What Happens After One Breaks Free
/I had just turned sixteen the first time I met a Pan.
I was also a virgin at the start of that adventure, and I wasn’t by its end.
But things didn’t go as they usually did, maybe because the Pan was in the middle of the F*ck when I came across him.
I saw him in the deepest parts of the forest. Of course, that’s where I found him.
Most of the stories about Pans took place in the natural wild – in the woods, near rocks and cliffs, beside rivers and creeks, and even under waterfalls.
Where else could Pans feel most comfortable shedding their human forms, to don their animal selves, and let the horny half goat live, breathe, and f*ck?
Autumn was at its peak. Not just the trees, but the foliage exploded with the madness vivid color, so vivid that our home was famous for it.
Tourists from all over the world crowded the more famous forests, leaving the more secretive and private woods known only to the locals.
I was in one of these havens, hiking with the girl I considered my best friend at the time.
Adele was a pretty girl, who I both loved and hated in equal measure. I always yearned for more of her, more of her time, more of her attention than she was willing to give.
My treacherous best friend liked the shape of triangles, especially of the human variety. I rarely had the pleasure of enjoying Adele to myself. There was always another best friend or her boyfriend joining us.
On this particular day, we had gotten an early start to go hiking.
Her new best friend of the moment – and my least favorite – was with us.
Adele insisted Lise was necessary, for although we were all sixteen, Lise was the one who had both a license and a car.
She could take us to the oldest parts of the secret woods, far from the tramp and stomp of oblivious tourists who made our larger forests rather unpleasant this time of year.
Reluctantly, I agreed.
I found her personality close to unbearable, and I didn’t understand what Adele saw in Lise, with her simpering smirks, and a grating voice with an insipid tone that worked on my last nerve.
But like most people, Adele had a case of hidden ugly-nasty, which expressed itself through malice. Girls like Lise were made for that kind of poisonous indulgence.
Since triangles are always two sides against one, it was hardly surprising I was on the outs that morning.
Adele and Lise walked arm in arm, either in front of me or behind me, whispering secrets in each other’s ears, and giggling.
I fumed, which is exactly what they wanted. I even realized that at the time, which made my impotent wrath even more palpable.
The forest saved me that day.
To keep from losing my temper and my dignity, I forced my attention on the beauty around me.
The woods were particularly exquisite.
There had been a recent rain. Leaves, a myriad of golden passion and exploding fire, covered the trees; the ground was resplendent and heavy with ample moisture, along with the warmth of changing color as well.
The powerful softness of morning light highlighted the forest canopy, and the colors were most vivid right after the rains.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply through my nostrils. The smoky aroma of autumn permeated the air along with a hint of spice.
I also heard the creek running in the distance. The sound of riotous peace of a waterbed streaming fat with fresh, luscious water brought me back to myself.
As the great-great-granddaughter of a water nymph, this was my favorite element. Water was my savior that gave me strength and power during times of stress.
I opened my eyes again.
I could finally notice the flurry of squirrels, the wing-flap and songs of the birds.
Everything pulsed with life, in this season right before the death of winter.
My heart beat strong inside my breast.
I turned around and faced the not-so-hidden ugly-nasty of Adele and Lise, sniggering at my expense.
The malice gleaming from their eyes was undeniable.
Suddenly, I knew I had been played for a fool to accept the role they gave me.
It was incredible how quickly love-hate dissolved in an instant.
Adele caught on to my indifference immediately. The vicious glee in her face disappeared and her brow furrowed.
If I had possessed less inborn composure, I probably would have laughed out loud. Adele and Lise seemed so dull and ordinary in that moment.
Really, what was I doing with these silly girls? I was borne from magic. I was a descendant of a nymph.
“I’m done,” I said.
“What are you talking about, Dusky?”
“I don’t want to hike with you and Lise anymore. I’m going my own way.”
“Are you nuts?” protested Lise. “We’re more than an hour’s drive from town.”
“Then I’ll be home by nightfall.”
I took off at a violent run.
I became giddy with each stride that took me away from them.
The delirious freedom borne from liberating myself from invisible shackles that rendered me powerless only because I had allowed it to be so.
Adele and Lise didn’t bother chasing after me, because what was the point of futility?
My father was tall and lean, with far more physical power in his physique than his appearance implied. I took after my father in that way.
I was several inches taller than Adele, with longer, stronger limbs. There was no way either she or Lise could keep up, much less catch me.
They shrieked after my departing back.
I didn’t hear all of what Adele said, something innocuous like calling her when I got home.
