Tamar slung the heavy rucksack over her shoulders and started up the winding cobbled street that left the town. Every month, for nearly as long as she could remember... Tamar had climbed God's Thumb. The great jagged monolith of limestone overlooked a bend in the river. Atop this great pillar sat an ancient monastery, inhabited by just one very old monk and his young apprentice. Since Tamar was a young girl, the old monk had been too feeble to make the journey to the village to get food and supplies. The journey was harrowing, even for one as young and strong as herself. Tamar remembered her very first trip up to the hermitage as she strolled out the town's southern gate. She had been very young and very hungry. Her parents had passed away that summer, leaving her with her ailing grandmother who had been completely unprepared to feed and raise a child. The winter had hit them hard... Food was so scarce that the pair had resorted to begging in the streets. After a day of unsuccessfully begging for alms, they had gone into the church to warm up. The town's priest had immediately approached them. He expressed his condolences for their situation and offered a "solution" to their destitution. He offered them a stipend provided by the church if Tamar delivered supplies to the monastery every month.
Initially the offer had seemed like a gift from god. The priest provided the parcel to be delivered and gave Tamar instructions on how to reach the site of the monastery, omitting quite a bit of vital information. So... desperate and unaware of the risks, Tamar's grandmother put her in a little boat with the rucksack of supplies for the monastery and sent her downriver. The same little boat that Tamar made her very first journey in was the boat she clambered into today, slinging the heavy pack and her walking stick into the space between her feet and guiding the craft out into the gentle current.
It was not long before she rounded the bend in the river and saw the familiar image of the huge column of white limestone jabbing at the blue sky. What the priest had failed to report to Tamar and her grandmother all those years ago, was that the monastery did not sit atop a hill or even a mountain... The monastery was over one hundred feet up in the air... and the only way up was a set of ladders, and an ancient, crumbling stairway cut into the natural face of the monolith. The first time she had seen it as a child, she had sat down at its base and cried. She had been tired, scared, and on the verge of starvation. As a child, only sheer desperation made her climb the first rungs of that ladder, then only blind determination kept her going. It was impossible to forget that first climb. The wind whipped around her so fiercely that she was afraid it would blow her right off of the rock face she clung to. She made it all the way to the landing in front of a little cave entrance before she stopped her ascent. She had sat down in the opening of the cave and was in awe of the view out across the valley from the incredible height when she had heard a rock clatter and saw a strange-looking boy come skidding down the path that ran up to the very top of the rock formation. When he came into view she knew immediately who he was. His existence had been village gossip for years before Tamar had even been born, and now she understood why.
The boy scrambling down the path was cursed, born as white as death. He had been born in her village and upon seeing him, his mother had thrown him into the river. It was said in the village that his white hair and bleached skin, he had been born with the mark of the devil on him. The monk who lived atop the pillar had been fishing in the river when he heard a baby crying. He followed the sound to a pile of rags washed up on the bank, and found the abandoned child. The story went that the monk had wrapped the baby up in his cowl, slung the infant over his back and took him back up to the monastery with him. The monk never came back down. Knowing the stories about the boy approaching her, and the superstition around him had utterly terrified poor little Tamar even more than the harrowing climb had. The young boy was just a few years older than Tamar had been at the time, and very patiently sat down a few feet away from her until she finished crying. He didn't say anything, he just scooted closer to her and handed her a large hunk of warm, fresh bread with his inhumanly chalk-white hands. She ate ravenously, sobbing and gasping as she stuffed her face with the first real food she had eaten in days. The boy just stared silently out from under his hood. Tamar finished the loaf, quivering in shock from the entire ordeal. Now, making the climb again at least a decade later... she couldn't shake the image of the boy's pale green eyes. His eyes swam in her mind as her little boat pushed into the sand of the riverbank.
The two misfits had been fast friends as children. Every time she climbed up to deliver supplies, he sat waiting for her with some tidbit of food or a pretty rock or flower. He had been almost totally mute, yet they had understood each other perfectly well. For about three years Tamar would make extra trips up to see him or go early so that they would have time to explore the caverns and tunnels dug into the rock together. Then one day a section of the rock path came loose and destroyed the rest of the steps that led up to the top of the great rock. Instead of fixing the stairway, a pulley system had been set up to span the last leg of the journey. She never saw her friend again after that. Tamar always wondered what had happened to the boy... She had never seen a person who looked like him before or since...
