The Wolf and The Blossom

Chapter 1

Anne

The day is warm with a cool breeze. I sit with mother, washing clothes in the laundry bucket, scrubbing away stains. It's been five months since we arrived in the Americas to start a new life. It's exciting and all, but I miss my old life. Tea parties, embroidery, reading; all a foreign thought in this New World.

The wind brushes my hair away from my face and the men come back, happier than they should be for a day after hunting.

"Yeah, that will show them Savages," one man with a red beard drawls.

"Dear, go inside and have Elizabeth help you prepare for dinner," mother says, eyes wary with the conversation taking place.

With a heavy sigh, I pick up my four year old sister, Elizabeth, and take her inside without a word. She treats me as if I am a child. Putting Elizabeth down, I start preparing the table for dinner and prepping the potatoes. If I were back in England I'd be at my friend Mary's house, we'd be taking an afternoon stroll through her lustrous gardens.

Instead I am here.

Mother and father wanted a fresh start, they say, from England. But only I know they are just running from their sins.

Unfortunately their sins came with them. Not in the form of actions but the aftermath, the memories. It comes in the form of mother's glazed blue eyes when she looks at me. When father shows his favoritism towards Elizabeth, the daughter he always wanted. His daughter.

Long straight blonde hair, blue eyes the color of the sea, his pert nose upon her little face. Unlike me with my unruly brown waves, brown eyes like dirt and his nose does not sit upon my face as my sisters does. I am not his child.

Once dinner is ready, father eats with us... well them, he's never spoken directly to me. Not once in my nineteen years of life. It stopped bothering me a long time ago. He dotes on Elizabeth, listening to her ramble. He gazes at the ghost of mother who sits with us but doesn't look at father and flinches whenever he touches her.

This isn't the life she wanted.

After dinner, I take Elizabeth, leaving mother and father to their own devices, to the small pond at the edge of the village, letting her splash around. "Fishy!" she squeals, chasing after it until she finds her next victim.

I look off to the sunset, finding solace in its beauty. A small peace in the midst of my dysfunctional life.

When I look back towards Elizabeth she thrusts a slimy, big frog in my face. "Look! It's a prince! Can I keep him? Pleeeeeeeeease Annnnnnnne," she whines, making a pout face.

Giggling, I nod. "It'll be our little secret!" I whisper conspiratorially, kissing her head. "Now come along so we can ready for bed. Don't forget, the prince is a secret!"

Elizabeth nod solemnly and walks along side me to the house. Mother and father are in the same spots we left them, him looking at her, her staring at the wall. I take a bucket and wash Elizabeth, then she puts her frog in the bucket, getting in her nightgown, jumping into bed.

"Anne.." she whispers as I tuck her into bed. "Why is mother always sad?"

I close my eyes and let out a long breath. "She heard a sad story."

"What was the story?"

"Well, I can't tell you or else you'll be sad too!" I tease, stroking her damp hair back.

She shakes her head vigorously. "I won't! I promise! Please tell me!" she squirms excitedly.

I laugh and snuggle her so she can rest her head on my belly. "Well, once there was a girl. She was happy as could be, living with her mother and father and she fell in love with a boy." I stroke her hair as she stays raptured on my every word.

"The boy worked in her farm house. They became very close and they knew they forever wanted to be together." Elizabeth sighs happily, loving the idea of romance. "Well, the girl's family arranged a marriage without her knowing, for a man she did not care for."

"Oh no!" Elizabeth gasps and looks up at me, balling her tiny fists in my skirts.

"In secret the girl and the farm boy met over and over until they made a baby... when that baby came the husband was furious. The baby looked nothing like him or his wife. So," Elizabeth interrupts me.

"So! So! What does he do!" her blue eyes are wide with trepidation, body tense as if living the story.

"The husband used the servant boy for awful tasks, beating him for the smallest of slip ups. And one day the servant boy dared to hold his daughter. The daughter he made with the woman he loved so fiercely, and the husband killed him." The last sentence comes out in a whoosh of air. I was five when my father first and last held me.

"Oh no, Anne. That was sad. How can I help mother?"

I tuck her back into bed and walk to the door. "Just be you, little one. Sleep tight, I love you."

"I love you," she murmurs, falling into sleep.