Under the Golden Mountain

Chapter 1

Odessa was only ten years old, and the only person in town that would speak to her was her imaginary friend. Everyone else refused to acknowledge the waif of a girl whose mother had just passed, and so, three days after Odessa realized she was truly alone in the world, she ran out of potatoes.

What was an orphan supposed to eat? Odessa did not know. She had tried begging, but everyone ignored her. She tried stealing, but she didn't have the heart for it. She tried selling some of her mother's old possessions, but no one would buy them, likely for the same reasons that no one would speak to her.

Odessa didn't understand those reasons. She understood that she was hungry, and that winter was coming, and there would be no one there to provide for her.

"Grim," Odessa said. She was calling on her imaginary friend. He often spoke to her when she was alone, and now that her mother was dead, she was alone all the time.

She tried again, her voice small in the emptiness of her one room home. "Grim. Are you here?"

"I am here."

Odessa had never seen Grim. His voice came out of the fireplace, or on the howling wind, or on the rustling of grass as a rabbit hopped through a field. Today she heard him in the bubbling of the water that she boiled in the fireplace.

"I have nothing to eat and no one will help me." Odessa had never complained to Grim, but she was out of options.

She thought she heard the bubbling stop for a moment. A pause hung in the air.

"Are you asking me for help?"

Odessa did not know any better. "I think so," she said. She did not know how her friend could help her. He was just a voice, not a person. He was just a voice that she heard when she was alone. But Odessa knew he was the only one that would listen to her now. "I just need someone to stay with. I've run out of food and no one in town will even speak to me."

"They won't speak to you because they think you have what your mother had. They think that if they speak to you they will fall dead as she did."

"Oh." Her stomach sank. The townspeople thought she was cursed. And there would be no convincing them otherwise. Odessa could remember the time a man fell into the river and the townspeople refused to help him out. They were a superstitious lot.

"But I still speak to you, no? Do you accept my help?"

Odessa did not know any better. "Yes."

"Go to the convent in the shadow of the Golden Mountain. There, the Abbess will welcome you, feed you, care for you, and in return, you will stay and give you life to the convent for the next ten years. Do not leave the convent grounds. Do not tell anyone that I sent you there."

Odessa frowned. This was a lot to remember. She knew where the convent was because she had gone there once before with her mother. "So I just go to the convent and live there for ten years?"

The pot on the fireplace bubbled louder, as if Grim was urging her to listen harder.

"Go to the convent. Stay for ten years and do not leave the grounds. They will take care of you in exchange for ten years of your life dedicated to the saints."

She may have been ten and naïve, but Odessa knew this was important. "Why can't I leave?"

"Because we've made a bargain. And if you tell anyone, something terrible will befall the one you love most in the world. As soon as you walk through those gates, it's ten years. Do you understand?"

Odessa did not really understand. The idea of a home for the next ten years appealed to her. And the threat against the one she loved the most did not really mean anything, because her mother was the only one she loved and she was dead. In Odessa's eyes, there was no downside to accepting Grim's help. She would go to the convent and stay for ten years, telling no one that she couldn't leave, that she had pledged ten years of her life to the Saints. It did not matter that she had never been religious before. She could be religious if that's what would earn her a home.

So she said yes. She went to the convent.