Just an Old Legend

This is the beginning of a long-ish tale that jumps around a little. I decided to write it after considering how getting by in the modern world would take some adjusting to if one possessed certain abilities and wasn't just an unthinking beast ALL of the time.

-------------------------

The last of the beans went into the big bowl next to the pot of potatoes that she'd already peeled. Finally she was free. With a bit of effort getting off the tall kitchen stool, the girl got to her feet and looked out of the window. If she leaned on the rough-hewn table and stretched, she could just see him there filling the troughs in his family's pens. She turned to see her mother looking back at her with a glance that said that she knew the question that was coming.

The farm-woman's worry lines eased just a little into a soft smile, "I know, little countess. You want to go to meet your prince." The normally dour look evaporated completely and there was just a hint of a twinkle in her eye. "Go to him then, but remember not too quickly. I saw you fall coming up the road from school today. You need to go at a pace that you can manage."

"I will, Mama," she said as she worked her way around the corner of the table and was gone as fast as her weak legs would allow. That amounted to a slow pace for most people.

He was on his way back to the last trough, struggling a bit himself under the weight and discomfort of the bar across his young shoulders that held up the buckets at either end. As he finished pouring the last of the second one in, he heard the metallic sounds of her approach.

"Can I help?" she asked hopefully.

He smiled at her standing there in her plain dress with that impossibly long black braid on her slender shoulder. She was just as anxious to get his chores over with as he was now. "Can you spread out some feed for the chickens for me? I have only one more trip and I'm finished." She looked to where he'd pointed and headed there.

The woman sat just a little below the crest of the hilltop, but from where she was, she could watch their slow approach if she sat up. The two weren't related, but they'd always looked like a set as though they belonged together. They even looked alike with their black hair and bright blue eyes. Everyone in that little place just assumed that they'd be a pair, since they were inseparable and if they were apart, they drew together like a pair of magnets given half a chance. They spoke of school at the moment, and then the boy interrupted to caution her about the downward slope.

"I know, I'm always ready for this," she said as she made the minute changes in her balance that the ground required of her. He walked beside her, involuntarily tensed and ready to help in an instant, but doing his very best not to appear to be doing anything differently. She knew it anyway. She just didn't let on.

The two children stopped within a few feet of the woman. They were totally unaware of her presence. It was always like this. They were as ghosts to her, a pair of eleven year-old friends stuck here forever and more devoted to each other than most married adults. The girl considered for a moment, but with a little forethought, she managed to sit down and smooth out the hem of her dress over her thin legs held in the metal and leather braces that she hated but needed all the same. The boy just plonked down next to her. He didn't know it, but she wanted to be able to do it just carelessly as he did, she thought. For his part, he was well aware that she longed to be the same as everyone else. He wanted that for her more than anything.

They sat together looking out over the mountain meadow in the afternoon sunshine while the few clouds drifted past. The light breeze puffed at them, but they were absorbed in conversation about everything and nothing and didn't notice it or the songs of the meadow birds as they flitted by on their business. After discussing how far away the next mountain peak might be, she asked if he knew what was on the far side of it.

He shrugged and decided finally that there must be another one just like that one. She smirked at him, and he laughed at her expression. Finally, he laid down on his back and raised his arm for her. She smiled softly and with great care, she laid back so that her head rested against the side his chest for a pillow. She made a little adjustment and told him that she was happy like this. He slowly lowered his arm to rest across her small chest very carefully. They'd done this forever, but he'd recently begun to notice the beginnings of what he surmised would be the swell of her breasts one day. He'd seen it in some of the other girls at the little school. He didn't want to go anywhere there yet, he thought, so his arm went just a bit lower down across her ribs.

"What are you doing?" she asked a little impatiently, "There's nothing there yet, not much of anything to bother yourself about, and I like it when you hold me there." She reached with her hand to move his arm to where he'd always laid it, "There," she announced in a satisfied tone as she held his arm with her left hand.

The woman smiled. The girl was beginning to have her own feelings, but didn't want to change anything for them, at least not yet. She knew that the girl wanted to hang on to what they'd always had. She'd worry about where his arm was supposed to go when she had something there to worry about.

The girl listened as he told her another of the tales that he'd memorized from a book that his uncle had sent to him from a distant land. It had been written in the United States, but the publisher's office in England had printed editions in many languages. He talked of the Wild West and they both worked out an adventure for themselves from it afterward. He liked to hold onto the end of her long braid. He never tugged it or anything, he just held it and brushed his thumb against the end. Behind them, the woman's tears streamed down her face as she listened.

