Anais of Brightshire Read online

  ~ End of Part One ~

  Author’s Comments: Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed the story. Book 2, titled ‘Anais of the Stolen Road’, and Book 3, titled ‘Anais of Gable’s House’, are currently available. A boxed set of the first three books, titled ‘The Anais Collection’, is also available . I am in the process of writing Book 4, and hope to publish it in the summer of 2014. Chapter 1 of Book 2 is included below.

  Anais of the Stolen Road: Chapter 1

  Dearest Anais,

  I spent today’s lesson time hiding in a cupboard in Mildred’s rooms. She was quite agitated that she couldn’t find me and complained to my mother. In response, my mother - normally such a sweet woman - has instructed that I stay in my rooms tonight and not attend the dinner or the festivities planned for Lord Reginald Pendragon’s visit. I’ve enclosed with this note a rather pretty ruby pendant that Lord Pendragon gifted me last evening. Although it’s very nice, I fear that he has given it to me for unnerving reasons. My brother is very sick, and there has been talk that if he dies I will have to break my betrothal to Thomas and marry some westerner, who will rule Barriershire through me. I don’t like it at all. I think Lord Pendragon wishes me to marry his youngest son, assuming my brother dies. His son is awful and I hate him.

  My love always,

  Give my best to dearest Cedric,

  Mediera Evangiline

  Dearest Mediera,

  I’m sorry to hear of your brother’s illness. There have been many who have fallen ill in Brightshire, as well. Cedric says that Thomas is bedridden. I will ask the sister of mercy to pray that both Thomas and your brother recover, and that you never have to marry against your will. Thellium has been occupied trying to help Thomas, so I have been left with little to fill my time. Although, the truth is that even before Thomas fell ill, Thellium and I had been on difficult terms. I don’t know what will happen to me if Thellium decides he no longer wishes to keep me as his apprentice. It’s a constant unspoken threat and I can hardly bear it. I don’t feel free to tell you about the details of the unfortunate situation in this letter, but when you visit, I’ll tell you everything. Cedric and I are anxiously awaiting the summer and being with you once again.

  All of my love,

  Anais

  Dearest Anais,

  This has to be my last letter to you for awhile. I’ve begged Mildred to find a runner in the market to deliver it instead of using our post, for I’m certain my letters are being tampered with. Lord Pendragon returned to Ellshire, but he left his son Colin. My father named Colin Sheriff of Barriershire, and I’m certain my father is ceding too many decisions to him. Colin says my family must leave the Great House, that the country air will be better for my brother. He will rule the city in my family’s absence. I think my father is making a grave mistake, but he will not listen to me. I fear I will not be allowed to visit Brightshire this summer. Do not send a letter in response. Colin has replaced all of the women in our household besides Mildred, and I think any word you send will be intercepted before it reaches me. I am scared of what the future holds. I will write again when I find a safe method. I hope this letter finds you well.

  Give Cedric my love,

  Mediera Evangiline

  I never told Mediera about the spell that Cedric and I had cast so many months before. I hinted about it in the letters, but I feared that if she knew I had dabbled, she would hate me. I thought that if Cedric and I could tell her in person, we could make her understand.

  I shook a pair of cold bone dice in my hands and threw them onto a wooden square we had set on my bed. Five and six. I smiled and placed my hand on the small pile of coppers.

  Cedric rolled his eyes. “That’s your sixth win in a row. You must be cheating.”

  I shook my head. “You’re just having a run of bad luck. Another game?”

  “No,” he growled. “Did you know that they’re going to hang Ceven?”

  “He’s the guard who went mad last month and killed that shopkeeper in the market, right?”

  “That’s him. He’ll be executed in the square next week.”

  I nodded. “Good. I’ll watch.” I had seen the shopkeeper’s children weeping. I had no pity for the man who was responsible for their grief.

  “I saw him in a cell in the guard’s tower. His eyes had changed. It was so strange, they turned solid black and shiny - looked like stones of black onyx.”

