The Silver Doe by Audrey Parker (historical books to read txt) 📕

attempting to keep his entire woe secret, as to not trouble her.
He had come here to remember, and then forget a certain memory that had been especially annoying to him, and he wanted it to stop driving him, bit, by bit, into insanity.
“Sari, oh Sari,” Kaz thought. “Why did she have to enter my life now?” Kaz had deliberated, after his Papa packed up and had taken her with that he would never see either of them again. But he was only half-right. Kaz never had seen his Papa again, never questioned his situation(s), and did not acknowledge his subsistence until the social worker appeared at his farmhouse with the sister he had not seen in over a decade in tow.
“This is Sariah Ausen. She claims to be your sister,” the social worker had explained when Kaz opened the door. He remembered the social worker for his wrinkled face that took on the shape of a balloon with a dirty blond haircut. The balloon made his body out of proportion and had Kaz wondering how is skeletal neck could hold it erect.
Kaz recovered quickly from this row of thought, and turned his attention to speculate the half-grown girl in front of him.
She was about ten, or eleven, and was built pettily. She looked like a bird, a hummingbird, next to Kaz’s muscular form. Yet it was undeniable they were siblings. She had the same caramel-colored tresses as Kaz – fine, with soft curls – identical high cheekbones and heart-shaped jaw line. They had always been the features that marked him as someone you expect to be wearing handcuffs. But Sari didn’t have the piercing gray eyes, the ones like storm clouds on a summer day, crisp and cold, which her brother occupied. She wore their mother’s eyes.
They were dark green, the green of an evergreen’s needles. They were captivating, they really were.
That more than anything led Kaz to believe the girl in front of him was really his long-lost sister. He had those eyes etched permanently into his brain, had seen then soften with warmth too many times to ever forget. He had pictured those exact eyes in his mother’s face, asking them for advice in life because he couldn’t ask the original ones. They had been gone for three months.
Now, after all that time, seeing those eyes and being unprepared for it was a punch to the gut for Kaz. He attempted to look away, but found he couldn’t. He could only stare into them, could only feel he falling deeply.
* * *
kaz snapped suddenly out of his sleep, and disoriented, understood it was only a dream and that he had fallen asleep. He felt instantly improved after he remembered where he was and why he had come. He looked around to observe his surroundings:
The wind was bending the willow’s branches to the extremes and Kaz had a fleeting thought that they might break and come tumbling down to bury him. But that thought was short-lived. It was clouded over by the wind, and the lack of brightness. Kaz looked up and saw the stars winking at him through the slight, about many willow leaves. It was later than it had been when he came to the creek bed. He stood up to hurry back to the farmhouse for Sari’s evening stew.


8,

Clara Mill was very near to her destination: she could feel it in her bones.
She was near the dead end on Williams Road and there was only a run-down old farmhouse left for her to check. There was a grove of pine trees enclosing the red-rusted mailbox and the overgrown, gravel driveway. The whole scene was old fashioned, and it made Clara wonder if there was electricity or running water. From what Clara knew of Sari, she would love to live there. Clara could only rust that he brother loved it, also.


9,

Uncle Joel was waiting.
He was on a bank of a fresh water creek and had his socks and shoes off and alongside him. His toes blurred under the transparent water as he watched them ripple in the slim current.
He could smell the our-of-site evergreen trees surrounding the traditional farmhouse where he was raised, even though he couldn't see either of them. He could taste the stifling pollen in the sir; see dandelion puffs weaving through the sweet breeze. Daylight filtered through the leafy blanket above him, and plots of grass, weeds and flowers lit up in response. Moss and vines nurtured up the rough bark of the willow trees that shaded him and Axle.
“Uncle.”
Uncle Joel turned at the calling voice. It was Kaz.
“Finally,” he said impatiently. “I’ve been waiting at the Willow Grove for nearly and hour. What took you so long?”
“I had some business to sort out.”
“Well, at least tell me why I’m here,” Uncle Joel snorted.
“How well do you remember my father?” Kaz asked suddenly, as if not sure how to phrase his wording.
“I only met him a few times,” Uncle Joel answered. “ At your parent’s wedding, and at your baptism.”
“I realized that, but what do you remember about him?”
Uncle Joel pondered carefully before answering. “He was a burley man and a was drunk more than was good for him. He had a hot temper and after took it out on your mother and yourself.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes-“
“ Do you know I have a sister?” Kaz interrupted.
Uncle Joel did not know how to react to his nephew telling this family secret. So he did the best he could. “A sister? Why don’t I know about her?”
“My father took off with her when she was only a moth old. She’s twelve now,” Kaz said.
Uncle Joel was flabbergasted. “And you’re telling me all this now? I’ve seen you more than once since then!” His normally weary voice was straining against all of his yelling, but it didn’t make the concept any less serious.
“ I thought she was dead,” Kaz answered sheepishly.
Uncle Joel was lost for words at his nephew’s confession, however small it was.
He started to feel self-conscious about what he was doing. He could feel his arms shuffle at his sides, clutch at his pockets, and his legs still wilting feebly in the clear water. His mind was occupied with how his eyes were betraying him to Kaz, but try as he did, Uncle Joel could only begin to challenge the bewilderment within them.
His only thought was; “How could a woman like Olivea Ausen possibly have another child and not tell her only sibling?”


