Page 4 of Terragnata and the Heir of the Earth

I shook my head, dismissing whatever dramatics were being cooked up by my imagination. Too many novels, indeed. Stepping into my house, I attempted to will away any intrusive thoughts. Despite the valiant effort of my logical mind to puncture holes in that building shroud of intuition, I could not rid myself of the sinking feeling that someone—or something—was watching me.

“Well,look who’s home late, with not much to show for it,” my brother Javis said when I walked in with my market basket half full of Mama’s jams. I faced discerning eyes. Her work with muddled fruit was unparalleled, and we almost always sold out of her ingenious combinations of rathumby and bullionbur, gallonberry and clove.

“What distracted you today, dear sister? Laying in the meadows with Gia, daydreaming of your first Spring Day, perhaps?”

Talk like that to a sibling would have earned me a smarting handprint across my face from Mama, but Javis only got a sharp look.

“Our Terra isn’t one for the boys, Javis,” my eldest brother Danson replied. “I do not doubt that even if Mavdoeswork up the guts to ask for a dance tomorrow, she will decline.” Though he said it as a statement, the way his eyebrows rose made it seem like a question. For a moment my family stilled, even Mama kneading dough in the kitchen, and they all looked in my direction.

“As I just told Gia…” I emphasizedjustto make them understand how much I disliked repeating myself, “I have no interest in a husband right now. And frankly, since you two seem set on barreling down the path towards marriage, or at least accidental fatherhood, there may soon be no one here to help Mama.” I said the last part matter-of-factly, making it seem like convenience formed my opinion, rather than a deep reluctance to sacrifice what tiny scrap of freedom I had and would surely lose when wed.

Danson choked on his drink. Mama gaped at me, probably for suggesting one of my brothers might unwittingly become a father out of wedlock. But before she could scold me, Javis quipped back. “That still doesn’t answer our question, Terra, now does it? If Mav asks you for a dance, will you say yes, or will you say no?”

“Boys, leave Terra alone and go help your father chop wood. Terra, bring me what you didn’t sell in the market today. And for the gods’ sake, can someone set the dammed table,” Mama said, fully recovered from my comment.

A few moments later, I did earn a smarting mark on my cheek after the boys had gone outside. But I could have sworn the corner of her mouth quirked up as she turned back to her kneading. It soothed the sting.

Dinner was short—notquite unusual with three miners at the table who wolfed down food quicker than a late December sun fell behind the mountains. The boys and Father spread themselves out in front of the fire in a post-meal stupor, while Mama and I tended to the dishes. We worked in silence, as usual, but something hung in the air. Something she wanted to say, but didn’t, which was unlike her. She rarely guarded her thoughts.

Later that night, long after I’d settled into bed, I used a sliver of moonlight peeking through my bedside window to read. I was lucky to have my own room—a result of having no sisters. My brothers were more than happy to sleep side by side in front of the fire in the main room. It was a position they likely would have found themselves in most nights regardless of having their own rooms, given the exhaustion in their bodies and the ale in their bellies.

I sighed into my novel’s crinkling pages. Matthias, the blonde warrior-prince-knight-hero, had just slain a magically mutated wildebeest, standing up from its mangled body only to find himself surrounded again, by wolves. He took on the predators, one by one.

C’mon, Matthias, I cheered silently. I shuttered my eyes from the page, imagining myself greeting him once the battle finished. I was his long-lost maiden, found at last, appearing from a supernatural mist. The spell that had kept me away was broken, now that he’d defeated that gruesome beast. Weembraced intimately, pulling back only to examine one another. We’d barely looked at each other a moment before a straggling wolf, somehow un-slain by Matthias, leaped out of nowhere, raging red eyes trained on Matthias’s neck. But I was quick, too quick for the wolf, raising my hip dagger to its throat before it could bite into my returned love, making me the hero?—

I jolted at the sound of my father’s footsteps outside. I quickly tucked my book between the sheets before he crept into my room. He sat down next to me, and though I did not stir, he spoke.

“You donothave to accept his offer tomorrow, Terra. It is your choice. But you must understand the gravity of the situation. Spring Day may seem routine and archaic to you, but to Argention it’s a proud tradition. A dance means you will be entering into a promise with him. A promise that you will be courted with the intention of marriage. Do not make a promise you cannot keep.

“I have little to give you in this world, Terra, and this world will take more from you than it will share. But if there’s one thing I ever say that you remember, let it be this. There is a little voice inside of you—something old and knowing and of the universe. It is not the thoughts that swirl in our minds or the stories we tell ourselves, but rather a deep wisdom that lives in our gut. This is your intuition. Seek it out, and it will be your guiding compass. If you don’t know what decision to make, it will lead you. If you are blind, it will see for you. If you are afraid, it will be brave. Should you feel alone one day, remember, you are not. Becauseitis there.”

And with that, he gave my hair a loving stroke and got up.

I released a shaky breath.Did Father just tell me to refuse Mav?No, he loved Mav like a third son, and some days more than his own, depending on what mischief my brothers had gotten into.

But the words he didn’t say were the ones that struck me. Words I’d heard from everyone else in my family, from the other ladies in the market, from the traders in the square. From my teachers and the seamstress and the patrons who bought my mother’s jams. Hell, even Gia had implied it.

You may never do better than Mav, Terra. He’s a good one, Terra. He will love you. He will be true to you. You would be stupid to turn him down.

The thought reverberated through me. Every single day. One that a small voice, coming from somewhere within me, refused to accept.

CHAPTER TWO

THE OUTSIDER

The morning of Spring Day was very apropos of its name, with clear skies, chirping birds, and too much pollen. The season incarnate.

Despite the weather’s optimism, dread weighed like bricks on my chest.

I had known Mav my whole life. I knew he would be a kind and gentle husband. It wasn’t the idea of him specifically that made me feel like oxygen slipped from my lungs but the idea that I would blindly tether myself to him for life. How did people rejoice in such commitment with no knowledge of the world? The finality of it sat unsettled in my stomach like curdled milk.

Such thoughts, mixed with the uncertainty stoked by my father’s words, plagued me all day. From morning chores, through breakfast and mid-day weeding, all the way until I found myself submerged in water, washing the grime from my skin in wait for Gia.

“Terra!” A voice sang through the cracked window to my right. I hoisted myself up, fists clenching on the sides of the tub, to see Gia marching down towards the cottage, carrying what looked like a sherpa’s pack. I giggled to myself. At least if I wasgoing to be dressed up like a doll, the right person for the job would be doing the dressing.

Gia burst through the door a few moments after I rushed to put on some clothes. My room wasn’t big, but it offered enough space for a small bed, a tub, and Gia’s heap of supplies.

She furrowed her brow at me. “Your hair is still wet.”

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