Seven

Chapter Two

It's odd, how the weather seems to reflect how happy Liza and I are. This just so happens to be one of the few days a year when the sky is not in a dreary, overcast state. Today, the sun shines bright on a backdrop of bright blue sky. Not a cloud in sight.

"What a lovely day it is," Liza says softly, also noticing the pleasant weather. We just finished eating breakfast, a simple meal consisting of our leftover rye bread, stale from sitting out all night, and some vegetables from our garden. Mother sent us to bring our leftover stew and peas from last night's supper to a family who lives not far from us.

My family may not be poor, and we may almost always have enough to eat, but we are by no means wealthy. There is an abundance of families in my town who have it far worse than us. Parents who have barely enough money to scrape by, and children who never know what it's like to have their bellies full.

The family we are on our way to visit, the Morris family, has had no ounce of luck in this past year. Frank Morris, the father, was fired from his job as a candlemaker. Having five children, their family was already struggling for money a great deal, so this sudden blow did not help. Then a few months later the mother, Hazel, came down with a case of Scarlet Fever, which soon spread to their middle child, Ivy. They were both dead by the next morning.

The point is, Mother tries to give their family food whenever we have any left over. And even when we don't, she often sends us to visit just to take some wight off of poor Frank's shoulders. He's been doing work on the side to make at least some money, but opportunities are scarce here in Caderivia. He hasn't had a steady job since last Winter.

I clutch the basket tightly with my right hand, as if to guard the precious contents it contains, while Liza holds my other hand. Being twins, people would think we are really close, but our relationship is as rocky as the path we're walking on. One day we could be the best of friends, as we are now, and the next we could be screaming and yelling at each other. Well, at least that's how it used to be. Our arguments don't get quite as out of hand now that we're older, but we still fight a great deal. Even if it's silent arguments, full of fuming breaths and icy glares, we both know that our personalities tend to clash.

We make it to the Morris' house at the perfect time, just when the wind is beginning to pick up. But, honestly, 'house' is not the most appropriate room. The Morris' live in a one-room shack, so flimsy that it looks like it could be knocked over with one slight breeze. It has lasted them this long, though, even if it appears on the verge of falling apart.

I let go of Liza's hand to knock, but the door is already cracked open so we just head inside. 12-year-old Nora sits on the floor with 4-year-old Georgie, making up her own story to a worn-down picture book because she never learned to read. Most girls in my kingdom never get the chance to go to school, because the knowledge has no use since a woman will spend her days doing housework. So girls tend to stay home all their lives, learning from their mothers how to one day care for a home while the boys go off to school to learn how to provide.

If a girl lives in poverty, she grows up learning, first, how to get a job, and second how to be a homemaker. For the middle-class, which is me, the order is reversed. For the wealthy girls, they learn only how to knit, cook, and clean, and never have to worry about getting a job. And if you are royal, well you don't have to worry about any of that.

My mother sent me to school for a few years, but now that she is getting older she prefers us to stay home and help out around the house. I know how to read and write, which is a rare skill to find in women, but not much more. Our family only owns three books, if even that, and I've read them all more times than I can count. The library in the center of town has maybe twenty books, but the cost to rent them has never been worth it to us.