Sara
The clucking and scratching of the hens outside my window woke me long before dawn. I breathed in the cool air, staring into the darkness, riding out the last of a dream that both puzzled me and left me aroused in a way I’d not known before.
The image of the dreamy, handsome, dark-haired man drifted still in my half sleepy state, and I fought the urge to run my hand down my body, the way he had done to me in my dream, to tuck my fingers between my thighs and rub away the clutching ache my dream lover had left behind.
I could almost still feel his warmth. The shiver as he touched me. The filthy words he had whispered in my ear that left me aching and my cheeks hot. I slipped my hand down my nightdress to where the tension tightened in my belly and battled this urge.
I stopped just above where the pulsing still lingered knowing my own hand could not give me the same tawdry feelings the mysterious man in my dreams had delivered.
Instead, I forced myself off the threadbare mattress that served as my bed, crossed the chilly darkness of my room in a single stride and lit the stubby remnants of last night’s tallow candle. The oily wick crackled, then settled to a dull glow. The bare slate stones were icy on my feet, and I shivered as I pulled my woolen shawl around my shoulders. It was a patchwork of colors after years of mending, but simple and worn as it was, I cherished it. It was a tapestry of my life, stitched together from what I could find to make something that was beautiful and almost whole.
Wrapping my arms around my body for warmth, I shuffled quickly out into the kitchen and awakened the smoldering embers in the fireplace with the poker. I added two heavy bricks of peat to the grate, and rubbed my hands in front of the low flames, then swept the errant ash around the hearth back into the glow of the coals.
Glancing at the neatly stacked pyramid of apple-wood logs to my left, I longed to put just one or two on as well. But I cast that foolish thought from my head. Roaring fires were expensive and were only to be lit when my mother, father, and sister were awake. No matter, my chores would be more than enough to warm me up even as I headed outside into the damp morning.
From a chipped crock that I kept in the woodshed, with a stone on top to keep out the mice, I took a few handfuls of feed and scattered it around the chicken run. The hens dove for the food, while the cock strutted back and forth along the fence line, waiting for dawn.
Mornings were my favorite time. The quiet, the calm, the orderly pace of the chores of the day. The way the dew gathered on the papery purple leaves of the thistle. I didn’t have much to myself, but I had my mornings under the wide sky and that was more than a girl like me had any right to ask for.
Sometimes, I wondered why I was so lowly. So much a cast-off in my family and this world. But, in the end, I knew wondering only turned to sorrow—and there was enough of that in my life already.
Instead, I raced happily and busily against myself to finish all that needed to be done before my family awoke.
Using the frigid well water, I scrubbed my sister’s frock, my father’s undershirts, and my mother’s nightclothes against the washboard until I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. These I hung out on the drying line before warming my hands on the fresh eggs, nestled in each nesting box. I placed each egg carefully in a basket and set them aside to take to market.
Back in the kitchen, the fire had come back to life, driving away much of the night’s chill. I set about preparing a stew for later. I chopped the onions and carrots as quietly as I could, so as not to wake the house. To the stew I added a single lamb chop that I had gotten from the butcher the day before—an extravagant treat that he gave me in exchange for only a few eggs.
The rheumy old butcher always squinted and told me I had the prettiest eyes in the land; that one glance at them, even with his failing sight, was enough to keep him satisfied to the end of his days.
“Aye, like the first queen’s eyes, they are,” he would say, somehow the wrinkles around his mouth both sad and happy at once. “I knew her, you know. Butcher to the royal household for many a year before the new queen insisted on choosing her own staff. But emerald eyes like that, lass…they could bring down kingdoms.”