Dragon's Apprentice (7)

Part Seven

The day of the bridal auction dawned hot and clear even though the past few mornings had been slightly foggy. It was a little unusual for that time of year, but those that saw it read little into it and Lynn wasn’t awake to take note of it or she might have thought better about participating in the day’s events.
“Get up!” Lynn’s mother shrilled up the stairs to the loft where, in a rare moment of bravery, Lynn had gone to her own bed in her sisters’ room the night before. It had been a brave move because her sisters were prone to loud arguments, which often degenerated into throwing things at one anothers heads with Lynn’s bed smack in the middle of the line of fire as hers was the center, and smallest, bed. It was why she so often slept in the coal cellar with the mice.
The night, however, had been remarkably uneventful. There had been one short squabble over who knew what, right after the lights had been doused, but one uncharacteristic shout from their father had squashed it in its tracks.
“I said up, all of you! Everyone up or there won’t be time to get ready before the auction starts and how would that look?! I’ll tell you how it would look! Like I can’t mind my own girls, that’s how it would look so UP!!” Their mother yelled again up the stairs and Lynn’s sister’s began to groan slowly into wakefulness. Lynn herself, who had been awake for the better part of an hour and just waiting for someone else in the household to stir that so that she wouldn’t get accused of sneaking off, sat up and swung from bed before any of them could start shouting at one another. She made a dash for the door, her bare feet as silent as cat’s paws across the hardwood.
With the ease of someone used to dashing through a wild forest she hitched her night gown up around her hips and slid, all dignity forgotten, down the stair railing and swung off before hitting the ornate ball at it’s end. Her feet firmly on the ground floor and away from her sisters, who were already starting to argue, she paused at last to stretch the kinks out of a back not used to sleeping on so soft or lumpy a surface as the mattress on her old bed. Of course the condition of the mattress probably had not been helped by the fact that it had first been the mattress of all of her sisters before her. Only her sister, Nan, had a new mattress, being the oldest and all. Her bed frame was also new and would be part of her dowry as a wedding bed assuming one of their other sisters didn’t do something spiteful to it beforehand.
Lynn cracked her neck first one way, then the other, then it cracked again as she returned it to her natural position and she put her hand on the back of her neck as a crick threatened to form, putting pressure on the knot before it could take shape. The cramped muscle released readily enough and, at last, she moved on through the sitting room to the kitchen where her mother was busy fixing a feast that would barely be large enough to feed the hoard that would descend upon it before long.
Lynn’s mother turned with a pan large enough to fry a baby in, which she’d been using to cook scrambled eggs, and jumped just enough to send a plate full’s worth of food into her hair when she spotted her youngest daughter who seemed to have just materialized at her back.
It was because she moved so blasted quietly, Molly decided to herself. Not like her sisters who all stomped and yelled about. She’d fetch a good price at auction, especially since she’d lost the ghastly tan which she’d developed who knew where. Molly also had it on good authority that this would be one of the biggest turn outs for an auction in Gold Spring’s modest history with men coming from as far away as the capital. She hoped that most of her daughters would go. Eight mouths were somehow a great deal easier to feed then eleven. A house with one daughter would also be a hell of a lot quieter, that was for sure and certain.
She smiled. “What were you doing up stairs, dear? I just sent your father down into the coal cellar to wake you.”
Molly didn’t think of herself as a neglectful mother where Lynn was concerned. After all, the girl had lived long enough to be old enough to participate in the auction. That was more then some families could say and if Lynn got less attention then her sisters it was because she demanded less, though perhaps she wouldn’t have if Molly hadn’t let the girl run wild. For just a moment Molly experienced a painful desire to have gotten to know her youngest child before it was too late, but then it was gone again, replaced by the pragmatism of a woman who had lived almost her entire life by the rules of a small town that didn’t encourage free thinking. She continued her trip to the kitchen table with the pan of eggs. Once she had placed them down she stepped outside the open kitchen door to shake the egg off of her hair and clothing before she returned to cooking.
“Any of your sister’s stirring yet?” She asked as Lynn slipped into her chair and began to heap food across her plate. Toast, eggs, bacon, ham, beef tips, fried red potatoes, hash browns, two hot cakes, fried green tomatoes, piping hot bread, cold apple pie and a carrot somehow found space on the plate before she smothered it all in butter, salt and pepper and began to shovel it down with a fork that seemed way too small for the job.
