At the Heart of Keen Woods
The gentle notes of my mother’s singing washed over me in the dim room. The warm light from the fire bathed her in a golden glow so that she looked like an angel. Her blond hair fell around her shoulders in ringlets, and I could see Baby Millie reach a chubby hand out of her blankets to tug on one of the curls. We were all gathered around the fire, waiting for my father to begin his nightly ritual of storytelling.
“What shall it be tonight, my girls?” he asked us.
“Tew us da stowy about da naughty kitty!” shrieked 3 year old Fiona.
“No, no, no, tell us the one about the faithful seamstress, Father.” Cut in housewifely little Rosie.
“Do The Hunter and His Dog, Papa!” said Evelyn, pulling the trigger on an imaginary gun.
“What about you, Eliza? Don’t you want to put in your two-cents?” asked Papa.
My 4 year old mind was spinning. “Tell us a story about… about a spy!” I decided.
Papa leaned back in his chair, stroking his bushy red beard in thought. We all knew not to interrupt him as he was thinking up a story. “A spy… Alright. Did I ever tell you the story of Lieutenant Peter Greenholt?”
We all responded with cries of, “No, Papa, no you haven’t!”
Papa went on, “He was a friend of my great-grandfather’s, a soldier in the Revolutionary War.”
“Was it a war like this one?” asked Evelyn.
“No dear, it was a war between two countries, rather than two halves of a country.” Papa said sadly. “Anyway, Peter was an American soldier in disguise. He was pretending to be a British lieutenant.” Papa continued to tell the story and I sat enthralled. As the story went on, Fiona fell asleep beside me, and Rosie got bored and went back to her sewing. But I listened until the very last word.
“…And so, Peter was awarded the highest honor a soldier can receive. The End.”
Now, 10 years later, the kind voice of my father fades away, to be replaced by the harsh tones of the housekeeper, Prudence.
“Eliza Lester, get your head out of the clouds and get back to work!” I quickly duck my head and finish washing the teapot I'm holding. I think back on my daydream. It's the only memory I have of my parents. I pinch my arm to stop myself from dropping back into a reverie. I hear the dismissal bell ring, announcing the end of our workday. Millie bounces into the kitchen. “Let’s go!” She says, tugging on my sleeve. I laugh.
“We have to wait for Evelyn, silly!” I respond, and Millie pouts. The 10-year-old is the spitting image of our mother, the apron tied around her middle increasing the resemblance. We have to wait for Evelyn to finish her duties before we can pick up Rosie and Fiona from where they work at the seamstress’ shop. The rest of us work at the Buchanon family’s mansion as maids.
I snorted as Millie starts tapping her foot impatiently. “Calm down, Mill, she’ll be here in a second.” Right on cue, Evelyn walks through the door, dusting her hands on her apron. We walk down and pick up our sisters, then start the long trek back to our shack. While Rosie makes dinner, I suppose I should give you a bit of our background.
This isn’t going to be one of those boring stories that starts with something like, “I was born on a cold night in November of 1859,” partly because I remember very little of my early childhood, and partly because I doubt you have the time or patience to listen to that. So I’ll give you the condensed version.
Three weeks after the memory I shared, my parents disappeared. Fiona and I were at a friend’s house, and the twins came to pick us up on their way back from school. When we got home, our house was completely destroyed. It smelled like smoke. We then heard a baby’s cries. As we followed the sound of Millie’s wails, we saw the destruction for what it really was. Starting at the back of the house, our home had been scorched. It looked like the flames had been put out before they damaged the front too badly, but the rest of our house was blackened and crumbled.
We found Millie tucked in a nook in our parents ruined bedroom. How she survived with no injuries other than a scratch on her face, we couldn’t guess. But we were sure of one thing. Our parents were gone.
I passed through the next couple of months in a daze. We were all sent to an orphanage. Once we were old enough, Mrs. Buchanon, a friend of our mother’s, let us have a shack on her property, and offered us places to work in her mansion. And with that, we arrive back in the present.
The shack where we live is minimal, with a small stove for cooking, a clay hearth for a fire, and… that was about it. We sleep on pallets of straw on the floor to cut the cost of beds. We picnic our meals on the grassy field outside, so we have no need of a table. We have two chairs and a couple of books. A curtain divides the cooking area from the bedroom, and a jar full of coins sits on a shelf, into which we add our weeks’ wages.
“How was everyone’s day?” asks Rosie as we eat dinner.
“Extrabulous.” says Millie emphatically.
“Extrabulous? What’s extrabulous?” asks Evelyn skeptically.
“Extraordinarily fabulous.” Millie says matter of factly. “I made it up today.” We all laugh.
After we eat our fill, the twins send us to bed. “How come you get to stay up later than us?” I pout.
“We’re older than you.” Evelyn tells me.
“Just by 2 years.”
Evelyn gives me her no-arguing expression and points at the cot I share with Fiona. I make a face, but still plop on my bed. Fiona and Millie drop off quickly, but I lay awake, listening to Rosie and Evelyn’s murmured conversation. Mostly they just talk about boring stuff, like President Grant and the reconstruction of the south. Where we live, in South Carolina, the War of Northern Aggression had taken it’s toll, but luckily not near our town. I finally get interested when their conversation turns to our parents.