10,

Clara Mill was there.
The floor had a few dust-clumps, but was otherwise clan beneath her tatted tennis shoes. The expectant cobwebs littering the ceiling were absent and there were no petrified lies in the room’s corners, though holes in the walls indicated the presence of mice. The cramped kitchen looked vulnerable and unused next to the roaring fire in the open hearth. A stew was boiling in a cast iron pot over it. Steam was gradually mounting from it to warm the dank corners of the room.
Thoughts were racing through Clara’s head, almost too fast to comprehend, but all of them centered on her friend. “Sari is here,” they said at last in harmony. “Go and find her.”


11,

The doe’s tatty bones groaned in the fresh morning dew as she slowly extracted herself from last night’s resting-place. The overgrown grasses around her were twisted in her pelt and lugged increasingly at the doe as she rose. Wildflowers perfumed the air and, last twilight, it had been that and their vibrant colors that had drawn the doe there.
The doe nibbled at some stems to help the process of removing herself, and found she was more ravenous than she had ever let herself become. She then gnawed more voraciously, and forgot about her meal acting as a cage.
The silver doe sat back down, and gnawed until her stomach was bloated, and it rumbled again. But not from the previous hunger that had haunted her waking. It was because it was in danger of bursting. It was a volcano, threatening to burst at the slightest bit of movement.
The doe may not have the prime brain in her part of the forest, but it was inaccurate to call her dim-witted. She sat back down in the indented area at her feet and snuggled deeper into the half-stems and remaining grass around her, preparing to wait out another day and night without shifting significantly.


12,

Foggy waves caressed her in moist fingertips, millions of them. When she looked at the hands, she could never distinguish the exact shape; catch only glimpses from the corners of her vision; only see her skin vanish into the damp.
Her white dress was solid on the irregular waves, but at the same time, it was the precise color to act as camouflage. When she looked beneath her, she discovered rolling hills and valleys, and from where she was, hidden in the billows of clouds, she could see the details of the slightest wildflower.
Her nose was petite and straight, and underneath, her smile was tremendous when applied. Her skin was the palest shade of porcelain, adding to the growing effect of a tall, but able doll. Her eyes were almond-shaped and dark, but her extensive hair was even darker. As she sensed something sweeping against her back, she documented feathered wings attached in between her shoulder blades. One small whisper was all it took to be told of their strength.
The angel called herself Caroline.


13,

Ivy wound densely up the tree Kaz was leaning against, blindsiding the wood from ever evading its clutches. He ran a few fingers through his wild hair and sat upright to survey the area: The sky was cloudless and perfect; the sun was beaming down on the world; the light breeze gently lifted nature’s work up from its place and then settled it back down.
The roses, tulips, violets, and buttercups created a forest around him. What would by many beautiful colors become churned and imprecise to his eyes, and the shrubs at their bases didn’t help the image. He blinked fiercely, and chaffed his eyes with the soles of his hands. Then, when he released them to see the result, one plant caught his attention.
About six feet in front of him, a bleeding-heart plant blossomed. It stood as if it were smirking, and so instinctively, Kaz cringed as if it were suddenly to attack, but he never took his eyes off the plant. He was afraid that if he looked away, the Bleeding Heart would disappear.
Preparing himself for the worst, Kaz stood up on stiff legs and inched forward one foot, and then two, three, four, five feet. He stopped and examined the majestic stance of the stems and the strategic position of the flowers. Even though the colors of the other plants swirled in wild patterns around it, and a pleasant breeze stirred the trees overhead, the bleeding heart was eerily still and silent.


14,

The clouds were silent and motionless, but the calm told Caroline more than any crowd ever could.
By her count, three days and two nights had passed, but since sunlight was always peeking through to reach her, and Caroline’s stomach no longer growled from hunger, keeping track of time was no small task. But the rolling green grew pristine and then faded with the passing of days. Caroline remembered seeking constellations in the heavens during her short life, though they were never visible from her position in the sky. Her wings ticked like a metronome automatically, and gave Caroline something to focus on, as well as to calculate the moments.