“ ’ibble,” Lynn managed around a mouthful so big that her cheeks bulged.
Molly watched in amazement as the girl somehow got it down and repeated the process with a second bite of what looked like butter, apple pie, hash browns and hot cake liberally sprinkled with pepper.
Out of all her children Lynn was definitely the most expensive to feed, especially in the morning. The girl was always the first to the table when she joined them at first meal at all and ate as if she hadn’t seen food for at least a year or more.
How could a girl so slight possibly eat so much?
Molly shook her head and patted her daughter’s unusual black hair, currently a tangled mass around her head, and added sausage to the girl’s plate. Out of all of her children Lynn was the only one that Molly didn’t have to nag into not dawdling through the morning even when she was eating for an army.
“Once you’ve finished eating, and after your sisters get up, I need you to come with me so that I can fit you to a dress,” Molly said just as Lynn’s father stomped into the house. With a smile at Lynn and a grunt to the world in general he threw himself down into the chair across from Lynn and began to shovel food onto his plate without a further sound.
Lynn grunted in response to her mother’s statement and went on eating. Her father watched her over his own food, wondering if she ever came up for air. Not for the first time he regretted that she hadn’t been one of his sons. Only people who worked hard ate like Lynn did and he had the feeling that she would have taken to the farm craft far better then any of his other children ever had.
He held his plate out for a few fresh strips of bacon as Molly walked by and they both stared in amazement as a whole hot cake disappeared into Lynn’s mouth with the accompaniment of three sausages and a slice of toast. In one gulp it was gone and she chased it with half a jug of orange juice.
“Leave some for the others, dear,” Molly said and eased the fresh bacon onto a plate in the center of the table with a fork.
“ ‘na ‘ooze ‘na wooze,” Lynn managed to say somehow around cheeks full of bacon, eggs and toast slathered in butter.
Her father grunted a laugh as Molly frowned at her.
“Now dear, please leave some for the others. I don’t want to have to cook twice,” Her mother said and Lynn shrugged, but didn’t add any more food to her plate even as her hand kept twitching toward the serving platters as if she wanted to.
“GET UP, YOU LAZY CRETENS, OR I’LL LET LYNN EAT YOUR SHARES, TOO!!!” Molly bellowed up the stairs one last time before she also took a seat at the table and began to fill her own plate with far less then either her daughter or husband.
Within moments there was a stampede of noise as not only her sisters but all five of her brothers came tripping over themselves down the stairs in a rush to reach the table. Lynn, her cheeks stuffed full of a little of this and a lot of that, stared as her siblings made a mad rush for the table faster then she’d ever seen any of them move in her life. She hadn’t realized that she was such a motivation to get her brothers and sisters moving.
With a growl she snatched her pitcher of orange juice away from her oldest brother, Jacky’s, reaching hand and took a huge gulp straight from the clay spout, insuring that no one else would try to take it. She plunked it down solidly in the place where everyone else kept their glasses and glared around at everyone before resuming her meal. Only her oldest sister, Gypsum, glared back, her eyes narrowed, but since this was normal Lynn ignored her completely.
Having inhaled her breakfast faster then anyone else, Lynn took herself outside the kitchen door and sat down on the low step just outside the door. With her chin in her hands she stared out at the forest. Ancient pines reached massive branches out past the boarder that her father so meticulously maintained to keep the forest from encroaching on the back door. The long needles spread upon the branches like fingers reaching desperately, it almost seemed, toward her as if calling her home. A high wind stirred the top most branches and a sound almost like a low, lonely moan passed through the boughs.
Lynn shivered and looked away even as she wished she could go comfort her forest, but that was silly. Why would anything in those old trees, besides Vaden, miss her?
“Ready, my dear?” Molly asked from her back and Lynn turned her head to look up at her mother.
Molly was not, by most standards, an attractive woman. Short and dumpy with limp, muddy brown hair that always seemed to escape from the bun at the nape of her neck she was the type of woman someone might look at and say “There goes a sturdy woman.” She wasn’t the kind of woman who would have ever fit in amongst nobility, but as a farmers wife she was the perfect choice. Once, before the boys had been old enough to work, she had held her own at her husbands side working in the fields. Now she was perfectly happy to be a house wife and do nothing but cook, clean, mend and accomplish other motherly tasks.
