Over the past year I have shared chapters of The Feast and Follies of the Animal Court, (available for Nook and for Kindle), short stories, delightful anecdotes, and teasers. For the next few months, you're in for a real treat - I've spent the last week priming and polishing, revising, and map-editing to prepare for you my favorite story. In the last twelve years I've written a fair few a novel, but none has warmed my heart like the one that we will be enjoying together over the next few weeks. That's right - you will have at your finger tips an ENTIRE novel of mine, for free, here at the Weekly Read.
My loyal readers actually saw a clip from this book; anyone recall reading a Christmas short on the golden perspective of spiders? That segment came from this book: Providence: The Tale of the Tamrins, or just Providence for short. (Sorry to my Rhode Island readers - this story has nothing to do with your town.)
Two hundred years before Gertrude and Breyton were born, two hundred years before most of my stories take place, in the quiet town of Providence, chickens ran with bows around their necks and gossip poured like tea from a kettle. Sit back, relax, and come meet the kind people of Providence.
Providence
The Tale of the Tamrins
By
S. Faxon
U.S. Copyright 2013 by Sarah Faxon
For Laudine
Providence
This is a story about a town called Providence.
The sleepy town lay at the northern border of a kingdom riddled with a future
full of misery, but the town itself was quaintly quiet and comfortably cramped.
At this moment in time no one then and there could have predicted what evils
the country's recently crowned King Darneīl would bring. The tale of what
followed the king’s fall from light has already been documented in a different
collection of leaves. This tale is about Providence and the glorious days
before the dawning shadows of the night, and it starts with a peach.
Part 1: The Fruits of Summer
Chapter 1: It Started With a Peach
“No, I could not possibly!” the
woman with handsome dark brown eyes adamantly denied her chuckling friend.
“He’s so…I don’t know, droll? Is that the word I want to use?”
“You think that Brian Higley is
droll?” the lady’s friend asked incredulously. “Come on, Gracie, I’m scared to
think of what you’d call ‘interesting’! He’s perfect for you!”
Ms. Grace could not disagree more.
She rolled her eyes, but hesitated to answer her friend, taking her time to
evaluate the quality of the nonperishable merchandise in the store they
browsed. “Hewie, need I remind you that I am a small town teacher; I lead a
quiet life. I either need someone beyond exciting or someone as level headed as
me. How could I possibly live the rest of my days with the heir to our town’s
only inn? He’s far too prominent for me. I can’t be with a man like him.”
“Like
him?” the shop owner piped into his customers’ conversations. Shaking his
bald head at the womanly bantering the man continued, “Now, now, Ms. Grace, Mr.
Higley is one of the best men in the county, save for me of course, but at
least he’s at a bit a-better marrying age for you than me.”
“And Mr. Higley is not already
married,” Hewie, more formally known as Mrs. Callaghan, added, poking fun at
the shop owner. “And,” she continued
dramatically while sending a mockingly suggestive look at Ms. Grace, “It is
very well known that Mr. Higley has an eye for your attention, which must mean
of course that he has an eye for you as
his future bride.”
"Really,” Ms. Grace muttered,
pretending to be entirely too interested in the round wax candle in her hand to
have been anything other than offended by such a preposterous assumption even
if it were true. Speaking about her personal life with the shop keeper
listening in, no matter how well she knew him, made Ms. Grace feel
uncomfortable. Talk in this town traveled fast.
“It’s true!” the shop keeper Mr.
Dawning confirmed from the intuitions of his own assumptions. “I’ll wager that
you’ll make a right fine couple, if it’s not too bold of me to say.”
“It is a bit bold, Mr. Dawning,” Ms.
Grace scorned, turning to the gentleman. At first he was afraid that he would
receive a firm scolding from the county’s only teacher, but then he saw the
smile on her gentle featured face. With a chuckle, Ms. Grace added, “Just see
how I grade you, sir, on tomorrow night’s quiz. Have you found time to study by
the way, or have you been too busy gossiping about Mr. Higley and me?”
“I wouldn’t do a thing like that,
Ms. Grace, not to you,” Mr. Dawning assured, but what else was there to do in
Providence than to talk about one’s neighbor with one’s other neighbors? “I
have been studying rightly, ma’am. I’ll be ready for whatever you throw at us
tomorrow, Ms. Grace.”
