[RiddleRose]: 298.Gold Dust - NaNoWriMo '07.Chapter twenty five

Chapter twenty five

Nash walked into the room, and Wren and Lessa turned around, both smiling, both flushed from the fire, and beckoned him to come over. Together, the three of them popped corn and laughed. Nash couldn't remember a time in the last two years when he had had this much fun, and been this relaxed. Well, maybe when he was teaching Lessa archery. But that was the only time. 

After a long while, Wren began to fade. At first he merely turned a little transparent, and then he began to actively fade away. He quickly hugged Lessa, and as he was only a pair of eyes, Nash heard a soft whisper of “see you later...” before he blinked out completely. Lessa tugged at Nash's hand, “Why do he and Neil do that Nash? Why do they just disappear like that?”

Nash shook his head, “I don't know pumpkin. I wish I did, but I don't.”

Lessa frowned. She hated it when he couldn't answer her questions. She was very inquisitive, and also very stubborn, but much too well bred to have a tantrum. She did cry sometimes, but it was always ladylike tears. She never sobbed like a child anymore. Since fleeing her estate home in the city, she had become much more grown up. She still got into everything, but she now listened when he told her not to go out alone. She had some vague understanding that there was something bad out there in the woods, something that Nash could protect her from. She never went beyond the front yard without asking him.

Nash was grateful of this. When they had first come, he had had to go running after her every two minutes, until the time when one of Wolf's men had grabbed her far from the cottage. Luckily, Nash had been frantically tracking her for the past hour and a half, and he heard her shrill screams, and came running. The sight of a dead man was something he wished he could have spared her until she was older, but it had certainly sobered her. After that, she had obeyed him. Mostly.

The cottage they were living in was one that Nash had found and fixed up. Lessa had insisted it look nice, and since Nash was reassigned to her the moment his agency realized she was still in danger, he had a fairly large income. They had gone to the nearest large market, rented a wagon, and bought everything that Lessa wanted. She had been trained to have a lady's sense of taste, and the cottage looked good when she was done. There were carpets covering the cold stone floors, and tasteful decorations on the walls.

Lessa had also bought new cooking pots and pans. After only a few months, she had decided that as the woman of the house, she should be cooking. Nash was grateful of this, because the only thing he knew how to cook was rice. He had gotten quite sick of rice, with whatever vegetables that could be bought or found thrown on them.

Lessa had gotten a recipe book, and had begun her forays into the world of food. At first, many of her attempts ended up being thrown out. Then she began to improve drastically, and so had their meals. As a consequence, both of their health had improved, and their moods were no longer bad most of the time. Since then, Lessa had become an expert at cooking with only a pan, pot, and large stew cauldron. They had stew a lot. It was easy to make, and it lasted a long time.

They had begun living in the cottage at the height of summer, when it was always warm. Their first winter was very hard. Snow had piled up against their door after one blizzard, and they had been unable to get out of the cottage for almost two days. It had been miserable. Their wood had run out, and they had taken to sleeping in one bed to share warmth. Finally, the snow had melted enough for Nash to shove the door open.

Outside, it was white all over. The snow was almost as high as Lessa was tall, and the drifts were taller than Nash. They had spent a joyous day of freedom laying in the snow, making tunnels, having fights, and building snow people. Lessa had turned out to have very good natural aim, and Nash had gotten the idea of teaching her archery when the weather warmed a little. 

However, first they had to get through the rest of the winter. They had, but it had been hard. The village was too far to walk in the cold and the snow, although Nash could have done it, Lessa couldn't, and he wasn't about to leave her alone. So they occasionally ran out of food. Nash was very good with many weapons, but bows and arrows are hard to keep unfrozen and stiff in the wintertime, so his hunting was limited to snares and traps. 

The snares and traps did work, but in the winter many animals hibernate, so there was not much to catch. They brought in a very small amount of meat. However, it was better than nothing, and Lessa made stews, and made it all last much longer than would have been thought possible. They both lost weight, but they were never in danger of starving.

They saved all of the furs, and Nash, who knew vaguely how to tan leather, learned, by trial and error. Soon enough, Lessa had a little rabbit fur muff and hood to keep her warm, and rabbit fur boots to wear when she went outside. He made himself mittens and a hat out of some of the leftover fur, and they were warmer after that.

Once, Nash managed to bring down a deer. That day, they were both busy. Nash skinned the deer, and hung the skin far up out of reach of any wandering scavengers who might try to drag it away. Then he and Lessa cleaned the deer's meat, and smoked it in the chimney of the fireplace, so that it would keep. It had been a thin deer, but it was still more meat than they had seen for several months, and they were happy. That night, they ate well, of fresh venison, and a couple of potatoes which Lessa found deep in the bottom of a sack they had previously thought empty.

