• Chapter 1


    The life of a farm girl had never been and interesting one. Mine didn’t seem to be any exception. “evelyn” I heard my sister Juliette calling me from across the field. I don’t know how I could hear her. The amount of noise that usually surrounded me –due to my 3 sisters and 4 brothers—was absent as I hid in the large oak tree on the far part of my fathers property (if you could call it that, he rented it from the Manor Lord.) The river that flowed through the village, providing water to our crops, branched off into a smaller stream that cut our field from that of our neighbors.
    It was this stream that I was now staring lazily at as I sat among the branches and leaves of my tree. I quickly jumped from the lowest branch to the ground fixing my dress once I landed. I could hear my sister’s footsteps getting closer and I knew that if she found me in that tree (yet again) I would have to hear all about the proper etiquette of a young lady. This was not a speech I wanted to hear another time, after the last time she’d threatened to tell father if she found me again.
    “Hello Juliette, how may I help you on such a splendid afternoon?” She ignored my pleasant manner. “You’ve been climbing that tree again.” It wasn’t a question but I answered anyway hoping that I was a good enough liar to fool her. “Not at all. Why ever would you think such a thing?”
    “You have a twig in your hair.”
    “Oh.” I pulled the traitorous twig from my hair and checked for any others.
    “Yes oh. But that’s not the point. I’ve been calling you for hours; I should have known you’d been here.” She was right she should have, this was one of my favourite spots, I spent every free daylight hour here, which was few. She was rather dense.
    “You have not been calling for hours. Don’t be so ridiculous.”
    “Well it feels like it. Why didn’t you answer me?”
    “I couldn’t hear you. I’m sorry” I had heard her. I just chose not to respond. I didn’t really feel up to doing whatever it was she wanted me for.
    “Well mother has been waiting for you, she asked me to get you to help her with the wash.” Ha I knew it, she had to want something. Mother honestly, she was only 2 years older than me but she thought that made her so much more mature than I—she was but that wasn’t really the point. She needed to take whatever had crawled up her butt and died out and leave me alone. “Why didn’t you just help her?”
    “Because she asked for you.”
    “So?”
    “So she asked for you.”
    “You know I really think you need to pull that rod out of your butt” And then I ran. A lot. And as fast as I could. She was going to kill me, all I could hope for was that I made it back to the house before she did so I could hide.
    My sister and I, although undoubtedly related, were nothing alike. Aside from the distinct personality differences there was nothing in our appearance to make you think we were from the same family