Sarah's Story Chapter 004 - Resolution

Sarah awoke to her father shaking her shoulder gently. “Sarah, wake up, it’s morning.”

She sat up from the edge of the bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

The first thing she saw was her mother, glaring daggers at her father, but lying still on the bed and not saying anything.

She had never seen her mother look so angry.

“Helen, the Lord is leading the search and rescue efforts around where James went missing, and has been since last night.”

Helen started inhaling, but Stephen cut her off.

“James is still missing.”

Tears immediately filled her eyes and started rolling down her face, wetting the pillow under her head.

Stephen untied Helen and brought both her and Sarah to the kitchen table.

Nobody had any appetite.

Stephen explained how the search had gone, how they had woken the best hunter in the village, and how in the early morning hours, before the sun had even risen, they had woken the rest of the hunters.

How they hadn’t found traces of a fight, but had found traces of two sets of tracks down by the river, then tracks of a person likely carrying another person deeper into the forest away from the village.

How the Lord had a skill to determine if any of his subjects had died, and that James was still alive.

At first Helen’s face grew more and more furious, glaring at Stephen, but as he went on describing the search that anger turned to despair.

Kidnapped.

Eventually she broke down sobbing, her head in her arms on the kitchen table. Sarah was speechless.

Kidnapped? Her brother?

Growing up with four older brothers, she’d always been doted on and protected by them, and saw them as bigger and stronger and, to some extent, invincible.

Especially after they chose their classes.

Paul, her oldest brother, had chosen to be a Farmer and a Swordsman. Even with just a stick in his hand, he could take on anyone. Then he had moved away to farm in a neighboring village with his new wife.

Sam, her second oldest brother, had chosen to be a Farmer and an Archer. He had dazzled her with feats of accuracy, shooting right through every apple she had thrown in the air until their parents had caught them wasting fruit and scolded them something fierce.

Brandon, the middle child, who had chosen to be a Farmer and a Lancer, using a spear like it was an extension of his body, twirling it around and even throwing it, able to hit a target almost halfway across a field to Sarah’s delight.

And James, who had bucked the trend and chosen to be a Smith, but who had still acted like a bigshot and stood up to protect Sarah from other kids when they were rude to her in the village, when their parents weren’t looking, even without his classes, even against people who already had their classes, he hadn’t backed down…

And Sarah realized that she didn’t know what James had chosen for his second class.

Her mother was weeping, so Sarah turned to her father – currently putting on a strong front she could see through in an instant.

“Dad, what did James choose for his second class?”

Her mother spent the next three days in the bedroom, weeping, refusing to eat.

Her father stayed at home, caring for his family, while hunters stopped by several times a day to update him on the search.

Sarah spent the first two days fuming at her brother for being so stupid and going and getting himself kidnapped.

Then she spent a morning worried sick about him, unable to stick up for himself, especially with how reckless he was with other people.

Then she spent an afternoon worried sick about her parents. Her mother had completely fallen apart and her father was barely keeping it together, even as he worked the fields.

On the fourth day, early in the morning, the silver-haired older man arrived at their house, standing ramrod straight at their doorstep.

Stephen gritted his teeth and frowned, then turned to Sarah.

“Sarah, go wait up in your room.”

She nodded solemnly. She heard her father come up the stairs, fetch her mother, and then they both went down again, the first time her mother had left the bedroom in all this time.

At lunchtime, her father came to get her.

“Sarah, I need to talk with your mother, alone. I need you to go out in the field and sow seeds this afternoon.”

“Okay.” Sarah replied. After a morning alone with her thoughts, doing nothing in her room, even the thought of working in the fields sounded more appealing.

At least, until she had started.

The bag of seed was heavy slung over her shoulder and across her chest. She had a hat but the sun beat down strongly; wasn’t it too hot for this early in spring? The ground was freshly tilled, due to her father’s efforts, but bending over and pushing the seeds into the ground and straightening up and stepping forward and doing that over and over and over and over got old fast.

Sarah knew she wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. James was the same way. Her other brothers had all taken to farming right away and could talk to their father about it at dinner even before they took their classes, while she and James had always rolled their eyes and tried to change the subject.

Thinking back on it, Sarah realized she’d had it easier at those dinnertime conversations. Her mother had always backed her up, mainly by pointing out that girls didn’t have to be farmers if they didn’t want, they could be homemakers like her mother, or bakers, or lots of options…

Her parents had tried to back James up, too, but their older brothers had always denigrated the idea, not to be mean, but they couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t like farming. Her father had never really had a good response for that. He didn’t get it either.

That’s not to say that James was a black sheep or anything. Everyone loved James.

They just didn’t understand him sometimes.

Sarah had been happy for him, that he had been able to become a Smith and get an apprenticeship right away. The smith in the village always seemed so unfriendly, she had been worried, but James had been able to get along with him just fine. But things had been so awkward after he chose his classes, and she had assumed it was because he hadn’t chosen Farmer…

Now she knew. She had never even imagined someone would choose two non-combat classes. She had always thought being able to fight was so cool, and she had loved watching her older brothers practice their classes even as their mother pouted that nobody understood how great being a Brawler was, to the point that Sarah could repeat her mother’s arguments verbatim.

Maybe Sarah didn’t understand James either. At least not as much as she thought she had.

Now he was gone.

When Paul had moved away to marry his wife from another village, Sarah had been inconsolable. It had felt like she was losing her brother forever and she didn’t understand why he couldn’t just bring his wife to this village.

But then a year later he had come back to visit with his wife and newborn daughter and the baby was so cute and his wife was so kind to her and seeing Paul again had been so great, she had even been able to smile as she waved goodbye and look forward to seeing him again the next time he visited.

Half a year after that, Sam did the same thing. He moved to another village to marry a girl there and take over her family’s farm, and he had promised over and over to come visit like Paul had, so Sarah had been able to wave goodbye to him too, even if she had cried in her bed that night.

Then two years after that, Brandon has also left, to marry a girl from the same village as Sam. In fact, their wives were cousins. That time, their whole family had gone to the wedding and Sarah had helped with the ceremony and it had been wonderful.

Tears fell to the soil beneath her as she realized she’d never gotten to wave goodbye to James.

And he might never come back.

She sniffed, resisting the urge to wipe her face with her dirt-covered hands.

She shook her head and forced herself to find some hope.

James had been a huge dummy by picking those classes, and both James and her dad had been even bigger dummies by not just letting their mom walk him to and from work.

It would have been better to get made fun of than kidnapped!

Sarah was twelve (and a half) (almost). In a little more than two years, she could choose her classes, too.

Obviously she would pick Brawler. As cool as her brothers were, she’d seen them spar with her mother and how easily her mother had taken them apart, even blindfolded.

And she’d seen her mother wipe out that entire squadron of knights in no time at all.

And she needed to be the best fighter.

The question was, what kind of second class would work best to rescue someone from kidnappers?

Sarah didn’t know. So she decided she’d figure that out later. Her first goal was going to be hard enough anyway:

Becoming stronger than her mother. The strongest person she knew.

She sure as heck wasn’t going to be a Farmer! This sucked!

And so Sarah decided that she was going to rescue her brother if nobody found him first.