The venison lasted them almost until the end of the winter, thought they were heartily sick of it by then. The deerskin remained frozen until spring, at which time Nash tanned it, and then he and Lessa beat it until it was supple and soft. Then they brought it to market, and sold it, so that they could replenish their furniture supply. At one point, while they had been stuck in the cabin for two days, they had been forced to burn some of their chairs. They also bought some green food, and some more potatoes, to last them until they could plant a garden of their own.

They started work on the garden as early as possible. At first Lessa was uninterested, but soon she got in the habit of watching Nash, and bringing him drinks when he got tired. Eventually, she got down in the dirt next to him, and decided she liked it there. Throughout that spring and summer, she rarely budged from their small garden. She turned out to have a natural aptitude for it, and when Nash got her a wide brimmed straw hat with a silk sunflower in the brim, she was so happy that she actually jumped for joy.

Lessa's ninth birthday came that summer, and Nash somehow procured for her a new lady's dress and parasol, and and also several more more simple dresses. She had begun to grow out of her old ones. She was proclaimed queen of the day, and Nash gave her the letter from Jamie that he had been saving for this day. She read it carefully, then tucked it away under her pillow, looking sad. When Nash asked what was wrong, she just said, “I miss Jamie.”

But it couldn't keep her down for long, and soon she was cheerfully dancing around the room to the sound of Nash playing the piano. He had gotten a piano in the springtime, because one of the farmers was selling his. It was small, and not particularly wonderful, but it played accurately when tuned, and it gave them music.

At some point, Nash remembered his resolution to teach Lessa how to shoot a bow and arrow. He set about carving her a small bow, and when it was done, he bought a large quiver full of arrows, and several spare strings. She was afraid of the bow at first, but he guided her through how to hold it safely, and he gave her an arm guard, so that she wouldn't hurt herself. 

He let her wear thin white gloves when she shot too, so that her hands would stay soft and ladylike. She was very worried about calluses, even though Nash assured her that they took a long time to grow, and they went away after a while. At first she was tentative, and her arrows hardly went anywhere. Then, when he corrected her, she over compensated, and her arrows had to be retrieved from far into the bushes. Eventually, she evened out, and her arrows went pretty consistently into the target.

By fall, they were consistently into the bull's eye, and Nash began having her shoot crabapples out of the tree in their yard. These were harder to get, and they discovered the well monster when one of her arrows fell down his well one time. He carried it back up, showing that it had stuck right through his pillow. He was in a grumpy mood too. Lessa was horrified at what she had done, and promised to make him three new pillows in apology.

He was modified, and after that Lessa used to go out to talk to him whenever Nash was too busy for her. He was pleased to have a friend, and so was she. Nash was happy because it kept her out of his way a lot of the time, and gave her someone to talk to of a different species. The fact that the well monster was confined to the well made it hard for her to talk to him when she was cooking, but he would come up to the very rim, and she would open the window and lean out, and they would shout across the small space to each other.

The well monster called her Golden, because of her hair, and she called him Blue. They became great friends. Lessa did make him the three pillows, and also a warmer blanket than he had had before. She also provided him with what scraps of food he wanted. He didn't eat much, living mostly on water and air, but he did like the occasional green thing. He especially liked carrot tops, which Lessa was happy to give to him.

That autumn, they prepared better for the winter. They smoked and salted a great deal of meat. They canned beets and peas, and some apples too. They put potatoes in sacks, and bought an entire barrel of flour, so that they could make bread. They bought several wheels of cheese, still in their rinds, and stored it all in the pantry. There were jellies, and pickles, and all sorts of canned goods. Nash cut and stacked a great deal of wood while Lessa was smoking and curing meat, and he stacked it right beside the door, so that it would be easy to get at.

All of that took several weeks, for canning just one item of food takes almost an entire day, and they had many more than one items of food. Nash was afraid to go too far from the cottage, for Wolf had been on the move recently, so there was perhaps a little less meat than there could have been. However, it still hung in strips from almost every rafter in the cottage, along with braided strands of onion and garlic. 

They were quite confident that they would not starve that winter. And in fact, they did not. They were well fed, and comfortable. This winter, in contrast to the one before it, was very easy. Nash turned twenty nine, and Lessa made him a cake, and presented him with a beautifully made hat, of raccoon skin, and a new coat made of wool, with a fur lining. Nash couldn't imagine where she had gotten the wool, and she refused to tell him, saying it was a secret.

That night she prepared an especially nice meal, and there was cake afterwards. It was a delightful day. The next day, they woke to a thick layer of snow, and more falling thickly from heavy white clouds. They both ran outside, Lessa to make sure the well monster would be all right, and Nash to shovel the snow away from the door, and to make a path to the privy. The well monster was just fine, and actually liked the cold, and the snowflakes that drifted down its well.

Then Lessa sneaked up on Nash, and dumped a large handful of snow down his back. He yelled in surprise, and grabbing her, threw her bodily into a snowdrift. She shrieked with laughter, and came out with a snowball in either hand.