By contrast her youngest daughter looked more as if she belonged on the arm of a king then working in a field somewhere. With long, rich, thick black hair that seemed to shine almost purple, of all the colors, in the light and eyes the exact shade of amethyst crystals she was a sight to behold, even when her hair was a tangled mess. Tall and slender with a sinuous, quiet strength, the girl often seemed more predator then farmer’s daughter. She was beautiful and Molly knew that if any of her girls sold that day it would be Lynn, though she doubted that Lynn knew that. The girl had the oddest misconceptions about herself.
Molly shook her head to herself and motioned for her child to follow her back into the house. As the rest of the family continued their breakfast, Lynn stared longingly at the remaining food as they walked past, Molly lead her up stairs to the room she and her husband shared. Leaving Lynn standing in the center of the room, staring at a room that all of the children had always been forbidden access to, Molly went to the wardrobe and, from the dust on top, took a single, flattish box wrapped in a dusty brown paper.
She blew the dust off and carried it back to the bed.
“I bought this for you on your second birthday when it had become painfully obvious to us all that you would surpass all of your sisters in both height and beauty,” Molly said as Lynn stared. “We knew when the day came, since you weren’t the oldest, that we would be unable to send you off with anything except a dress so your father and I decided to have this made for you.”
With that she cut the paper away with one of her husbands knife. Carefully she pealed the paper away from the cloth within and, slowly, exposed a swath of what appeared to be white crushed velvet. With reverent hands Molly lifted the gown from its wrapping by the shoulders. It unfolded in a graceful line into the most beautiful dress Lynn had ever seen. It must have cost her parents a small fortune.
Molly shook it out and laid it carefully across the bed before she lifted the hem of the skirt for Lynn to see. There, and in a couple of other places Lynn could see, the heavy cloth had been folded over more times then was necessary to make a seam.
“There are gold, silver, and copper coins hidden about the dress. The copper coins are hidden here, in the hem of the skirt, the gold ones are hidden in the cuffs of the sleeves and the silver are in the seams along the back. There are four gold coins, six silver and twelve copper. Even if you’re bought by a slaver it’s illegal for them to take your bridal dress from you so it is the safest place to hide anything you may wish to keep,” Molly explained as Lynn stared. A small fortune had been squirreled away for her within the seams of that dress and they both knew it.
She looked back up at her mother in surprised puzzlement.
“But, why?” Lynn asked at last and Molly met her daughter’s gaze evenly.
“Because, my dear, you are both beautiful and smart. While smarts may serve you well in this world as a poor country girl, as a younger daughter beauty will not. If you don’t learn how to take care of yourself, protect yourself, no one is going to do it for you. This dress is the best your father and I can do for you to help you on your way to learning the skills you are going to need when you leave Gold Springs behind,” Molly explained and reached for her daughter to pull her night shirt off over her head where she dropped it on the floor for disposal later.
With her naked daughter standing in the middle of her room Molly began to scrub her down with cold water from the pitcher she’d brought into the room earlier. Lynn screamed as the cold water hit her, but Molly ignored her completely, scrubbing away like a mad woman unleashed.
Once the girl was scrubbed from head to foot and the knots had been yanked from her hair with a bone comb and that same hair had been braded behind her into a single thick band, Molly dried her gruffly with a rough towel and yanked a girdle down over her head. Positioning it just right she had Lynn grab hold of the bed post before she jerked the strings in as tight as they would go. Lynn gasped even as her lungs were constricted and clung for dear life as her mother continued to pull the strings tight.
“Mother,” Lynn gasped, “Mother, I can’t breath.”
Molly ignored her and, with one final tug, secured the garment tight around her. Lynn moaned as Molly pried her hands free and spun her to face her once more. Next she helped Lynn into the appropriate three petty coats before, at last, she pulled the dress down over the girl’s head. While Lynn was definitely thin enough that she didn’t need the girdle, and the dress would fit her just fine without it and she would, undoubtedly, leave both the girdle and petty coats far behind her the first chance she got, Molly wanted to insure that she was dressed in all propriety that day.
Last, but not least, Molly helped her daughter slip into soft slippers that matched the dress. They were completely impractical for walking or riding a horse, but for the occasion they were just right.
“Alright,” Molly said when she was at last satisfied with her daughter’s appearance. “Go pack. Just remember, if it’s not a part of the dress anyone who buys you can take it from you.”
With that she chased Lynn out the door and toward her own room. Still a little in shock, she went without question as Molly turned to the task of getting the rest of her daughters ready for the day.