The crowd has already begun to gather by the time I reach the market place. Everything is sold here, everything can be bought. Melons, meat, corn, gold, silver, jewelry. Slaves. I look away when I pass their pens, because the sight still turns my stomach. It wasn’t so long ago that I was up on…
Month: September 2017
Anne of Green Gables
Last Sunday, I did absolutely nothing. Like, nothing at all. I lit a fire in my wood stove, made popcorn, and read the whole day. It. Was. Lovely. The book I chose was an old one, and probably familiar enough to most of you. I mean, who hasn’t read Anne of Green Gables? Besides me,…
Sugar
I’m making tea when they arrive. They knock on my door, although anywhere else they would have kicked it in. “It’s a routine search,” they tell me. “Only a formality.” I let them in. What else am I supposed to do? Even I can’t make them go away, although their master thinks so highly of…
Sheep Pens
My breath hangs like a cloud in the still air when I step outside. The grass is frozen now, and the needles of the pines are white with hoarfrost. I missed these days during the summer. Our home is beautiful enough during the warm seasons, when the grass is green and the creeks are high….
Autumn Winds
The birds are flying south now. When I go for walks in the morning with my dog, their nests are empty and the trees where they used to sit and sing their songs are bare. I can’t really blame them. It’s the wood sprites that chase them out, really. They don’t like the cold or…
Songs
“A maiden fair and a knight so fine went riding on a summer’s morn . . .” The song echoes in the narrow corridors outside my cell, bounding from ceiling to floor, stone to iron bars. I lay my head back against the wall and listen. Another tavern song, written to make the women blush…
Going Home
Everyone else is asleep. The captain confined us to our quarters the moment we stepped on his ship, as if our ragged, bloodstained clothes and battle-scarred weapons threatened him. The others complied easily enough, they don’t mind being confined for a few days or a week. Most of them have done nothing but sleep and…
Little Ghosts
At midnight, the clock in the hall chimes twelve times. I listen to it, waiting until the last echo has faded, and then I get up and fold my blanket. And wait for the children. They come in twos and threes, padding up to my rooms in the attic like little ghosts, dressed in their…
Eagles
The mountains rise above us, black against the blue skies, against the white clouds driven on by the keening wind. I can see the eagles above them, floating in the breeze, black specks among all that blue, all that white. We’re following them. Following the eagles. We have nothing else to do. The paths we’ve…
Water Buffalo
We take them out at dawn, when the sky in the east is red and the birds are starting to sing. I climb onto our bull and pull my sister up beside me. It’s her first time herding, her first time coming into the fields and pastures with me, and her little arms wind around…
