To be a functioning member of a village, girls must be skilled in many things.

They had to cook and know the basics of keeping animals like chickens alive. They needed to know how to garden. They also had to learn how to spin their own thread and do threadwork, repairing their family’s clothes.

Most girls learned these skills from their mothers, but as Erika lost her mother in a bout of illness when she was four, she had to learn alongside her friend Tabitha. Of the two of them, Tabitha was by far the more talented one, picking everything up twice as fast and being more skilled too.

However, Erika didn’t mind because none of those skills could compare in importance to the skill she idolized most: woodworking. Her father was the resident woodworker of the village, responsible for making and repairing most of the tables and chairs.

As a child, Erika loved to sit in an unoccupied corner of her father’s workshop and watch her father work. Her father took big and cumbersome pieces of timber and created beautiful pieces of functioning art. She always thought it was a wonderful trade.

She didn’t know when it had started, but Erika knew that she wanted to become a woodworker, a creator, and ultimately inherit her father’s trade.

However, on the day after her first bleeding, her father no longer allowed her to enter the workshop.

“A girl cannot inherit a trade.”

Her father crushed her dreams without mercy.

“Why not?” she had asked.

“Look around the village and tell me, what woman do you see learning trades? It is not what a woman should do. From now on, focus on your duties as a girl.”

For the first time, Erika saw the invisible strings all around her, wrapping around everyone. Everyone moved according to those strings, unable to break free. Those strings were wrapped around her too.

The world came crashing down around her, but that realization wasn’t what caused it.

So quietly that Erika almost couldn’t hear, her father had sighed. “If only your brother had been the one to survive.”

 

Ever since that day, Erika and her father spoke less and less, drifting apart. She continued to learn the skills that girls had to learn, but she took up wood carving in an act of defiance, learning everything by herself.

Her father never remarried. Thus, Erika continued to act as the woman of the house, doing all the cooking, cleaning, gardening, sewing, and everything else required of her. It was suffocating.

Those strings controlled her every movement. Whenever she stepped out of line, the gazes of her father and the other people of the village would force her back onto her preordained path.

Her only escape was her hobby of carving, and the stories Tabitha’s mother sometimes told: stories about the beautiful princesses, gallant princes, and great adventures where the prince saved the princess from fire-breathing dragons, uncovering great riches, and living out a happy ending. Stories about travelers that lived up to impossibly tall tales. 

These fantasies escaped from the stories and weaved themselves into her mind as if they were real. The characters in the stories were so free, embarking on quests, doing whatever they wanted. They weren’t bound by anything, unlike her. They were limited only by her imagination. She envied them.

She created little puppets and put on little shows for Tabitha, much to her friend’s delight. But the puppet shows weren’t just for Tabitha. They were for herself too.

Sometimes, just a little, Erika dared to dream that she might one day be able to cast off the expectations of her father and the village and do what she wants to do. She dreamed that one day, she could pursue her own future the way she decides, even if it meant leaving and heading out into the treacherous wild beyond the fairy rings.

 

The days and years passed unnoticed. Things changed with time. 

Erika never forgot her dream of one day leaving the village. However, as she matured and took on more and more responsibilities, she forgot the original reason she wished to leave. All she knew was that she must leave and see the outside world.

Erika wasn’t the only person who changed either; the attitudes of people around her did as well. The older generation looked upon her with an appraising eye, but it was the boys’ whose attention became most apparent.

They offered to help her when she went to fetch water from the well.

They asked to take a walk with her in the quiet forest beyond the village boundaries.

They gave her gifts of flowers, food, and other little trinkets.

Some of the attention was easy to push away with excuses. Erika learned that she could refuse walks with something like “there are monsters beyond the village boundaries,” but gifts were harder to reject without offending. The only thing she could do was to try her best to repay them so that they owed each other nothing. But for some reason, their faces always lit up with joy.

Eventually, Erika just did her best to avoid them. It was difficult to avoid all of them, but she managed, and over time they learned that she wasn’t interested— all but one.

