Marin, Book 1 (The Xortha Chronicles)

Chapter 1: On The Farm

Marin

Chapter 1: On the Farm

    Nestled in the Aeonar Forest, two leagues from Brennan's Crossing, was a farm near the hamlet of Sleepy Willow. Not a big farm mind you, but one big enough to support the Demense family. The Demense family consisted of Jeb and Natty Demense, who were father and mother to their son, Tad, a young man of 19 summers, who was eight hands tall and had sandy blonde hair and gray eyes. And there daughter, Marin, who had seen 15 summers and had redish blonde hair, eyes as blue as the sky on a clear day, and pale skin. And she was quite tall for a girl at seven hands and a finger.

    Today was a typical day on the Demense farm: it was morning and they all sat down at the table for their morning meal. Eggs, ham, and buttered bread. After the meal, Natty began cleaning up and everyone else went outside to begin their daily chores. Jeb went to the barn to milk the cow, Tad fed the horses and pigs, and Marin went to feed the chickens. Next, they went to the garden and began pulling weeds. It hadn't rained in almost a month so there weren't many weeds to pull but the hard part came when they had to take buckets to the stream and fill them with water, then return to the garden and begin watering their crops. This had been a daily routine since the last bit of rain they had, and it took the better part of the day to get the entire garden watered.

    After a day of laboring to the point of exhaustion, they all went in the house for evening meal and a bit of rest. The evening meal was a bowl of bacon and white beans with cornbread. One of Marin's favorites, and today, her Ma had a peach pie baked so Marin had a small slice of pie.

    One morning, Jeb went to Marin and said, "I need you to go into the attic and search around for something we can sell; the garden isn't producing well enough to sell many extra vegetables and we need coin for other things." So Marin went to a ladder in the corner of the house and climbed up to the attic.

    When Marin reached the top of the ladder, she sneezed from all the dust, which stirred up more dust. She covered her face with her hand and looked around. Apart from dust and cobwebs, there were boxes of old clothes, a disused chest of drawers, an old rusty sword setting next to an equally rusty helm, and a sack of books.

    Marin gathered some of the clothes, the sword and helm, and the sack of books and took them down the ladder. She thought they wouldn't get much for dusty clothes, or the rusty sword and helm so Marin asked her Pa if he could clean up the sword and helm, then she grabbed her ma's wash board and a cake of soap, and took the clothes to the stream and began washing them. 

    Most of the clothes came clean easily enough. A pair of trousers had holes in the knees which she could patch later, but they all looked in good shape otherwise.

    Marin finished the wash and took the clothes back to the house and hung them out to dry. She then remembered the sack of books she brought down from the attic and decided to have a look at them to see what the books were about.

    In the sack there were three books, all leather bound and held closed with leather cords. She opened the first book: "Apprentice Level Magic" by Aleister Lieber. The second book was titled "Dregorian Explained" by Naila Rani, and the third book, "Magical Postures", by Mearl Bender.

    Marin had heard stories about magicians doing incredible things but thought they were all made up just to entertain children, but she began reading the apprentice book and discovered that it explained how to cast spells, and in the back of the book were the spells it referenced, in a strange language. Could this mean that magic was actually real?, she asked herself. As she read, Marin discovered the strange language was called Dregorian, the language of magic.