Beyond the Border | ✔

2 | rule 23

RULE 23: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE CAN ANY MEMBER OF THE BORDERLANDS COME BACK INTO THE COMMUNITY ONCE THEY STEP FOOT OVER THE BORDER

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Gran was frantically throwing various foods in pots and pans when I arrived back home. She looked frazzled, her usual neatly combed gray hair was scrunched up in a clip.

"Is there a method to your clear madness?" I asked with a smile, taking a seat at the wooden kitchen table.

From my seat, I couldn't quite decipher what Gran was concocting up in her kitchen. She was known for her pies — especially her pear pies because she had grown up making them since she was just five years old.

Secretly, I hoped she was going to make her delicious chicken noodle soup. It may have been the dead of summer, but I was always craving the creamy soup, no matter what season it was. I had long given up begging for the soup in summer, though. She'd huff that it was in not season and that she could cook so many summer recipes that she didn't want to go to waste.

"Oh, my flower, thank goodness you're here. I was about to send Pop out to our garden to bring in some cucumbers, but they're never as good as Wendy's. I've been saying for years that I think she pays one of the witches to enchant her soil. Annita thinks so too," Gran started to ramble off, scuttling over to the table to take the bag of vegetables from me. "Oh goodness, I've forgotten to give Wendy her pear pie. I'll make sure Pop brings it to her tomorrow — unless he's too busy, but I don't see what he could possibly be doing. He's been retired for five years, but somehow he's always busy. Men, I tell you. Stay away from them, Sage."

A loud chuckle was heard down the hall. "I've been telling Sage that for years, but I don't think her Pa's bedtime stories of how men are bad have been exactly working out too well."

Pa clamored into the kitchen, dirty from working at his forge. Ma used to tease him about how dirty he'd come home. She'd say some days he looked as dirty as one of those beasts on the Outside.

"Pa, you say that like I'm already engaged to be married," I shook my head. Pa was quite protective when it came to me. He'd always been protective, but once Ma disappeared — died — his watchful eye became almost unbearable. Gran had to slap some sense into him when he wouldn't allow me to go on a school picnic because he was frightened something would happen.

Gran had told Pa he was being ridiculous. The Borderlands was the safest place on this green earth. We didn't even need a police force, just a highly civilized court that dealt out justice, but we'd only ever needed the court once when Old Henry started to grow old with dementia and was stealing people's chickens.

"My little girl is turning twenty—"

"—she's not so little, Chuck." Gran liked to test the waters with Pa. She always said that Pa was a hellion growing up and that it would serve him right to have a child just as unruly as himself. Unfortunately for Gran, they got me, so Gran, in return, had been the one trying to make up for it.

"She'll still always be my little girl. I was only a couple years older than Sage was when I married her Ma," Pa moved behind me, his hands resting on the back of my chair.

Pa hardly ever spoke of Ma. At first, I thought he was truly heartbroken over her death. I'd never seen him cry, but I sure did hear him cry for the first couple of days after Ma was gone — it broke my heart.