“Good,” Ms. Grace approved. She
stepped up to the counter of the heavily laden shop to pay for the items she intended to purchase. As Mr. Dawning tallied
up her bill, Ms. Grace quietly but firmly said, “I expect you to be a good
gentleman and not pass our
conversation about Mr. Higley along the party line, yes?”
Mr. Dawning had already begun to
imagine having a conversation about said subject with his wife later, but
because Ms. Grace decided to regard it with such taboo…“Of course, ma’am,” he
answered loathly. “I’ll not tell, but I do agree again that you would both look
right nice together coming up the church’s aisle.”
Ms. Grace simply stared at the man.
She was so tired of the people in this town arranging or imagining her life for
her. With only a subtle “thank you” to Mr. Dawning, Ms. Grace paid for her
candle and her new bar of soap. “Why is it,” she whispered to Mrs. Callaghan as
they exited the shop, “that I can no longer have a conversation with any one
without the unprovoked topic of marriage rearing its ugly head?”
Mrs. Callaghan turned her nearly
green eyes to her life-long friend. She laughed and laced her arm through Ms.
Grace’s before answering, “It is just small town talk, Gracie. You’ve lived
here long enough to know that.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Ms.
Grace muttered to herself, ignoring those years she spent away from Providence
when she went to pursue a higher education. It was a blessing then for her to escape;
this town was so trapped in its web of traditions and gossip that even the best
of friends referred to one another by last names and neighbors invented stories
about the other so as to have something worth talking about.
“Then you should expect us all to wedge ourselves in your
concerns. You may persist in living alone, Ms. Grace, but that does not grant
you the rights to privacy,” Mrs. Callaghan said, bumping Ms. Grace with her
shoulder. “In fact it gives you less.”
The women strolled together into the
hub of the Sunday market street fair. The store keepers of Providence did not
rest on Sabbath under the belief that Sunday was a day to be enjoyed, so why
not provide the best products to bring the joy of profit and of
purchase?
The warm summer day made sitting in
the large white church at the end of town a bit intolerable, so wandering the
markets and shops afterward was a grand relief. The street fair was less
crowded today than usual; many of the town’s citizens retired to their porches
or to the verandas of friends to lounge in rocking chairs. The summer sun
served as something like a sedative to the hustling town. The people were
usually terribly alight within each other’s lives, but today only howdy-dos
were exchanged among the few who were on their feet. Without the chatting
crowds Ms. Grace and Mrs. Callaghan were easily able to maneuver around the
carts to see what would catch their attentions. Yet even with the heat, every
person they passed greeted Ms. Grace, for most of them had a child in her class
and/or they were enrolled at her school themselves. It could be argued that
aside from the reverend and the family of the mayor, Ms. Grace was the best
known and the most admired citizen of Providence. This was one of the reasons
for why her name frequented conversations.
Mrs. Callaghan sighed dramatically
at her dear friend’s conundrum as they drew closer to the cart owned by the fruit
farming Witten family. “Ms. Grace,” Mrs. Callaghan softly said, leaning her
still-child-like face closer to her friend’s ear, “The people here care for
you. They just, they’re worried, you know?”
“Worried?” Ms. Grace asked, finding
this to be a bit of a surprise because she thought that the town’s people only
thought of her to occupy the time. “Worried about what, exactly?”
Mrs. Callaghan knew that she had the right to answer this without justification because it was something that only close friends could do. “Well, it comes down to this: you’re not exactly young anymore.”
Mrs. Callaghan knew that she had the right to answer this without justification because it was something that only close friends could do. “Well, it comes down to this: you’re not exactly young anymore.”
Ms. Grace stopped walking. “Not ‘young’ anymore?” she asked, feeling immediately
offended. “What? Do they believe that if you’re twenty-three and not married,
you’re doomed to die a spinster?” Without looking, being too distracted by her
bafflement, Ms. Grace reached for a lovely peach. However, her eyes shot to
where her hand had landed. Contrary to what she had expected she felt the touch
of human fingers and not a fuzzy peach’s skin.
A humble, handsome face smiled
bashfully from the other side of the fruit table in reaction to the unexpected
touch from the teacher’s hand.
