Chapter 4
I, ELLINORE, JUST ELLINORE, HAD spent the last two weeks of my life trying a variety of new things only to discover that I was completely horrible at all of them.
Not that I would admit it ever. Especially not to Zig or to Aven (if I saw them again) or to anyone who asked, really, because I had chosen this.
I had chosen to garden and to knit and to cook and to write.
It was just more difficult than I had anticipated.
I’d hit a few snags, but I was certain I could figure it all out. Maybe.
I sprinkled water on my decidedly dead herb garden on the windowsill and looked out at the backyard, where the mud pit that was supposed to be rows of carrots and string beans mocked me. Okay, so I didn’t have a green thumb.
I also didn’t have the fine motor skills required for knitting.
What I did have was a knotted tangle of yarn and two bent needles sitting uselessly on the table.
The large jumble of string would have been a perfect plaything for the two stray kittens I’d adopted from the nearby farmer’s barn, if they hadn’t run off together on the second day they lived with me.
One of the sheep bleated contentedly in the yard, reminding me that my brother had been more successful with his newly acquired livestock than I had in all my domestic efforts.
Fine. Whatever. I had failed at the other things, but cooking… cooking I could maybe do. I’d roasted plenty of game over a campfire in my lifetime. And it hadn’t been horrible. I’d survived.
I left the window and crossed to the hearth, where I peered into the pot. Well, that didn’t look right.
I skimmed over the recipe that I’d purchased from a merchant a few days ago.
It was supposed to be rabbit stew, but it looked more like…
noxious sludge. I grabbed a long wooden spoon and tried to stir it.
I wiggled the handle, attempting to lever the not-quite-soup into moving.
With a grunt and my ample sword-arm strength, I tugged.
The handle snapped in half, and the thick, viscous liquid didn’t budge.
The broken end of the spoon sank into the brew, like a stone slowly disappearing into a bubbling swamp.
I cursed and threw the remnants of the shattered handle into the fire, before sighing and slumping onto the bench at the table.
I covered my face with my hands and let out a frustrated scream.
I took a breath and composed myself. “Okay, no,” I said out loud. “It’s okay. This is not a pity party. I tried something new, and it didn’t work.” I stood and placed my hands on my hips. “It’s okay.”
I comforted myself with the knowledge that my parents had made it to their new home.
A trader from the coastline had brought the message and delivered my mom’s letter.
It was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak spell, knowing that my parents could now enjoy the benefits of my winnings.
Even if it had come at the cost of… my sense of self and any and all normal life skills.
“I think you’re a lost cause,” I said to the gelatinous stew currently destroying my mother’s good pot. “Maybe I am too.”
Rainbow bleated from the yard in agreement.
With a heavy sigh, I dumped whatever it was that I’d mistakenly conjured into the row of carrots (it couldn’t hurt), then scrubbed the pot clean. Then I sat inside and drummed my fingers against the kitchen table, unsure of what to do next.
A journal of pristine parchment sat tauntingly blank in front of me, and a new quill and inkwell were within reach, waiting for me to take them and do some self-exploration.
Small splats of ink stained my fingers as I dipped the quill into the well.
I stalled. I set the quill down, then picked it up, then twirled it in my fingers, then set it down again.
It was only a journal, meant for my own eyes, or maybe Zig’s if I ever told him the truth.
It shouldn’t be so difficult, but I didn’t know how to begin or what to write.
I knew the truth about how all my supposed accolades had gone down, but there were so many lies tangled into who I was to everyone else, I didn’t know what the real Ellinore looked like.
I stared into the distance for a few minutes, contemplating a nap, when the door creaked open and Zig slipped inside, wearing the same clothes from the day before, a sack in his hand. He raised an eyebrow at me. “Ah, you’re home. Just where I left you.”
I mustered my best annoyed look. “And you didn’t come home last night.”
He shrugged, then smiled, all teeth. “Would you like to know why?”
“No. Ancients, no.”
My mom once said the cosmos had given her me to test her humility and had given her Zig to test her patience.
I’d never quite understood what she meant until these last two weeks of living alone with Zig.
And now I got it. I so got it. But I couldn’t leave him, not until I convinced him to move to the new house.
