The Fire and the Fog (6 page)

She could have left the room through the
door; it was a working door, and more than adequate in size. She
could even have gone through the door without waking her sisters;
Joahn and Serah were not exactly light sleepers. But then she would
have run into her parents and brothers, all likely already at the
breakfast table. If she made an appearance in the morning, her
mother would try, again, to force her to eat till she burst. Her
mother thought her too skinny, but Erris simply didn’t feel like
eating ninety-seven helpings of eggs and bread every morning. She
wouldn’t eat unless she was hungry, and right then she wasn’t, so
why force it.

So instead of padding lightly across the
polished wooden floors of the house towards the kitchen to sit on
whichever of the eight sturdy wooden chairs happened to be
available, Erris’ bare feet hit soft soil, still cold and moist
from the morning dew, and she scampered quietly off towards the
barn.

She knew that the chickens would not lay
their eggs until around midday, and even then her mother and Serah
would collect them, so Erris would instead deal with the rest of
the farm’s livestock, before any of her siblings got there. The
animals were, after all, the things that Erris loved most about
living on the farm.

She had spent all of her nearly sixteen years
on her parents’ farm; only leaving for occasional trips to town on
special occasions, and one unfortunately memorable trip to
Vhyindar, Rege’s capital city.

Vhyindar had taught her that cities were
horrible places. They reeked of human refuse, garbage, and the
stinking masses. They teemed with so many people, milling around
like less-intelligent sheep, that Erris truly wondered how any of
them got anything done.

And what exactly did city people do? They had
no livestock to care for, no mouths to feed, no crops to grow. Most
of them barely even had families, sticking to a paltry one or two
children. It seemed as if they were simply flitting aimlessly
around all day, pretending they were so busy, so important, that
they mattered somehow in the grand scheme of things, but Erris knew
better.

But no, the worst thing about cities, as far
as Erris was concerned, was that they had no animals. Oh sure, they
might have a few flea-ridden dogs, maybe a horse or two festering
away in too-small stables. But they had no real animals. No plough
horses, 20 hands tall and muscled everywhere, strong enough to pull
huge loads, but nice enough to eat salt from a child’s palm. No
sheep, fluffy and loyal, but as shy and skittish as anything. They
had no pigs, dirty geniuses that they are, masters of wallowing in
mud, and escaping from pens. The list went on.

And even worse than having no real animals,
city people mistreated the ones they did have.

Of course, Erris’ opinion of cities, and
their inhabitants, came solely from the books she would read
through voraciously at night, and from her one excursion to
Vhindyar when she was ten. But it made no difference. She would
never live in the city, and that was the end of it.

No, she thought to herself as she opened the
barn door and began preparing food for Marmot, their young, strong
plough horse. She would live on a farm for the rest of her life.
Eventually she would be married, and her husband’s family would
build her a home, just as her family had done for her brother
Jayke, and his wife Yolan. Then she would have a husband and a
house, she could start having children and raising a family, and
all would be as it should be.

Until then, she thought as she leaned hard
against Marmot’s tall shoulder and distractedly stroked his mane,
having already pulled over an armful or two of hay for the horse to
slowly mulch contentedly; until then she would just have to occupy
herself with chores and books.

Giving Marmot one last hug, Erris left his
pen, swinging the gate tightly shut behind her. As sedate as he
was, it could lead to an entire afternoon of chasing if he got out
again, and Erris had too many other chores to do. It had been
Joahn’s fault the last time he escaped, but Erris had been tasked
with getting him back, as usual. Every time Joahn made a mistake,
Erris had to fix it. It was patently unfair. Erris had never made
so many mistakes when she was young, so why did Joahn? And why was
Erris stuck cleaning up after her?

Still, she had one animal down, and the rest
of the farm to feed. Erris would leave the pigs; one of her sisters
would likely bring out the leftovers from breakfast and last
night’s supper for them when her family finished eating, and the
chickens could wait. The chickens probably hadn’t even left their
shady coop to parade around the yard yet, and there would be no
eggs to collect until midday or so, so Erris headed for the farm’s
sedate cow, Ms. Spots.

