KELA
“The boy is grown, Kela. Now I don’t mean to speak overmuch, but I’d been shooing horses on my own for two winters by the time I was Peer’s age. There no harm in letting the boy do his work,” Abram Porte smiled lazily through his lolling beard. “Stay inside and share your fruitwine with me.”
Looking at him, it was easy to surmise just how much Abram Porte intended to drink of the Viljem family stocks. He was a large man, enormously large in both frame and weight, and his body was prone to excessive gristle. It was a strange sort of fat. Kela’s son Peer had told her as much when they first settled in Oakhurst. Instead of being shaped like a sack, Abram looked as skinny as any man – save for the genuine appearance that he had tucked a keg up under his shirt. A ponderous brown beard spilled down his chest and onto his stomach in frizzing curls. Kela laughed to herself and imagined how small Peer had used to be next to him.
“Abe, we settled in a land where folks worship wild wolves. If you go just a few miles north of here, you’ll find folks who believe these wolves are telling them to kill us. Oust us from our homes, with force, and send us back across the ocean. I think that a boy could stand to stay young for a few more winters.” She looked out the window and then turned back to give Abe a sardonic look. “But you’re free to drink our stocks dry if you want to help Peer and me in the field.”
“Perhaps I’ll finish this drink and be off, then. I do have to make it out to the stables soon.”
“I’m sure.”
She smiled at Abe. He shrugged and picked up the jug from the table to pour a long flow of sweet drink into his cup.
Peer was wielding an enormous mattock with visible difficulty outside of Kela’s window. His father, Benjamin, had sent him out to break up the encroaching veins of whiterock that had appeared a fortnight ago. It wasn’t the sort of job she would have picked for Peer. The boy had the look of a cornstalk. Close to her own height, blond, lanky, and most importantly – it seemed as though a breeze would be enough to sway him back and forth. Kela could never understand why Ben tasked Peer with heavy labor just before he meant to go harbor cities. Peer did not share his father’s immensity.
“Now I don’t mean to speak overmuch, but I heard that cough of yours on the way in here. Are you sure that your man Ben would be happy with you toiling out there?”
“He was happy enough to send his twig of a son out into the field and the boy looks like his arms might snap off.”
“Kela,” Abram said. His face was a laugh, but it shifted easily into a look of concern. “You don’t look well. A woman bearing a child was never meant to work fields. Begging your pardon.”
Kela looked at her reflection in the window pane. Her long face was no less haggard than it had been the day before. A shroud of flush had overtaken her skin and blotchy rose discolored her forehead and cheeks. Her thin blond hair, which she had washed in a bin just a day earlier, looked matted and dingy. One of her hands rose to rest on the slight bulge at her stomach, without a thought.
“I can’t say that the Second Brother has been kind to my complexion lately. I distinctly remember a sort of glow that I was supposed to get in return for bringing new life into the world.”
Abram huffed. “Now, I don’t think god has much care for how prettily we keep ourselves - more care for our souls I’m sure.” He looked down and brushed a hand over the portion of his frizzing beard that lolled over his stomach. “Well, I hope so anyway.”
“I’m sure, Abe, and I’m fine nonetheless.”
A clap resounded through the pane of the window as the mattock dropped hard against the rock veins outside and Peer rolled back on his heels to rest.
“I must get to it. Better to drown in the drink then to drown in drink, as they say back in the Squall.”
“You’re not on a coast anymore, Kela. If you’re set on drowning, fruitwine is the only thing to do it in around here,” he paused for a moment and took another swig. “Not meaning to talk overmuch, but you people have half-a-hundred ways to tell a man he’s had too much wine. Must have been a lot of drunks back home.”
“How could I tell? I have quite a stable of them here for comparison.”
Abram hooted. The cup made a loud clap and a whirling metallic sound as he dropped it down on the table. “Speaking of stables…”
“Yes, yes. Go tend to your horses. If I needed a man’s help to work in the field, I’d have asked Benjamin to stay home.”
Abram stood and nodded at her, a smile in his eyes, but beneath the beard Kela could see him grimace. “Be safe about it. Sit if you feel faint.”
