The Princess and Her Rogue

by Sheritta Bitikofer

  “Oh, I see you two are up already,” greeted Mrs. Forger as she came walking from down the hall in a plain dress tunic. Kiara immediately stood up and laced her fingers in front of her in a very innocent pose, as if she had been caught in some scandalous act. She blushed and bowed her head a little. Nate only turned to look in Mrs. Forger’s direction with a look of tired surprise.

  “I apologize, Mrs. Forger. I just came to check and see if Nate was feeling any better. I hope we didn’t wake you,” Kiara said very formerly.

  Mrs. Forger grinned and waved her hands in a careless fashion. “Oh, don’t worry about it, dear. If my husband were in the same place as little Nathan here, I’d have been up all night worrying about him, too.”

  Kiara blushed a deeper red and bit her lips bashfully. Nate cleared his throat and looked towards the fireplace, contemplating whether he should stand or just keep sitting there.

  “But, no matter. That just means you two can help me prepare breakfast before the others get up. Come on, Miss Kyra. I’m sure you can help me in snatching a few eggs from the coop this morning,” Mrs. Forger said giddily as she stepped towards the kitchen to fetch two small hand baskets.

  “Eggs? What do you mean?” Kiara looked up with new confusion.

  “Chicken eggs, dear. Out in the chicken coop. I bet those hens are still fast asleep, so it will be quite easy.” Mrs. Forger offered out the spare basket to Kiara, then marched towards the door like a woman with a mission. Kiara looked from the little woman - who resembled a hen herself - then down to Nate, who just gazed up at her with an amused smirk, knowing full well that Kiara had never done such a thing as collecting eggs from chickens in her life.

  She took offense to that look, stuck out her tongue at him, and then marched on right behind Mrs. Forger. Kiara was only half convinced that she could pull this little task off before she walked out the door, but once she was out in the brisk morning air, she knew she couldn’t. Her tunic was too thin and wouldn’t keep out the cold well enough. It was apparent that the farther away from the Field of Fire they were, the colder it happened to be.

  Her skin crawled, causing her to shiver as she followed the women out to where the chicken coop must have been, listening to amusing stories about chickens that had the tendency to fight back when someone would steal their eggs. The anecdotes weren’t encouraging.

  Kiara wrapped her arms around her shoulders as they cautiously entered the wooden coop. Row after row of chickens sat sleeping in their little nests, a few clucking in their sleep and others letting out little grumbling sounds. The floor was speckled with bird droppings and smelt of stale straw. It was almost too much for Kiara to stand. This had to be the dirtiest thing she had ever done.

  Mrs. Forger walked over to the first hen and gently reached under its bottom to grab an egg to place in her basket. “See, it’s that simple. You try,” whispered the woman, motioning towards another slumbering chicken in the next row.

  Did this woman honestly insist that Kiara put her hand under an animal’s bottom to steal its baby? She thought it was both disgusting and uncalled for. But, then again, she was hungry and scrambled eggs for breakfast sounded very appetizing.

  So, with a shaky hand, she dug her fingers between the hen’s bottom and the twigs of the nest and tried to find an egg. With luck, Kiara found the egg, but in her haste she missed grabbing it. Instead, as fortune would have it, she grabbed the scrawny leg of the hen.

  Inevitably, the hen awoke in frenzy, clucked angrily and flapped its wings wildly. This set off a chain affect in the chicken coop and before Kiara knew it, every chicken in the room was wide-awake and flapping their wings to escape out the little door. Kiara ducked and covered her head, as did Mrs. Forger until all of the screeching hens were gone from the coop, leaving behind only their feathers floating in the air.

  When the hysteria was over, Kiara glanced up to see Mrs. Forger laughing heartily. “Well, not bad for a beginner!” she proclaimed, finding this all extremely funny for some reason. Kiara chuckled a little. At least this made her job much easier, as all the chickens were gone and had left their eggs sitting in the nest, waiting to be gathered up for the family’s breakfast.

  An hour or so later, all the members of the Forger family - as well as Kiara and Nate - were sitting around the table. For the first time, Kiara saw everyone in the household. And what a family they were; nothing compared to Kiara’s family, of course, but just as close.

