WIP Post #5

Keeping it coming! Thanks for the feedback! Even the, "I'm reading it and liking it and post more" sort of feedback is helpful. Keeps me going on the rest of it. :-) And I'm posting two sections tonight (I do not yet have chapter breaks...I'll figure that out in revision) since they were both a bit shorter.

Teldon worked the ground with his hoe, breaking the frozen soil into submission. He dropped a few seeds and tried not to think about how useless his work was this late in the season. But he had to try something. He and his younger sister might still starve, but at least it wouldn’t be for lack of effort.

            The rattle of cartwheels on the path caused him to glance up from his work. Kellen dragged the old cart behind him, his hat low over his eyes. Every now and then he grunted softly with the effort. The contents of the cart where covered in a dirty burlap sack; tomorrow was market day and it looked like Kellen would set up shop and have his trades ready early.

            “Greetings,” Teldon called out as he passed. Kellen stopped, wiped his brow, and nodded.

            “Greetings.” He picked up his cart again and looked about to go, but something was bothering Teldon. He had not seen Azya for several days, and that was unusual.

            “How is your sister?” Teldon asked.

            Kellen stopped, bent over the wagon. He tilted his hat back so that Teldon could see his eyes and his scraggly beard. His face was dirty and sunken from the gnawing hunger they all suffered from. “She left.”

            Teldon stuck his hoe in the ground and leaned on it. “Left? Where’d she go?”

            Kellen cleared his throat and shifted his feet, looking around him as if seeing if anyone would pass by and overhear. “The soldiers came. Fa couldn’t pay the tax. So they took Azya.” He cleared his throat again. “Took the donkey too.”

            Teldon let the hoe fall to the soil and approached the fence. “Where did they take her?” He struggled to keep from shouting.

            Kellen shook his head. “I don’t know. They’ll want her to work.”

            Teldon struck the fence with his fist. “Damn it.” He looked at Kellen who refused to meet his gaze. “You let them take her? And Morda too? Your ma?”

            Kellen shook his head and Teldon noticed he restrained tears. “Couldn’t stop them.”

            “No. You didn’t stop them.” He snatched the hoe from the ground and began to attack the soil. Tears stung his eyes. The wagon wheels crunched over the gravel as Kellen hurried away.

*          *          *

            Lissella was well that day and raged with fever that night. She trembled and muttered. She cried out and writhed. Teldon dabbed her pale forehead with a wet cloth and she shuddered at the touch. Her breathing became rapid. The herbal teas and poultices he made did nothing except make her vomit or scream. As the night grew colder in the short hours before dawn, she lay still, her breathing shallow and fast. A final cry, and she was gone.

            Teldon stared at the lifeless body of his child sister, lit by a gray dawn, as silent tears poured from his face. He knew it was the blight. It had largely left the area, but the young and weak were still susceptible to it. With trembling hands he wrapped Lissella in the blanket she laid on, carefully tucking in the corners. Strangely, it was not unlike the way he put her to bed at night. He closed her eyes and covered her face last. Then he walked around their small cabin, filling a rucksack with the last of their food, a canteen of water, a change of clothes. He took a wooden spoon from the mantle and stuck it in the coals of their dying cook fire. Swinging his warmest cloak around his shoulders, he stepped outside the cabin, holding the burning spoon high.

            With a strangled sob, Teldon threw the burning spoon at the house. It wasn’t long before flames crept up the dry wood and the entire house was alight. A few early morning passersby on their way to market wrinkled their eyebrows curiously, but hurried on and did not ask questions. Burning down one’s house was the only way to get rid of the blight. It had become a common practice in recent years. Indeed, this was the second cabin he had built after his parents died. And now it was Lissella’s funeral pyre.

            The tears quickly grew cold on his cheeks and he pulled his scarf up over his face. His back to the wind, he set off on the road he knew led out of the nameless village, but had never travelled that far himself. No matter. His life was over here. He would find Azya, or he would die trying.