The Chaos Circles #3

Lya gave out a swallowed squeak, and then quickly covered her mouth. She must have remembered how Jaque had always hated that. She quickly recovered.
"Oh, I doubt that. Sudden disappearance of former most eligible bachelor in Enatuh! Carlas and her daughters would leap and weep at the same time."

Jaque cringed his face. The women of Leigham hunt men for marriage and he had been eyed upon since the age of twelve. Lya straightened her shawl, maybe because she just wanted something to hold on to other than her basket.
"Your father would be very angry."

Jaque felt a hot pit at the bottom of his stomach. He did not want to think about his father just yet.
"He'll get over it quickly. I think he had been suspecting it. And he has three other sons to redeem himself with."
Three better sons.

"Then my father would get very angry."
The corner of Lya's mouth twitched menacingly, the kind that Jaque had seen all women do to men who got home drunk and singing stupidly, be it a wife, sister or daughter.
"But that's the whole idea, isn't it, Lya? As long as I'm the one who's the bigger disgrace, no one will suspect you had anything to do with it."
Lya's father was not a farmer, but a teacher and the head villager to boot. His influence in the community was strong.

The sun was rising high. The sheep will be needed to move up north, into the cooler shades of the mountain. Jaque picked up his long crook and made a quick pipe with his lips. The excited barks of his sheepdogs answered the whistle and the sheep bleated loudlyas they began to move.
"It's getting late. Could you give my thanks to Mother Samuel? They were delicious."

Lya gathered what was left of Jaque's breakfast from the grass and into her basket. She gave him a rare, soft smile instead of her usual childish smirks.
"Whisper to me a secret, Jaque."
"Me?"
"Yes. Just this once."

Jaque took a moment to contemplate this question. It was a game they played, telling each other unnecessary things of what they found about other people and many were simply childish and sometimes untrue. He had outgrown it and it was mainly Lya who spoke secrets.

Secrets. There were many he shared with her. He had told her about the quiet creek full of cherry trees that nobody knows about. He had told her about the birth of his sheepdogs, the reason why Mrs. Jeram's battercakes always taste better, about a Frettson's nightly outings with a Leighamdottir some years back and, his last and most painful secret, about the time when his father decided to remarry.

Yet of all the stories he had shared with her, he never thought to tell her the Truth. Maybe, at first, it was because Mr. Samuel never did, nor did any of the elder Samuels. Maybe they thought Jaque had forgotten about it, being so young at the time, or that Jaque would never tell anyone. And he never did. Not even when the Truth became even heavier to bear.

He scratched his head, trying to think of something, something much more pleasant.
"My secret is... erm, that I know those battercakes you've sent are not made by Mother Samuel at all."
Lya rolled her eyes in irritation. But then, she raised an eyebrow and asked mischievously
"Now how can you tell that?"
That was an easy question.

"Too much flour and honey, and plenty of black burnt sides. Now that terrible cook had made me fat, heavy and in a great need of water. Mother Samu-"
Jaque's words were cut off when Lya threw a whole battercake at him. He barely managed to cover his face as it broke to sticky pieces.
"Why you...! Sitting there, like...! Well, Mother's training is hard."

To be continued...