“I miss them.” Rosie whispers.
“I do to.” Says Evelyn, putting her arm around Rosie.
After a pause, Rosie says, “It’s her birthday, you know.”
Evelyn nods. “Do you want to visit the house?”
I narrow my eyes at the faint outline of my older sisters. I’d never heard them mention this ‘house’ before. I'm suspicious, but more than that I'm curious, so I stay silent.
I feel a rush of chilly night air as the twins walk out the door. I run to the window and see them heading towards the forest.
“Fiona!” I whisper-hiss. “Fiona, wake up!” I shake my sister awake.
“Whazzamatta?” she says groggily. I point out the window at the twins’ receding forms. Her bright green eyes stretch wide.
“What are they doing?” she whispers.
“Let’s find out.” I grab our coats, and we make it about 10 paces down the path before a blond haired, blue eyed bullet shoots out of the house.
“Whatcha doin’?” Millie asks- much too loudly.
“Shh!!!” Fiona and I hiss.
“Why?” asks Millie, not bothering to whisper. Fiona claps a hand over our sister’s mouth.
“If you want to come with us, you have to be quiet!” I tell her. We wait for Millie to nod before Fiona lowers her hand. “We’re following the twins.” I point. “They said something about a house.”
We start walking, staying far enough back that we can see the twins, but they can’t see us. After walking what feels like a million miles, we arrive in a clearing. At first I was too concerned with my aching feet to realize where we were, but when I glance at Fiona she has a funny look on her face. I raise my head to look around the clearing and freeze. Then the flashbacks hit.
Seeing the burned house for the first time.
Finding Millie with a deep cut on her face.
Seeing my belongings as a pile of ash.
The cold realization that my parents weren’t coming back.
My knees buckle and I collapse. Fiona kneels next to me, Millie staring at us like we’ve both lost our minds. She opens her mouth, “I have 3 words for you. What. Is. Going. On?” I don’t even bother pointing out that that was 4 words.
“This is our old house.” I whisper. “The one that burned.” I see realization dawn on her face. She takes a step forward… and promptly trips.
I glance down, then do a double take. Millie had tripped over a metal lockbox. I'm about to open it when I hear Evelyn say, “Let’s go home.”
Rosie shakes her head. “Just a little longer!” she begs. Evelyn relents, and I turn to Fiona. We’d better go, she mouths. I nod. Carrying the lockbox between us, we somehow manage to stumble home and shove it under our cot.
The next morning works out perfectly. It was Saturday, our day off work, so Rosie and Evelyn went into town to get more food and we seize our chance. The box is locked tight, but the lock is rusted over, so I'm able to smash it open with a rock. We all hold our breath as Fiona pries open the lid.
“It’s… paper.” Millie sounds disappointed.
“Obviously.” Fiona says.
I don’t argue with them. My attention is caught by the words on one of the papers.
Dear Anthony and Julia Lester, I read, your application has been accepted, and you are officially admitted into the ranks of the SDU (Spy DIviision of the Union.) Sincerely, Nigel Hartford
The next page is shorter- Julia Marie Lester:
Code 10467
Anthony Charles Lester: Code 96494
And the last paper is another letter:
Dear Lesters, your identity has been leaked to the Confederate Army. We are trying to discover the culprit of the leak. Till then, prepare for attack. Relocate if possible. Try Headquarters in New York City. In Haste, Nigel Hartford
Fiona has been reading over my shoulder. Her eyes are stretched as wide as they can go.
“What? What’s wrong?” Millie asks.
“Mother… Mother and Father were Union spies,” I manage to force out through the lump in my throat.
“What?” We hear from behind us. We spin to see Rosie and Evelyn looking angrier than I’d ever seen them. “What did you say?” Rosie insists. I mutely hold out the papers. The twins blanch as they read them.
They walk over to the box. Evelyn trips on a loose board in the floor and knocks a stool over on her way down. The books on the chair fly everywhere, one landing in the open lockbox with a CRACK!
“It’s a false bottom!” Evelyn cries. Quickly, she pulls out the now broken board which was the base, to reveal a pile of bills.
Rosie gasps. “War Bonds! Do you have any idea how much those are worth?" I know one thing.
“They’re more than enough to buy 5 train tickets to New York City.”
A slow smile spreads across Evelyn’s face. “We’d better start packing.”
“That’s an incredible story!” the reporter exclaims. “People would pay to hear that!”
We sit in the comfortable newspaper office, being interviewed by the reporter and editor of The New York Chronicle. All 5 of us are snuggled up against our newly-recovered parents. It turns out that our parents had indeed been captured by the Confederate Army, released, and traveled back to South Carolina. When told that we had perished in the fire, they fled to USDA headquarters in New York. Now, thanks to a rusty old lockbox, we are with them again.
“Would you tell us the whole story?” the editor asks. “Start at the beginning.”
Everyone looks at me to explain our adventures. I know just where to start. I take a deep breath, and begin.
“The gentle notes of my mother’s singing washed over me in the dim room, the warm light from the fire bathing her in a golden glow…”
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