Hidden Power (2 page)

Aurora nibbled from a bowl of fresh-shelled pinora nuts while she waited for the hot water to boil, watching moonlight spill over their tiny farmstead. Past the herb garden, which was her responsibility, the 6-acre farm spread out like a patchwork quilt across the fertile land of Pleasant Valley. 

The dover cane fields and saw grass plots were just over the rise, where an orchard of grace berry trees bloomed in the distance, leaves dappled with bright pink buds. 

To the left was the barn, in need of a fresh coat of paint and missing a few slats here and there but sturdy enough to keep the six hoar beasts, four tunney goats and dozen sour birds warm during the chilly frost season nights.

Aurora always rose well before dawn, preferring to get a jump on her morning chores so that her afternoons were free from the hustle and grind of farm life. She was on mid-season break from her learning, and while her father thought that meant working for him full-time on the farm, 16-yeard-old Aurora had other plans. 

At least, once her chores were done.

The ancient kettle rattled on the cast iron stove, and Aurora snatched it away before it could whistle through the dented copper spout. She filled two earthen mugs, watching the green bitterroot flakes float to the top as steam fluttered away. While the tea steeped, she sat in the breakfast nook and laced her leather boots tightly, sliding into her worn jacket and grabbing the first mug on her way out the door.

The air was cold with early morning chill and Aurora sipped her tea greedily, despite steam still spilling off its bittersweet surface. It tasted like wildflowers and cinnamon with a little dirt thrown in for good measure, but it had quite the kick and she knew, after only a few sips, she’d have all the energy she’d need to knock out half her morning duties before hunger forced her back into the kitchen for a proper breakfast. 

By then her mother would be up and starting her own day, baking fresh buckwheat rolls with honey sap butter and frying thick slabs of hogs tooth bacon with ground spice flakes on top. Aurora’s stomach growled just thinking about it.

She wrapped her fingers around the mug, feeling its warmth before taking one last sip and setting it down on the fence post around the wild herb garden. She often started there, where the moon was brightest because of the lack of towering trees to blot it out.

She opened a small box she’d built in the corner of the garden and retrieved her tools, bending to her knees and silently weeding the terranon shrubs and moving toward the pristine rows of arrow root before attacking the thorns on the Geraldine sprouts. Her hands worked quickly, despite the chill. She could weed and till and dig in her sleep, and some mornings it seemed she did.

She smiled and hummed a tune, drawing a bare hand across her sweaty forehead and slipping a spray of long, black hair behind one ear as she bent back to her work. She hummed a song her mother used to sing to her, thinking but not singing the words that always brought her comfort when she needed it most:

“When the moon rises high

In the Synurgus sky;

And the ramble bugs hiss

I will send you a kiss

To wish you a merry good nigh…”

It always made her smile to think of the way her mother couldn’t find any way to make “goodnight” rhyme with “sky” or “high,” so she just left off the last letter.

Aurora was still humming when her father stumbled past, heavy boots trampling the dewy morning grass as he grumbled about the “ungodly hour” and spat bitter root juice in her compost heap. 

“And a good morning to you, too, father dear,” Aurora cracked as she watched him shuffle by.

He was a sturdy man, a lifetime farmer, with long, lean legs and arms layered with thick, veiny muscles beneath his old morning jacket. His hair was cut short and close to his head, more like salt and pepper bristles than anything else. Still, it suited his manly and rugged physique and lent character to the wrinkles around his soft blue eyes.

He was a kind and gentle man, that is, if you didn’t speak to him before sunrise, which Aurora rarely did without having a very, very good reason. Instead she bent to her work as he stumbled into the barn, where she would join him after he’d chewed enough bitter root to form complete sentences and maybe, just maybe, crack the day’s first smile.

She stood and arched her back, admiring the way the morning sun turned the horizon a stunning orange-blue as the second of Synurgus’ double moons finally disappeared from view. The rays grew warm on her young face as she stretched until the last of the morning’s chill had left her muscles. 

As she approached the barn, she heard cursing from the bleaters’ pen. Her father had recently bartered with Senior Pretorius, the neighboring farmer, for six new head of the short, furry beasts with the cotton white coats, trading only six bushels of fresh saw grass for the privilege.

