Shayna Krishnasamy - Home

Copyright Shayna Krishnasamy 2009

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product ofthe authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living ordead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-0-9813352

Cover image provided by amy_B123 on Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/11158252@N03/.

For Eyal
You are my home

Contents

The little girl squinted up at the giant tree.

It had been calling to her all summer, its grayish trunk catching her eye whenever shewas in the close. When she played with the other village children, or drew water from the well,her tree always lingered in her mind. It was a maple, with leaves as big as dinner plates andbeards of club moss that swayed in the wind.

They beckoned her.

Today was the day. She placed her foot on the bottommost rung of the ladder and took adeep breath. She was a good climber. She could have beaten the older boys in their climbingraces, but because she was a girl, and only in her seventh year, they wouldnt let her compete.Gazing up, she saw the fog drifting far above her head. No villager had ever climbed all the wayto the canopy.

Shed show them.

It was close to noon when she reached the top of the ladder and wrapped her fingersaround the lowest branch. She pressed her cheek into the bark and inhaled its mossy scent. Shesmiled. There was nothing she loved better than a good climb. Holding tight to the branch, shewedged her knee into the wood and swung her body up, already reaching for the next limb. Thedark skirts of her kirtle swung about her legs.

The climb took most of the day. As she neared the top of the tree, she stopped to catch herbreath, her legs and arms shaking from the strain. The canopy was almost close enough to touch.She felt a rush of exhilaration. Shed told herself that reaching the top of the tree was her utmostdesire, but secretly shed cherished another wish: to look for the first time into the face of thesky. She wiped the sweat from her face with her fathers work gloves. Just a few feet more

Not long after, as far below her father took his first notice of her absence, the top of thelittle girls head brushed against the leaves of the canopy. Dizzy with excitement, she braced herfoot against the highest branch, grabbed hold of the leaves above, and pushed her face into theopen air. Then she let out a scream so strong it was heard from one end of the village to theother.

Her father caught her as she fell and ran with her in his arms to the home of the villagehealer, bursting through her door as she was serving supper to her family. They laid the littlegirl down on the table.

The healer hunched over the girl as her father held his breath. When she finally lookedup at him, he knew. She couldnt meet his eyes.

The suns rays were too much for her. She laid her hand on the girls forehead. Sheis blind, she said.

There were days when she would go from morning to night without speaking to another human soul. In those rare mid-morning lulls, when for a moment there were no tasks to tend to, she would run her fingers over her fathers old tunic and winter cloak, both thick with dust, and imagine that the five years since shed last seen him had never been, and that at any moment she would hear his off-tune whistle as he came in from the fields. At times she felt as though shed spent her whole life waiting for her fathers return, for the thaw to come, for the bread to rise, for her life to change and always in silence, always alone. When the villagers came to her cottage door and called for her, there were times when she started, for she hardly recognized the sound of her own name.

It isnt natural, Maude Quigg commented to her daughter, Roana, as they came away from the girls toft, their arms full of the bread shed baked and the tunics shed sewn or mended. Always alone like that, always in the dark, not even a candle. It cant be healthy.

Whats Shallah need a candle for? Roana asked, dropping a pair of brown hose as she struggled with her load.

Keep your voice down, girl! Maude risked a glance behind. Do you want her to hear you?

Roana rolled her eyes.

Theres nothing wrong with her ears, her mother warned.

Bending down to grab the hose, Roana thought she spied the hem of a red kirtle withdrawing into the trees.

Come on, Ma, she said brusquely, setting the pace. Lets get out of here.

Only once theyd disappeared down the lane did Shallah emerge from her hiding place and wander back through her yard, scattering the hens. It was an old habit slipping out the back door of her cottage and following after the villagers as they left, eavesdropping on their talk. Once upon a time shed felt it necessary, back in the days when shed been a newly orphaned girl, when thered been talk of taking her to live in one of the village homes, against her will. These days, she hardly ever heard anything worth hearing.

Darkness! Shallah thought to herself, shaking her head. What nonsense.

Maude Quigg was a busybody and a gossip, and likely various tales of Shallahs unhealthy habits would be circulating about the village by sundown. Were Shallah herself to set foot on the village green that night, shed be followed at every step by whispers, some sympathetic, and others much less so. Many of the villagers thought it odd that shed not yet married, though shed reached her eighteenth year; that she kept her own toft, though she was only a woman. Others went so far as to claim shed gone mad in her isolation, pointing to her untidy dress, to the twigs and leaves in her hair. Mostly they simply disliked her, for she wouldnt accept their pity and shunned their company, preferring to keep to herself.

Closing her door tightly behind her, Shallah sighed with relief. Their barbed opinions couldnt follow her here. This was her home, and none could enter without her say so, a fact she cherished. Here she could be herself without worry of scorn. Here she could escape the village and all its inhabitants, and here alone. For, there was nowhere else to go.

An outsider might have called Trallee the dark village, for darkness was its constant companion. It sat in the heart of a deep wood, overshadowed on all sides by trees as tall as the highest hills with trunks as wide as homes. Far above the ground, their branches wound together to create a canopy so thick that naught but a few rays of light could flow through. The villagers had come to fear sunlight above all, and shunned its emergence through the branches, cursing its warmth. They taught their children to run from beams of light, to retreat indoors at the slightest sign of brightness. On sunny days, when it was possible to see from one end of the village to the other, the villagers went about with their hoods drawn, their faces averted from the awful glare.

It was a secluded place. The villagers never thought of leaving Trallees confines, for the forest was said to be full of dangers. Only one of their lot had ever set foot outside the village, a desperate choice made in the days of famine, when the rain wouldnt come, and the crops wouldnt grow.

He left a little girl behind.

And he never returned.

Shallah stoked the fire in the hearth and set a pot of water to boil, being sure to sit back as she peeled the onions so the skirts of her kirtle wouldnt be set alight. Shed a special affection for this dress, for it once had belonged to her mother. Shed sewn it herself when she was a girl, her crooked stitches evidence of her impatience with the work, and secretly Shallah believed shed chosen to have the wool dyed red to irk her father and draw the attention of all the boys in the village. It was a fanciful story, one Shallah treasured, though she knew it to be a creation of her own mind. She knew next to nothing of her mother. Shed died in childbirth, leaving her shy husband with a squalling babe in his arms and a broken heart.