At last, the young pair sat up, and he waited as she struggled a bit to stand. It was all he could do to let her stand up on her own. He wanted to help her, but knew that she had to do it for herself, and even if he did help, she would insist that he let her do this. She'd learned from him not to let her face show how she strained, and she was proud of herself for managing this on the hillside. He admonished her very gently to stand straight for a minute so that he could inspect the braces to see if anything had shifted. She asked him to make sure that there wasn't any dried grass stuck to her dress back there, and waited as he brushed down over her shoulders and back quickly a couple of times to remove it. Then they were off, walking slowly up the grade hand in hand .

About halfway, the girl told him that her legs were hurting her again, and this time it was worse, "I went farther today and Mama says that I'm growing more, that's why. Then Mama asked me to try to catch an old hen for the pot. It took me a while without my canes scaring her, but I almost outsmarted that one and I didn't fall down. I couldn't quite catch her, but while she was watching me to see what I would do next, Papa walked up and he had her by the neck before she knew it. But now my legs are screaming at me."

"Without your canes? You did well then," he said, smiling genuinely, "I can never catch a hen myself. I'm too clumsy and they dodge too well. You always complain that you aren't getting better, but you're wrong, you know. I watch carefully and I see you get a little bit stronger every day. Stand straight again."

She did as he asked, and he bent to carefully pick her up. She put her arms around his neck as he lifted her and noticed that he had a small cut over his eyebrow. She knew where he'd gotten it. It had come out of his fight that morning. There was one bully who never seemed to learn. But her friend had been there for her again as he'd always been since they'd started school. The bully now had a black eye instead of just a cut, and now she hoped he'd keep his mouth shut instead of trying to hurt her with his words. She rested her head against the boy's shoulder and thanked him again. He told her that it had been nothing, but she'd seen it for herself that it hadn't been easy for him.

The woman watched him struggle with her as he took her to more even ground to set her down again. She always wanted him to carry her farther, but she never told him this. Back on her own feet now, she strained a little because her legs were really bothering her quite a bit more, but she didn't mind and said nothing. At the door to her home, she turned and gently touched his cut, noticing that it would heal well. She put her arms tightly around his neck again as he hugged her for a moment and she kissed her friend twice quickly before hobbling into the house. Her mother had seen them approach, and already had the small tub of liniment ready to rub her legs.

The boy walked back to his family's home with a small smile that only his mother saw from her window as she watched him come. The two mothers talked often of how difficult it was not to grin when their children sat at the table in either home as she helped him with his lessons. They'd noticed the hand-holding there as well below the table. Normally, his lessons couldn't be gotten into his head with a hammer, but when the girl sat next to him, he learned anything easily.

The woman blinked and looked around. The spell was broken. The little farms changed to their ruined state again. She wiped her eyes and saw that the meadow had gone back to its overgrown present-day self. She knew the exact spot where the children sat most times such as today. There were several very thin saplings just beginning to grow there next to her over the place where they'd lain down.

She stood up and ripped them out a little angrily. She'd made the final payment on the upper meadow the week before and she'd bought the two tiny farms ten years ago. What her money had bought was a place for her to keep her memories and not much more. It didn't matter, she thought as she blew her nose into a tissue, what the place needed was a few sheep, and once she'd found someone for that, it would return to what it once had been. She was fooling herself, she knew.

She didn't know if anyone around here even kept sheep anymore.

She reached for the end of her braid as she walked back to the overgrown cart path which would lead her down to where she'd parked her car. Untying it, she let her long, jet black mane free and turned for a last look for today. She ran her fingers through her hair to shake it out and looked at the mountain in the distance, as permanent as her memory. The wind blew her hair around her and she sighed.

Everyone who had lived here then had gone to their graves now, everyone but her. She was still a young woman to anyone's eyes, but she knew the bitter truth. She doubted that the boy still lived. Even if he did, he'd be almost a hundred years old, the same as her, but he likely wouldn't know his own name anymore.

To her, the children were only ghosts of the past where she belonged and she was the one trapped here in the present. She looked down at her strong legs as she strode easily over the same ground that had caused her to fall so many times back then. What should have happened was that they'd gone on and loved and married. They should have had children themselves and grown old together. He'd never minded her disability. They'd loved each other from when they could talk. She held back the sob that she now felt.

Her legs had grown strong and straight, finally, and though that had happened anyway afterward, she'd have happily traded these legs for a life in her braces if they could have had that life together, as much as the boy had wanted her to be free of them. She'd have managed for him somehow as he'd always managed for her.

But instead, she'd been cursed to go on living. Everything had changed. Everyone was gone, and life was just a cold, empty cast iron bitch.

The woman had only the ghosts of when she'd last been happy. But in her heart she knew that while she still lived today, once she was back in the real world, she was the one who felt like a ghost.