But the barn was only designed for a dozen livestock, at best, and Aurora’s father had complained daily ever since. “More bleater troubles?” she asked knowingly, poking her head in the barn for fear he might toss a spare nayer shoe in her general direction.

“I knew I shouldn’t have added more bleaters to our stock,” he grumbled, rubbing a large, calloused hand atop his stubble-covered head. “What was I thinking, Aurora?”

“You were thinking,” she reminded him, cautiously stepping foot through the double barn doors, “of soft winter coats and snug blankets, of spring bleater beasts and fresh grass when they can graze and not stink up the barn!”

Her father looked at her then, blue eyes twinkling in the dim glow of the lanterns flickering on either side of the cavernous barn. “And until then?” he asked, a crooked smile filling his handsome face. “Should the extra bleaters sleep in your room?” He chuckled dryly before adding, “But no, where would all your books sleep then?!”

She blushed and turned away. Her father had never been much of a reader, and couldn’t understand how Aurora could want to read books when not in school, let alone spend every spare cent of her allowance on them.

Suddenly he cleared his throat and tossed off his gloves. Her eyes widened; he never quit his chores before they were through. “Where are you going, father?”

He shook his head as he approached her. “An old army friend just moved into town after leaving the service,” he explained. “He’s a carpenter by trade. I’m hoping he can help build me a new bleater pen before frost season hits us in full.”

Aurora stood by the door, an idea forming behind her placid smile. “But what about your chores?” she asked innocently, gazing around the dusty barn with wide eyes as if it looked worse than it actually did.

But he was too smart to fall for her little games. He tucked her under the chin, fingers smelling like bitter root. “That’s what daughters are for, Aurora.”

“Or!” she shouted, following after him, smoke rising from the cabin as her mother stood in the warmly lit kitchen, preparing breakfast for the two of them. “I could go into town for you. I’ll be needing new clothes for when I go back to my learning, and need to barter some in town anyway.”

Her father looked skeptical but he was standing still, one glove still on, so there was hope at least. “I could ask about your friend in town?” she added hopefully, feeling his resistance crumble.

Aurora guided her steed through the woods halfway between the family farm and the nearest town. It was still early morning and her chores were done and her belly was full of hogs tooth bacon; a fair start to the day if ever there was one.

Beneath her long, and still growing legs, the six hooves of her sturdy steed, Boer, ground into the damp earth as around them bower trees towered above, half-shielding the morning sun with their orange and yellow leaves. 

Aurora shifted in her creaky saddle and straightened the bundle of old clothes on her lap. She had been meaning to get into town for ages, but between her chores and reading and exploring the Valley with her friends before curfew, the early days of frost season just seemed to slip away and here she was, only a few weeks from going back to her Learning Place.

The forest thinned and the town of Balrog emerged, charming, quaint and quite bustling by the time she rode Boer through the heavy double gate that marked the only entrance into and out of town. The rest of the charming village was protected by a high wall, patrolled day and night by armed sentries. 

A small fountain gurgled in the town square and children sat in groups of two and three, eating fresh sweet buns from the baker or sipping on sweet gourds from the fresh grocer. A blacksmith toiled in his workshop, working the bellows as hot coals turned hotter steel into weapons for the Royal Guard.

Six-legged steeds in their thick frost season coats clattered across cobblestone streets as Aurora nodded pleasantly to the shopkeepers just opening their doors or already selling their wares.

She stopped for a sweet gourd just before the dressmakers stall, watching as the grocer grabbed the vibrant green melon and, with a single tap of her butcher knife, sliced off the thick top to reveal the sweet, fleshy meat beneath. 

Sliding it across the sticky cutting board, Aurora gripped the fat, thick end of the gourd with both hands and tipped it gently to her lips, where fresh, sweet orange liquid from inside gushed inside her mouth, filling it with a vaguely citrusy burst.

She thanked the shopkeeper and slid over two small, square coins before sharing some of the sweet gourd juice with Boer, who snuffled and neighed and whinnied and stamped his two front hooves in appreciation, making Aurora wish she had thought to buy one for each of them.