He laughed as he kicked off his boots. “Did I hear shrieking earlier?” He ran a hand through his tousled hair before wandering over to where I sat. “I swore I heard a scream while I was walking home.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “No. There was no shrieking.”
“Oh, must have been someone else.” He lifted his nose and took a tentative sniff, then shuddered. “What’s that smell?”
“Stew.”
“No, it’s not.” He breathed deeply, then pinched his nose. “That smells like death.”
“You’re a jerk.”
“As expected,” he said. “I could say it’s nice to know that you’re not perfect at everything, but that would tip me from jerk into prick territory.”
I bristled but didn’t deign to respond.
He smiled, knowing he’d touched a nerve, then dropped the sack on the table with a thump and settled on the bench. He extended his hands above his head and yawned, grimacing as he stretched. “Ugh. My back. I shouldn’t have slept on that floor.”
“You could’ve come home.”
“That still would entail sleeping on the floor.”
“No, it would be sleeping on a mattress and blankets… on the floor.”
The home where we’d grown up was a two-room cabin with a fireplace in one wall and a window in the other that looked out over the backyard and the well; a rough-hewn table in the living area, with a long bench on one side and two chairs; and one room with a hay-stuffed mattress.
I’d taken my parents’ old room since they left, and Zig still slept where we used to as children, on a mattress and a pile of blankets in a curtained-off area on the other side of the structure. Not that he slept at home often.
“It’s a good thing I brought home lunch, or else you’d starve from obstinacy…
and ineptitude.” He reached into the bag and handed me an apple with a perfect red peel.
He flapped open a cloth napkin and placed the rest of the contents on it—a hunk of cheese, slices of salted meat, a loaf of bread, another apple, and a large pile of thick-shelled nuts.
“Those better not be magic beans,” I said.
Zig narrowed his eyes. “That was one time, and we were nine. Let it go. Besides, be grateful I brought you anything at all. Beggars can’t be choosers, you know.”
“I can pay you back—”
He shot me a glare. “I can treat my sister to lunch. I have my own money.”
I bit back the comments about how he made that money because I was very much aware of how hypocritical that would be.
I sighed. “I tried, okay? Cooking is difficult.”
His expression turned grim, as if he’d already noticed my struggles.
Or maybe he was just hungover. “It smells about as difficult as the knitting looks,” he said, holding the raggedy ball of yarn between two fingers, then tossing it aside.
“You know… you can sit around and be miserable at the coast with our parents. You don’t have to be here to do that. ”
I straightened from my slump. “What? I’m not miserable.”
“Sure. Tell that to your dying plants.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. A faint breeze blew in through the open shutters, rattling the stunted twigs of my herbs. Another cheerful bleat of the sheep echoed from the pasture.
“Anyway,” he said, and took a bite of his own apple. “I don’t get it. You were happy. You had a competitive situationship with that royal person.”
I scoffed at that, but Zig continued undeterred.
“You had acclaim. You earned enough gold for five lifetimes. And you just quit? Like that?” He snapped his fingers. “Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Right.” He cast a glance at my leather armor and sword propped in the corner.
I’d not fixed the pauldron, but I’d cleaned and shined the armor.
And of course polished and sharpened my sword.
And hadn’t touched it since. He frowned.
“You can tell me, you know. I’d listen. I can’t promise I won’t judge, but I’d at least keep my mouth shut.
” He fiddled with his sleeve. “Did something happen?”
My eyes stung at Zig’s sincere concern. It would be so easy to tell him.
That I wasn’t what everyone made me out to be.
But it was all too fresh, too immediate, sparkling right under my skin.
And I couldn’t shake how he’d looked at me on the street two weeks before, like he despised me.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “You wouldn’t understand. ”
His expression shuttered, like a cloud passing over the sun. “Right. Of course. I’m not an adventurer. I’m not Ellinore the Brave.” He said the title with such disdain, it made my heart ache. “I wouldn’t get it.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I don’t really even understand myself.” And that was the first full truth I’d said to him since I returned. I gestured to the blank parchment. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
Zig touched the journal. “Wow,” he said, staring down at the blank page, “you’ve been so prolific. I’m impressed.”
I snatched the book from him, almost knocking over the inkwell in the process. “I’m organizing my thoughts before I start writing. I’m… preplanning.”