend to make us all