Fiction: "The Shopkeeper's Maidservant," Part 1 of 3.
"One's the parentage, two's the upbringing, and three's the desiring—tell me these three, and I can tell you the road your steps shall see."
"Better to be a poor but wise lad than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to receive advice."
—Ecclesiastes
Part 1: Serving Desrek of the Upper Vale from my youth.
To see where I come from, you must journey east from here, to the shoals of the Swift River. Then you follow the Swift for about a day upstream, climbing the hills when you are near the waterfall. Then turn at the in-going of the next tributary—Rill Creek. Though it be narrow, the Rill is long, and unspools its silver skein over a dozen fallings within the thickly-forested hills. Along the Rill, the road is well-packed and wide enough for two horses. Take it through those hills until you leave the woods and find a valley of golden fields: that is my home. Our town sits within the arms of two hillocks, and is simply called "Upper Vale."
In the Upper Vale, we have a saying: "One's the parentage, two's the upbringing, and three's the desiring—tell me these three, and I can tell you the road your steps shall see." I could wish that it were the desiring alone that accounted for aught. Even still, the effect of desiring is far greater than people think to weigh it.
I was an orphaned child, and have been a servant from my childhood years, so as you see I have no great claims of parentage. Nor can I point boldly to an upbringing full with intentionally-gifted graces. But there are graces not gifted by a father's will nor a mother's planning, and at least one was mine: quickness in learning my letters. That I have to thank for my first unexpected responsibility—one beyond the dullness of the stirring of a pot of soup, or the beating-out of rugs, or the scrubbing of latrines.
I overheard the father of the family, Master Desrek, declare me "quick enough" with my letters. I was listening near the rail of the stairs, childishly wondering, but well-enough pleased by his comment. I didn't know what trouble that assessment would buy me. Master Desrek himself then called me down: "Marna! I have a task for you." Then he told me I was to see to the schooling of his eldest son, Sharneth—I, a thin sapling of a girl—barely older than my pupil!
By the third lesson, Sharneth's eyes were hot with concealed violence. I say concealed, but it was only concealed to those who did not and would not look for it. I flipped open the dusty primer and started reading, pointing out the symbols of the sounds as I went. He looked away from his book, talking of the horse his father would soon give him. I told him he needed to shepherd his attention and lead it back to our task. He snapped, "I wasn't doing anything wrong."
Here, I took time to weigh my words and consider: if I contradicted him, I could face a whipping on his say-so alone. But if I agreed, I would most likely fail at teaching him, and be in trouble that way. I looked first at the wall, and then at his face, as I wondered how to answer. But he took this silence as my response, and found it uncomfortable. "Well, I wasn't doing anything!" Encouraged by this slipping of his certainty, I kept up my end: I spoke no word. As I waited, I cast my eyes demurely at the table, then snatched a glance at his face, then turned them to the open page of the lettered-book. If this worked, I vowed, I would let no unnecessary words slip from me in the future. And work it did. "What?" was all he said, turning his head down as he sought refuge in the printed page.
After, I thought of the way that they say great queens and noble ladies in stories can silence you with a glance. Here, I mean human women of great status—not of the nobles and rulers of Faery-kind; even from childhood I knew that one should speak of them seldom if at all. But, as I say, I wondered: Is the power in the status of their position? Is it their "look"? Or does the very silence of the glance silence the one they look upon?
I was relieved to have weathered that lesson with Sharneth. For I then had the power to turn his attention to work—wonder of wonders! He even grew to enjoy our lessons and reading, in time. And as Desrek had hoped—and every father hopes, I suppose—in time, too, Sharneth laid up a good supply of maturity and wisdom.
It was perhaps good that I only had my mind on succeeding in the task at hand—not in weighing its value to the future nor in questioning what had happened in the past: I would have been scared indeed if I knew then what I now know—that the past, two reading-tutors Desrek had commissioned had each left in a fury, refusing to teach Sharneth. Yet he learned from me, a girl, though my only desires were to keep myself out of trouble, to have a bit of work that was not so dull, and perhaps to be well-regarded by my masters.