The euphoria of freedom kept me running hard for nearly twenty minutes.
The forest was a blur of green, while leaping over rocks, cracking twigs, and the earthy spice in the air.
Then I hurled through the trees to the creek bed where I intruded on the Pan in the F*ck.
The Sons of Pan and the Daughters of Nymph
/Pans were the sons of the God Pan, His Profane Holiness of the F*ck.
So long as Pan followed the rules of the gods, and kept his c*ck for the c*nt of nymphs, balance was maintained. Those demigoddesses had enough magic to copulate endlessly without Pan’s seed fattening their bellies with child.
Most nymphs chose eternal maidenhood, savoring the delicious pleasure found in their lithe, nubile forms and the nectar of their sweet juices.
Every once in a while, there would be an exception.
A nymph would grow bored of the endless revelry of giggles and romps. Then they allowed Pan’s seed to plant as they willingly passed into the phase of the Mother and brought to life more gods into the heavens.
Or so it went most of the time.
Every so often, things happened a little differently.
According to my grandmother, her grandmother - my great-great-grandmother Nonny - had been a water nymph until the day she met a hunter, and unexpectedly and inextricably fell in love with him.
Nonny was even more deviant than the other nymphs.
Instead of the God Pan, she chose a mortal man to wife her down and begat upon her womb the mortal children of humanity. With her husband, Nonny birthed many babies. My grandmother’s father was the tenth of Nonny’s eleven children.
I have memories of her.
Nonny was the one who gave me my name.
I was born in that evening hour after the sun drops below the horizon, when the fire of evening sky gives way to the deep lavender of twilight before night falls and darkness rises.
“Dusky,” Nonny declared, as soon as she saw me. “No other name will do.”
My mother had wanted to name me Rose.
But she didn’t dare argue with her great-grandmother. Nonny was a true matriarch, and her word was law.
Even though Nonny gave up immortality, she had enough left that she long outlived her husband. I never knew my great-great grandfather. Nobody ever knew Nonny’s true age, but she didn’t leave this world until she was well past a century.
She joyfully embodied the phase of the Crone. Her face wrinkled and wizened from decades of joy and suffering, triumphs and defeats, births and deaths.
Until the day she died, her faded eyes gleamed with mischief as if Nonny had enjoyed the grandest joke on us all.
Perhaps she had.
There was not a vestige left of the maiden nymph she had once been; yet there was not a sliver of regret in her.
But to get back to Pan and his nymphs. Even the most lascivious nymph needed a rest from time to time.
And that left enough empty spaces for Pan and his voracious lust to break the rules of the gods, and seduce mere mortal women like me.
Well, not exactly like me. But I’ll get to that soon enough.
As His Profane Holiness of the F*ck, how could he not break the rules, not want to spread his seed in many kinds of soil?
And human women, we’ve always been so easily caught off guard and so limited in our options to protect our wombs from inconvenient progeny.
So His Profane Holiness of the F*ck spread his seed far and wide, and thus, the mortal Pans were born.
They took after their father, lotharios of the f*ck and duck.
Although mostly human, the mortal Pans could still shapeshift to horny half goats with furry haunches, hooved feet, hirsute faces, and horns protruding from their skulls.
Their transformation was happenstance, however. Sometimes their forms shifted before the F*ck or during the F*ck, but never after.
I had heard stories about them all my life. My grandmother, Mamie, was obsessed with the Pans, and collected tales of their intrigues and seductions.
She had quite the collection too.
Mamie swears she gave her maidenhead to a Pan.
Mamie was never one to take unnecessary risks if the lost gamble would cost too much. She took pennyroyal to prevent pregnancy from the virile seed planted in her. In case the pennyroyal didn’t work, Mamie married my grandfather.
It was absurdly easy for Mamie to find a husband. As the descendants of a water nymph, the women in my family are very alluring, and thus have no trouble attracting suitors and ardent devotion.
I spent a lot of time with Mamie when I grew up, to the point that I pretty much lived with her. I felt more at ease with her than with my parents.
My parents had an easy-going, mild-mannered style of love that I would later come to realize was extremely rare. They allowed me to stay where I wished without a fuss. I appreciated that about them. In the long run, they made my life so much easier.
Mamie lived with her older sister, my Great-Aunt Dottie. For some mysterious reason that was never explained, Great-Aunt Dottie never married, and Mamie moved in with her after my grandfather died.
