The travels of Yan Overton

The enchanted child

Chapter One

The enchanted child

Yan entered the world beneath the lambent light of a gibbous moon during the most ferocious storm ever witnessed in the Grayweald, the wooded lands of Mercia.

His first gasped cries muted and subdued amidst the raging winds, that in their fury crashed like waves upon the staunch boughs of lofty beeches encircling the humble cruck house that stood nestled within a murky sodden glade.

And yet such a joyous occasion as a birth was to be grievously damned with remorse, as the child's existence was at the sacrifice of his mother's life. The helpless infant's wails suffused with the agonising whines of his uncle, who at the loss of his beloved sister could not contain his grief no more and fell despairingly to his knees in floods of tears, his heart shattered like shards of glass upon the cold stone floor.

"Why?" he wretched in a dolorous tone, "Why?"

Even from such afflicted beginnings it seemed that Yan was destined to endure an equally miserable childhood.

Forced to live a life of serfdom, toiling the fields of his uncle Jeremiah's farm he was shown little or no love, his dour uncle resenting Yan as if he were solely accountable for the loss of his younger sister and yet ironically raising the boy as his own, although it must be said that it was probably more as gesture of respect for the loss of his sibling than empathizing for the misadventures of an orphan.

With no mother and an absent father Yan was quite alone in the world and yet through all this he remained sanguine. During the day he would plough with oxen in the fields and at night he would sleep in the barn with the animals, high up on the hay bales beneath a cotton blanket where he would weave incredible dreams of his prospective exploits.

"One day I will travel the world on a huge carrack ship with sails as big as a barn and visit strange new lands" he would announce boldly whilst holding up his tattered blanket like a mizzensail to the aggregation of livestock that looked on apathetically at the spritely youth, the only acknowledgement hollered from his odious uncle beyond the barn doors, scolding him for his boisterous discourse.

"Keep your voice down boy!" he would roar impatiently.

The farm was a smallholding consisting of two detached buildings made from wattle and daub and situated close to a copse, two miles outside the village of Nettleham. Yan was permitted to dine in the house during the day but slept in the barn at night. This wasn't solely due to the antipathy engendered in his uncle but his duties as a farm labourer, to sleep in the barn and protect the livestock from wild animals or potential rustlers was as much a part of his activities as ploughing.

Now this trite existence may appear monotonous but there were occasions when Yan could wander off for short periods and have time on his own. It was during these moments when he began to develop an interest in the natural world, observing with wonder the industrious ant, tenaciously dragging a leaf, or the bumble bees hovering and flitting amongst the foxgloves that bordered the fields. He would always enjoy collecting acorns and wild flower seeds in autumn then propagate them in preparation for spring, creating prismatic streams of wild flowers that flowed around the fields in summer like fallen rainbows.

It was whilst on one of his brief jaunts one day that he stumbled upon a large oak tree laying prostrate upon an area of brambles that had come down during the night. As he waded through the splintered limbs that lay strewn about him he began to discern the faint yelps of what sounded like fox kits coming from beneath the bole, rushing over to the source of the sound he discovered to his horror that the mighty oak had fallen straight across the entrance hole to a vixens den, trapping her young kits inside. Hastily he dug around the trunk with his hands to free them but to no avail.