Early Spring

CHAPTER 1 - A KITTEN AND A CHICKEN

Let me tell you a story about a world that has been forgotten. It is very much like our world, and some who do not look past the ordinary might never see the difference. It is full of toil, joy, magic, and heartache. Gardens flourish, and past wars linger. Life can be harsh, but everyday miracles persevere, like the first flowers of spring peeking up through the snow.

We begin our story in a time when grief and sadness hang over the world, and some have forgotten to see the magic in the bees and appreciate the stories in chipped teacups. The land and the people need breath, peace, and to relearn the taste of the bread they eat and see the beauty in the things they create. And it all begins, as all good tales about magic, earth, and family do, with a lost soul journeying home.

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The sole of Lark Truedale’s left boot had worn completely through in two places. It would fall apart altogether soon. She stuffed a strip of bark under her shabby sock and wrapped the ball of her foot in a scrap of fabric she had been using to keep her hands warm. The sun seemed confident today. Hopefully, it was ready to throw off the chill of winter and get to the hard work of spring.

She had been walking for two weeks and aboard a ship before that. The war was over, and she had been a tiny drop in the river of weary soldiers returning home. Mystic Landing was along the coast to the south, and she would be there in less than an hour. Home. Finally.

Would it be the same as it was ten years ago? Already, she was flanked by familiar stone walls. A comforting blanket of nostalgia settled around her as she began to see a familiar tree or break in the wall. The mix of promise and dread made her stomach flutter.

Like most of the rock walls that meandered through this part of the country the rows of stone on either side of the road were made by the first farmers to clear the rocky soil and put down roots. Some areas had been cleared by hand and by plow horse. These sections were beautifully random and constructed mainly with what her grandfather called “two handers,” a stone requiring two hands to lift. The stones were fit together quickly and efficiently by practiced hands hundreds of years ago. These types of walls were her favorites. They were covered in lichen and spongy moss and were home to all types of creatures. She especially loved the walls that ran through the wild woods, lining forgotten fields long since reforested.

Other sections of wall were built not by hand but by magic. These walls were precise and even but left few crevices for chipmunks. The new walls built by her father at the Truedale farm were like these, although the war had come before he could complete them. With their fire and might, sun mages were the first to be drafted. Moon mages, like Lark, were only recruited once healers were in high demand.

A quarter mile from her home, set in a slight bend in the road, was a humble roadside temple. Small temples were common along the main roads, and the stone wall dipped back from the path to allow space for travelers to sit and pray, meditate, or conjure.

This temple was a welcome sight, unchanged since she had walked this road as a child. It gave her hope that other things would be as she left them. The beech tree that shaded it had grown tall, and the grass along the stones was wild and full of dandelions and bittercress. At the base of the tree sat an odd stone, pulled up from the soil two hundred years ago like its ordinary brothers who made up the wall. But this one was special. A face had been carved in the stone, and it looked up at Lark as if it had been waiting for her all these years. Whether carved by a deity, a race of people long forgotten, or a trickster farmhand with hidden talent, it didn’t matter. It made those who passed it feel as if there was something special about this place.

Lark knelt down in the long grass in front of the stone, heaved off her pack, and began to clear the weeds from the stone. It seemed to smile up at her in gratitude. She sat back on her heels and took a deep breath. The air felt familiar here. She was stalling, and she reprimanded herself for it. She had longed for home for ten years, and now she was so close she was terrified to see what had become of it. The only family left was her grandmother, and it had been a year since she had gotten a letter.

She had just about worked up the courage to continue when a pair of eyes blinked at her from a shadow beside the stone. The eyes were round and gold, with slitted pupils. She couldn’t make out even a hint of the rest of the creature in the blackness under the long weeds. Lark had a touch of taming magic, but she resisted using it. Wild animals usually just needed a calm spirit.

She sat quietly for a few breaths, then spoke, “Is this your temple?”

The weeds rustled, and the eyes blinked at her. Then the creature responded with a chirpy, “mrraaa.”