Mamie told me the story of her seduction many times as I grew up. The older I became, the more explicit her descriptions. By the time I was fourteen, I knew every detail of how she had been seduced.
Many people thought that somewhat odd and quite perverse, but we’ve always been very open about the F*ck in my family.
Great-Aunt Dottie always shook her head and rolled her eyes whenever she overheard Mamie’s stories about her night with the Pan.
“He wasn’t a Pan,” she drawled. “You didn’t get pregnant.”
“I took pennyroyal!” Mamie protested. “Pans can’t resist women descended from nymphs, you know that!”
“Pans can’t resist women, period. He was too slick and good-looking to be a Pan. He was just a rogue.”
This was a long-standing argument between them. Good natured bickering like this often occurred in our family. But there was never any judgment. We embraced the Power of the F*ck.
The Beginning of a Long Walk Home
/For years, I have heard Ella Bandita described as the ugly seductress no man could resist.
I always thought that strange, and not simply because she had always been so lovely to me. Beyond the beauty held in my eyes, the vagabond seductress never had to be beautiful and her savage features made her a legend.
Woman was the most fascinating creature I had ever known. She was also the most dangerous, even in that time I knew her before she became the Thief of Hearts.
So to reduce her to a lack of prettiness always seemed to me the pettiness of an empty mind.
And then there is Adrianna.
Adrianna the Beautiful, the most legendary Courtesan of the Capital City, and they say she grows more beautiful with time.
Thank you for understanding and for your grace, Wanderer.
The time has long passed that I should tell you the story of my Woman who would become your Ella Bandita. But I can no longer do that without sharing the extraordinary stories of the Courtesan who wanted to destroy her.
So much has happened since we parted that this tale will take many days and nights to unfold.
I must start from the beginning, in which you played a crucial role.
I hope you forgive me if I talk about your part in this as if you hadn’t been there. I know it’s irritating, but I need that kind of distance to make sense of the stories I lived through and the stories I heard during these past few months.
So…Wanderer, may I walk with you on your long journey home?
****
The Courtesan’s beauty was staggering.
I had never seen so much flesh in my life as I did in the massive portraits on these walls.
Standing, reclining, full front on, in profile, her back to the artist, the Courtesan was naked in every pose, her silhouette that of an hourglass.
Her full breasts stood high on her chest, her torso curved to a slender waist above rounded hips, her legs were long and tapered. Her skin was creamy and luminous; and black hair cascaded to her waist. Her features were noble; hers was the classical beauty of the highborn class.
But her eyes made her unforgettable.
Beneath arched brows, her large eyes angled on a tilt and mingled the hues of gold and amber. Her steady gaze held the controlled ferocity of a wildcat.
Such fierce scrutiny replicated in portrait after portrait overpowered my senses for a moment.
I turned my back to gather my bearings, only to come back to the incessant pink of the foyer.
How in the devil did I come here?
That’s what I wondered as I encountered again the cavernous entry into the home of Adrianna the Beautiful.
The atrium had soaring ceilings with pale pink satin lining the walls, while mottled pink marble stretched along the floor and up the steps of the sweeping staircase in the middle.
Maybe even the ceiling was pink.
It was impossible to tell because the massive chandelier hanging in the space between the ceiling and the floor reflected pink everywhere.
Hundreds of candles and thousands of crystal droplets married fire and ice when the tiny flames coupled with the glimmering teardrops, then flickered along the marble floor, the stairs, and the walls.
Such a pairing had cast rosy radiance throughout the foyer to render everybody inside timeless and ageless.
Instead of gaining my balance, the glowing majesty of the entryway stirred the memory from that afternoon, which made me light-headed.
I turned back to the paintings.
This time, I found it easier to focus on the portraits lined along the wall north of the wide elegant staircase that cut a dramatic swathe in the center of the foyer.
The woman peered intently at the artist who had painted her.
The loving attention to detail made me wonder if the artist had caressed his lover with each stroke of the brush. Carnality and lawlessness emanated from the Courtesan’s portraits. I could easily imagine a handsome, tormented soul painting with fevered intensity, a creator hopelessly in love with his libertine muse who would only cherish him in the moment.
Perhaps they had made love in between sittings?
Before me were nine paintings displaying the glory of a legendary Courtesan in all the phases of her life.
About five years must have passed in between each portrait.
Her features matured and grew more defined with each painting, as she left the plump bloom of youth behind. Her body ripened to her prime, then past it; silver streaked her glossy black hair more and more in each portrait.
Yet in all the paintings, her expression was much the same.
