Carrying Hope

AN/ This actually began as a school research paper. I was hoping to be able to publish it as a book, though I've not recieved much feedback on it. (Teacher slacked and never read it...) My one fear is that I never stick to a specific lanuage style, mixing modern english with old english. Constructive comments welcomed and also, feedback on thoughts. ONWARD!

The ground beneath her quaked and shivered, she could feel it. The insects and animals scurried from the west, running along her legs in haste as she knelt, hidden among the wheat stalks. The crows flew, squawking overhead, screeching into her ears of an omen. The wind sent a chill to her bones and a whisper of darkness to her ears. The crows circled back several times over the field and village, calling out wickedly sharp and high pitched wails before finally circling back to the west, fleeting as quickly as they’d come against the setting sun. Raising her head above the forest of wheat she look out at their backs as they flew against the wind back from whence they’d come. Never before had she’d seen this, never before had she felt the omen of ill will that she now felt. Picking herself up from the dirt, dusting it from her long skirt and apron, she swung the basket of her labors over her arm and headed back through the village to her home.
The village of Agrona was an agricultural one. The villagers often had nothing but what they wore on their backs, living in broken down huts with packed dirt for their floors and whatever they could grow off the dry cracked soiled that they’d farmed nearly to death over the years. None there could make much living, so the village was banned together in growing the necessary crops to survive the winter. They were a suspicious group, the lot of them. Outsiders weren’t welcome and were never allowed to stay long before the town would try to scare them off. They were nearly a hidden village, forgotten by the rest of the kingdom and that’s the way they liked it. They found no reason to be involved in business that was not their own. “Keep your nose where it belongs.” That was the town motto.
Nituna had been raised here her whole life with her mother and father. Sadly her mother had died when she was only about the age of 12 and she now lived alone with her father in the far off corner of the village. For some reason, for as long as she could remember, they’d been exiled in most parts of the village. Even now, as she walked her way back to her home she received unfriendly glances from over the villagers’ shoulders as the women gossiped to one another in the corner to which they thought her not able to hear. She’d never been given any explanation or clue as to why the village had treated her family as such, but she’d grown not to care. She’d managed to make a reasonable living here with her father and she was happy with that.
Off in the corner, across a rickety old bridge at the very end of the village, she could make out her house, lopsided, the light piercing the grass roof could clearly be seen brightening the inside through the cracked and gaped shutters attempting to cover the open windows. The vines grew wildly over the mud, wood and stone fame of the house, cracking it as it tried to grow through it. Walking up the slanted, water logged and rotting old steps she opened the creaking old door of flimsy, gap ridden panels of pine. Careful to watch her first step over the upraised stone base she placed the barely laden basket upon the small table in the kitchen, directly adjoining with the entrance, slightly to the left, under a dusty old window. “Father! I’m back!”
From further inside the house she heard rustling and a clatter. Limping from the bedroom came an old man, wrinkled and grey with time. The cane he held did little to help him stand upright with his hunched back and his eyes were clouded over, lacking the sight they once had, lucky, once in a while, if they could make out shadows were once they’d seen colors and sights beyond sights. He’d been a strong man in his youth and through most of Nituna’s childhood. Becoming both a mother and father to her after her mother had died had taken a toll on his mind and stressed his body to early old age. The rough years in the fields had shown no mercy to him either. Now, in his old age, it was nearly impossible for him to care for himself, so Nituna took the work of two men in the field. “Nituna?”
With a soft sigh Nituna swiftly, with the swoosh of her long, tatter brown skirt against the dirt of the floor, came to her fathers side, bending to help him as she was now taller than the hunched man. “Father, I’ve told you before not to move so much. You’re condition won’t allow it.” She gently urged the man back into the other room with a press of her hands against his shoulder as she guided him. “Come now, sit down by the fire”
“The town is ablaze with gossip. I can hear them from outside my window, whispering. What do they talk about?” His eyes have gone and he was not quite the man he used to be, but he could still tell when the town was riled, especially as it did not happen often. There would be a feeling in the air, a tense, suffocating feeling. That feeling had returned to the village.
“I do not know, father. Neither a woman nor child has said a word to me today. I was sent to one of the more reclusive parts of the field, I had little company but the crows and critters of the land. Strange is there behavior as of late. The animals scurry back and forth needlessly and the crows circle the crops and return from whence they came without ever once stepping foot in the field or taking a grain from the crop.”
“Black?” Asked the old man, his blind eyes moving up in instinct to where his ears had heard the sound. He was now sat comfortably in the only padded chair available in the house, warm in front of their crumbling and slanted fireplace.
“Black and sleek as the night. They flew higher in the sky than usual, circling the village over and over again before disappearing into the west once more.” Nituna had sat herself on the dirt floor next to her father, kneeling at his side as she told her tale of the day. She’d picked up a knack for story telling from her father. Ever since she could remember he’d sat with her by the fire every night and tell such incredible stories of Fairies and Elves and adventures of knights and warriors saving friends and kingdoms. She could only hope one day to be as great a storyteller as he had been to her. His tales were so planned, so articulately planned out; it was nearly as though he’d actually been recounting a long battle history of the world the entire time. “I think that must be what had scared the animals away. Oh how they ran as fast as their four little legs could carry them.”
