Freckles: Origins of a Cabin Girl

Part 4

The next five years didn't get easier. These years thoroughly taught me everything my life would comprise of and what I would become: nothing. I was worthless and had little to offer the world except for my wild animal antics and a desire to roll up some herbs into paper and inhale the fumes. Thinking about my fox family only brought heartache. The only real mother I would ever know was forever lost to me and could not protect me from the cold onslaught of slow death which people refer to as life.

I had three foster siblings, all brothers, all older than me. They were civilized, well educated, had never been in trouble with the law; they were everything I wasn't. They never did drugs or even drank ale. My foster mother, Dreya, had big plans for their lives. Colby, her oldest, would become a prefect. Berny, the second, was to be a gate watcher, which is someone who protects the village by interrogating incoming travelers and potential immigrants. The last, Viffy, was to become an archer, to stand by Bernie and threaten away dangerous men and women. As for me, I was to attend school the next fall. Dreya reminded me constantly that I would not become a barbarian if she had anything to do with it. I secretly wanted to become an archer. Viffy was amazing with a bow. I thought that if I could get as good with a bow as him, I wouldn't be stuck relying on anybody. I didn't know it, but I was quite clever for a four year old.

Sometimes I would sneak outside at night, the deceptive little barbarian that I was, and hold Viffy's practice bow. I didn't shoot the arrows anywhere, for fear something would break and cause a ruckus. I fantasized about actually having a nice relationship with my three brothers. How incredibly nice it would be, if only I could have conversations with them like they have with each other. Maybe Viffy would even show me a little about archery. I would set the bow down and walk into the house, all dreams of happiness revoked and crushed in my young, fragile heart.

My early school days were a trial of blood and sweat, both in the literal sense. I quickly realized that nobody in this world is truly honest. Not completely, anyway. My friends would bluntly insult me, and were quick to inform the teacher any time I retaliated. School was a losing battle for me, the only lesson I retained was that I was never allowed to stick up for myself.

I wept every day after school, sometimes with scrapes, open cuts, or bruises, from nasty fun my friends had at my expense. They would do horrible things like stick masks to my face with thumb tacks, and make me stand behind baby donkeys so I would get kicked. Sometimes I would have sweat dripping from my chin, and my heart would be beating fast, after I sprinted as fast as I could on my way home from school, running from the malicious laughter of my friends behind me. Dreya, through all my years of school, never showed notice of my weeping, or my injuries.

These horrors lessened as the next few years went on. I would figure out how to deal with my so-called friends, how to avoid them if I needed to, learned how to read books to escape the cold aura of the family I returned to each night. I read often, but answered Dreya when I was spoken to. I was only as minimally polite as I needed to be, for her to become satisfied and leave me to my own world.

My life was starting to look up. Way up. I lived the lives of the people in the books I read. Princess Kira and Jasper the daring knight who saves Kira from an undesired, prearranged marriage, they lived inside me. Redpaw, the wolf rejected from his clan, and determined to howl at the moon to find them again, he lived inside me. Through the stories, I found self-realization, and the motivation to keep going.