Lark grinned and leaned down. “You’re no wild animal. Here, kitty, come out.”

She reached towards the shadow, and two enormous kitten ears appeared, attached to a tiny black kitten body. He bounded out of his hiding place, a little shaky but determined. He was skinny and dirty and so black that his features were hard to determine. Lark gathered him up into her lap, and he began to purr and kneed his paws on her trousers. She pet him with tender intention and let her healing magic touch him gently. He was healthy but dehydrated and very hungry. Had someone abandoned him here?

Lark kept stroking him with one hand and pulled her water jug out of her pack with the other. She poured a bit into her palm and let him lap it up greedily.

“I think I have something else you’ll enjoy,” she said. “I guess now is as good a time as any for dinner.”

She pulled out a bit of bread, cheese, and smoked fish she had traded for some healing in the last village she had walked through. She shared her meal with her new friend, giving him tiny bits on her fingertip. He would have eaten the whole fish had she let him.

“Mother never approved of feeding a cat from the dinner table,” she said as the tiny kitten curled up in her lap. “Plenty of mice in the barn and birds in the garden, she would say.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He began to purr louder than his small body should have been capable of.

“But you're special, aren’t you? A gift from the temple, perhaps. Can’t ignore that. Would you like to travel together?”

The cat meowed softly and flopped over on his back to allow her to rub his round belly. Even his underside was black, no hint of pink. And his ears, usually smaller in young cats seemed to take up his whole head.

“You are an interesting gift, for sure,” she said. “I think I’ll call you Boon. What do you think?”

Boon purred dramatically and flopped back over. Then he climbed up her jacket and nestled on her shoulder beside her collar.

“I guess you like it then. Shall we go home?”

Something about not being alone, even if her companion was a kitten the size of a teacup, made taking those last steps of her journey home easier. She had described her family’s farm to her friends in the healer’s corps many times. They had all swapped colorful descriptions and cherished memories of home, especially in the last few years when they had been gone so long the memories seemed thin and worn.

Her first sign of home was the ivy covered mailbox. It had toppled backward and lay propped up against the stone wall behind it as if it were leisurely napping in a bed of bittercress and creeper. Through the wild green weeds spots of color hinted that human hands had once tended the space. Bright yellow tulip buds poised ready to bloom. Her grandfather had planted bulbs along the road that bordered the farm years ago, and he had carefully tended them each year. This had been his farm for fifty years. His life. If the tulips were still here, then a part of him was also. But Lark’s stomach cinched up in dread. Her grandmother would never have let the mailbox remain damaged like this.

Lark’s heart ached in sympathy for her Grandmother. June Truedale had suffered so much loss. Her husband of 40 years, her true love, had died twelve years ago. He went quickly and without fuss or pain. Having worked in his beloved greenhouses that morning, he simply never woke up from his afternoon nap. A year after that, June lost her daughter in law, Lark’s mother. In truth, she lost her son that day as well. Lark’s father was never the same after her mother died. He left the farm with the sun mage corps soon after. And a year later, June lost Lark. She had left her grandmother standing in this very spot. Even as she walked away her grandmother did not beg her to stay. Looking back ten years later, Lark did not think she could have been as strong.

She waded a few steps into the chaos of weeds and pried the reclining mailbox’s door open. A faded card with the emblem of the Belrae Postal Service on the top read simply, “All mail has been forwarded to Mrs. June Truedale - Mystic Landing Widows’ Home.” It was dated just over a year ago. The knot in Lark’s stomach loosened. She would find her in town.

She looked up at the sky. The sun was already below the trees. She’d never make it to town before dark, better to stay the night here. But what would she find down the wood lined drive? There was only one way to find out.

Lark put one foot, then the other off the main road and onto the dirt lane that lead to her home. The trees and the brush were thick, obscuring all but a hint of structures past the slight bend ahead. Birches, maples, and the occasional ancient oak loomed closer to the path than she remembered, creating a tunnel of foliage overhead. And the eager saplings and quick growing early spring flora filled in the gaps between the trees. Dandelions and clover dotted the dirt path. The woods were easing back in.

