1st 5 Pages March Workshop - Baird

Name: Jeri Baird
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy
Title: Fly True

CHAPTER ONE
MOIRA

I am called by many names. Destiny, Fate, Fortune; however I prefer Moira, for it sounds as if I have a heart. I do not. This is my story, although it may appear otherwise.

The year was 1300. A time when people believed in me, indeed feared me for meddling in their pathetic lives. It was a time before the priests had claimed them for their own brand of lies. A time where superstition and religion held hands like those faced with dying clutched at the living. An uneasy truce.

I watched over all, but my eyes fell upon the children in an isolated village of a northern English countryside. It is for these children that I had designed the quest that all undertook before assuming their place in the village as adults. And of the children, the twins interested me most, because they were the children whose parents conspired to deceive and cheat me. But I am Moira, and I will not be cheated.

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month in that centennial year, a young woman gave birth to twins. The girl child arrived first, welcomed with happy tears. When the midwife said, “There is another,” her joy transformed into terror, and a few minutes later the boy child arrived. Her husband watched as she turned from the babies, wrapped her arms to her chest, and wept. For never in the history of their village had more than one twin survived the quest. One always sacrificed for the other.

The rules of the quest were simple. On the first day of the first month all the twelve-year-old children began a time of magic. When they performed a good deed a token appeared. Bad deeds and dark thoughts received omens. In the tenth month they entered the forest alone. For five days the omens became challenges, and if the child had received enough tokens to defend themselves they survived. Not all did.

The quest began as a test for the children before they entered adulthood. Those who survived chose an apprenticeship at the end of the quest. Those who didn’t were a reminder to the younger children to consider their behavior in the hopes that their outcome would be better. In the many years since I’d created the quest it had served that purpose. But now the quest simply amused me.

After the births the parents devised a plan. The midwife, bound by the oath of her profession and strengthened by her friendship with the mother, would not report the second birth.

I allowed their foolishness for it delighted me that they would think to dupe me.

Swaddled together the boy and girl gazed first into the other’s eyes. The familiar heartbeats soothed each from the other. Unaware of their parents’ sorrow or the knowledge that it would be but two years before they were torn apart, the twins knew only the comfort of the moment. The boy would go with his father, the girl with her mother. They would be old enough to feel the pain of separation, yet young enough to forget.

But I knew their destiny, and I alone would see that it came to pass, for all things happened exactly as I intended.



CHAPTER TWO
THE TWELFTH BIRTHDAY
ADANNA

Adanna woke to the yeasty smell of baking bread. For most, that scent would comfort, but for the girl who woke to that odor every day of her life, it symbolized everything Adanna hated. She hated her mother for working long hours and then falling into bed exhausted. She hated how the smell permeated her clothes and her hair, such that when walking in the street strangers would identify her as the baker’s daughter. And she hated that she had eleven months and four days before she could leave the bakery, never to return.

Adanna’s basket of embroidery thread lay on the woven coverlet from her bed. The yellow thread sprawled over the covers. Like most nights, she’d fallen asleep stitching. She settled the basket on her nightstand and threw the covers to the side.

When she yanked off her nightcap the golden hair she’d inherited from her mother tumbled to her shoulders. Her dark eyes surely came from a father she knew nothing of, and of which her mother would tell her nothing.

A familiar sense of loss flooded through her, and she sighed. Would her mother even remember it was her birthday? Having the bad luck of a birthday on the Feast of St. Martin meant that every year her mother spent long hours the week before baking the special breads demanded by the villagers before the forty day fast began the next day.

“Adanna?”

She jumped, surprised to see her mother standing at the door. Flour smudged her face, and her hair glistened from the hot ovens. Dark circles underlined her eyes reminding Adanna of the late nights she’d worked.

“I baked something for you.” She held out a bun with sugared icing. Cinnamon, a precious commodity in the bakery sprinkled over the top.

It tickled Adanna’s nose and her mouth watered. She smiled. “Thank you, Mother.”

Her mother smoothed her apron. “Almost to your time of magic. Are you excited?”

Adanna shrugged, not wishing to reveal her true feelings.

The mother sighed. “Then you will choose, and everything will be perfect again.”

Adanna frowned. When had her life ever been perfect?

Her mother continued, “There’s much you can’t understand until you've completed the quest. When you return…” she paused, and Adanna noticed her slight shudder. “…and Fate has chosen the bakery as your apprenticeship, everything will be as it should.”

Adanna crossed her arms. “Mother! Are you worried I won’t return from the quest?” When her mother paled, she knew it to be true. “How could you think I would fail? Really, Mother! Do you think so little of me?”

“No, no, of course, I don’t doubt your return.” She twisted her hands. “You just need to be careful in this year to gain tokens. You mustn't tempt Fate.”

“Fate? What does Fate care about me?” Adanna’s gut tightened. What would she do if Fate did choose the bakery for her apprenticeship?

Her mother picked at the dough under her nails, and Adanna suspected that she hid something. But then, she had her own secrets, and apprenticing anywhere except in the bakery was one of them. She took a deep breath to calm her thudding heart and nibbled at the bun. “It’s wonderful, Mother. Thank you.”

Her mother smiled and caressed Adanna’s hair. “ I've invited Marigold to feast with us tonight. We'll have rabbit stew. And cake, as well.”

“Yes, Mother. Thank you.”

She turned to leave and then looked back. “Less than a year now, Adanna. I promise everything will be better.”

“Yes, Mother. It will be better.”

Adanna had her own plan that she shared with no one. Not her best friend Marigold, not her favored teacher, and not her mother, who would be shocked to know her daughter capable of such thoughts. With a small favor from the fortune teller and some magic, Adanna felt confident she could pull it off. Two noblemen’s sons would also enter their time of magic. Adanna intended one of them to fall in love with her.

She would not be a baker, whatever Fate might say.