The wind cooled as the sun began to set. It tangled Leda's hair, pushing her messy curls into her face as a warning. It would rain soon, she thought, digging into the sandy bottom of the creek with her hands. The horses wouldn't like it. She had managed to thatch the roof of the barn herself, but ever since the winter, muddy puddles would emerge from the ground, rotting the hay and dampening their sleep. A drainage issue of some kind, she suspected. She placed the fresh milk in the creek and surrounded the bottles with smooth rocks to keep them standing through the night. She could the barn another set of hands, she knew. But with that criteria, she also knew it would never happen.
She returned to the cottage. The wind was very strong now, pushing its way through the stays of her dress and penetrating the shift below. On nights like this, Leda thought the wind was almost pushing her into her home, as if it knew better than she did how to take care of her.
Her cottage had been a beautiful family home once, with a lacy white veranda and gabled windows. The jewel of a fertile working farm surrounded by anchors of arable farm, land which, she imagined had stretched over hilltops as far as you could see, and only ended where the land dropped into lake. Since the wars, the forest had crept back over the fields, moving so fast to reclaim its rightful place that now it threatened to extend its branches through the walls of the cottage. The lake, which was once a calm, placid place to fish and swim, became engorged, eating up the shore and swelling so fat that it extended past the horizon now. Leda had never seen the other side. It was so large and so deep it might have been the sea, but the water was clean and cool.
The cottage itself was largely used for storage. Leda lived in one room, the rest of the cottage was an organised maze of grain, textiles, salt meat and preserves. She did a tidy business here, trading what she could muster out of what was left of her farm for any goods a solider or a ranger could bring her. They were used to her now, a little bit afraid of her, but used to her. She was the only place to trade for a hundred kilometres, so rangers and soldiers had come to accept a woman working in trade - outside of her place at one of women's communes - or starve.
Then there was trade with Cliffhouse; Men weren't allowed past the gates. Leda was the only person they had ever heard of who could be in trade and yet, enter the women's compound. it was unnatural, against the law, but it benefited them all. Every month she loaded up her cart with food, and came home with a cart full of beautiful cakes and preserves and blankets and beautiful shirts and coats and wool blankets. The men in her store could hardly wait to wolf down a cake with coffee, or run his hands over a wool scarf or a thick coat, speculating on what sort of beauty it might have been that made it. Leda didn't have the heart to tell him that at Cliff House only the widows and old matrons who had the time and the skill to make crafts. The younger women and girls could only cook and clean and take care of the babies. That was. after all, how the men wanted it. But she let them believe what they wanted - as long as they would bring her tools, or better, books to trade.
The room she did use for herself was the kitchen. She knew it was the kitchen, because when she had found this place, the only thing left in tact was an old, wood burning stove. It was made of steel - not aluminium, or glass or rock. She's never seen steel before, not like this anyway; One huge piece that made up a whole thing. She knew from the scraps of steel and iron that she'd collected over the years that it was a powerful metal. She also knew from her books that the making of steel had brought forth the first civilisations. Then thousands of years later, humans became greedy, and built to much, too fast. Then they poisoned the earth, ruined their crops and war and disease took over. But that was hundreds of years before she was born. She was just glad to have a stove.Sometimes, when she was immersed in kneading dough or stirring a pot, she felt like she used to, when she was a girl. Before she had ever met a man, before she was assigned to Gerald. Her life seemed impossibly rich and easy then. But like so many things in her life, the stove had to be hidden. If a ranger or solider found it, he'd melt it down for weapons. So Leda slept in her kitchen. Not even rangers would insist on seeing where she slept.
She changed out of her work dress and ate a supper of onion soup with a bit of hot bread and cold butter. Outside the wind continued to howl, crashing against her wooden shutters. Leda knew the wind would subside with the rain, but the rain didn't come. The wind picked up again and the goats began to bleat with fear. She'd have to put them in with the horses. She got up from the table with resignation, wrapping a shawl around her shift. She thought about putting on her dress again, but the thought of lacing up just to see the goats was too much. She stuffed her bare feet into her work boots and walked out into the night.
It was a strange night, alternating between dark and light as the wind pushed the clouds across the full moon. In a dark moment, Leda considered getting a torch, when suddenly her land was bathed in a silvery light. The moon was brighter than she'd ever seen, bouncing off from the lake, illuminating the path to the barn better than any firelight. Leda shivered, and looked back at the lake, which was cut with a white path to the heavens. A tree had fallen recently by the shore. Tomorrow she'd have to cut it up for firewood.
She unhooked the goats from their stake in the garden, walking them to the barn, where they immediately curled up with the horses for warmth. It was odd how the animals would make and break allegiances like that. Two days ago her mare had bitten a goat in her path, but today they were lying together like mother and child. Either they were incapable of holding a grudge, or no evil was so wrong as to be punished by isolation on a night like this. Leda shut the door behind her and walked alone down the path. As she came up to her cottage, she was taken by the lake again. The fallen tree was gone. Maybe it had never been there, a trick of the light.
Inside, she put another log on the stove and settled in with a book. The wind continued to roar outside. She heard her shutters slam. A tree knocked against her walls. She huddled over her candle. Finally, the rain came. The wind subsided. The tree continued to knock.
Leda put down her book. The knocking came again. She stood up, and, bringing the shawl around her more tightly, went into her shop in the front hall. She fashioned the chains and opened her door a crack.
Four men stood at her doorstep. Ranging from boyhood to late middle age, they were covered in mud and smelled like horses. The first thought Leda had was to shut the door, quickly, but they wore the leather insignias of rangers, so she stopped herself.
"Horse feed is in the barn," she said. "Take what you need and leave, I've nothing else for you tonight."
"No need, Leda, we're not here for trade," Leda recognised the voice. It was Brandon.