To her left, just before the bend, another path had all but been reclaimed. A clearing let the evening sunlight bathe the grass in the last light of day. Yellow forsythia grew around the ruins of a burned house. Lark allowed herself a glance. She let the old grief come and go, like a quick embrace. Her father had built that house, and he had burned it to the ground. She would visit that pain later. Her father’s house was not really part of Truedale farm, not the heart of it anyway. It was a bittersweet wound that time and the forest would sooth.

Lark’s pace quickened as she put the ruins behind her. She reached the bend in the lane and a barn appeared. The familiar sight of the faded red paint and gambrel roof sent a smile to Lark’s face and a swell of relief to her soul. As the path widened, she saw the glint of sunlight on the glass of the greenhouses. Three long glass houses sat side by side, facing the barn from across the yard. In her grandfather’s day they had been filled with flowers, herbs, and rare plants. Now, they housed weeds and broken panes, but they were as welcome a sight as any world wonder. And, across the neglected yard, nestled into the hill behind it, was the cottage. It was the most beautiful thing Lark had seen in a decade. Her eyes stung with tears, and her throat grew warm. Her worst fear, a fear she had not even been able to speak out loud, was that there was no home to return to. But here it was. It was overgrown and damaged, but it was standing.

When her grandfather bought the land, the cottage had been a wide A-frame with a green, grassy roof. He added rooms to either side over the years giving it the shape of a witch’s hat with a thick brim. A dutch door with a rounded top sat under a circular upper window and was flanked by two sets of large rectangular windows, all shuttered as if sleeping. The green roof had grown long and vines and ivy draped down over the face of the house, in need of a haircut.

The large oak to the right of the cottage had remained lush and looming, shading the yard and the house, but below its branches, between the cottage and the barn, a fallen cedar tree had bisected the chicken coop. The front of the coop and much of the run lay damaged under the twisted branches of the gnarled tree. Lifting the tree without a sun mage would be impossible. She’d have to chop it up. One of many big jobs she’d need to get to work on.

The yard before her had traded aesthetically landscaped for naturally wild. Long wispy grasses and thick carpets of clover were scattered with splashes of early spring wildflowers. The well, which sat between the greenhouses and the cottage along the path to the gardens, had a thick crowd of mugwarts surrounding it. Past the well, the firewood shelter was oddly full and free of surrounding weeds.

Movement near the barn drew Lark’s attention. The tall grass by the broken door wiggled and shook. Lark brought what she remembered of taming magic to intention and took a step back. On her shoulder the kitten gripped her jacket with its tiny claws. The grass stood still, then, in a burst of clucks and feathers a chicken flew out as if squeezed from the brush. She was skinny and ruffled but had a healthy red comb, bright yellow color, and a nice fluffy backside. Lark smiled and released her intention.

“Chick, chick,” she called.

The chicken perked up, and with an excited cluck, began running towards her with all the bouncing awkwardness only a chicken can maintain. Lark knelt down and pulled a few berries from her pocket. She held them out in her hand, and the chicken pecked them greedily. When she had eaten them all and looked around to make sure she hadn’t missed any she cooed contently and lowered herself down, flattening her back. Lark pet her gently.

“A friendly girl,” she said.

The chicken made happy noises and wiggled her scraggly tail feathers. Boon bounced down from her shoulder and sniffed the bird cautiously. The chicken was too busy enjoying being pet to notice.

“Have you been on your own for the last year?” Lark asked. “Poor girl. Don’t worry, things will be better now.”

Her grandma never named the chickens. She said she could never abide eating something she had named, and with chickens, it was always a possibility. Lark had secretly named them all. “If I’m right,” Lark said to the chicken, “It’s the first of April today. So let's name you April. What do you think?”

April chirped in agreement.

“Excellent, now, we have a cottage to air out. Shall we?”