Those golden eyes sparkled with defiance and unrepentant joy.
Her generous mouth curved in a knowing smirk.
Had she anticipated her future audience when she posed for her portraits? Did she see past the artist, looking to those who would later gaze upon her?
Her stare was relentless.
She dared me to judge her, the scarlet woman who should have been an outcast.
A Clever Piece of Blackmail
/“If you speak a word about tonight,” the Patron’s Daughter hissed, “I will destroy you!”
“If I talk, your ruin will come before you could get at me. There’s sure to be some deep and dark bruises on your bottom. That’ll prove the truth I’d be telling.”
I couldn’t resist mocking her a little.
“You filthy little grubber! I hate you!”
Underneath her viciousness, I heard the tremor of fear in the Patron’s Daughter voice. She would never be able to bring me to shame or rage again.
That was when I understood how much power I now had over the nemesis who had cast my life in shadow.
That moment has always been the most exquisite intoxication I would ever know. I’ve enjoyed much power since that night. But nothing has compared to how I felt in that moment because it was my first taste of power.
“Likewise.”
With one word I was free from the bondage of hypocrisy, and the relief sent another luscious shiver through me.
“Don’t you dare tell anybody about tonight!”
“What are you going to do to shut me up?”
“What!”
“Don’t play dumb. How many times has your father paid for silence? If you want mine, you also have to pay.”
She stared at me, her mouth agape.
Honestly, I was as shocked as she was because those words were out before I knew what I was saying. Fortunately for me, years of stoicism enduring brutality and overwork made it easy for me to hide my feelings.
“What did you bring for the Brute?”
Her eyes widened as understanding set in.
“You set me up!”
“There was no way I could have set that up,” I retorted. “If I had known you had a yummy for taking a beating, I would have taken it upon myself long ago.”
“You ugly, repugnant, little tripe!”
“If you think I’m ugly, do you see the Brute as handsome? You sure cleaved your pin pretty good rutting up against him.”
She slapped me hard across my face.
It was everything I could do to not slap her in return. If I had, I would have left my mark on her for certain.
Instead, I pushed her down hard.
“Either give me what you meant to give the Brute, or there will be lots of exciting conversation to be had after morning worship.”
She practically snarled at me.
“No! You rot with the devil!”
“I think you’re likely to meet him before I do,” I said, and turned my back. “It’s your ruin.”
I took five steps before she relented.
“Wait!”
I stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“I brought three gold coins and two jeweled rings I never wear.”
I came back and held out my hand.
“I am not giving you all that!” she protested. “That’s what I brought to marry the Noble Son! What you saw is not worth that much.”
“The gold coins will keep me quiet. On my honor.”
“You have no honor, you greedy little snipe.”
“Takes one to know one,” I repeated the Brute’s retort.
I had no choice but to admit she was right.
My connection with her was dishonorable from the very beginning.
But I didn’t care.
As soon as the cold gold touched my palm, a shiver went down my spine. In my hand was more money than my family had ever possessed in our miserable lives.
I almost fainted from the thrill of it. The sacrifice of integrity was worth it.
“Next week, I suggest you be fully prepared to guarantee my silence.”
“I won’t be coming next week.”
“If you insist,” I replied. “You know where to find me when you change your mind.”
Her response to my audacity was spit to the face when we came out of the woods.
But I knew the Brute was right.
I also knew the Patron’s Daughter would never be able to strip me of my dignity again.
At last, I looked into my palm.
The coins were larger than I expected and I had no idea what they were worth.
I was buoyant, skipping through the woods to go back to the cabin as the Sorcerer and I had previously agreed upon.
I expected the Brute to be there when I walked inside. Instead, the Sorcerer waited.
His ancient face looked almost pleasant when he saw me.
“That was a clever piece of blackmail,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
“You practically handed it to me. Thank you, by the way.”
“Perhaps I made it easy, but you were intelligent enough to take advantage of the opportunity. Most people don’t. You have a sharp instinct.”
He peered into my palm and whistled.
“I think you will do supremely well in the next phase of your life, Addie.”
“I don’t even know what these are worth,” I admitted.
“With the money you have in your hand right now, you could live in very elegant apartments with a servant or two in the Capital City for three months.”
The Perfect Moment of Weakness
/Ironically, the perfect moment came from my suppressed irritation.
I was already in a dreadful mood when I met up with the Patron’s Daughter.
It was the peak of harvest season and that day had been viciously hot.
Working the fields had been pure misery. Even the most stoic of workers cursed as we pulled vegetables from the ground, drenching the earth with our sweat.