When Erika opened the door and saw Ian Antonas waiting for her at her doorsteps, she stiffened. He didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong as he waved at her. “Hey, Erika!”

Why is he here? I thought he stopped coming over.

Hiding her surprise, Erika forced on a smile. She greeted him back, careful not to act with the same familiarity he showed her. “Good morning, Ian. Didn’t I say that you don’t need to come visit me? Why did you start again…?”

“Oh, today is special.” Ian looked proud of himself. “You know that traveler that came here yesterday? She needed her horse’s shoes changed, so I’m getting my first real job today. My father said that I could invite a few people over to watch, and I thought of you first.”

Erika’s smile was getting a little cramped. “I—I see… You really don’t need to—”

Too excited to stop, Ian swept right on. “Do you want to come? It’ll make me really happy if you did!” His eyes gleamed as he tenderly picked up her right hand and covered it with his own.

Erika slowly drew her hands out of his grip, feeling the rough calluses rubbing against her skin, and shook her head. “Unfortunately, I told Ronja I’d help her with the inn in my spare time. It’s spring now, so travelers are finally moving again.” She tapped her chin. “Hopefully, they brought fairy rings. We need to expand the village boundaries.”

“Oh, is that so?” Ian muttered, shoulders sagging. He looked so disappointed that Erika’s heart softened. However, she really was busy. She should’ve known that Ian wasn’t going to give up so easily, though. “Then how about I treat you to breakfast instead? My job isn’t for a bit.”

“No, thank you,” she said, rejecting him. Although Ian was a nice boy, she didn’t like him in that way. “Ronja promised me all three meals today for helping, so I have that already covered. I’ll be heading off.”

“Wait, I’ll walk you there.”

“No, you really don’t have to….”

But Ian was as stubborn as a bull, and in the end, Erika gave up and just let him be.

They left her house and headed toward Ronja’s inn near the front of the village. Although it was called an inn, it was more of a communal mess hall where everyone bonded over meals. The only inn-like part of the building was some space on the second floor for the occasional traveler to stay in.

When Erika pushed open the doors, she stopped in surprise. Despite it being quite early, with the sun still hidden behind the trees in the forest, there was already someone sitting at a table— a tall woman wrapped in a cloak. There was a long, thin pipe resting in her hands.

Mustering her most professional smile, Erika curtseyed to the woman. “Good morning.”

The woman looked up at her voice, and Erika forgot to look away. The woman was beautiful, exactly like how Erika always imagined the princesses in stories to look. But rather than a princess, Erika’s instincts told her that the woman was more like a prince.

The woman had her long, wavy russet hair tied up in a simple ponytail. The sheen of the hair and how it almost glowed in the light told Erika that the woman took good care of herself. Her brown eyes had an intense gaze when she sized Erika up before moving on to Ian, like a predator staring at her prey.

Erika shivered and yanked her eyes away from the woman, afraid that if she kept staring, she’d be seen as rude. Ian seemed to have no such reservations, though, and she had to nudge him to get him to stop.

After a moment, the woman finished observing them and stood up, walking over to Ian. She was tall, even a bit taller than Ian. She held out her gloved hand with a faint smile.

“Good morning, boy. I believe we met yesterday, but we never really introduced ourselves. I’m Marian, a traveler.”

Ian grabbed and shook the woman’s hand. “Ian. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

As they introduced themselves, Erika noticed that his hand lingered for a tad longer than it should’ve after the handshake, only letting go after he finished talking. She sighed. This Ian… could not be saved.

Fortunately, the woman didn’t seem to mind. “Heard you’re replacing my horse’s shoes instead of your father, is that right?” she asked, settling back in her seat. “You passed a test, and it’s your first solo job.”

“Yes! I won’t disappoint you, ma’am.”

The woman picked up her pipe, although she didn’t put it into her mouth. “You’d better not.”

Her rather rude words left the atmosphere between them awkward. Erika peeked at her face to see if she was smiling or doing something to suggest a joke, but all she saw was a blank face. She stiffened when Marian suddenly met her eyes.

A red flush crept up her face at being caught in the act, and she fled toward the back of the inn. The door slammed shut behind her, and Erika took a deep breath to calm herself down.