  Black eyes, I thought. I wondered if that meant something. The boy in the cage at the market I saw so many years ago - his eyes had been solid black too. Sometimes, I tried to scratch out the image of him that seemed so etched into my memory. But the more I tried to erase him, the brighter his face seemed.

  A sharp knock interrupted our conversation.

  I opened the door to find a winded scull, clearly a runner from the kitchens. The boy’s thick mop of ashy hair was prettily disheveled, and his cheeks glowed bright and rosy.

  “Are you Anais?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I was curious - I had hoped for weeks that Mediera would have found a way to send another letter - perhaps he held a note from her.

  “Your father requests you return home. Your mother is very ill.”

  “What?” That wasn’t what I had expected at all. “My mother?”

  “Who sent the message?” Cedric asked.

  “I have no idea.” The boy shrugged.

  Cedric dug a copper out of his pocket and gave it to the boy.

  He flicked the copper in the air, caught it, and then grinned and ran off.

  Cedric looked at me, his forehead creased. “You never speak of your family.”

  “There’s not much to say.” I stood and paced the small confines of my room. I would have to go home of course. Perhaps she had recovered already - not everyone died of this sickness.

  “Are you going to go home?”

  “Yes, I think I must. I should go talk to Thellium before I leave. Even though he hardly speaks to me, it feels wrong just to leave.” I was officially apprenticed to Thellium Vance, who acted as a scribe in the Great House, but lately - ever since he caught Cedric and I trying to cast a spell in the courtyard - he had grown distant. I was so afraid that he would tell me he didn’t want me as an apprentice any longer.

  “I think you are being too difficult on Old Thell. He’s just anxious about Thomas.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Cedric. How could he act like that night never happened? How could he act like things just went back to normal with Thellium? Did he even care? “I think it’s more than that, Cedric. He hates me.”

  Cedric rolled his eyes. “You mean because we played around with that book. It was just a game, nothing happened. He overreacted. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I frowned. Maybe it wasn’t real to him, because it didn’t work for him. I never asked him if he dreamt of the dead man that night after we cast the spell. My dream had been so horrible, I was afraid to speak of it aloud. And here he was acting like it didn’t matter at all. The truth was I knew why he didn’t care. To him, Thellium was just a servant, and his feelings were irrelevant. For that matter, so were mine.

  “How are you going to travel?” He smiled and blithely changed the subject.

  “I don’t know.” I sank back against the stone wall, grateful for its support. “I suppose I’ll go the market and see if I can find Gil. He could take me home.”

  “He might take you there, but there’ll be no guarantee you’ll come back. I’ll go with you. We’ll borrow horses from the stable.”

  “We? You aren’t coming with me.”

  “Like hell I’m not. I’m not letting you go alone.” His lips pressed firmly together and he glowered, an expression that he often formed when he was trying to get his way.

  “Cedric, be serious. I may be able to disappear for a few days, but you certainly can’t.”

  “I’m coming.” He stared at me, his gaze f
irm, and put his hands on my shoulders.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled sharply. Did I really wish to stop him? No. “Fine.”

  When I requested a leave of absence from Thellium, his only response was a distracted nod. His lack of interest caused my stomach to twist up in concern, a too familiar feeling these days.

  Cedric and I walked to the stables in silence. Addie, who had advanced to lead stable hand, provided us with our mounts. Her hair was shorn so short she looked like a boy. I grinned at her wordlessly. Her promotion must have been recent, for we hadn’t crossed paths in the stables before and only lead stable hands interacted with the members of the Seve household. She smiled a broad open smile back at me, and touched my hand briefly after she helped me gain my seating.

  “Are you friends with that servant who gave us the horse?” Cedric asked in a harsh tone as we rode our horses out into the field.

  “Yes.” I didn’t feel like trying to explain my relationship with Addie. Cedric wouldn’t understand.

