The sunshine was bright on her face as nine-year-old Alira rolled over in her bed. She looked out the window at the warm spring day and sighed contentedly. She rose and stretched, her muscles sore from hauling buckets of water the previous day. Alira and her mother were tending the wild crops of strawberries and carrots and the herbaceous basil and dill that grew rampant. Her mother tried to keep their gardening as natural as possible, allowing the wild food to grow in the nearby woods. The biggest downside was that they had trouble keeping out the rabbits and other opportunistic critters. Even a few snare traps barely deterred the wild animals.

Alira stood, her long dark hair draped down her thin back. She dressed in a boyish tunic and pants and then tied her tangle of hair into a braid. She laced her boots and gave her small round face a quick scrub in the chipped, white basin they kept on a small vanity in their shared bedroom. She tidied the bed, fluffing the down pillows and retucking the sheets and bulky comforter. She took a glance around and nodded in satisfaction then followed her nose, which was telling her that breakfast was ready.

“Good morning,” Erin said as Alira sat at their scrubbed wooden table. She picked up the cup of hot herbal tea her mother had made her and smiled a reply.

“I’m going to Endmoore today. I need you to start the washing,” Erin said, her back to Alira as she washed a dish in the deep basin they used as a sink in the kitchen area of their main room. Alira nodded as her mother turned to see if she had heard her.

“No words today?” her mother asked kindly. “It’s ok.” Alira looked up into her mother’s hazel eyes that shone with concern. A small frown pocked her mother’s otherwise youthful, freckled face.

Alira opened her mouth to apologise but couldn’t find the words. It happened sometimes. Words weren’t always easy for Alira and sometimes her mother’s intensity quieted her until she didn’t know what to say even if she had the words.

“Maybe later,” Erin said as she turned back to the dishes. Alira caught the small sigh her mother let out as her shoulders slumped. Alira could hear something dismissive about her tone and cast her eyes down, shrinking further into herself.

For almost ten years Alira had struggled with words. They often refused to come to her when she most wanted them, when she was desperate to make a point or ask a question. She could never predict when it would happen but she knew she could spend days talking normally only to find that the next morning she had been struck dumb again. She found that on the days she couldn’t talk, she wanted to ask her mother more questions, converse more with her, tell her what was going on inside her own heart. She planned the things she wanted to say while silent but when her words came again, the drive to say what she had planned vanished, as though she had been drained of the desire to be understood.

Erin never seemed surprised when the words were gone and was very patient with Alira, teaching her their own gestures that condensed whole sentences into a single flick of the fingers. They could hold most conversations normally this way but as Erin devised the gestures and signs, Alira didn’t know how to ask questions in the special language. She just knew how to comply and accept her dumbness.

Alira’s loss of words was also why Erin had taught her to read and write at a young age. Every book that her mother brought home, often borrowed from the small country school of Endmoore, was read two or three times before being returned when Erin journeyed to the small village again. If she was ever given paper and pen, she could write her questions or thoughts but that was a frivolous purchase her mother always declined to procure. Alira knocked once on the table, asking for Erin’s attention.

When her mother turned, Alira signed “Ok, I can do that.” She was careful to smile while she signed, hoping to put her mother at ease and to draw her out into a conversation. When Alira lost her words, Erin would also go silent, nearly as mute as her daughter.

“The bedding is in the basket by the door. Wash it, mangle it, hang it. Then you can do whatever you want.” Erin gently touched Alira’s cheek as she walked by then untied her apron and left it on the table. “I’ll be off now. I’m sure I’ll be back by sundown or thereabouts.” Alira gave her mother a smile and finished her tea as the door clicked shut behind Erin.

An hour after Erin had left, Alira felt the words come back. They bubbled out of her as humming and soft singing while she worked. Her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, Alira set the huge pot of water to boil and then filled the tub with it once it started to steam. She took a deep breath and plunged her hands into the hot water, scrubbing the large swathes of fabric with the abrasive soap her mother brought back from her shopping trips to Endmoore. The water swished soothingly as the heated water brought out sweat on her forehead. The water eventually turned a little grey, an indicator to rinse the washing, and Alira began ladling buckets out of the tub and tossing it out the door of the cottage, aiming away from the chicken coop.

After a quick rinse and second round of emptying the tub, Alira then began the arduous task of wringing out the sheets by hand, getting as much water out of them as she could so they were easier to roll onto the long mangle rolling pin. She folded the sheets into long, narrow strips and wound them tightly, working on the smooth table behind their cottage specifically designed for such work. Then, using her slight frame as a weight, she used the heavy mangle board to roll, squeeze and flatten the sheets. Water sluiced off the table and soaked her feet and legs. At least she had taken off her boots before starting.

