Page 4 of Sinbound to the Highlander
2
Ruthven
Crickets chirped in the dimming evening, and a bullfrog bellowed near the stream. Freya’s legs were up to her chin while her hand dipped into the stream, twirling the water that shot her wobbly reflection at her.
It was an image she had seen hundred times; dark-auburn hair pulled away into a messy bun at the back of her neck, and her dark green eyes were almost hidden in the splatter of freckles across her nose.
Do me birth parents look like me?
In this quiet, the few hours she had to herself, she dreamed; dreamed away from the farm-fields, the thick forest, and the village that her home was on the fringes of. The mountains that shielded them from the horrible snow and rain the other villages got, loomed above her high and majestic.
Sitting at the stream that flowed just a stone’s throw from her parent’s modest cottage, Freya allowed herself to wonder. It was the same issue that had plagued her from the day her parents, Balthair and Caitlin Crushom, had told her the truth about who she was, or, rather, who she wasn’t. She was not their birth child.
Her mother had said to her that it was a babe’s cry that had woken her up a summer morning, two decades ago. She was there, on their doorstep, in a basket. Her parents hadn’t known who she was, where she had come from or who had carried her there, but they had taken her as theirs anyway.
As Freya grew, her mother had told Freya that, she, Caitlin was barren, and that her appearance in their lives was a gift from God. She loved her parents, with all her heart, but she kept wondering who her birth parents were and why they had sent her away.
The more Freya wondered, the more she battled with two opposite emotions. When she was optimistic, she felt they had sent her away because they were dying or were not able to raise her as there were too many children in the home, and so they sent her away for a better life.
When Freya felt negative, she thought that they had sent her away because she was not a son, and a lot of families prized sons more than daughters. But then, the one she hated the worst was that, she had been born too ugly. Perhaps to some beautiful people who saw her face and deemed her unfit. That one sank to her core.
Is that it? Is that why they sent me away?
No one in the village treated her differently, but she heard things. When some of the merchants took their produce to the cities, they came back with stories of what the rich women wore, how they acted, and, more importantly, how they looked. They all had skin like alabaster and hair that looked like silk. And they were all married.
Had her parents come from the city? Were they beautiful people? Was that why they had sent her away? Or were they poor and had sent her away to get a better life?
She twisted to look at the cottage on the hill behind her and smiled. Her life was not bad at all; her parents loved her, and she had no reason to be feeling this way, but the uncertainty that came from not knowing what had caused them to send her away was still sticking in her mind. And the older she grew, the worst it got.
“Freya,” her mother called from the backdoor. “Freya, come here.”
Swatting a buzzing insect away from her face, she darted up and ran to the lady who was wiping her hands on her apron, “Aye, Maither?”
Caitlin gestured to a basket of washed turnips on the tiny kitchen table, “Peel those for me, Dear. I want to have dinner ready afore yer Faither comes home.”
Obediently, Freya went to grab the knife and began peeling while her mother put a pot on the fire-prongs to boil. Beside it, was an iron bread pan that, from the scent coming from it, had bread baking inside it. “What were ye out there kennin’ about?”
Though the subject of her birth parents was not an issue, she would rather not speak about it. “Old Missus Beathag asked me to pick some herbs for her on the morrow, I agreed, but I forgot to ask her which ones.”
Her mother clucked her tongue, “Always so absent-minded.”
Freya only smiled and went on peeling. Somewhere between peeling the turnips and dicing them, they began to sing an old song about a beggar man. “The pawky auld carle cam ower the lee, Wi' monie gude-e'ens and days to me, Saying, Gudewife, for your courtesie, Will ye lodge a silly puir man ? The nicht was cauld, the carle was wat. And doun ayont the ingle he sat. My douchter's shouthers he 'gan to clap.”
“Oh, ho,” her father Balthair called as he came in. “The Beggarman, eh, what put ye in such a jolly mood?”
“Naythin’,” Caitlin smiled and kissed his cheek, “Just normal happiness.”
Her father was dusty and stained from work on the farm, but he was cheerful. They were reaping the overflow of the wheat and barley crops, moving it away to prep the land for the next crop of barley, oilseed, and corn. He dropped a kiss on her cheek as well before announcing he was going to wash off in the river.
When he moved off, her mother dropped the roasted beef into the pot for the stew, and she finished dicing the turnips.
“Let that cook for a while, and before it gets soft, add those pieces, Dear,” her mother advised. “And mind that the pot daenae boil over.”
“Aye, Maither,” she nodded, grabbing a wooden spoon and stirring the pot while her mother went to meet her father at the stream.
These twilights moments were when her mother and father had some time to themselves and shared some intimate moments. As they lived in one open cottage, it was challenging for her parents to have some time to themselves. Freya did not mind; it was only reasonable for married folks to reconnect in private.
“Someday, I hope to have a marriage as they do,” she mused.
