Spindle(14)

His cotton sack looked too empty for a boy leaving his home, as if he were leaving everything behind. It was filled with food his mother had put in for him. Briar knew because Mrs. Prince repeated what she had packed for him over and over: cheese, bread, sausage, cheese, bread, sausage, as if she couldn’t find the words to tell him what she really meant: Don’t leave. I love you. You’re my only son.

“You think Fanny can keep an eye on those boys?” Henry asked, breaking the silence.

Briar groaned. “You saw?”

“I, myself, have been curious about Mrs. Clover’s hat. I don’t blame them at all for investigating.”

“Well, Mrs. Clover would, had she known what they were doing.”

“I had no idea you were so quick on your feet.”

“With those boys? I have to be.”

“I know you sacrifice a lot for them, Briar, but they won’t be your responsibility forever. They’ll grow up and you will be free to follow your own dreams.”

“It might happen sooner than I like. Nanny only agreed to keep the children until I turned seventeen. That’s this summer, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m afraid she’s gone to find homes for them and Fanny is too nice to tell me.”

“Nanny’s not leaving you out of the decision making, Briar. She wouldn’t do that.”

“People do things you don’t expect all the time.” She gave him a playful shove, knocking him off-balance. “See? I never thought she’d leave without at least telling me. How well do you know her?”

He elbowed her back. “I’ve known her all my life, but I don’t know her really well, just, you know, in the way that children know friends of their parents.”

“So, like your family, she’s always lived here?”

Henry smiled. “No. She moved in about the same time you moved here.”

“Really? Good thing, that. No one else would take us.”

“I know how just about every family ended up here. Or at least, my family used to keep track of that sort of thing before too many of the mills moved into town. Now it’s a lot harder to notice the new people with all the comings and goings.”

“So, your family keeps an eye on the valley?”

Henry laughed. “I guess it’s a bit of a game with us. We are observers.”

“Did you notice my family when we first moved here? You and I started the mill at the same time.”

“Of course I noticed you.”

“Lots of girls started work at the mill when I did.”

“Ah, but no others were named Briar Jenny but you.”

“So it’s my name you noticed?”

“It caught my attention.”

“And you were the one who introduced us to Nanny after Da died.”

His jovial face grew serious. “With a name like yours, you needed protection. Nanny needed some life in her cottage. It was a good fit for everyone.”

“What do you mean ‘with a name like mine’?” Fanny had noted her name, too. But so many strange things had happened since yesterday, maybe this was just a coincidence. Henry never spoke of fairies like Fanny did, so he couldn’t be teasing her about Sleeping Beauty, too. “Is it because I’m Irish and everyone assumes my da was a drunk and I’m a Catholic instead of a Protestant?”

Henry didn’t answer. Perhaps she’d misunderstood him. He’d always said he liked her name, and now here she was assigning him bad motives.

“Speaking of names.” Briar pulled out her letter. Flipped it over. Cleared her throat. “My mam had a sister who stayed behind. They lost touch and it was one of Mam’s life regrets that the family never found out what happened to her.” She gave him the letter labeled with as much of an address as Briar could remember, and he put it in his pocket.

“I don’t expect you to find her. But if you have the letter with you and as you meet people on your way…could you…ask if they know her? She wouldn’t want my mam’s family to be split up. She might be our hope to stay together.”

“Of course I’ll try.” He picked up an acorn and rolled it between his fingers. He handed it to her, like he did when they were kids and he collected them for her. “Is that where you plan to go when you leave the valley? Ireland? Even though you’ve never been there yourself?”

“Mam talked of it from morning till night: the green hills, the hunt for shamrocks, the music her da would play on the fiddle. She didn’t want to leave in the first place, but her people were forced to. It was all she ever wanted to do, go back and find her older sister. But Da would always pipe in with how skewed her memories were. He’d say it wasn’t as magical as she remembered. He focused on the potato famine that pushed both their families out. He only remembers starving.” She paused, smiling at a memory. “Mam used to tell Da that it’s easy to halve the potato where there’s love. She always won that argument because Da did love her so. Had they lived, I’m sure he would have found a way to return home, since the famine is long past.”

No matter how much Mam glossed over the lean years in Ireland, the stories of the potato famine scared Briar. Da spared no detail in telling how bad it got. How entire crops were destroyed by blight, a sick blackening of the plants and potatoes, leaving people with nothing to eat. How some were so desperate they ate grass and died anyway. How packs of dogs roamed looking for those not yet buried. And how much better things were for them in Sunrise Valley, despite the long hours and low wages. They ate. They were alive.