The Springborn

CALDER

I squash my hat in my fist as my feet pound the ground beneath me. Robbie’s waiting for me just inside the border of the woods, or he’d say something like, “Don’t punish that poor hat for your own stupidity.” And I’d give him a glare or a smack for it, even though he’d be right in pointing out that the stupidity that just happened was one hundred percent of my own doing.

Will I ever encounter Sabella face to face without saying the wrong thing?

I never should have mentioned the basket. I know full well I am forbidden to speak of it. Delphine would skin me alive if she knew I’d mentioned it. Yonaz would make me chop firewood until my blisters sprouted blisters.

As much as I regret that Sabella’s mother cut our visit short, it was probably for the best. My blasted tongue had gotten off its leash. Again. Next time Yonaz should write me a script rather than giving me a vague idea of what to say and do.

Now that I reflect on it, his plan was rather ridiculous. What sense was there in my pretending to be a boarder? How would that have inspired her to trust me? It feels like I’ve been shoveling lies into a heap and hoping they’ll sprout daisies, but all the while they’re just useless excrement.

“Judging by the sour look on your face, the visit did not go well,” Robbie says as we head toward home. His bird feet tread lightly on the pine-needled path. The trilling of robins overhead is louder than his footsteps.

A brown frog stubbornly sits in the path. It eyes me as I step over it. I do not wish to expound upon my foolish behavior, but Robbie will pester me until I do. My face heats as I say, “I mentioned the basket to her. And also, she saw you yesterday. And by you, I mean all of you, including your feet.”

“Blast it all to blazes,” Robbie says. “Then we’re both in big trouble. Or we will be if Yonaz or Delphine find out.”

“Maybe nothing will come of our little missteps and we won’t have to confess.” I say this with far more optimism than I feel.

“We’ll keep it to ourselves for now. No harm in that,” Robbie says. “So, will you be moving in with the girl’s family or not?”

I shrug. “Remains to be seen. Yonaz thought that if I formed a friendship with her, she’d be more easily swayed to join us. I’m not so sure. She doesn’t seem to trust me one bit.”

He casts me a sidelong glance, accusatory in nature. “You flirted, didn’t you?”

“Not on purpose.”

“Well, be more careful next time. She’s been housebound for ages; of course she’s uncomfortable with strangers. Befriend her slowly instead of proposing immediate marriage or waxing poetical about her hair.”

“Hey! I don’t do that.”

“Pardon me?” Robbie counters. “Every blessed time Yonaz sends you for supplies, you come back mooning over some shop girl or dairy maid. Remember the girl from Coalton whose giant of a brother came after you because you asked her to meet you in the meadow?”

I shrug. “She said she liked flowers and I offered to show her flowers. It was not my fault she leapt at me and kissed me right as her brother got there. She was forward, Rob. I’d been a perfect gentleman?—”

Robbie rolls his eyes. “Gentlemen do not invite young ladies to meet them alone in fields, and well you know it. The mine towns are rough but the people are not without their rules of propriety.”

I roll my eyes heavenward. “You have to stop reading those etiquette books. Try a novel or something.”

“Calder.” He chastens me with my own name. He’d have made an excellent parson or schoolmaster if he’d not grown the feet of a chicken. Strict, but wise.

“All right. I will try to do better,” I say. “Slow, sensible friendship it shall be.”

“Good,” Robbie replies.

The path narrows and I let him walk ahead of me. Robbie is like my brother, but I don’t tell him everything. If I were to confess my strong feelings for Sabella, he would argue that they’re my “typical nonsense” and will burn out fast, but I know otherwise. This is no fleeting infatuation with someone I just met, but something abiding and real that has already endured the test of years. I have been with her, although unseen by her, on sunlit days and days wet with rain or thick with snow. I have seen her tears fall in torrents and I have listened to her sing softly, contentedly, as she roamed the mountainside. I have pressed my ear to the plank walls of her home and heard her father belittle her and her mother berate her. I have stood ready to rush in and rescue her from misery more than once. Only the threat of severe punishment has kept me from acting the hero. Well, that and my firm belief that she will one day join us of her own free will.

Robbie glances over his shoulder and says teasingly, “She is pretty, though. Do you think she fancied my fine set of legs when she caught sight of them?”

I shove him off the path. He stumbles into the brush but doesn’t fall. “Shut it, Rob.”

He chuckles and picks leaves off his shirtsleeve. “I will take that as a yes.”

“I think she’d fancy your chicken legs cooked up in a stew.”

He shoves me back and cries, “Last one home is a rotten raccoon carcass!”

And the race begins.