  “I see,” Cedric grunted.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “No. I’m sorry, let’s just forget it.”

  The mood between us darkened as we rode on, perhaps aided by the overcast sky and my fears over my mother’s health. We were moving at a fast pace, making it quicker than my initial trip with Gil. It only took four hours before we approached my family’s land on the river. We stopped our horses a mile from my old house. “We can’t take the horses any further. The land’s too marshy. It would be dangerous.”

  “It doesn’t even look safe for us to walk here.”

  “Are you afraid, brave Cedric?” I taunted.

  “Me? Never. Lead me onward.”

  We tethered the horses to a tree and walked, careful of our footing, while moving long jagged brushes out of the way with our hands.

  “Shyte!”

  “What happened?”

  “My hand, I...” I lifted up my arm and showed him a long scratch extending from my palm to my elbow.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked as he touched my shoulder.

  “Not really. I was just surprised.” I looked up to his eyes and then turned my face toward the horizon, where a small house lay hidden in mess of vines. “This is it,” I said quietly, pointing to my old home. The house seemed smaller than I remembered; it was built of marsh wood and roofed with thatched brushes.

  “Should we knock?”

  “No,” I whispered to him. I put my right hand up to my mouth, and called loudly, “Hallo!”

  The door opened, and a young man with tousled blonde hair poked his head out of the door. “Who’s there?” he called.

  “It’s me, Anais,” I called in answer.

  He poked his head back in the house and then opened the door wider and ran out to me, while whooping loudly. He threw me over his shoulder and twirled me around before dropping me to the ground in front of him. “My god, sister, I thought we would never see you again.”

  “Oh, Simon, I’ve missed you. It’s been so long.” I didn’t want him to let me go.

  “Look at you,” he cried, eyeing me up and down. “You’re all grown up.”

  I smiled. “Four years will do that to a girl. Is Mah okay? I received a message that she was ill.”

  Simon’s long narrow form deflated. “Oh sweet sister, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.” He inhaled sharply. “Mah’s dead. She held on as long as she could.”

  “I’m too late then.”

  “Yes. We sent Gil with the message a few weeks ago. We hoped you would get here sooner.”

  I breathed deeply, and fought the stinging that threatened my eyes.

  “Where’s Dah and Petey?”

  “On the water. I would have been with them, except someone has to stay home and salt the fish, now that Mah’s gone. When Dah comes back, he’ll take you to Mah’s grave.” Simon turned to Cedric. “Who’s the fella?”

  Cedric extended his arm and shook hands with Simon. “My name’s Cedric. I also live in the Great House. I didn’t want Anais to have to make the trip alone.”

  I looked at Cedric, narrowing my eyes. I was surprised that he hadn’t disclosed that he was Lord Seve’s son. But, perhaps he meant to keep it a secret. Revealing his identity would create an immediate sense of tension and separation, and Cedric’s situation put him in more than enough scenarios of social isolation, he likely didn’t want to step into yet another.

  “How kind of you, Cedric.” There was a sense of hesitancy in Simon’s words, as if he wasn’t entirely happy with the presence of an unknown boy in our midst.

  Simon turned back to me. “You didn’t come with Gil?”

  “No, a runner delivered the message. I don’t know why Gil didn’t find me himself. I hope he’s alright.” I paused. I didn’t want to dwell on Gil’s odd method of communicating with me. I looked up at my brother, a half smile forming at the corner of my lips. “We rode horses,” I whispered.

  “Really, now? Horses! That is exciting. You left them up in the drylands?”

  “We tied them to a tree, just where Gil ties up the mules.”

  Cedric and I helped Simon with gutting and salting at the large wooden block table in the center of the kitchen. Poor Cedric was close to useless. I don’t think he’d ever done anything close to manual labor in his entire life. He kept looking at me in confusion as Simon and I walked him through the process.

