Maiden Wreath

Part 1

 It is the second week before the Midsummer's Eve on the northern world. The flowers are blooming to take up the little space nature has left for them, filling the air with sweet jubilating scents that tease you on your every step to the forest.

Forest is where we are going today. It is the last time to collect healing herbs mom said, when she sent us off in the morning. We went all together, it was easier this way : me, Zahrah, Erika and Viika. I'm supposed to teach Erika and Viika, but I have little success with them wondering off all the time. Zahrah is already married and lives in her new home- she only came with us because she is afraid to go to the forest alone and the other women in her new family are too old to come. That's what you get if married off to man as old as your father. But soon she'll have a daughter of her own, who will get her maiden circlet dad made us.

Erika and Viika are not married yet. Viika is not, because she is too young and Erika... Well, Erika is sort of already taken, but the process hasn't been finished yet and so she, by the law, is not married yet. But she'll make a fine bride when the leaves turn to gold and fog covers the earth, because her wedding dress is silvery grey and her hair are just as golden as the leaves. I should know, I helped her make it. Then she'll move away to the south, closer to the sea.

I, though the eldest of the girls, wasn't actually the eldest. Zahrah was. I was found wondering around on the beach fifteen years ago and they, good people, took me in. They say a boy from the village brought me here, to my family, but I don't remember - I was too young.

I loved my two sisters, they meant the world to me, and my two brothers too, though one I hadn't seen in years – it was quite common around here to send your brothers off for trading roots - and the other was now busy keeping the household together while father was tuned on his blacksmith works. He loved being the only man in the village, who knew how to deal with the rage of raw metals. He even had two apprentices, from whom one lived with us and the other came every morning from the neighboring village. My brothers are older than me, first being Magnus and the second Hagen.

And that's what our little family was. Next to them were about another twenty five hearths and ten in northern side and fifteen in the south, who weren't quite part of us, but belonged in our bloodlines. Meaning they don't bother us, we didn't bother them – most times. Little grudges between families are not even worth mentioning.

If you leave people out, the place itself is quite beautiful. I say quite, because the nice weather stays here only for the summer and most time of the year it's mere one storm after another sort of weather.

That's why mom sent us out to gather herbs today, because it wasn't raining. It always does on Midsummer's Eve. Perhaps we angered gods with something or did our ancestors do something to aggravate them enough to take away the only true holiday we had. Old people say if it rains on Midsummer's Eve, the winter will be cold. They sure knew what they were talking about - swimming through snow up to your knees or hiding in the house from the creeping cold is not what I like to do. But it is a good motivation to keep the spinning wheels going and spindles working.

Today I didn't have to think about it.

"Viika has wondered off again." Zahrah hummed from where she was gathering moss. It had taken her quite some time to find it and she had said little since we left from the village.

I spun my head up. "Not again! The girl has no abilities to stay put and do what is told to her!" This was the fifth time she had disappeared and I had no willingness left to go after her again or yell my lungs out to get her answer me. "One day the spirits will take her if she isn't careful!" I cursed and continued collecting the blackberries.

"Don't say that! You know she can't really help it."

"Yes she can," I argued, "if she keeps a keen watch not to let us out of site!"