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As she ran the board across the rolling pin, she studied the intricately carved images along the top of the dark, hard wood. Her mother had once said that her father had craved the board and roller. He was a mystical figure of her childhood and she always imagined him as a tall, broad man with dark, kind eyes and a bright, wide smile. She had never known him but her mother spoke of him sometimes, her voice regretful and sad. At nine years of age, Alira wasn’t yet of an age to ask more questions about her parents and their relationship but she did ask if he had loved her. Her mother always answered that he probably thought he did. Being so young, Alira didn't know any other way to interpret her mother’s sad sighs and off-hand reply than as an affirmation of her father’s affection.

Having wrung out the laundry as best she could, Alira hung the crisp white bedding on the laundry line strung between two posts that had been stuck into the ground in the clearing near the cottage. The sun warmed the linens and the wet fabric flapped and snapped in the breeze. Her chores were done as soon as she tidied up the tub and put away the mangle. She wiped her hands and legs off and put her boots back on.

Now free to find her own amusement, Alira grabbed her fishing rod and a trowel with a small bucket. She gathered a few worms and grubs from the yard around the cottage and slung her rod over her shoulder, humming. She made her way around the fallen logs and prickly brambles in the woods until she reached the slow, lazy stream that ran toward the larger river a few miles away.

She came upon the stream and found her favourite spot to sit, a large, round pinkish red boulder that her mother said was granite and could be worth hundreds of gold pieces if it could be carried into town. She baited her hook with a fat white grub and cast upstream, watching her line plink into the water and then start to slowly drift toward her. She knew where the small deep pools were and that some fish would hide in the crevices between the larger rocks. She guided her line toward one such pool and waited.

Alira loved to fish. It’s true, it was a singular activity for the most part and she knew her mother didn’t have the patience to sit and wait for a fish to bite. She preferred to set out nets and traps and check them later. But Alira loved the noisy stillness of the forest, the rush of the water, the sparkle of the fish just below the surface.

She watched her line go taunt and felt the rod jiggle. Alira pulled up hard while winding the reel with a couple of cranks and she felt a heavy weight pulse in response. She had caught something. Something fairly large, too, if she wasn’t mistaken. She pulled up on the rod again, her lip between her teeth. She cranked hard on the reel and watched her line come back in, inch by inch. She worked the fish in, carefully keeping the line from cutting on the rocks that broke through the slow water.

“Come on,” she whispered, words no longer gone. Her voice was meek and pleading, begging the catch to land. She frowned, gritted her teeth, and pulled up again, the last three feet of her line flickering just under the water. The fish thrashed and broke the surface, leaping and glittering. The silver scales caught the dappled sunlight and Alira grinned excitedly. So close…

“Come on!” This time her voice was determined, no longer pleading. She yanked one last time and the carp leapt from the water, flopping and gasping onto the shore of her rock perch. The animal floundered, splashing water on Alira as she knelt to unhook her beautiful prize.

“Stop that,” she scolded, feeling silly for talking to the fish, which gaped at her with a panicked, wide stare from one eye. The fish wasn’t doing anything wrong. In fact, it was acting completely naturally, given its understandably confusing circumstances. She couldn’t fault the fish for struggling against being dragged ashore into a world it shouldn’t know about. The fish’s mouth worked, mimicking Alira’s own wordless gasping earlier. She laid a hand over its face, distraught at the animal’s panic.

I’m dying! The fish seemed to scream with each gaping mouthful of air. Her hand trembled from the excitement of the catch. What’s going on? The fish was probably wondering.

“You’re very brave,” Alira whispered. “But your task now is to become food for others. You’ve done wonderfully. You can rest now, Fish.” Her soft voice quivered as she bowed her head over the animal. She swore that as she spoke the animal slowed its movements, the writhing becoming faint twitching, which became stillness. The fish’s mouth gasped once more against her palm, then lay still.

Moving quickly to get it over with, Alira took out her small pocket knife and swiftly sliced the fish, washing its entrails out into the stream for the crabs and small shrimp to feast upon. She swished it clean and sang softly while she scraped the silver scales and slime from its sides and looped a finger into a gill and out its mouth.

When Erin returned shortly after dusk, Alira had deftly filleted the fish and prepared a thick batter in which to fry the prize. She turned proudly to her mother, a figure that always inspired awe and love, and displayed her hard work.

“You’ve been busy,” Erin said gaily, choosing to not make a comment on the untidy workspace and the small dusting of flour on Alira’s face. The young girl nodded and wiped her hands on the too-large apron that was wound twice around her tiny figure.

“Still no words, Alira?” Erin asked as she drew the girl in for a hug. Erin’s daughter drew in a breath and prepared to speak. Something made her pause. For the first time in Alira’s short life, she knew she had the words but did not want to use them. She chose to remain dumb and instead shrugged an answer.

“Don’t worry about it,” Erin said as she pulled away and smiled weakly down at her daughter.

Never again did Alira lose her words. From that day on, her silence was always a choice.