“Oh! Sir, please forgive me!” Ms.
Grace quickly apologized, ripping her hand back to her side.
“There is nothing to forgive, Ms.
Grace,” the gentleman’s charming crooked smile and light brown eyes
delightfully excused the innocent act. He plucked the peach from the table and
rounded the cart to speak with the teacher. “How are you, Ms. Grace?” he asked,
throwing the peach to her.
Awkwardly catching the fruit, Ms.
Grace smiled grandly. “I am excellent, thank you, sir,” she answered. “How are
you, Reverend Tamrin?”
Providence’s most adored citizen
politely bowed his head as he answered, “I am very well, Ms. Grace. And how are
you, Mrs. Callaghan?”
“I’m good,” Mrs. Callaghan answered
succinctly. She had spotted her handsome husband looking for her. Mr. Callaghan
kindly beckoned his wife back to his side so that they could return to their
home in the neighboring town of Dansend. Turning back to the reverend and her
friend, Mrs. Callaghan excused herself and bid them both good-day.
“Back from their trip to his
mother’s, I see?” Reverend Tamrin inquired.
With a sigh, Ms. Grace nodded. All
before church and after, the majority of the conversation Ms. Grace shared with
Ms. Callaghan concerned the niceties and the travesties of having a
mother-in-law. The rest of their conversations discussed the object of Ms.
Grace obtaining a mother-in-law. It was good to spend time with her friend who
had moved to the next town over, but if all they were to talk about was
marriage Ms. Grace was not sure of how much of that she could stand.
The reverend parted his thin lips to
ask something, but before his words were uttered, the owner of the cart, Mrs.
Witten, found the pair. “How fortuitous!” the middle-aged farmer’s widow came
beaming before the reverend and the school teacher. “How glad I am to see you
two. Before I start, let me ask, Ms. Grace, are you still teaching that class
for adults?”
The teacher answered the question
with, “Yes, madam, I am.” Ms. Grace elaborated, pushing a stray lock of her dark
hair behind her ear, “My class meets every Monday and Thursday for two hours
after supper time. Are you interested in joining?”
The tanned cheeks of the farmer
turned pink. Pushing her own mess of ginger curls from her rugose face, the
woman answered bashfully, “Oh, heavens, no! I am an old shoe, Ms. Grace, no. It
is my sons who I believe need a bit
more of an education, which brings me to my question. You see, Ms. Grace,
Reverend, I came home the other night to find my eldest partaking in an
activity that I won’t delight to recall now and it was then when I realized
that there were a great many things that m’ husband and I ought to have taught
the boys, but with my Mr. Witten gone so early in their lives, God rest his
soul, I never really had the chance to teach them those things m’self while
maintaining the farm,” Mrs. Witten inhaled deeply. (Ms. Grace was almost
certain that the woman had said nearly all of that on one breath.) “I thought,
if only there was a way to reinstate a bit of God and ‘is graces into them
without forcing them to go to something a bit below their level and then it hit
me as though the Divine Himself had wanted it to be so,” Mrs. Witten paused to
intensify the moment – her excitement was plain. The reverend and Ms. Grace
possessed an iota of where this was heading, but neither then could have
guessed the greatness of what would come from this one suggestion. “I thought
what if Reverend Tamrin and our lovely Ms. Grace formed a dynamic fellowship to
help whip into shape the morals of the people in this town by teaching
together.”
Though the market around them
continued to function and roll as though nothing at all significant transpired, to Ms. Grace the world stopped.
The reverend sent a look to Ms. Grace,
but she seemed lost in the digestive process of the suggestion. Taking the
initiative, Reverend Tamrin answered in his humble fashion, “That is not at all
a bad idea, Mrs. Witten, but I do believe that since I would be encroaching on
Ms. Grace’s time and territory, the decision should fall irrevocably to her.”
The world of Ms. Grace slowly
resumed its turning. She looked to the softly handsome face of the reverend,
shadowed by the long rim of his black hat. As it was, juggling the workload of
two-elementary classes and one adult class was challenge enough, but the presented
opportunity to work with the reverend certainly would be worth the extra
hurdle. Besides, she had always wanted a class more literature based and this
presented her that chance. With the peach still in her hand, Ms. Grace agreed
with the reverend. “I do too see this as a marvelous idea, Mrs. Witten.” Ms.
