A Very Long Time Ago

Under the apple tree in front of the house, Vero and Virgil crossed swords – which were really carved tree branches – again and again. The battle pushed one way, and then the other. A strike blocked, followed by a counterstrike, and then the same again in turn.

Veronique was named for her maternal grandmother, who had died while Mama was pregnant. She was born in the large wooden house Father built for Mama before they were married, and where the whole family lived together. Besides herself, Mama, Father, and Virgil, there was also her older sister Yvette, and her baby brother Antoine.

Virgil was her twin brother, so Vero supposed that of all the people she knew, they knew each other the longest. They were inseparable even before they were born and, besides Mama, Vero liked him the most of anyone in the family.

Not that she let that fact deter her during their duels.

Sometimes he called himself her older brother, which frustrated her quite a lot, because they were twins. And while he had been born first, it wasn’t by more than a few minutes, which Vero didn’t think ought to count against her.

He attacked her with a thrust which she could easily parry with a horizontal sweep. She spied a weakness in his position and followed up with a lunge forwards, and a powerful overhand swing.

She realized too late that it was all just a feint. He sidestepped her strike, and swatted the branch out of her grip with a stinging wrap on the back of the hand.

“Ow!” Vero clutched her hand to her chest. Her eyes began to water from the pain, but she blinked rapidly to disperse it. She was much too proud to let her brother see that he’d made her cry. “You rat! That was too hard!”

“Father hits me twice as hard when we train. Suppose you were in a real fight? You might be dead now.”

Vero wasn’t really listening; she was more concerned with the thin trail of blood along her hand. “You cheated! I hate you!” She kicked him as hard as she could in the shin, and in seconds, they were both sprawled wrestling on the ground.

Vero was too mad for a reasoned defense, and Virgil was easily the stronger of the two of them. It wasn’t long before he had captured both her hands and pinned her down by sitting on her chest.

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“Yield!”

“No! Let me go!”

“Say you’ll quit, and I’ll let you up.”

Vero refused to cease her struggling, ineffective as it was. “I won’t! Get off of me!”

“Oh, very well.” Virgil allowed her to get up.

He was smirking as he climbed off her, but Vero had already started to cry in earnest. When he tried to put a hand on her shoulder, she shoved him off. As soon as she regained her feet, she turned her back and ran into the house.

Mama was spinning wool when Vero came crashing in. Vero had a tendency of crashing into and out of the house, so Mama paid her no mind to her at first, until she saw the state Vero was in. Then she dutifully put down her own work to address the issue.

The person Vero loved the most in the world was Mama.

She loved all her family to a greater or lesser extent of course, but Mama was special. She was, Vero felt, the most kind, beautiful, and wise woman in the whole world. She had long brown hair, and wonderful green eyes which Vero and Virgil both inherited. Vero couldn’t see her own eyes of course, but if they looked like Mama’s – and people often said they did – they must be very pretty indeed.

Vero felt fairly certain that, of all her siblings, she was Mama’s favorite. But she didn’t like to point it out.

“What’s wrong, dear one?” Mama asked.

“Virgil… and we were practicing… and then… too hard, and… defended myself…” Vero explained through wheezing sobs, while presenting her hand to Mama as evidence. Then came to her conclusion, “And I won! But it hurts Mama!”

Mama kissed her hand and prepared a cold poultice. “Now Vero, if you don’t want to get hurt, then why do you start fights with your brother?”

Vero didn’t answer. She had only told Mama the story for sympathy, and maybe so that Mama would punish Virgil. She wished that she hadn’t, now that it meant hearing a lecture about changing her own behavior.

“Why don’t you play a nice game with your sister instead?”

“Yvette doesn’t like playing games. She just likes to talk about nothing and complain that she isn’t married yet. Maybe if she was more interesting, she wouldn’t have so much trouble finding a husband.”

Mama took the poultice and pressed it against Vero’s hand. “Well, there are lots of other girls in the village you could play with instead. I’ve told you before that you wouldn’t get hurt so often if you stopped roughhousing with your brother and his friends.”

This wasn’t going at all the way Vero had wanted, so she decided to refocus Mama’s attention. She let her eyes water up again. “My hand still hurts, Mama.”

Mama relented and hugged her tightly, which was all Vero had really wanted all along. “Very well then, dear one. Would you like to say a prayer for healing together?”

Vero nodded, and Mama must have felt the motion against her chest. She led them to the moon shrine. Mama and Vero clasped their hands together. Mama recited the words in Liturgical and Vero repeated them, although she had no idea what they meant.

“Feel any better?”

Vero did feel better, at least a little. “Mm-hmm.”

“Why don’t you help me with my spinning and we can tell each other a story?”

Vero loved playing storytelling games and agreed very quickly. Her own troubles forgotten, Vero held the distaff and Mama went back to work with the spindle.

“Once upon a time,” Mama began.