  Mr. and Mrs. Forger sat at both heads of the table. Everyone was dressed in regular peasant attire, rather than nightgowns. Kiara sat comfortably on Mrs. Forger’s right hand side. She had grown rather attached to the woman while they fixed breakfast that morning and sitting near anyone else would have felt too awkward. Across from Kiara, sat the youngest daughter out of the three that were present. The little seven-year-old had blonde hair and bright, youthful blue eyes and answered to the name of Ashley. The child was small and scrawny, but was very honest and innocent. At first seeing Kiara, Ashley exclaimed how pretty she was and how scary Nate looked. Kiara grinned at the compliment, but Ashley received a strict scolding from her mother for the insult she had made towards Nate. However, Nate didn’t mind so much and thought the child adorable.

  Next to Kiara, sat the boy she had met last night by the name of Owen. Now fully awake, Owen seemed rather shy and timid around Kiara. He kept his head down and from the sound of his voice he was just reaching manhood.

  Across from Owen and next to Ashley, was the middle girl of the family, Miranda. She was very pretty, with dark brown hair and black eyes. From the way she held herself, she was also stepping into - or rather, stumbling into womanhood. She was far from graceful and she often apologized for everything. Just like Owen, she seemed very shy and reserved. Kiara felt sorry for the poor girl. Sorry enough that taking the young lady under her wing didn’t seem like a bad idea.

  Next to Owen, on the other side of Kiara, sat the two boy twins who looked just a bit older than Ashley. One was named Hunter and the other Jeremy. They both had striking blonde hair and brown eyes like their eldest sister, Leanne. The two boys were rambunctious and spent their free time before breakfast playing knights and horses in the living room. Kiara still couldn’t decipher which boy went to which name, but she figured it didn’t matter much. Wherever one went, the other was told to go as well.

  Leanne and Nate sat in front of the twins, with Nate sitting closest to Mr. Forger. Already, Kiara was envying Leanne for getting the best spot at the table. She used the excuse that she was in charge of keeping the twins under control, but Kiara knew that the real reason was because Leanne and Nate were old friends. Kiara found herself constantly looking in their direction, watching the way she acted towards Nate and the way he returned those actions. Leanne would steal every glance she could towards Nate, but he seemed less inclined to look back, but instead kept his eyes focused on his breakfast. Kiara hoped this was a good sign that Nate had absolutely no interest in the girl. What he said earlier about not being interested in her did not comfort Kiara in the least. Time and people could change, so Leanne could have become more attractive to Nate now than when she was younger.

  “So, Miss Kyra, what brought you across the border to be needing Nathan’s help to get back home?” Mr. Forger asked at the beginning of the meal after introductions had been made. Kiara almost didn’t respond to her fake name, so the response was delayed until Nate cleared his throat to get her attention.

  “…Oh! Um… I was, uh…” Kiara didn’t think the plan too thoroughly, so she figured that the truth would have to settle for now. “… I was kidnapped by bandits and they were taking me towards the Field of Fire until Nate came and rescued me.”

  Kiara said it so fast and in such a mumbled voice, almost ashamed of the truth, that only little Ashley, Owen and Mrs. Forger were able to catch the entirety of what she had spoken to her plate of eggs, ham and bread.

  “Oh, my word! You poor thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Forger.

  Owe
n said nothing, but only looked up in shock.

  “Bandits! What did they look like?” Ashley cried out very excitedly, as if it were story time.

  Kiara could see Nate lean his elbow on the table and hide his face in frustration. What else was she going to say? Did he have some other story that he had told Mr. Forger last night?

  Once Mrs. Forger announced the circumstances to the rest of her children and her spouse, the rest joined in on the excitement, asking all sorts of questions and showing mixed feelings of concern and excitement.

  “Good going, Nathan! You got yourself into a real mess!” Owen teased from across the table. Nate only scoffed at him and continued eating without a word.

  “Why on earth would bandits try to steal a pretty girl like yourself?” Mrs. Forger asked.

  This time, Kiara only shrugged, seeing as her mouth was already full of scrambled eggs. It was better than having a foot in it, anyway.

