She had worn the same dress for five years, and to cover it had made herself new aprons out of the scraps that others could not use. She ate from her own garden, and grew her own grain. What she could not grow or make herself, she bought with money she earned as the egg-woman.
Though everyone had their own chicken coop in their yard, few people looked forward to the task of entering the smelly coop to search for eggs. Oda did it every morning for people, and in return they let her keep an egg or two. Of course she could not consume that many eggs herself, and so she sold the rest to those whose chickens were not laying at the time. Oda was a proud woman even though she had great ugliness to keep her humble, and she became prouder as year after year she refused her due as a spinster. When I asked her why she would not take her spinster’s allotment, she replied, “Because then I would have to be grateful, and that is more exhausting than work.” She was wise in a sour sort of way.
“What have you brought her here for?” Oda said to me when I arrived at her door with Annakey.
“Vilsa died,” I said. “She needs work.”
“Give her the due of an orphan,” Oda replied. “I have no work for her.”
“She is not an orphan. Her father is alive, or so her mother claimed. She must work for her living.”
“Again I ask: Why do you bring her to me? There are not enough eggs for two of us.”
“Think, Oda, how much more money you could make if you could clean out the chicken coops for people.”
“I am too old to clean out chicken coops,” she said. She was an insufferably stubborn woman, but before she finished her sentence she understood what I was proposing. “Oh,” she said. She looked at Annakey with interest.
“She needs the use of your shovels and buckets. You arrange the work with those of the village who are happy with your work as egg-woman. Make sure she does well, and take a portion of her pay.”
Oda nodded, and that is how Annakey became the chicken-coop girl.
Chapter 6
Inscription on the Story dolclass="underline"
Run away into a story, and when you come out at the end you will find yourself even closer to home.
Hard work makes you lose your beauty if you are bitter, but Annakey did not become bitter. It was tucked away too far behind her heart, and had she not promised her mother she would be happy? All of us watched as Annakey grew more fair and true, careful in her speech, and faithful in keeping the promises to which she was born. She could not play as the other village youth did, but she took satisfaction in working hard. It was not only for her living. After all, Manal brought her meats and fowls and she was not starved. No, she needed to work to assuage the need in her heart to create in miniature. This I know now. How her fingers wished to make the world she saw.This, she would say with her fingers, this is how my eyes see, this is how the world is real.
Not long after her mother died, she smiled. I began to think she had no feeling, and I treated her so. One night she drove me too far.
It was on a summer evening, when the sun had gone behind the mountain but still filled the sky with light. I see it even now by the power of the storymaker. It had been so hot that summer that the waterslicks, usually wet with glacier water, were as dry as tracks.The old people sat on their stoops for relief and even the babies stayed up late, cooling their bottoms in the clover. The older boys were playing at chance-bones, gambling away their fathers’ land by the foot for some day when it would be theirs alone. Manal sat apart, not gambling. Renoa had found it too hot to hike on the mountain so she stayed in the village with her friends. She and the girls approached the boys.
“Come play bat-the-barrel with us,” Renoa said to the boys, her friends gathered behind her.
“There! I win. The east bush of your barley field is mine,” Areth said to Dantu.
“Miller must first give me the marsh bottom at the end of his cow meadow,” Dantu said.
Miller laughed. “You will first have to play or fight my brothers for it.They are so much older than I, they will have divided the land between their own sons by the time I am grown to claim it.”
No one was looking at Renoa until she said, “By the time the land is divided between all of you, there will not be enough for you to have a wife, never mind sons of your own.”
They all laughed but Manal, and his silence sobered them quickly. “Why do you laugh?” Manal said.
“What else can be done?” Areth said.
“When it comes to pass that there is not enough food, no one will laugh. Something could be done if a new valley was found.”
“Dollmage says there are no new valleys,’ Renoa said, but Dollmage has not walked to the top of Mount Crownander and has not seen what I have seen, the world stretching away without end....”
“Mountains,” Areth said.
“But where there are mountains, there needs to be a valley,” Manal said evenly.
All the eyes gazed toward the mountaintops with longing and fear. “Someday we will have to go,” Manal said.
“That is a long time away,” Areth said lightly.
“Yes. So come play bat-the-barrel with us,” Renoa said, “and we promise we will eat very little when we are your wives.”
Areth stood chuckling, but the other boys looked at Manal and did not move, waiting to see what he would do.
“Will you play, Manal?” Areth said.
Manal looked at something through the heat haze and the smoke of the common fire. “If Annakey can play,” he said.
The smile remained on Renoa’s lips but drained out of her eyes. “She is always too busy,” she said.
“She will play,” Areth said. “I will fetch her.”
He brought her, almost dragging her by the hand to where the village youth were waiting. The boys stood when she came, and said hello and joked with her.
Renoa, in a loud voice, began outlining the farthest limits where one could hide, and how high the seeker had to count.
“Annakey, you can be the first seeker,” Renoa said.
“You go first, Renoa,” Manal said. “You are the one who wanted the game.”
“I will,” she said, with her doll’s smile, and she began counting.
They played and hid and laughed in the deepening twilight, and on beneath the blurred stars. Each of the boys took turns having Annakey hide with them in their best spots, crouching close with her until they were found and had to race for the barrel. Manal seemed always close by, wherever she was hiding. Annakey forgot to be careful of Renoa and laughed outright, and for the first time that evening Manal laughed too.
Finally, it was Areth’s turn to show Annakey his favorite hiding place, which was in the upper boughs of a tree. While they were hiding, Areth asked for a kiss.
Annakey shook her head and pointed to Tawm who was seeker, and coming close to them.
“Yes,” Areth said.
“Shh,” she said. “Here comes Tawm.”
“Yes,” Areth said again.
Annakey moved from the upper boughs to the lower boughs, her eyes on Tawm, ready to run and reach the barrel first if he spotted them.
“I will have a kiss,” Areth said, coming close to her.
Annakey drew away. “A kiss is a kind of promise,” she said, “to the one you will marry.”
Areth grabbed her arm and held it tight. “Then promise to marry me.”