Changes to previous sections: Stepfather giving a gift to Anita changed to grandfather.
Chapter 2
Anita stretched as she leaned back on her heels and surveyed the work she’d done in the last week. She’d dug a new plot, planted her seeds, and diligently weeded. The garden near the house, soon to be filled with colorful flowers, was getting too small to feed her younger brother, Bernat, who was outgrowing his clothes monthly. Only 10, he was already as tall as her 5’, and would probably have a foot on her by the time supper rolled around. She chuckled, but her eyes quickly lost their happiness as the past dragged her back to remember similar words spoken by her grandfather the last time she’d ever see him. She frowned, remembering the gift he’d given her before the soldiers had come, and her and her mother had been the only ones to escape, but she shook her head and picked up her tools. It had been lost in the commotion of the day of her brother’s birth, and though she’d searched the forest since then, she’d never recovered it.
“Bear-nah! Bear-nah, I swear if you have stolen the bread again I will swat your behind! I do not care if you think you are the big man now, you can wait to eat at supper like the rest of us do!” Anita turned around at the loud, accented voice, and her smile returned. Marge was looking determined; Gods help Bern if he’d eaten the bread already. Anita walked around the house to the barn and sure enough, saw Bernat shoving the last of the bread into his mouth. He grinned at her, and joyfully ran to hide from Marge. Since Marge had found Anita and her mother in the woods ten years before, Anita terrified but doing her best to help the safe birth of her brother, her mother too weak to do much but breathe. Marge had appeared to them as an angel, and she’d saved all three of them. Isa, Anita’s mother, had survived, just barely, but miraculously. She didn’t ever fully recover her health, but she hadn’t passed, and for that Anita thanked the Gods daily.
Marge’s farmhouse was large, much larger than one woman could use, and she’d insisted that Isa, Anita, and Bernat fill it. After Isa had grown well enough, she and Marge would sit in the great front room, Marge at her great loom and Isa with the mending. They’d taken to each other like sisters, and they looked similar enough that Marge had told the curious villagers just that. She’d said that Isa’s husband had been a soldier who had been killed, and her and her family had come to live with Marge. Anita didn’t think Isa had ever told Marge what happened, and Marge protected them anyway.
The first night in Marge’s big house, Anita had crawled into Isa’s freshly cleaned bed, next to her exhausted mother and her sleeping brother. Isa had struggled to stay awake as she warned Anita never to tell anyone where they were from, or what had happened, because it would put them in a lot of danger. Anita had nodded, understanding the secret that needed to be kept, and had curled against her mother’s side, both giving in to much needed sleep.
After she’d put away her tools, Anita leaned against the outside of the barn and looked up at the darkening sky, dreaming about the future. She knew her mother worried that she was getting restless, but she couldn’t help but dream. When she’d been young, her mother had told her exciting stories about how she and Anita’s father had met. He’d saved her, wooed her, and they’d been married just weeks after they’d met. Her father, though, had been killed before she’d been born. After Isa had married Bernat’s father, the stories of the tragic, whirlwind romance had stopped. Anita and her stepfather had gotten along well because he loved her mother dearly, and she him, and they’d been happy with him. Anita frowned sadly at the thought that Bernat’s father too had been killed before he’d seen his child born. Shaking her head to clear it of unhappy thoughts, she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself.
She wanted the love that her mother had with her father. She wanted fire, she wanted passion, and she wanted the madness of young love. But she also wanted the kind of love she’d seen between her mother and stepfather. Their love was sweet, mellow, and sensible. It was a lasting love that hadn’t been given the chance to last. Anita wondered often if she could have both those loves with one man, and she decided she could, and determined that she would.
When she’d first ventured out of the house and away from the garden, it had been weeks after their arrival to Marge’s. Anita was terrified to leave; afraid that she would be recognized by soldiers, and that they would do what she’d seen them do to her stepfather, her grandmother, and her grandfather. But Marge had insisted that she help her in town to buy new wool, and Anita had reluctantly agreed. She’d hid behind Marge as a boy and a girl her age had come up to inspect her, but as they laughed to each other, she’d stepped forward with her hands on her hips.
“I’m Needa. I’m Marge’s niece and you’d better be nice to me or else she’ll tie your heads together and leave you like that!” she’d said, which had only made them laugh harder. Anita had blushed, and turned to hide back behind Marge.
“Hi Needa. I’m Cassie. This is my dumb brother Calum. We’re 13. We have the same birthday, that means we’re twins. But don’t say we look alike because we don’t! We just both have blonde hair and blue eyes but everybody in my family does. Your hair is pretty, it’s so dark. My papa just came back from the capital and he brought me a doll. Would you like to see her?” The girl had returned, and the three had gone off together, Cassie chatting importantly, Calum and Anita walking quietly beside her.
Anita had had a monumental crush on Calum, and for a full year she’d blushed every time she’d seen him. But eventually, her infatuation had faded, and had been replaced by loyalty and friendship. The three of them had gotten into lots of trouble over the years, and Marge had yelled at them plenty. Other than Calum, none of the village boys held her attention much. They’d been obnoxious. They still were obnoxious, as many of them were courting her. Anita sighed in frustration and pushed herself off the barn as Marge rang the supper bell. Bern raced in ahead of her, starving to death despite having devoured an entire loaf of bread a mere half hour before. Anita rubbed her arms and looked around at the growing darkness, feeling uneasy, and walked up the steps into the house.
NaNoWriMo word count so far: 2548
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