  “Well, no matter why they did it, they still did and now you guys are here. So, I assume they took you through Resh Pass, correct?” Mr. Forger inquired.

  Nate and Kiara both nodded.

  “But, you guys came in from the west. Did you go all the way around Deceiver’s territory?”

  The two travelers nodded again.

  “That’s a long way to travel. What other dangers did you happen to come across?” Leanne asked, finding herself engrossed in the story. Mr. Forger already had to explain to the others about how Nate got his shoulder wounded earlier that morning.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe what we did before getting here!” Kiara began, becoming over enthusiastic, remembering what she had to endure in the past few days, “We had to trek all the way across the southern border, then up through Gimel’s Bog where I almost died in the quick sand…”

  The children were captivated.

  “Once we made it out of there, Nate got food poisoning from eating some bad berries that I told him not to eat, but he ate them anyway…” Nate grimaced and kept munching on his piece of toast. “Then, one night, the bandits caught up with us and had Nate surrounded in a clearing. I escaped and hid on this ridge not too far away and watched him slay every last one of the bandits single-handedly!”

  The family made remarks of shock and awe.

  “But, Nate got sliced in the side in the process, so we had to stall our traveling for a day. Would you mind re-bandaging that wound after breakfast, Mr. Forger?”

  “I would be glad to, Miss Kyra. Continue,” replied the farmer.

  “Thank you. So, the day after that, we came to a little part of the Field of Fire. It was so terrifying and we almost died avoiding these huge geysers that spewed out fire and steam. I almost fell down into a lava river that ran through the field, but Nate saved me again. We both almost got incinerated just before escaping the field, but we made it out alive somehow. It was quite an adventure.”

  “And then, on top of that, you get attacked by wolves?” Miranda chimed in curiously.

  Kiara nodded. “Yep! Last night, Nate disappeared from camp and I went out looking for him, but instead, a bunch of wolves found me. He came and rescued me and killed a few, but he got that nasty wound on his shoulder.”

  The children were completely enthralled by the tale. Ashley swooned at the romantic notion of going off with a mountain man herself and being saved from the jaws of death. Even Miranda and Leanne seemed to daydream about the idea. The twin boys were already picking who they wanted to be for their next pretend game: either Nate or the mean bandit. And Owen looked over in Nate’s direction, inwardly admiring his courage and strength. Mrs. Forger looked extremely sympathetic, while her husband was nodding in approval towards Nate.

  “Looks like you’ve become quite a hero, Nathan. I don’t know if I’d be running all over the country taking hits like that for a woman, but you sure have got guts,” Mr. Forger commented as he patted Nate on the back like a proud father or uncle would. Mrs. Forger immediately took offense to what he had said and the farmer noticed. “Oh, except for you, Ma. I’d do that for you, but not just for any old stranger. That’s what I meant.”

  “Mmhmm, sure it was. That’s ok. I’ve got a list of chores for you to do anyway,” Mrs. Forger said with a matter-of-fact tone. Everyone giggled at the farmer’s expense, but continued eating.

  “Well, that’s all in the past, anyway. So, where are you from and where are you going back to?” Mr. Forger asked before shoveling a fork-full of egg into his mouth.

  “Oh, I’m from Aleph,” Kiara replied before she could think. Everyone gawked at the answer and Nate, once again, looked embarrassed and frustrated.

  “Aleph? You’re from Aleph?” Leanne asked with zeal.

  “Yes… Is that odd?” Kiara looked around at the baffled faces of the family.

  “It’s not odd, dear, just a big coincidence. We used to live in Aleph some years back. Leanne and Miranda were born there, in fact. We haven’t been back in Aleph for a long time,” Mrs. Forger said thoughtfully.

  “Oh… I’m sorry if it brought up some bad memories or something,” Kiara said.

  “No, no. No bad memories. Just a few regrets,” the mother replied.

  “I wish I was back in Aleph. It was so beautiful there,” Leanne said tiredly as she pushed away her empty plate. Nate looked from Leanne, to Mrs. Forger and to Kiara with a look of regret himself. Kiara shrugged and picked up the last bit of bread she had on her plate.

