Chapter 5

Meg

Every day after school, I will go outside with the other kids and play potato ball. We take a potato sack and stuck it with more potato sacks and tie it off. We'll divide into teams, and have to throw the stuffed sack from person to person on our team. The other team has to try to touch whoever has the ball or intercept a pass. In order to score, you have to get the sack to the other team's area, which is always the opening to the alley on either side of the street.

My team was in possession of the sack on that certain day. Connor passed it to me, but Li ran after me. In a desperate urge to get rid of the sack, I search the street frantically for an open teammate. I push it forward, out of my hands. Haliy catches it, and I look up at the muggy sky.

Ha Mae's upper window is no longer boarded, which is peculiar. My family has always been close to Ha Mae, and we all know that she never goes to her attic. But when I look up, a girl stands beyond the glass. I brush a stray blonde curl from my forehead and look back up.

She's gone.

I return to the game. Haliy has gotten the sack into the alley, which means we're ahead. The sun is touching the horizon, and our Omams will probably step out onto the porches of Elberta and yell at all of us playing to get home, so the group bids each other farewell and sets off in their own directions. I head inside to our home right next to the playing ground. Omam is in the kitchen, making dinner. Tito is setting the table with plate and forks.

"Meg," My mother says in her thick Allerakin accent, "Drinks." I pull out the bone wooden cups from the cabinet. The cups were more expensive because they have a protective glaze covering the outside, so I am careful with them as I take them to Ha Mae's house to get milk. Maybe now I can figure out who that girl was.

Ha Mae lives across the street from us, but at this hour, the street is deserted. I cross and knock on the door. I hear an, "I'll get it" grumble from Ha Mae and a shuffling of chairs. She opens the door just enough so I can see her face. "Go right around."

As I walk around, I hear a girl's voice say, "Who was that, Omama Mae?" and Ha Mae reply,

"Just the neighbor, Meg." I rise up on my toes to peer through the window. Ha Mae's back is to me and I can see most of the girl. She's not very fat nor thin as a stick like me, but is more of a healthy weight. Her brown hair is cut off suddenly at the shoulders and is quite messy. She wears a fair blue dress that looks like it was once fit for a princess and a golden necklace. I infer that she was once well-off, but now maybe her parents are dead and she must live with her grandmother. I relax my feet and continue to go to the stable.

We helped Ha Mae buy the cow, and though it is in her yard we are allowed to milk it. My Omam still likes me to always check in with Ha Mae before milking. I swing the stable door open and step inside the warm barn. The cow is kneeling in her stall. "UP!" I command in a firm voice. The cow slowly gets to her feet, and I place the first cup under. We don't like to use a pail for milk, so instead we will squeeze the frothy, white drink straight into the wooden cups. Once the cups are full, I use my back to shut the door to the cow's stall and then the barn door. I don't latch it; that's Ha Mae's job for the later night.

I go straight across the street and kick the door open with my food instead of using my hands for I have no hands to spare. Omam rushes to it and takes two of the cups from my hands and sets them on the table. I place the other two on the table and sit down, stretching my fingers. Tito is shoveling bread pudding onto his plate, and Omam is putting little, half-grown garden vegetables on hers, mine, and babas. The bread pudding is a common food, and thank goodness about it, because if it wasn't, Tito would probably cry. Man, how my brother loves bread pudding.

I think all that is in it is bread and milk, and maybe an egg or two. But it feeds us for the night and lunch then next day, so that makes it more economical and fitting for our meager budget.

It may not be dream food, but at least it's better than what they eat in Erelaria; Omam says they eat just ground nuts and water, sometimes cooked into patties, and sometimes like soup. I couldn't stand eating either one of them. Also, their political views are something, as baba says, to loathe. They think that Airavia and Ekkaria should be two separate countries. They don't see that their land would be perfect for the Capital of Pinia rather than First Dock. After dinner, I head upstairs to my room.

All of the houses on this street are identical on the outside (aside from Ha Mae's sagging roof) and the inside. There is a downstairs with three rooms- a front room, a back room, and a bedroom for Omam and Baba. The fire place opens up in both the front room and the bedroom. The back room leads to the back porch, which goes into the yard and forest (on the west end like mine).

The upstairs is an attic. In our house, we have divided it along the fireplace with all of our worn and outgrown clothes of us and Ha Mae. Any scrap fabric gets sewn into the curtain. Tito is on the side with the stairs, and I am on the side without them. The fireplace is also double sided, but there is no fire, only heat.

I push past the curtain to my side of the attic. The floor is bare except for my straw bed. Real beds are too expensive, and no one in my school class has one. Normally they are given as a marriage gift, but I'm not married, and don't plan to become married anytime soon, so I have no bed.

I pull out my writing book. The Miech gave us the assignment to write a story- a story about the Airavian-Ekkarian land war- to be returned at the last snow of the season- and whoever wrote the greatest number of words would be rewarded. I intended to fill up my entire book with tiny print, and that would guarantee my win. We were on the honors system to count our words correctly, but that should be no problem. I open the book and pull my bit of fat out of the bone ink bottle.

I pause for a second. What am I to write about? I look all around the room. What could I write about? I imagine the history of Pinia, the war, the army marching through our village on their way to conquer the Erelarians. I remember cheering for them as they burned a pile of kindling, saying, "We burn this kindling like we burn the Erelarians. They are wrong!" I remember how that cheer went up in the air. We threw other twigs and pine cones into the fire. We burnt leaves and pine needles. Everyone threw something. My stick spun in the air before sailing into the pile of ash and burning twigs.

The army continued the next day, and every day after I thought of how they must be attacking the Erelarians. And now I feel something about the attack that I never felt before. I can't possibly turn in a story about how the Erelarians are being hurt, that it's inhumane to do what they do.

I put the brush away, close the book, and seal the bone jar with the fat. I can save this assignment for later.

Hn=b