Kela was trying to come up with some quip, but he waved her into silence.
“For the child’s sake, if not for your own. Farewell, Kela.”
“To you too,” she responded. She maintained a smile until Abram turned away. The table was filthy. Scraps of food sat on dishes and empty cups were grouped by Abram’s chair. She heard the door shut.
After a few minutes of cleaning up the house, Kela exited through the square walnut-board doorway and stepped into the bright blue breeze . A cobbled stone fence loosely encircled the Viljem property – as though the tilled land and rolling lines of wheat wouldn’t indicate that the land was taken. In the field, Peer had stopped working and was watching her as she approached.
“Morning,” he called.
“Morning. How’s the work coming?”
Peer shrugged.
“It’s cold out here. Cold for harvest coming on, at least,” she said.
“I hadn’t noticed. This warhammer father gave me to use on the poor unsuspecting ground is keeping my blood pumping.”
Kela shook her head in feigned admonishment and wrapped herself with her arms. “Bloodlust, young man, is not an admirable quality. And against the earth itself. We left the Squall behind, Peer. The land here is quite tame and kind. You shouldn’t strike it so.”
“If you’d let father know that, I’d be happy to stop.”
“I’m sure you would. Step aside. Let me see the progress.”
The slim line of rock had split the tilled dirt around it, slithering under the nearby cobblestone wall and stealing the nutrients from the crop that grew around it. Instead of a full gold shade, the wheat nearby had spots of blight and a hollow brown cast. Peer’s efforts had not gone to waste, however. There were webs of small fractures on the whiterock’s surface.
“You’ve cracked it. Just keep on going and we’ll have it done by morning’s end,” Kela said. A sudden cough erupted from her chest and burned her throat. “I’ll look into some of your other chores for today and see if I can’t help get those out of the way. We have a lunch to make it to.”
Peer eyed her worriedly. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I’m fine, darling.” Kela walked toward the shed. The sound of Peer’s hammering mattock began to clap through the air again. She pushed on the door, but it was budged. The hinges would not give until she threw a strong shoulder into doorway.
“I could use a rest.” Agatha Vogstam had said. Back in the Squall, across the ocean, the world had been a tougher place. Nine months mending crawfish lines during pregnancy and half-a-day with the physicker for the delivery of the child. Only then had Agatha said that she could use a rest.
Here, a few clouds were the extent of bad weather. The hills were green. The ocean and port storms were a five-day trek away. Mae’sin was a softer land. How had she gotten so weak? Benjamin hated when people forgot where they came from.
She grabbed a small sickle from off the shed wall and made her way back into the field. There was shakiness about her vision as she walked, which disturbed her. Even keeping her son in view was proving to be somewhat of a challenge.
“Peer, could you come here for a moment.”
The sound of a mattock’s handle wheeling to the dirt came from nearby.
“Mother? Are you alright?”
She staggered backwards, but suddenly a pair of young hands was there to steady her. In her weakness, the sickle slipped easily from her fingers.
“What’s going on?” Peer asked. His voice was as grating as a saw’s teeth, but the sound was welcome. Her sudden headache meant that she was regaining her senses. A throb echoed behind her eyes and cleared her vision. She found it was not so hard to keep her footing.
“Nothing, nothing. Don’t worry, I’m feeling alright now. Go back to your work.”
Peer eyed her curiously for a moment and then walked back to the whiterock. As Kela bent over to pick up her fallen tool, another horrific racking cough erupted from her. She covered her mouth in the sleeve of her woolen tunic.
“Second Brother,” she murmured, rubbing her throat. Peer had begun working again, before she glanced down and noticed the deep red stain in the crook of her sleeve. The crimson – sickly, dark, wet. A clang resounded from Peer’s mattock as she stared at the blood. With dancing eyes, she looked up to take in the view of the Viljem properties – the home she shared with Ben, the boy they’d fathered, the wheat fields which, for Ben’s sake, she’d tried to love. A hand went to the bulge in her stomach again. She might have spoken then, but Peer’s pace had increased and there was another clang – and another clang – and another clang.