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“I have to leave.” I tell my family. Mum sighed, she knew it was coming. She’d been there when I opened the letter, when I told her what it meant. My dad looked wretched. My little sister Kendra looked like I’d just shoved an onion in her eye.
“There are far better prospects for someone of my skills. It won’t be forever.” I couldn’t live out my days as a farmer. I craved more. My mind wanted more. The few books I’d acquired barely fed that hunger. I’d won a place in a mainland university by solving a riddle. My travel fair, food accommodations, everything. I’d even get an allowance. I was one of six who found the answer. Nothing here challenged me. Even that equation had been solved in my head while working at the mill.
“No one ever leaves.” My sister starts sobbing. She’s only six and no one ever leaves, she’s right.
“It won’t be forever.” I assure her. Giving her a side hug. “I’ll always be from here.” I cleaned the table, and for three days we pretended everything was normal.
—
A cargo ship took me to the mainland. I spent the week sick from the turbulent rocking of the water. No thoughts put to the promise of writing letters. When we reached a harbour and solid ground, it felt like coming out of a sickbed. My stomach settled, and I ate so much.
From there I was on a caravan’s wagon, sitting on the buckboard beside a driver who smelled of horse and tobacco. The wagon swayed like a hammock. I didn’t let it put me to sleep, though. There was too much to see. I wrote home, wrote of the forests with trees thicker than Dad is wide. I tried to describe the deer I’d spotted and the rumours of monsters that dwelled in the heart of the woods. I tried to capture the towns we passed in words. One full of blacksmiths selling everything from simple nails to clockwork machinery. Another had fabrics in such wondrous colours, oh Mama the dresses you could make with such marvellous material. Silk, light and like water through the fingers, in colours as rich as a sunset and as vibrant as spring flowers. Or velvet as soft as a cat’s fur. They even gave me a scrap. I tucked that scrap into the letter home. Mom could make a dress for my sister's doll from it.
No town could have prepared me for the city. All of them could have fit in the walls with room to spare, every farm back home could have fit along with them. The walls, they’re twice as tall as the tallest grain silo and have a gateway that takes four oxen to open and close. The driver told me it’s over five hundred years old and took the reign of two kings to build. When I asked him what they were so afraid of, he told me stories of monsters and monstrous men that had invaded in ages past. I wasn’t sure if I should believe him. But I wrote home about it, anyway. And I sent some dried herbs so they could try them. I told Mom how good it was in soup. Imagining them back home trying it, talking about it, while Mom worked on the velvet dress made me ache for home. Nights spent with friends make it tolerable.
It took a few days to settle in at the university, to stop getting lost in the gardens, or simply staring at statues of people gone by. Remnants of history we were never taught. I’ve even taken to a community plot, little gardens for everyone to grow things so I’m not completely losing my roots. I’ve made friends that way. Teaching people about tending to land. And I wonder if anyone else off on the farmlands would love it here as much as I do. Would their minds come alive in lessons like mine does? Would they eagerly drink in every word like they’d never tasted pure water? Shouldn’t everyone get the chance to find out? I seal some more herbs into the paper. Another letter home. So many but never any returns. Are they that upset that I left? Or is postage that slow? It’s been a month since I sent my first one with my address on campus.
Weeks go by, and I’m told I’ll be an engineer if I can keep up my grades. If I can keep being so smart. I’d design buildings and bridges and even aquifers, help people get from place to place, make sure they have clean water. I keep writing, at least a letter a week. I tell them about the friends I’d made, and the people and places. And never get one in return. The summer comes, and I can go home for three months. If I want.
I nearly don’t.
The return trip feels so much shorter. Even the boat ride seems smoother.
The road home, though, that’s longer. Every step feels leaden, weighted, cursed. Why wouldn’t they respond to a letter? The stamp I used paid for the return. Up ahead was the little farmhouse, and it seemed so little now. The whitewash so dull. But I could smell bread baking. My stomach growled, and my heart ached. For all the exotic spices and strange meats, there was nothing like a home-cooked meal.
I knocked on the door, feeling like a stranger. It’d only been 9 months. Not even a full year. I sent a letter saying I’d be home. They shouldn’t be surprised.
Mom answered the door and just stood there staring at me like she didn’t know me.
“Hi, Mom.” I tried to give her a hug. She stepped away.
“I don’t understand. Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“You left. No one leaves.” Her voice is harsh. Worse than when she’d chided me as a child. “You aren’t from here anymore. This isn’t your home.”
On the table beside the door, I see my letters, all of them, unopened. “I’m… I’m..” I don’t have words. So many of my words unread. “This is my home.”
“You abandoned us for the city. That’s where you’re from now.”
“No,” the word is a plea. “Don’t say that. Don’t.” Tears burning and bitter dig paths through the grim of travel on my cheeks.
“We did the harvest without you. Did the winter without you. You left us, and you wouldn’t even face us to do it.” She stares down at me like I’m a rotten potato that just squished in her hand.
“Dad and Kendra can’t agree. Can’t just act like I’m not a part of this family.” That I didn’t feel homesick for the last 9 months. That the only thing that keeping the homesickness at bay was imagining them reading those letters. That connection.
“They agree.” She tries to close the door, but my boot blocks it, leaving a smear of road dust on the whitewash. “Unless you want to stay for good, go away for good.”
“How…how can you demand that? Don’t you understand what this means for me?”
She closes the door, pushing my foot off the threshold.
I can hear my sister crying inside. This can’t be how it ends. I walk the long track back, and stop in the tavern. And despite the fact that I’ve never had a drink before, I do. I tell my tale to the bartender. Finding a friend. But not an answer. Where do I want to be from? Can I stand the idea of being alone in the city, never coming back? Never seeing my sister grow up? But the idea of never being back in that library is somehow worse. The thought of being limited. Of never being in class again. If I could just get them to understand.
“Final call, for alcohol. Finish your whiskey and beer!” The bartender announces.
And in the crowd there’s my dad. And I know who I want to take me home. The ache is stronger than the burn of the liquor. But it’s not just for home, it’s for the library. I grab his arm, and he looks at me like I’ve stabbed him with a pitchfork.
“If I’m forced to choose, I’m going back to university.” I tell him.
And now I’ve twisted it, churning pain in his heart with every word. I hate myself a little. “You aren’t from here anymore.”
It was time to go. I can’t go home, and I can’t stay here. There’s a boarding house, and I can get passage to the city where I’ll be from.