Journey of a Girl

A Proper Education: Chapter Twenty-Four

"Tell me about the woods," Sally said when they took a break from their chores.

Her words had a slight slur and her nose was red, a telling sign that Sally had been draining her secret bottle at a rapid pace. She was slumped over the counter, cradling an empty cup and watching Credence eat a bowl of stew.

"My head is seven sizes too big today—tell me a story to take my mind off it."

Credence recounted the time when skeletons visited her home, describing in detail the fascinating way they moved as they built the family well, and how the food they ate fell through their bones.

Sally listened with a smile on her face, not interrupting once and only tearing her gaze away to refill her cup. When Credence finished with the skeletons crumbling to dust and scattering to the wind, Sally gave a dreamy sigh.

"I don't know if a word you said is true, but I hope it is. The things you must have seen out there!"

"What about you?" Credence asked. "What was life like with your ma and pa?"

Sally rolled her empty cup back and forth on the counter.

"Mum was a pleasant woman. Happy all the time. Da was...less so—but he was never mean. He just had a sadness about him. Something in life that hit him with it."

"What was it?"

"All the men in my family carried it, Da said to me once. Said I was lucky to be a girl because it meant the sadness would pass over me. It had to do with his father's father's father or something like that. I wasn't supposed to ask about it, but one day Da told me he was never really content because he was searching for something. All the men in my family were. Something...other, you know."

"What something?"

Sally shrugged. "Never did find out. Mum told me it was the same with Da's father too. Somewhere long ago in the line, one of the men, with a wife and children of his own, took it upon himself to leave. Maybe it was a curse, or maybe the urge caught him just right, but he took off from the towns while babblin' about some higher purpose. Talkin' about greatness and royalty deep in the woods. There was even a tale about him runnin' through the streets, naked as nature, taking dirt and leaves from the ground and covering his shoulders and head like it was clothes."

Sally stopped rolling the cup.

"Ever heard anything about that?" she asked, hope in her voice. "About royals in the woods?"

Credence bit the inside of her cheek.

She knew quite a lot about royalty living in the woods.

She wasn't sure how Sally would take it, to hear that the same girl she was talking to had been promised to become the queen of them.

"No," Credence said. "Never heard anything about that."

Sally grunted. "Well, that betrayal, that leaving, broke the heart of every man in my family, even those who weren't born yet. They carried it like...like a hat on their head. A hat of blue, that's what Da would say on the days when he could barely lift himself from bed. 'My hat of blue is on tight today'. But sometimes..."

Sally gave a heavy sigh.

"Sometimes I'm afraid that sadness got passed to me, somehow. Da never had a son to give it to, so maybe I got it instead. And I think...if I don't fight it all the time, it'll overtake me. And one day it'll be me running into the woods naked."

"That's not true," Credence said and meant it. "You're the kindest person I've met in the towns. You're special, Sally."

The woman smiled, but it did not touch her eyes.