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A Mother's Tale

Through Shadows Falling

Respectable Roguery

A Mother’s Tale

Copyright 2003 Amie Marie Holloway

He met Her while on a trading expedition to the Basin Cities. Despite Her family's misgivings, She returned with him to his Lowland village. His family mistrusted Her as not only an outsider, but also an Aert'Lan from Palline. The village was more superstitious than it cared to admit, and most of those superstitions revolved around the "otherness" of the Aert'Lan. Still, She made a place for herself. Her presence within the household was tolerated when it became apparent how much money the family stood to make from Her tailoring and embroidering skills. She was never loved, and barely respected. Life was even more difficult when he was away on one of his expeditions. At those times he wasn't around to protect Her from the animosity of the village. His family would only intervene when violence was threatened, as they didn't want to jeopardize future profits. Several years passed in this way: he would protect Her in the winter while the passes were blocked, leave Her in the spring to ascend to the Basin, traded all summer while She withstood the storm at home, and return to the Lowlands in the fall before the passes froze again.

Then, to his family's horror, She had a baby. To their credit, they were more horrified by his decision to not participate in the family trade expeditions until the child was grown than by the child's half Aert'Lan blood. The child managed, in the way that only babies can, to earn the love of his parents. His siblings, however, resented the child's presence and future claims on the family's wealth. But while his parents lived, life went on as it had before. The villagers came to accept Her as a member of the community, although an unwelcome one. She loved Her child and tried to instill Her beliefs and culture in the child. His family fought Her constantly on this. They did not want the child to know anything about Her, other than She was the mother. Any mention of Her Aert’Lan heritage or Palline family was almost immediately countered with ridicule of Her “crazy ideas”. The child didn’t know whom to believe at these times: mother or grandparents.

As the years wore on, he never stopped loving Her; but he did come to resent the effort of constantly defending both Her and himself for daring to love “one of those people”. Perhaps he never realized just how badly treated She was during the months he would be gone, or perhaps he hadn’t cared. When the child was six years old, he resumed his expeditions. He would leave as early in the spring as possible, and stay up in the Basin almost too long to make it back through the passes. His family delighted in the extra profits this brought them, and encouraged him to leave earlier and earlier, and stay later and later. In the child’s tenth year, he did not return in the fall. She assumed, like his family, that he had left it too late to make it through before the passes froze. Winter came and went. The expedition returned with the spring, but he did not. They brought tales of disease, early snows, and death.  Several were lost to “plague”, and the survivors were pinned down between passes by an early blizzard. More were lost to the weather and starvation before they made it to a village where they could spend the winter. He was one of those taken by the cold. They buried him in the pass.

She was devastated by his loss. His parents feared it had broken Her mind. She was turned out of the house as a madwoman and left to wander the lanes alone in her grief. His parents kept their grandchild and wove stories of Her abandoning the child and dying in the wilderness. She refused to leave Her child alone with the people who hated Her, and would appear often at the child’s window when the rest of the family was sleeping. The child inadvertently let slip these nighttime visits and His parents saw to it that She was expelled from the village. Forced at last to truly abandon Her child, she made her way back to Palline.