The problem with multiple siblings, Erris
figured, was that you had to take turns naming new animals. The
problem with taking turns was that, eventually, even the youngest
got a turn.

Joahn, Erris’ youngest sister, had her first
chance to name one of the farm animals four years ago when they had
bought Ms. Spots. Joahn was six at the time, and had chosen, for
obvious reasons, to name the milk cow Ms. Spots, though a more
ridiculous name, Erris felt, could not have been possible.

Erris had named Marmot, which she felt was a
perfectly appropriate name for a horse. It was not a common horse’s
name, like Francis or Henry or Betsy, nor was it too ridiculous for
a horse. Her brother Boll had named a piglet Soldier last year,
which was just silly and inappropriate Erris thought as she dragged
up a stool and placed an empty bucket under the cow’s udders. No,
the problem with Ms. Spots’ name was that it was too plain. It
lacked flair, finesse, originality. It was almost as bad as calling
a horse blackie or brownie, or a calling a dog goldie, or a pig
pinkie. Naming animals after their colour was just silly and
infantile.

She knew that Joahn had been young when she
named the cow, but just last year, she had named two newborn
piglets Ms. Rolly and Mr. Polly, which was also just wrong. No,
Erris thought, and not for the first time, she should have been
given exclusive naming rights to all the farm’s animals. She would
name them well. She would certainly name all her own animals when
she had her own farm.

Erris smiled as she finished milking the
unfortunately-named cow. Joahn would grow up eventually, and she
would learn to choose more sophisticated, more imaginative,
more…appropriate, names, she thought as she picked up the now full
bucket in both hands, and walked awkwardly sideways towards the
house, the bucket swinging low beside her. Not to mention Joahn
wouldn’t get another turn at naming for a decent while; she was
last in line now, since the pigs.

As Erris laboriously climbed the steps up to
the house, lugging the basket behind her, and shouldered aside the
door into the kitchen, she saw that her family had already finished
their breakfast, and that cleanup was well underway.

Her mother and her older sister Serah stood
at the sink, washing the dishes from buckets of water that one of
her brothers must have drawn up from the well.

Serah was Erris’ eldest sister, and at
eighteen it was starting to look like she might never marry. It was
not that she wasn’t nice; Serah was sweet, gentle, and a fantastic
cook, second only to her mother, but an accident at birth had left
her with a mangled left leg. She could still walk, but only with
great difficulty and pain, and it made it much more difficult for
her father to find her a husband.

Erris always felt a pang of sadness when she
saw her sister. She always wished there was some way she could have
helped, even though she knew there wasn’t. She had even had her
father trade for several basic medical texts for her to read, in
hopes she could find some miracle cure, but there had been nothing
in them to help her sister.

Still, through it all, through the pain and
the knowledge that she would likely end a spinster, Serah smiled.
She was a saint, Erris knew, if only some man could look past her
leg. Someday that might happen, Erris hoped and prayed, but it
couldn’t happen soon enough. Erris knew that Ragn must have had a
reason to cripple her sister, as Ragn had a reason for all He did,
she just couldn’t fathom it.

Distracted by thoughts of Serah, Erris failed
to notice her mother. Short and wide, with a white apron wrapped
around her waste, she headed straight towards Erris, a wooden spoon
still covered in soap suds in one hand, and a scowl on her
face.

‘You!’ her mother said, pointing the wooden
spoon only inches away from Erris’ nose and flinging soap suds in
her face, causing her to flinch her eyes closed momentarily in
surprise.

‘So nice of you to show up for breakfast. Now
march.’ Her mother said officiously, pointing towards the table
with her free hand.

Erris saw to her dismay that a place had been
left for her at the table, with a plate piled high with eggs, bacon
and bread. She had lost track daydreaming during her chores; had
forgotten why she had snuck out the back of the house in the first
place. Resigned to her fate, Erris only got two steps towards the
table when she felt her mother rap her hard on her rear with the
spoon.

‘Moooom, that hurts’ Erris whined as she
turned around, her hands reaching back to cover herself from the
assault, intending to glare at her mother.