Breaking from her reverie, she stretched and drug the little skiff onto land before beginning her climb. The trip that had started out taking her a grueling hour of climbing as a child, now only took her about half the time. She had gotten very good at climbing and very agile over the years. Living on rooftops in the village and making deliveries to the monastery had made her incredibly strong. She reached the cave and steadied herself for a few minutes before ringing the bell. In the years after her first ascent, the steps carved into the rock that continued the remaining twenty or so feet to the top of the pillar, where the monastery and chapel sat, had been eroded away... and were now utterly impassible. A large metal basket on a pulley system had been constructed to get supplies the rest of the way up the cliff face. Tamar never saw the ancient monk, or his younger acolyte anymore... and hadn't for a number of years. She wondered about what life up here was like for them as she hoisted the heavy bags of flour and materials up the cliff, heaving at the thick ropes. An idea occurred to her as she hauled at them. If the basket could support all the weight of the flour she sent up there... It could probably support her own weight. Tamar had always dreamed of seeing the view from the very top of the column... So she waited. She heard the clatter of metal and bags, and the sound of a door slamming shut far above her. Then.. she carefully climbed into the basket and hauled at the rope. Her ascent was incredibly slow, but when she shakily stepped out of the contraption and onto solid ground she was shocked. The first thing that struck her was the absolutely breathtaking view. It was even more beautiful than she had imagined. Her time spent hauling herself up in the basket had cost her precious time. The sun setting across the land for miles and miles around in vibrant hues of pink and orange and lavender took the breath from her. She sat in absolute admiration staring out at the setting sun until it was dangerously low in the sky before she realized her grave mistake. It would be impossible to make the journey back down and make camp before full dark and that was too risky for even surefooted Tamar. She considered her options. She could try and lower herself back down in the basket and spend the night in the cave below and potentially fall out of the basket grappling around in the dark... or she could try and find a place to hide for the night up here. The latter was by far the more appealing option.
She snuck around the low curtain wall, and into a tiny door set into one of the monastery's hodgepodge of buildings. She plastered herself to the back of the door and listened for voices or footsteps. The blood pumped in her ears and she could hear virtually nothing. Fear set in. If she was caught here the punishment would be severe. The monks up here took a vow of silence and of celibacy. As a woman, being caught here would be incredibly bad news. One letter to the priest in the village and she would be stoned in the town square. Her heart slowed and she was able to slip further into the building. A door was open to her left and a spiraling stone staircase led up to a small tower room. At first, she didn't see anyone in the moonlight, then, camouflaged in the silvery light, he moved. It was like a human moonbeam turned to look at her. Incredibly long silver hair and vaguely familiar green eyes with an eerie faint red cast, fringed in long chalk-white lashes stared at her. He laid propped up in a bed by the window, bare in the heat but for a blanket slung across his waist. There was a faint sheen of sweat on the broad milk-white expanse of his chest.
Tamar felt her mouth go dry as the desert sands. His brow furrowed and he began to stand up, wrapping the blanket tightly about his hips, scarlet showing across his nose even in the dim light. Tamar dodged as he reached a hand out to grab her arm and twisted out of his reach. His foot skidded on the stone floor and he snatched a handful of her shirt and crashed backward into something she couldn't see in the dark. There was a horrible grunt, the sound of his knees hitting the floor hard. She tumbled with him into a tangled heap on the floor.
It registered with him first... nose to nose in the dim light. He didn't say a word, his stony face just cracked open with a toothy grin. Then it dawned on her... her mute, childhood friend with the white hair. He was... all grown up. He carefully rolled off of her and snatched the blanket he had tripped over off of the floor. The dim light didn't disguise the scarlet blush of embarrassment. He offered her an arm up off the floor, and as soon as she got to her feet he grabbed the back of her collar like he was scruffing a cat. He hauled her to the door, and unceremoniously shoved her out of it.
A moment later he opened the door, having donned a pair of pants... and yanked her back inside. The door wasn't even fully closed before she found herself wrapped in a rib crushingly tight hug. He released her, leading her gently to a small armchair in the corner of the little room and gesturing for her to sit. She sank into the chair, weary from the stress and the exertion of the climb while he drew back a set of heavy drapes and lit the candles on the desk they had tripped over.. Light bathed the room and she could finally see well enough to make out the rest of the room. It was bigger than she had previously thought, L- shaped with a small study in the shorter leg of the room. A very large window and a bed lay at the juncture of the two areas and a huge wardrobe sat around the corner, along with a deep basin of water on a stand. Clattering drew her attention back to the man at the desk in front of her. He was rifling violently through a drawer for something, making choked sounds of annoyance. Suddenly he emerged victorious with a writing stick and paper, the light catching the white teeth of his grin. Her heart fluttered strangely at the sight of him.
He pulled a chair up next to hers and scratched something on the paper, tapping at it impatiently.