  As the sun started to fade, I got up to make a big pot of fish stew and liberally seasoned the pot with spices Gil had brought us from all over the Seven Shires. It didn’t take long at all to remember where Mah had everything stashed.

  “Oh Anais, I hope Dah can talk you into staying. I miss your cooking desperately. Petey and I have been trying, but we always mess everything up.”

  “You, hush now Simon. Don’t tell your lies.”

  “I’m serious. It never made any sense that they sent you to Brightshire in the first place. You should have stayed here with us.”

  “You know Mah insisted.”

  We heard the sounds of men approaching. I smiled in my certainty that it was Dah and Petey coming home.

  “Dah, we have to try the east bank tomorrow. I’m certain...” Petey stopped short as he entered. “Sweet sisters of mercy - Anais, you’re home.” Petey dropped the satchel he was carrying and embraced me.

  I let myself disappear for that one moment in his affection.

  “My girl,” Dah said with a smile as Petey and I broke our embrace so I could hug him. “My little girl. I was so afraid I would never see you again.”

  I cried against his shoulder. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for Mah.”

  He brushed my hair out of my eyes. “She understood. It was her time.”

  “I should have visited. I just didn’t think...”

  “Shush. We’ll talk about your Mah tomorrow. Tonight let’s celebrate your homecoming and devour whatever concoction you cooked up. The smell of it is dazzling; you were always such a good cook. I should have known you were home based only on the smell.”

  “You’re so grown up,” Petey said, as he patted my head. “You must be fourteen now, my beautiful sister. I can hardly believe it.”

  I nodded and smiled through my tears. I was so happy to see my father and brothers, my heart felt full in a way I had almost forgotten.

  The next morning Dah woke me up at dawn. “Come out with me for a walk, we’ll leave your friend to the hands of your brothers, I’m sure they’ll keep him busy.”

  I followed Dah out to Mah’s grave, a simply carved headstone standing alone in a secluded grove. We sat down and I bowed my head and prayed silently to the sisters of mercy.

  Dah patted my head as I cried against his shoulder. “Why did she make me leave?” I choked.

  “I hoped by now you knew. Didn’t Anabella find you?”

  “Anabella?”

  Dah sighed. “There’s so much I need to
tell you. I don’t know where to start.”

  “Dah. What’re you talking about?”

  “The beginning then,” Dah sighed. “There were three sisters, the daughters of the Lord and Lady Seve of Brightshire. Corrine was the eldest, Melise the middle child, and Anabella the youngest. They were beautiful girls, beloved to all of the townspeople. Your Mah, my Magda, was a distant relative of the family, and she came into the household to be Anabella’s handmaiden. Magda looked just like the Seve girls, with the same bright blonde curls and big cornflower blue eyes. The girl’s were sweet to her and treated her just like another sister. They would flit around the market, all four of them, like little birds. I had a shop in town then, sold little odds and ends that Gil would bring back from his travels. Gil should have run the shop, he was the older brother, but he couldn’t manage to stay in one place for very long. Gil would bring me these pretty little glass figurines from Barriershire. The girls loved them; they would come in to my shop at least once a week to look at them.” Dah dabbed his eyebrow with his sleeve and I itched absently at the scratch on my arm.

  “When Corrine’s fiancé, Robert of Kinshire, came for the wedding, the sisters were so busy that only Magda still made time to visit my shop. We would talk for hours, and sometimes I would close the shop and she and I would stroll around the market together. It was lucky for me that I fell in love with Magda. I could never have had any sort of chance with the Seve sisters. In truth, I shouldn’t have had much of a chance with Magda, but I think with all of the wedding preparations, there was a sense of romance in the air. When I proposed, she was surprised at first, and she took some time to consider. That month I waited was torture. But finally, on the evening after Corrine’s wedding, she came to me and gave me my answer.” I had never heard this story; I had always imagined that we had always lived here in the marshes, forever separate from the city.