  “Honestly, I think up here is much more lovely than Aleph. You get a perfect view of the mountains.” Kiara motioned towards one of the kitchen windows that depicted the snow caped peaks of the Shin Mountains.

  “It may be a lovely view, but we lived much better in Aleph. We didn’t have to struggle or work as hard as we do now… Which reminds me, chores start immediately after breakfast,” Mrs. Forger informed the group.

  The younger children groaned, but the elder ones knew better than to complain, so they just sighed.

  “That includes you two, as well.” Mrs. Forger meant Kiara and Nate.

  Nate didn’t seem all that surprised, but Kiara was a little worried. “Um… What kind of chores are there?” she asked nervously.

  “There’s milking the cows, churning butter, feeding the animals, cooking lunch and dinner, tending to the gardens, grooming the animals and whatever needs to be done around the house like laundry, cleaning… You know, regular chores,” Mrs. Forger listed as she began taking up all of the family’s dirty plates.

  “Don’t you do chores back in Aleph?” little Ashley asked as she hopped down from her chair.

  “Um… No, actually, I didn’t,” Kiara replied sheepishly.

  “Yeah, look at her hands! She hasn’t got any scratches or blisters!” one of the twins jested as they ran past her chair to head towards the front door.

  “Don’t worry, Kyra. I’ll teach you to do some of the chores with Miranda and I. They aren’t very hard,” Leanne said softly from the other side of the table as she and her sister stood up.

  Kiara thanked her and stood up as well to follow them towards the door.

  “And don’t forget, you lot, that today is harvest day so right after lunch, we’ll be going out to pick the last of the crops!” Mr. Forger reminded before he arose from the table himself and pulled Owen up - who had just happened to be too preoccupied with staring at Kiara to notice it was time from work. “Come on, Nathan! You can give me a hand with making some little metal pieces for a horse harness that’s due tomorrow.”

  Nate soon rose as well, but unwillingly, to follow Mr. Forger and Owen out towards the barn.

  Once outside, Kiara waited for Mrs. Forger on the porch with the other girls until the men were all out of the house. Nate lingered on the porch and looked over his shoulder to Kiara, who was staring back at him. He gave her a faint smile, then turned to follow the boys towards the barn and workshop. Kiara smiled back and watched him walk away, secretly wishing she were qualified for doing a man’s work so that she could be closer to Nate. />
  But, instead of pounding away at hot metal, she would do something that seemed more tedious. Kiara frowned as she saw Mrs. Forger emerge from the house with two basketfuls of dirty laundry and little Ashley dragging along her own basket that must have been way too heavy for her.

  “Alright, let’s go and do laundry first. Come along, Kyra. There’s a creek down by that tree line and the basin is just around the house, there,” Mrs. Forger said dutifully as her, Ashley and Miranda began to make their way towards the creek. Leanne chose to stay behind and help Kiara with the basin and soap.

  Kiara was too distracted, watching Nate until he disappeared behind the barn doors, to care about the fact that she hadn’t done any laundry in her life. She was too in love to care. The only thing she could think about the entire time she was soaking the trousers, tunics and dresses in the soapy water, was when she would get to see Nate again.

  And luckily, it wasn’t at lunchtime like she had thought. It was much earlier than that. After the girls had finished washing all the clothes, sheets and dishes, each one dispersed into their own appointed tasks.

  Mrs. Forger and Miranda secluded themselves inside the house to clean it from top to bottom. Ashley was assigned to feeding the animals and collecting the rest of the eggs out of the chicken coop to put in their cold cellar. Leanne was told to tend to the garden, churn butter and prepare the wool for spinning later that evening.

  Kiara was given the lucky chore of milking the cows in the barn. At first, she was terrified because she had no clue how to go about milking anything, much less a cow. But then, when she heard of where the cows were located, she didn’t mind it anymore.

  So, with half a dozen tin pails, she staggered skittishly into the barn, aware that Nate would be on the other side of those great big doors. The first thing she saw was Hunter and Jeremy pitching fresh hay into horse stalls off to the far left side of the barn. Ahead, she saw the cows in their own stalls, but she wasn’t in a big hurry just yet.