I almost passed out, and several others did.
So there was no holding my tongue when I met with the Patron’s Daughter, who was especially petulant that day.
“Aren’t you getting bored with this?” I declared. “Do you ever think about what you want, or do you simply like to complain?”
I can still remember the pitch of irritation in my voice.
I was both aghast and exhilarated by what I said.
I have no idea where those words came from, but what I said was perfect. I knew from her first reaction.
Her blue eyes grew wide for a moment. Then she glared at me.
It was clear I had offended her. Yet what she didn’t do was storm off in indignation.
“How dare you!”
“If you want to marry the Noble Son that much, I know somebody who might be able to help you.”
“That is absurd. How could you, Addie, possibly know anybody who could help me marry the Noble Son?”
The Patron’s Daughter had recovered enough to regain hauteur. She puffed herself up and looked down on me.
“The same way I came to know you and all your secret sorrows.”
What I said next made me writhe with self-loathing for days, but it sealed my change in destiny.
“People confide in me because I don’t matter. Just like you do.”
The ruthless honest stopped the Patron’s Daughter in her tracks. Her expression could best be described as frozen.
“Everybody needs to confess,” I continued before she could recover. “And I’m no danger to anybody. So I know things and I know people.”
“All right,” the Patron’s Daughter said hesitantly. “Tell me more.”
I had her.
This was her moment of weakness that I had been waiting for.
This moment was also the first time I felt the delicious thrill of power.
It made me giddy for days.
“There’s a cabin deeper in the woods-”
“Nobody goes into the Ancient Grove,” she interrupted. “Everybody knows that.”
“We’re in the Ancient Grove right now.”
“We’re at the edge. That’s not the same thing.”
“We’re deep enough that nobody can see us here,” I countered. “So what difference does it make if we go a little further in?”
The Patron’s Daughter paused. Before she could argue further, I pressed my point.
“As I said, there’s a cabin in the woods and the man who lives there swears he can see inside a person’s soul and know their true desires.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, but he swears he can bring people what they truly desire.”
She frowned.
“That is ridiculous!”
I swore inwardly.
I had known the Sorcerer’s bait was weak when he told me what to say. I protested that it wouldn’t work.
But the Sorcerer had insisted that’s what I would tell her.
The Patron’s Daughter was stupid, but even she wasn’t so easily fooled.
Yet the Sorcerer had insisted on a certain script and that I follow it word for word, even in the face of her resistance.
So I did.
I shrugged as the Sorcerer told me to, and kept my tone light and casual.
“Well, that’s what I heard. I also heard he only takes visitors on the eve before the holy day of rest.”
“And what does he want in exchange?”
“I don’t know.”
The Patron’s Daughter shook her head, and gave a rather unladylike snort.
“I’m only trying to help. I know where the cabin is. I can take you there in a few days if you want.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Suit yourself,” I said and shrugged again. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
I cursed the Sorcerer and his paltry script when the Patron’s Daughter flipped her long raven hair and walked off.
The savory taste of invincibility and power disappeared, leaving bitterness in my mouth and my being filled with despair.
I had actually had the Patron’s Daughter where I had wanted her. Yet because of the Sorcerer, I had blown it.
I still went to the cabin as I was supposed to.
When I walked in, it struck me how barren this cabin was, only one room with meager furnishings. Perhaps a monk might have been comfortable there, but it was incredible the Sorcerer believed this could be the setting for the seduction and downfall of the Patron’s Daughter.
To my surprise, the Sorcerer was almost beaming when I walked in.
“Excellent work!” he said. “Addie, that could not have gone any better!”
“Are you mad? She said no.”
“Of course, she said no today. Everybody resists at first. She’ll say yes, probably by the end of the week.”
“I really doubt that.”
“You underestimate yourself. How many times have I been right when you’ve disagreed with me?”
I said nothing.
“Trust me,” the Sorcerer cajoled, his tone almost soothing. “You hooked her. She won’t stop thinking about what you said. She’ll even start obsessing about it. Chances are she’ll look exhausted by the time she comes to you. Keep up your melancholy walks in the woods.”
Desperate For a Way Out
/My initial resistance must have caught him off guard.
To convince me to sacrifice my heart, the Sorcerer promised to cast a spell that would endure the test of time. I would grow more beautiful as the years passed.
At the time, I thought that a frivolous temptation. Youth never considers the brutal reality of old age, and vanity is not an indulgence available to the ugly.