  “We had a small wedding, and lived quite happily in the rooms above my shop. Corrine and Anabella came to the wedding, which was sweet. By that point, Melise had been shipped off to Barriershire, she was affianced to the Lord of Barriershire’s eldest son, Uther. She was to spend some time there before the wedding, which was set for the following year. Magda was pregnant with Petey less then a year after we married, at the same time that Corrine was pregnant with Thomas. Corrine was so busy, which we understood, so it was only Anabella who would come to visit us, but even her visits eventually stopped. My Magda and I were busy with Petey and then Simon, so although we were sad when Anabella stopped visiting we were so distracted with the children that we didn’t give it much thought. And then Corrine died in childbirth with their second child. Although the baby, Clara, survived, the girl’s parents, the Lord and Lady of Brightshire, just seemed to waste away in their grief. Robert was named the Lord of Brightshire until the baby Thomas came of age, and then he remarried so quickly. Robert’s second marriage was quite the scandal; I think the girl was with child at the time. That poor child will never really belong to any class. The talk around town was that the child would have been better off if Robert hadn’t married her at all.”

  Dah paused and cleared his throat. “But I digress, it wasn’t long after Robert’s second marriage that one grim night Anabella came to us. She had a little black haired baby with her, a baby with big grey eyes. I had never known Anabella to be so terrified. She gave us the baby and told us to take the baby and leave Brightshire.”

  “A black haired baby?”

  He nodded.

  “Me?” I squeaked as I put together the pieces of his story.

  He nodded again.

  “Anabella told us your name was Anais and she told us to take you away with us and to hide, but she made us promise to send you back to the Great House when you were of an age to serve. She said she would find you and keep you safe. Gil took us out of Brightshire in the back of his cart. Keeping a two year old, a three year old, and an infant quiet was no mean feat. Gil drove the mules east until we reached the water. Magda and I were taken with the beauty of the marshes and we made a home here. Sweetheart, you have to understand, we didn’t want to let you go. We loved you - we still love you - but we had to keep our promise.” Dah brushed his fingers gently against my forehead. “Letting you go was the hardest thing we ever did.”

  I buried my face in the soft sheepskin of his shirt.

  “Anabella never found you?”

  “No. I’ve never even heard of her.”

  He patted my head. “We shouldn’t have sent you back there. We should have kept you. I’m so sorry.”

  I stared hard at him, wordless. I had no idea what to say, my mind was numb.

  We stayed near her grave for a long time. Finally, my father stood and took my hand. I expected him to lead me back to the house, but instead he brought me deep into the marshes, toward the ocean. After we pushed aside the final layer of tall reeds, my gaze was broken by a large spare ship, whose three square-rigged masts seemed to scrape the sky. It was far bigger than any fishing sloop I had ever seen.

  “Dah?” I asked.

  “We’re leaving the Seven Shires, for the new world east of the Great Sea. Too many of our own have gotten sick and died, and there is talk of furies rising in the Southlands. I know the idea of furies seems like a bad fairy tale, but, my dear, I think I believe it.”

  I nodded. “It’s true. Lord Seve has called to the west to ask for the troops to fight the furies, but the western lords do not believe.”

  Dah nodded. “Gavon and Mitchum’s families have helped us build the ship, and as soon as Gil returns we’re going to leave. In his youth, Mitchum worked on large trading ships that exported goods out of the Barriershire port. He knew how to build her. We all pitched in on the design and material costs. Will you come with us? Now that you know the truth.”

  I stared at him. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t know.”

  He nodded. “Take a little time and think about it, but don’t tell your brothers what I told you about our past. They don’t need to know.”

  “The ship’s a beauty.” I smiled sadly; knowing that the only family I’ve ever known may be leaving me. “I bet you’re excited about getting on the water.”

  “I am. She’s seaworthy. Your friend Cedric can come with us.” I think my father must have understood somehow that my reluctance to leave Cedric was, in part, responsible for my uncertainty.

  “I doubt he would. His ties here are too strong.”