That woman’s eyes— for an instant, they became really sharp and scary, but only for a moment. She couldn’t even be sure if she had imagined it or if she was just jumping at shadows and scaring herself.

As she stood there catching her breath, the master of the inn, Ronja, was beside her in an instant. She shoved a tray with soup, bread, and a small slab of venison covered in juices into her hands.

“Erika! So glad you’re here! Right on time too. Quick, take this out. That traveler has been waiting for a while,” Ronja said, speaking as rapidly as ever. “Be careful; it’s hot; don’t spill it!”

Erika blinked at the order, taking a moment to catch up with Ronja’s pace. “Okay.”

With careful movements, she took the tray to the swinging doors and pushed through sideways. Completing the final stretch of her journey in a few more steps, she set the tray of food down in front of the traveler.

The traveler nodded at her. “Thank you, girl,” Marian said.

Erika offered a small smile back and went back inside. A moment later, she pushed the doors again with her own breakfast. When she sat down at the nearest empty table, Ian sat down across from her. As she ate, she felt Ian looking at her with a blissful expression on his face, but the food seemed to taste more dull than usual.

Erika tried to not look back at him.

However, the only other exciting thing in the room was the traveler, but staring at a stranger was rude. Besides, Marian was scary, and she might get glared at again if Marian caught her looking.

As her gaze wandered around the room, however, it somehow focused back on Marian. Finally, Erika gave up and looked without hiding what she was doing.

Not only did Marian take good care of her hair, but she was also well dressed. From where Erika sat, she could see what Marian wore under her cloak. Unlike the mixed and matched clothing of the villagers and several other travelers that passed through, Marian’s clothes were in complementary shades of brown and of the same material. Erika couldn’t quite put the feeling into words, but it had a strange neatness and uniformness to it. Marian seemed to exude discipline.

Whatever Marian claimed she was, she wasn’t just an ordinary traveler. If Erika had to make a completely uneducated guess, she was probably a soldier going home from a faraway battlefield… as if.

Having satisfied her curiosity and filled her head once more with wild fantasies, Erika drained the rest of her vegetable soup. When she lowered her bowl, she felt Ian’s gaze again. He was staring at her with a gaze that seemed to burn through her. She looked away, ignoring the brief hurt look that flashed across Ian’s face.

Ian wasn’t for her. She didn’t want to be stuck here for the rest of her life, married to a blacksmith, even if it meant her future would be stable. She didn’t want the stability that came with strings attached. She wanted to control her own future.

With just a nod toward him, Erika picked up her tray and headed back to the kitchen. She put the plates into a tub of water, soaped them, then rinsed it off. The plates went on a rack while the trays were put back into their cabinets.

By the time Erika finished, the sun was already high enough to be seen over the trees, and even the late-risers were awake. The men from the village began to crowd into the mess hall, clamoring for food with hungry chicks, running her ragged between serving drinks and meals.

She even had to deal with harassment when groups of boys dared each other to grope her, though they quickly stopped when she slammed their trays down in front of them with a glare and spilled some of their soup.

The traveler, Marian, was nowhere to be seen. She had left when the inn first started filling up.

It was a full hour before the mess hall finally emptied, and everyone got back to their day. Utterly exhausted, Erika collapsed in a chair and closed her eyes. As she did, she saw a face— that traveler’s. She couldn’t forget the feeling she got from the traveler.

Those sharp eyes. That aura of discipline. The way she dressed. Marian was slightly different from every other traveler that Erika had ever seen pass by her tiny village. If there was anyone that could help her break free from the village, Marian was it.

“Ronja, I’m going out! I’ll be back to help by lunch!” she called into the kitchen.

“Okay!” Ronja hollered back. “Hurry!”

Without answering, Erika ran out of the inn. Her goal was to find out more about Marian and eventually get to know her, so naturally, Erika had to find the traveler first. She looked for Marian everywhere, such as the hack alchemist, the butcher, her father’s place, and many other locations, but she didn’t find any traces of the elusive traveler— everywhere but one place.