I only gave in because the Sorcerer wouldn’t.
Now, I am grateful and relieved I took all he offered.
The winter, and sometimes the autumn, of life has often been described a woman’s hell.
That is usually the outcome for the women of my sisterhood, especially those who don’t leave the life to marry well.
Perhaps that humiliation may be mine when I am close to death, but thankfully, I have not suffered any loss of status or income, even though I am in my sixtieth year.
Again, I get ahead of myself.
To go back to that moment when I was offered the chance to change the dreariness of my fate, it may surprise you to know, my dear Shepherd, that I took a few days to think about it. To be made over into the image of beauty and grace was a dream I never had the audacity to imagine for myself.
Yet I couldn’t fathom how this could actually come to be.
First, how could I possibly lure the Patron’s Daughter to the Sorcerer of the Caverns? We absolutely loathed each other.
Second, how could the odious Sorcerer possibly seduce such a vain and arrogant creature as the Patron’s Daughter, given how ugly and ancient that he was?
“You need not concern yourself with that,” the Sorcerer actually laughed when I asked him. “I, too, have my methods of transformation.”
Since we are here now, we both know I accepted.
Really, how could I simply resist the reward?
I would never be ugly again.
I need not have worried about finding the possibility to influence her.
I started running into the Patron’s Daughter on my solitary walks through the Ancient Grove not long after meeting the Sorcerer.
The first time I ran into her, she was in tears.
She glared at me, of course.
But I was too stunned by the spectacle of her showing any sign of pain to take offense.
Apparently, the rejection of the Noble Son made her had gotten to her, and that made her vulnerable. That had never happened to her.
At first, I wondered if she now understood how her suitors felt in how she treated them.
But I would later find out that she didn’t give that any thought.
The abandonment left her dejected, but it also made her petulant.
Again, I get ahead of myself.
After that first unpleasant meeting, I ignored her and kept going on my way.
The next day, the Patron’s Daughter rode past us working in the fields, her demeanor as haughty as ever. But on this afternoon, she looked me in the eye and gave a slight nod as she passed.
That she had never done before.
The forbidden Ancient Grove must have been a favorite place for tearful girls suffering romantic disappointment.
Every time I went for a walk amongst the massive trees, the Patron’s Daughter was also there.
I wondered if the Sorcerer cast some kind of spell to make these frequent meetings happen.
It hardly mattered if he did.
After a couple of weeks of running into each other every time I went for my evening walk, the Patron’s Daughter finally spoke to me.
It was the first time I had ever heard her sound somewhere near pleasant.
“Do you come here every day?” she asked. “I imagine you would be too exhausted.”
“I do and I am exhausted,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
To my surprise, she almost apologized.
“I beg your pardon. I did not mean any offense.”
I accepted her self-correction with a nod and a thank you.
After that, we started to chat lightly whenever we ran into each other.
That was rather awful for me.
From what I’ve already told you about my former life as Addie, darling Shepherd, would it surprise you to know I was not particularly liked?
Anger, resentment, and envy were the strongest traits of my personality.
Who loves the bitter?
I was consumed with bitterness long before I turned eighteen.
Looking back, I don’t like who I was at that time.
Now, it shames me to admit I was every bit as petulant as the Patron’s Daughter, and that was without being spoiled. I thought myself above my company, the other peasants who worked as hard as I did under miserable conditions.
Yet I was the one who complained incessantly.
It was impossible to be held in esteem or respect with such a ridiculous attitude. Even my parents thought me a fool. For an indentured peasant born to a life of servitude to want more than I could ever have, instead of making do with the life that was offered me, seemed to everybody a state of lunacy.
And looking back, they were right. It really was.
But one thing I had never been was a hypocrite.
The reason the people around me knew of my envy, bitterness, and angry desire for more was because I let it show.
So to act in such a way to encourage the trust of the one girl I had hated and envied my entire life to get what I wanted made me feel vile.
To make my point, the only baths I knew during those years were the ones I could muster at the edge of the river, scrubbing myself with the scraps of meager soap that were left after doing the wash.
Most of the time, my personal stench made me nauseous.
Yet my pretense of friendship with a girl I couldn’t stand made me feel so much dirtier in a way that a lifelong deprivation of baths never could.
But I had a choice. Between the promise of beauty and the freedom of an unknown future, and a meager integrity that would keep me in a life of misery, what would you have chosen? Really?
I chose beauty and freedom.
I was truly desperate.
Please remember that, Shepherd, in case you feel tempted to judge me as my story unfolds.