Honey For Tea

Chapter 1

The first night I stayed in the old farmhouse, my uncle brought back an albino deer from his hunt. Her alabaster fur was sleek in the moonlight. The red of her blood dripped across her stomach and down into the grain of the wood flooring. I could feel the death as my aunt shooed my uncle and the doe to the woodshed. I could feel the death from my room, far away from the metal carving knife he would inevitably take to it. I could feel the death beneath the heavy moon that hung in the sky. My grandmother called it a devil's night. I went walking down in the fields by myself, just to get away from the death. I set myself a brisk pace to walk at, even if I would get tired in the end and have to stop, I wanted to try.

In those early days I was a chubby thing, all fat and no muscle. I struggled to keep up with that brisk pace even. Hard working on the farm fixed me right up, but when I first arrived from the city, the endless expanses of berry fields nearly put me down. I went walking by the lines of trees on the side of the field. There was a small stone fence that cut off the forest from the field. Suddenly something beyond the line of fence began to move. The crackling of branches under foot rustled through the trees. I turned my head to where the noise was and saw a strange light among the trees. I saw the shape of a person. The person was too far away for me to make out any details besides the fact that they were holding a lantern. I heard the laugh of a woman, and some talking, then the figure turned away and took off into the dense forest. I did not follow, feeling it was useless and I'd never catch them, so I continued down the narrow path between the field and trees.

When an hour had passed, more or less, I returned to the farmhouse in the hopes that the death would have cleared. Thank God that it had. I fell down on my bed hard and didn't get back up until my aunt came tugging at my ankles. At the time, my dream self felt truer to me than my real self. I wished I could dream forever but my uncle wanted me to work right away.

At the breakfast table a young man came tromping in from the outside. My aunt was always shooing the fieldworkers out of the house with their muddy boots tracking across the floor, but this man seemed to be an exception.

"Dane, this is Reid," my uncle said, gesturing to me.

The man inclined his head towards me and said, "How are ya now, Reid?"

The man was young, perhaps in his early twenties, so not much older than I was. He had a shock of black hair over dark eyebrows but his eyes were a light grey. He wasn't handsome, but he seemed sturdy and straight cut.

My uncle cut into my thoughts, "Dane will help you out in the fields. We need netting over the blueberries since the birds keep picking at them."

Dane nodded at us and disappeared down the hallway. I finished my toast in silence with only the sound of my uncle sipping his coffee and rustling his newspaper. Across from where I sat was a large painting of a black dog against a snowy scene. My uncle didn't own any dogs, nor did he particularly like dogs as far as I could tell.

The weather was warm, though not unexpectedly so. The mid-June heat was heavy, but a wind rushed across the fields and soothed my hot skin. The fields were so vast I was shocked. In the city everything was tall, but here everything was wide. I had arrived in the evening the previous day having been picked up from the train station by my uncle. The ocean of berry bushes had been lost to the darkness. Now, as I stood on my aunt and uncle's porch, one of the many cats that lazed around the house brushed against my leg. The feeling made me jump and the little lady gave me an indignant glare. Sheepishly, I bent over and gave it a pat to which it meowed in agreement with. My new found friend gave me another look when I stopped, then ran off around the corner of the house.

I looked back at the fields. The fields felt like they were rolling towards me. They were waves prepared to suck me in, like if I stood in them then the undertow would pull me under, but I had to give myself up to them.