There weren’t many hands in the groves before the sun had climbed up the walls of Paheri Nok, the treasured apples let to rest around the morning dew. It would take the Chief Gardener an hour to rouse the sleepy young to get to work after the official day was allowed to begin.
This wasn’t just another day though, and there were quiet chuckles filtering from underneath the slumbering trees already. Birthdays were special at the Chief’s home and there would be freshly made sweets, stuffed and mixed with the fruits being gathered right now.
“My heel hurts already, this dastardly cold,” one grunted as she plucked with a frown, the basket laid by her feet, “I hear that the Aga Angara* is as wealthy as the weed of the forest, can’t he afford fruit from anywhere with one throw of a coin-bag? I feel the night still creeping its chill into my bones!”
“Keep grumbling if you wish to find another hire,” an older man, her senior in the gardens, peered at the basket on the ground before resuming his work without pausing, “He isn’t cruel but Paher Mahir isn’t one to tolerate tongues that wag more than work. Besides, the special feast is always made from the produce here. It has been a tradition since the naming of the young master.”
“Isn’t it because of -,” his son piped up but bit his tongue when the father shot him a pointed glare. He was young, younger than those who had been witness to the story he had only heard during bedtime. Nobody knew if it was told as a cautionary tale or a regretful memory but there were few homes in Agapura, let alone the Mavat hills, that did not know of the misfortune.
The young lady with an aching heel had moved to the land quite recently and she shifted her eyes between the others, a distraction blooming in her mind.
“Because of what, Dada?” she had a curious mind and there was always room for gossip, especially when it made the work bearable. The Paher clan was a generous employer and a glittering wall of pristine pride, which always sought a beauty mark in terms of salacious pasts. She saw the hesitance on her senior’s face and wracked her mind for any possible hint she might have heard already.
There was one, though –
“Is it because of his sister?” she could remember the mention of the two, the pair to the dutiful son, a young mistress who had been swept like ash under the rug of the land’s talks.
“What sister?” the son scoffed, looking away from his father purposely as he hefted his smaller basket into the giant pile, “She was as different from the family as night from day. It took the poor Queen so long to find sanity again after what she did to them. Five hundred leaders, all noble and virtuous guests of the clan, burnt to the ground in one night.”
“I heard that she was influenced by that nomad scholar? Aira- Aiva –”
“Ailaran,” the young boy piped up and his father threw a fallen branch at his head, hushing his tone.
“If you want to die, do it once you have earned me back your childhood expenses,” the old man hissed, looking over his shoulder at the inquiring young woman with a harried frown, “Yes, it is because of her, this was the garden she began with the young master. Now, one more nosy bit from you and I’ll make you work at this hour for the entire week, mind you!”
“Uff, it’s not like I’m practicing Sanchay in the yard,” the woman grumbled under her breath but went back to work nevertheless. There was no more mention of the feared princess who had once planted the trees that they plucked fruit from now. The people inside the sun-bathed walls of Paheri Nok didn’t want to know where she was, and only hoped that neither she nor her crazed ideas would affect them again.
Paher Minar was nothing more than a runaway murderer and the land was better with her gone.
Aga Angar - Title of the Chief. Literal meaning Ember of Aga
Sanchay - Moonshadow tricks