Grace turned to Reverend Tamrin and added, “All we would really have to do is
alter the literature portion of the class; we could have a seminar with a theme
or lesson that you, Reverend, would choose since that is your department of
expertise.”
For a moment, Ms. Grace thought that
she saw a flash of pink on the reverend’s face. The gentleman turned his gaze
away from Ms. Grace too quickly, so she was not sure if the reverend actually
blushed or not. “All we need now is the time to plan,” he said cheerfully to
Mrs. Witten.
“Why not tonight?” Mrs. Witten
quickly suggested. “It’ll be much cooler then; you’ll be able to think more
clearly.”
To the suggestion of meeting his new
partner tonight, the reverend reluctantly had to respond, “Forgive me, but I
cannot meet tonight.” Mr. Tamrin paused for a moment, stopped by the
repressed look of disappointment streaming from Ms. Grace. The gentleman
elaborated even though Ms. Grace already knew the reason why he could not meet
her, “I will be busy tonight. In fact, I am sorry ladies, but I ought to be
leaving pretty soon.”
“Not without giving this woman the
knowledge of when you two will meet, Reverend Tamrin, you won’t,” Mrs. Witten
quickly said.
The reverend turned his gaze to Ms.
Grace. She swallowed very hard from the wake of his eyes. “Ms. Grace, how does
Tuesday night sound? That way we may prepare for Thursday or for Monday without
interfering with your other classes. Which do you prefer?”
“Tuesday for Thursday is fine, Reverend
Tamrin,” Ms. Grace answered to the best of her ability – her nerves were a bit
shot at the moment from a whole host of delightful possibilities. “Around six?
At the schoolhouse?”
“Sounds good,” the reverend answered
with another sight of his charming smile. “I’ll see you then, Ms. Grace.” The
reverend gave his company another subtle bow before he turned to leave.
However, two steps away, the reverend turned on his heels, reaching into his
pocket. “It’s on me,” he said, handing Mrs. Witten a copper coin for the fruit
clutched in Ms. Grace’s hands. The good sir again gave the ladies a gentlemanly
bow of his head before officially parting Ms. Grace’s and the peach’s presence.
~*~*~
The short trek to her one roomed,
four walled home beside the schoolhouse could not have passed fast enough for
Ms. Grace. Repressing a smile was hard enough, but denying the joy springing in
her was more like torture. In a remarkably calm manner, she was able to enter
her home and she was able to gently shut the door. However, once that deed passed,
she hurled her bag of things to her bed, keeping the peach in her hand, so that
she could properly throw her childish dance of happiness. In the privacy of her
brightly lit home, Ms. Grace was able to smile uncontrollably as her mind dared
to wonder. Her artistic mind, as it did tend to do, hoped and prayed that the
flash in her reverend’s cheeks and the peach, made their scheduled meeting more
like a date. She made several failed attempts to collect her thoughts, to
finish making her test for tomorrow night’s quiz, to do anything productive,
but she simply could not. Eventually, Ms. Grace plopped herself down
at her dual purpose vanity-desk to stare critically at herself in its large
oval mirror. She hoped that by staring herself down she might be able to
conjure some form of sense from the torrent of little things that she had been
collecting in her conscious for years. There were so many events, mostly very
small, that she feared she may be overly interpreting as clues. Clues to what,
she was not sure, but she could only hope.
Smiling
absently, she unwound the ribbon holding back her dark brown hair to run a comb
through. Releasing the tightness of her every-day bun was a pleasant temporary
relief, but it hardly lasted long.
“But he’s a reverend!” she suddenly
reminded herself, throwing down the comb and slapping the palms of her hands on
the face of the vanity. Regaining her composure and ignoring the stinging
feeling in her hands, Ms. Grace looked at herself quizzically. “Can reverends
engage themselves to ladies? Are they like priests? No, they can’t be like
priests…” Her eyes strayed to the peach beside her on the vanity. Its ripe smell
of sweetness loomed temptingly to her. She smiled giddily again to think that
he bought this for her – she could not let it go to waste.
Ms. Grace brought the peach to her
lips.
Never before had her tongue
experienced so sweet a taste.
~*~*~
Your humble author,
S. Faxon
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