  When we returned to the house we all worked together to gut and salt the haul of fish my father and Petey had brought home yesterday. Cedric was slightly less useless than he was yesterday, but I still wondered how obvious it must be that he had no experience with real work.

  Cedric and I decided to spend the night sleeping on the floor of my brothers’ room on a pile of straw and blankets. But I couldn’t sleep.

  Bleary eyed, I stole outside and stood alone staring at the twinkling stars while absently scratching my arm. I had picked at the scabs until they bled, and a few drops of blood rolled off my arm and sank into the wet marshy ground below. I felt too young to make this decision. It was unfair. Even after my father’s disclosure, I still felt as if Dah and my brothers were my family. How could I not go with them? But if I left, I would never see Cedric or Mediera again. I shuddered. I wished something would happen to make this easier.

  “I can’t sleep either.” Cedric blundered outside and stood next to me. He placed an arm around my shoulders.

  “My Dah and brothers built a boat, and they’re going to sail across the ocean to the new world. Do you think I should go with them?” I asked in a whisper. My chest felt hollow at the thought of leaving him.

  Cedric’s fingers gripped my shoulders and he turned me around so that I could see his eyes boring into mine. “I don’t want you to leave me.” And then he cupped my face in his hands and kissed me. It was my first kiss, salty and sweet in t
he misty light of dusk. It seemed to take an age before we broke apart; perhaps we prolonged it because we were both so scared to deal with the aftermath. I couldn’t even start to imagine what it meant.

  “You could come too?” I asked breathless, although I knew he would never agree to it.

  He took a long time to respond. “No. I’m not going to run away. I can’t leave my family if there is really a risk that they could get hurt. And, Mediera needs me. I won’t leave her,” Cedric whispered back, his eyes searching mine. I envied his certainty. And as I thought about what he said, I realized that if Anabella was really my mother, then Mediera, Thomas, and Clara were my cousins - my family. My real mother might still be alive somewhere in the Seven Shires. Even if it was a secret, Cedric’s family was my family, and my ties to this land were as unbreakable as his.

  I shivered as Cedric’s arm encircled me again. “I’ll stay.” The pieces fell into place. I would stand or fall here in this land with Cedric and Mediera.

  That night I dreamt that Cedric and I were kissing in a field of wild flowers, but Cedric changed into the black eyed inhuman boy from the market. Another boy broke into the field and stabbed the black-eyed boy and told me to run away. But instead of running, I turned into a crow and flew into the sky.

  We left the next morning. The bittersweet goodbyes to Dah and my brothers were hard, but I was happy for them. I knew they would have a better chance of survival if they fled from the shores of Brightshire.

  “If you change your mind, there are many ships docked at Barriershire’s port that trade with the new world. You could find us,” Petey said as he hugged me goodbye.

  “Maybe someday.”

  “Deri,” he whispered in my ear.

  “What?”

  “That’s our family name. I know Dah never told us, but I made him tell me after Mah died. I’m taking the name again once we set up a home. Remember the name Deri.”

  I kissed his cheek. “I’ll remember.”

  We rode the horses hard and returned them to the stables. I wanted to retreat to my room to consider my new reality, but at the entrance to the Great House, a guard grabbed me.

  “You’re the scribe girl?” he asked roughly.

  “Yes,” I responded, shrinking away from his grasp.

  Cedric grabbed my other arm, and another guard pulled us apart. In the foray, my leather satchel, carrying my most guarded possessions, clattered to the floor.

  The guard started dragging me out of the Great House.

  “You have no right to take her,” Cedric demanded.

  “Lord Seve commanded that she be taken to the guard’s tower immediately.”

  “Why?” Cedric asked.

  “It’s none of your concern, boy.” The guard grunted in response. I realized that I couldn’t pull away from him, I slackened and let him take me away.

  “I’ll find Thellium. I’ll fix this,” Cedric shouted to me. “You’ll be okay, I swear.”