That left only two options left: either Marian returned to the inn after Erika left, or she was at the smithy that was run by Ian’s father. She still remembered that Ian was supposed to be making new horseshoes for Marian. Around now just happened to be when Ian was supposed to work.

Elise hesitated. There had been a reason she checked everywhere except the smithy, but in the end, her interest in Marian won out. She soon arrived at the smithy, circling around to the back of the house where the forge was.

There, hammering away at something on an anvil, was Ian. She wasn’t here for him, though, and she continued to look around.

Sure enough, she found Marian leaning against a wall with her arms crossed, still holding her pipe. For some reason, Elise’s breath caught in her throat when she saw her. A prince…

The flames of the forge danced on both Ian and Marian’s faces, reflecting off the beads of sweat from the heat.

Somehow sensing her arrival, Ian looked up, but he only spared a second before quickly looking back down to focus on his work. According to his own words, a horseshoe was easy to make. Still, since this was Ian’s first time forging something for an outsider, it was natural for him to be nervous.

Ian was much easier to deal with when he was concentrating like that. Erika cheered him silently.

It didn’t take long for Ian to finish. On his way to Marian’s pitch black horse, however, he stumbled over a stray piece of iron on the ground. He went sprawling, and the horseshoes in his hands went flying, clattering on the sandy floor.

“Hell!” Ian cursed, scrabbling after them. Luckily, the metal wasn’t dented, and no other issue arose. The process went so smoothly that before Erika could have a chance to talk to her, Marian was gone. Part of the reason was that she was too shy to call out to the traveler, and she could only watch as Marian rounded a corner and went out of sight.

She couldn’t even go after her because Ian ran up to her and grabbed her hand in excitement. “Hey Erika, how’d I do?” He puffed up his chest. “Perfect, right? It’s just a few horseshoes!”

“I don’t know much about horses or smithing, but the customer looked satisfied, so it’s probably fine,” Erika replied. “Also, you dropped the shoes….”

Ian’s smile twitched, but he maintained it. “Don’t worry about such minor details since it turned out fine in the end! To celebrate, let’s have a drink! My father keeps some nice stuff here.”

Erika furrowed her brows. “I don’t drink,” she protested. “Besides, it’s in the middle of the day, and I have more work to do later.”

“Come on, one drink won’t do anything,” Ian pressed. “Although I know what you’re worried about. You’re a girl, after all. But I’ll protect you.” He patted his chest, showing off his strength.

Protect… Erika didn’t need protection. Especially not from Ian.

“I’ll pass on the drink. I promised Ronja that I’d be back before it’s lunchtime to help.” She tried to leave but barely made it a step before a vice clamped around her wrist. She felt like she had just pulled on a wall of iron, and she stumbled, falling back into Ian’s arms.

“Wait, we still have some time left before it’s time for lunch. Since you’re already here, why don’t I show you some practice pieces I made? I begged my father to let me keep them, at least until we need the metal again.”

Wordlessly, Erika pushed off him.

Feeling her try to snatch her hand away, Ian tried again to make her stay, a hint of desperation in his voice. “They’re my first works. You can see how much I improved! It really won’t take long!”

He began to pull her toward the dark smithery. The forge fire had burned out.

Erika was a girl. The most arduous labor she did was carry buckets of water from the well to the house a few times a week. Ian was the son of a blacksmith. She didn’t stand a chance.

Pain shot up her arm.

“Let me go,” Erika growled through gritted teeth, digging her feet into the sandy ground.

“It’s just for a while, I...” Ian insisted, but when he looked back at her, his words died in his mouth. Slowly, his grip loosened until Erika could pry her arm out of her grip. “I’m… so… sorry….”

She looked at the finger marks on her wrist, then back at Ian. Anger suddenly surged into her head, and she shoved Ian. When he stumbled and didn’t fall, it drove her vision completely red. Quickly, she took a deep breath to calm herself, and that red blur in her eyes receded somewhat.

Giving Ian one more glare, which was all she could do, Erika stormed off. Behind her, she could hear a crash, metal against metal.

She did not look back.