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By: Katherine Huber
By: Katherine Huber
This is an ongoing story. To read chapters 1-3 CLICK HERE.
This is an ongoing story. To read chapters 1-3 CLICK HERE.
Chapter 4: Almost Easy
After I knew what I had to do, it was almost easy.
Almost.
There would be no arranged mother. No sleeping on the mound of soil. No more tea under the cloudless skies. No more friends.
No more freedom.
Lots more of Great-Aunt Matilda.
After I knew what I had to do, I wasted no time in getting it done. Neither did anyone else. Even Lily helped, although I could see the pain in her face whenever she looked at me. It made my throat close.
How could someone who’d only known me a week look at me like that? Like I was important? How could they look at me like I was important, like they were sad to let me go? Mother was the only one who’d ever looked at me like that. Unless Father had in, the few weeks he’d had with me before his death.
Great-Aunt Matilda had never, never looked at me like that.
But I couldn’t think of that. I had to get to Old Mother Well. I had to find her.
But could I be brave enough to leave the only place that felt like home to me? The only place where Mother felt close to me?
I didn’t know.
* * * * * *
Together, Anna, Sarah, Lily, Edward, and I packed. We filled leather sacks with food, with clothes. We filled them with homemade boomerangs, staffs, bows, and spears. “The Wellwood isn’t kind to those who want to leave it,” Sarah told me. “It’s wise to be prepared.”
And it was true. As we prepared to find Old Mother Well, the Wellwood hurled obstacles into our helpless selves. Every day, it rained, soaking us in cold fluid. The wind was biting, and lightning illuminated the drab sky. Thunder crashed in our weary ears. Sly, doglike creatures crept to our camp in the night, growling in low rumbles. Edward, Lily, and Sarah watched over the area every night, in shifts, while Anna and I tried to keep a meager fire going long enough to cook the little food we could find.
I infinitely preferred it to Great-Aunt Matilda’s house.
There was so much freedom in the Wellwood. I could be who I truly was inside, in a way that I never could with Great-Aunt Matilda.
The Wellwood was part of me. But I had to leave it.
Why me? Why anyone? I didn’t know. I just knew I had to go.
So we packed, and one day we set off.
We were going to see Old Mother Well.
To be continued
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