“The west, hm?” The man sat in his chair. He was oddly aware of his daughter continuing with her day and all the odd bits and ends that had happened and that she’s seen in the fields. His mind was wrapped around the idea of the crows. Crows had left these lands long ago. It had seemed that they deemed the village had not grown enough food even for them to steal and moved to other villages to plunder the fields of corn and wheat. The villagers hadn’t complained about this, it only made the work in the fields that much easier and with so many troubles already facing them, it was seen as a streak of luck. And now they’d returned from the west? It was an event he’d not expected to see in his lifetime, not in such old age and failing health.
“Father, are you listening?” Her hand came up to rest on her fathers’ hand. He startled and took in a breath, a gasp, after exhaling a breath he’d not realized he was holding. With an effort and concentration his old, fogged eyes could just barely make out the shape of her face as she looked up to him from her position, kneeling on the dirt floor. His hands rose to trace that outline. “Father?”
“Come; help an old man to his chest.” The elderly man attempted to pull himself from the chair, cane thumping against the hard pressed dirt. Nituna, in turn, lifted herself up with him, taking a hold of his arm and guiding him from the chair by the fire, down to the room in which he stayed. For as many years as she could remember there’d been an old dusty trunk sat at the end of her fathers bed that he’d not once allowed anyone to look in. Being raised the way she had, the curiosity was maddening, but she would not let herself be tempted. She’d heard her father though. Sometimes, late at night, when he thought everyone had been asleep she’d heard the creaking of the old hinges and the clinging, clattering and chiming of whatever contents that lay within as he hefted them up and play with them in his hands to all hours of the night. Now it would seem he was ready to show to her its contents.
The old man sat himself, finally, on his U shaped bed, worn over the years of use. There at the end he could feel his trunk. He ran his hands over it, feeling the grains of wood, pulling the dust off. It’s been so many long years. “There’s something you should know Nituna.” Opening the latch by feel alone the old man lifted the lid. Dust flew into the air, making Nituna to fan it away from them with swift movements of her hands. Once the dust had settled and the air was once more clear she could see inside the trunk to the shining, if somewhat dusty contents inside. The man lifted them up, piece by piece, laying them across his tattered old quilt. “Dragon scales this ,” he said while holding up what almost appeared to be a chain mail shirt. “Hardest substance you could find, and rare as well.” He fingered the old thing. Next came the sword that he’d pulled only slightly from its sheath. “Marble handle, durable, nearly indestructible.”
“Father, what are you talking about? What’s happening?”
The old man took in a shaky breath, putting down his items. He’d better just get it out. “Nituna, you are not my daughter.” His fingers were still splayed out over the assortment of items that he’d pulled from the trunk, feeling their cold, metallic surfaces. “I’m not your father.”
Nituna laughed, falling to her knees before him. She should have known. Dragon scales, swords and such. Did he really need to take his tale this far? He must have been tired, he was delusional. “Come now father. I think it is time for you to get some rest, you’re delusional with exhaustion.” Nituna moved to pick up the items that her father had displayed on his bed. “Lets put your things away and…”, but was stopped when his old, wrinkled hand wrapped tightly around her wrist.
“You do not see it, do you? You are not my daughter!” He said with more enthusiasm. “You’re not even Human.” His voice trailed off a bit, as if it pained him to say it. “My wife and I had not been able to have children of our own, but she so longed for a child. In those days, I was young, strong. This village was not enough for me and I took to the roads for adventure. This only drove my wife wilder than ever, being alone day after day with not a soul to care for. Then I found you. That’s why we named you Nituna, ‘my daughter’. That is how I’ve come across the name Braeden, ‘from the dark valley’. I got it for bringing trouble to the village, for not being bitter as they had been, of the outside world.”
“You’re talking crazy” She told him.
“There’s a whole world out there Nituna. This village has shunned the world, growing bitter and angry with everything but their needs. There’s adventures out there that are waiting. All those tales, they’re true. I’ve taken you from the Elves. You’re an Elf Nituna. I took you from them when you were but an infant, that’s why you don’t remember. Look at your ears Nituna!” He placed his hand over her right ear. “Pointed to a tip that no Human would have, hearing and sight that no Human possesses. You have been exiled from the village. They know, they know that are not Human born, that you are not ours. You are exiled because of this. Now, someone wants you back.”
Her fingers lifted to her left ear, tracing the point to which she thought just to be a physical flaw, an attribute, such as freckles or a mole. Her heart beat against her chest in a painful jerk. She shook her head, brushing everything aside. “You should rest, father. You need it” Breaking free of his grip she gathered the trinkets and such that he’d pulled from the trunk. She found them heavy, heavier than she imagined. Stacking them away a bit hurriedly into his trunk she closed the lid, laying him down and pulling the old quilt up over him. His age had begun to take effect and it beat against her heart to see him in
such a state, bringing tears to her eyes. “I will wake you before I leave for the field tomorrow, father. I’ll have breakfast ready then.” Padding softly and quickly from the room she wiped her eyes with the back of her worn sleeve before heading further back into the house, up the ladder into the loft where she slept under torn old blankets.
The night was deathly quiet, the crickets chirped their tune on rare occasion and even then they were hesitant. The moon was shrouded by dark wisps of clouds, making the night dark, veiling even the stars from her gaze through the gaps in her star ceiling. It was hard for her to fall asleep. There was an anxiety in her hearts, a beating at her head to keep alert. She worried for her fathers’ sanity. It seemed, he was loosing more and more of it as his age grew and she worried that she would not be able to help him and she would watch him wither away before her, helpless. Why was she so helpless! Curling to her side and pulling the blanket up near her chin, she felt for the first time, the cold that she’d not felt before. The chill of the wind coming through the gaps of the wood and straw, and she wept silently till sleep overtook her, the world becoming fogged and blurred.