All it took for Omah to stop her daughter in
her tracks was a single raised eyebrow though, the kind of eyebrow
that says “Try it, I dare you”. Omah was a master of the eyebrow.
She had been using it on her children for twenty years, just as her
mother had used it against her. Erris couldn’t raise her eyebrow
yet, even though she had practiced in a mirror for hours.

Unfortunately for Erris, there was no
fighting the eyebrow, or her mother. Giving up, she slouched
unhappily to the table where she sat, poking at her breakfast in
front of her, wondering which of the pigs had provided the bacon
that sat, still glistening, in front of her. She always felt bad
eating meat, because it inevitably came from one of the farm’s
animals. She figured it was probably Mallow. He was the oldest pig
on the farm at the time. She really hoped it wasn’t; she always
felt worse eating one of the animals she had named.

In retrospect, Erris decided as she glumly
dunked a slice of bread into one of the eggs light yellow domes,
causing it to shatter and break and spill its admittedly delicious
golden insides, maybe the day wasn’t going to be nearly as exciting
as she had thought it would be. Not that breakfast was the end of
her day by any means. There was a whole day’s work for everyone on
the farm, from cleaning and cooking, to caring for the animals and
repairing tools, to preparing for next months harvest. Nothing but
a fever that had you bed-ridden ever got you out of chores. Erris
had tried.

Her father Johan had sequestered himself in
the tool shed with some new contraption he had bought, one that
supposedly promised to not only reduce the work and time required
for the harvest, but also to increase the harvests yield. So far
no-one had seen it but her father and Jayke, and both were being
silent and secretive about the whole project, which was slowly
annoying Erris. She wanted to know. She had to know. There was a
secret out there in the tool shed, and she couldn’t find out what
it was. The ignominy of it was galling, almost painful.

Still, despite all complaints and concerns
for which pig she was eating, Erris eventually finished breakfast.
She found out it was in fact Mallow that had provided the bacon
when she delivered the pigs their slops, and it made her sad for a
moment to remember the old pig. He had certainly been a model
example for a pig, grunting and rolling and eating. Really that’s
all he did, but still, she would miss him.

Erris stopped for a moment after emptying the
bucket, wondering to herself as the pigs waddled quickly over to
the trough and started eating. She was sure that Joahn or Boll
would be given the slop to take out, instead of her. Somewhere
during breakfast she had been tricked, somehow. She only had a few
seconds to wonder though, as her mother yelling her name from
inside the house quickly had her picking up the empty bucket, and
dashing towards the house, and more chores.

The day passed, as days often do, and it
eventually ended. Johan being sequestered in the tool shed annoyed
Erris, as it meant there was more work for the rest of the family
to do. With Omah, Serah and Joahn limited to easier, household
specific chores, it meant that Erris had to pull the same load as
her brothers. Not that she couldn’t pull the same weight as them,
just that it was a slightly more battered and tired Erris that
finally slid into a chair at the dinner table that night, just as
the sun was hiding itself behind the distant mountains it used as
blankets once more.

Dinner was a relatively simple affair.
Several omelets made with the eggs Erris had stolen from the
chickens at midday, and cheese and bacon. She always hated having
to fetch the eggs. The chickens always hid and protected the eggs,
and rarely gave them up without a fight. She had been pecked more
times than she liked to admit that afternoon. A link of sausage and
bread, washed down with glasses of chilled milk completed the meal,
which was more or less standard dinner fare. Erris would have liked
something more green, but as she didn’t do the cooking, she didn’t
get to make the choices. So she swallowed her complaints and ate,
knowing that her mother would do worse than hit her with a wooden
spoon if she tried ignoring two meals in a row.

Dinner and its cleanup lasted an hour, and
then left the rest of the evening as free time. Erris’ father,
Johan, left immediately for his tool shed, to spend more time with
his new project, while her brother Jayke and his wife Yolan retired
to their home, built not far from the farm’s main house. They had
not been married long, and Erris knew that Yolan was trying her
best to get pregnant, whatever that meant. Whatever it involved,
no-one had consented to tell her yet, even though she had asked.
Twice