When the gourd was empty Aurora washed her sticky hands in the fountain and then grabbed her pile of old clothes from the back of Boer’s saddle. Tying the steed up to the hitching post outside of Madame Grimelda’s Thread Emporium, Aurora stepped inside the quaint, faintly musty store to barter for fresh clothes for the frost season semester of Learning.

Madame Grimelda was a tiny woman with a gray bun of coarse hair piled high atop her head. She greeted Aurora by name and asked of her parents’ health and well-being. 

Balrog was a small, thriving community in the kingdom of Wrenthe, and since the land was rich and fertile, and the neighbors friendly, few residents ever ventured far from the Valley it inhabited. Like all small villages, everyone knew everyone else, or so it seemed. 

“What brings you in today?” the old woman asked, greedily eyeing the clothes Aurora set on the crowded front counter and, no doubt, mentally calculating their worth – and how to keep that fact from her valued customer. 

“Well,” Aurora began cautiously, more than up to the intense negotiations that were sure to follow, “the Frost semester is right around the corner, and I wanted a few new clothes for when I go back to Learning.”

Madame Grimelda eyed her shrewdly. “Of course, of course, you do dear. And just look how you’ve grown since last we bartered! You’re nearly a woman now, eh? Almost sixteen, I’d say–”

“Almost
seventeen
,” Aurora was quick to correct, already eyeing a bright orange jacket hanging from a wicker mannequin in the display window, but trying not to let the old woman know. 

Madame Grimelda nodded appreciably and approached the jacket anyway. “This would look very mature for your return to Learning,” she said. “I assume your boyfriend would love it???”

Aurora blushed, a rare show of weakness. “No, no boyfriend… yet.”

Madame Grimelda cackled knowingly and leaned in across the counter with a conspiratorial wink. “That would all change if you showed up on the first day of Learning wearing
this
beauty.”

Aurora had to admit, Conner Griffith might look at her differently if she walked into school wearing the high-collared jacket with the tapered, narrow waist. Nearly twenty minutes later, the jacket was on her back, and several other new outfits were nestled in one of Madame Grimelda’s trademark green and gold bags.

“Always a pleasure,” the old woman said, tallying the stack of clothes Aurora had brought in; far bigger, Aurora noted, than what she was bringing out of the store with her. Still, with what she still had in her closet back home, and a few minutes each morning, she could make the new clothes last another season, maybe more.

“Say hello to your father for me,” the old woman said as Aurora opened the door to leave.

“That reminds me,” Aurora said, turning around with the drawstring bag of clothes slung over her left shoulder. “My father said an old friend of his, Lutheran, moved into the area recently. A craftsman, he was hoping this man might help him build an addition to our barn. Might you have heard of him?”

The old woman’s eyes lit up. “It just so happens,” said Madame Grimelda, “he was in here not three days ago, bartering a whole bag of fresh-shorn cotton from his Bleaters for a leather tool apron.”

Aurora was ecstatic. New clothes and Lutheran’s address? Her father would be ecstatic! “Can you tell me where he lives?” she gushed, leaning in for the answer. 

The old woman wrinkled her nose. “He said he’d bought the old Corinthian farmstead, out past Wandering Woods. Do you recall where that is?”

Aurora nodded tentatively, not looking forward to the journey. “The one past the Crystal Waterfall?”

“That’s the one!”

Wandering Woods was a dark and twisted place, with gnarled trees that shut out the daylight and strange, exotic animals that made even stranger sounds as they hid among the dark and gnarled trees. A giant Hooter with four wings watched her from a high branch, yellow eyes gleaming in the sudden darkness.

Boer was hinky, treading lightly with his six thick hooves as Aurora guided him on by tugging gently on his braided mane. “There boy,” she said, “just a little farther.” 

But even she blanched at the lie; it was many miles to the Crystal Falls, and all of them through the Wandering Woods. “Trust me,” she added in a wavering voice, “I don’t want to be in here any longer than you do!”

Soon the path grew too thick for Boer to navigate alone and she reined him in, slipping from his saddle to plant her feet on the soft, misty ground. She slid a long blade from her saddle sheath and cautiously led the nervous steed by the guide rope, hacking away thick, gnarled, thorny branches in advance of their faltering progress.