We row for hours. I helped with what I could, with my weak arms. I accept it, I didn't have much strength, but I couldn't sit idly by. All of us in that little boat had to contribute to get safely to shore.
I thought it would be easy. "You only have to row for a day," I kept repeating. What a fool I was. Just half an hour of rowing was enough to be exhausted, not to mention hours.
At one point I thought: "What if we don't make it?"
With us we took some food that we stole from the ship's holds, but… what if the food ran out? How could we survive without food and clean water?
The very idea of staying in the middle of the high seas, without resources, was unthinkable.
At that point, we should have stopped calling the boy's father "the man", so we finally got to know each other's names.
The man's name was Oskar and his son was Mayu.
Oskar..., that was a hunter's name.
And when we finally got there, late in the afternoon, I flopped down on the beach sand, relieved.
"We did it!" I exclaimed.
There is something you must understand and is that in the south I never felt the sensation of cold. I mean, we had cool nights, but nothing like what I felt on that coast. IT was like hundreds of pins, stinging your skin nonstop, causing your body to shake.
"It's freezing!" I said, hugging myself.
"My lady has never felt this cold?" Veny asked.
I shook my head, trembling.
The bard took pity on me and lent me his thick green velvet cloak. I felt a soothing warmth, which calmed the trembling in my body.
That's when I understood the importance of a proper coat. I didn't want to imagine the poor people who didn't have enough money to buy appropriate clothes for the cold. Poor those of us who are miserable. Poor of those who have nothing.
"The further north we go, the colder it gets," Veny warned.
I thought I should have prepared better.
"Where are we, dad?" Asked the boy.
The man looked up and saw the towering gray, rocky mountains looming in front of us.
"I believe we are in the Duchy of the Mountains," he replied.
That was the region north of the Green Wall, we called it "The Duchy of the Mountains" or simply "The Mountains", and it was ruled by the Luquence family.
At what exact point in the mountains were we? There was no way of knowing. We just had to walk and find a village or town to find out.
And we did it, we walked a couple of leagues until we reached a small farming village. Veny, Oskar, and the child were warmly received, a woman in her fifties saw them tired, emaciated, and weak and immediately offered them lodging, but not to me. No lodging for the dark-skin.
In contrast, I was greeted by a shower of stones, thrown by a group of children hiding in some bushes.
"Black blood!" They screamed.
Black blood?
The adults of the village (all light-skinned), did nothing to stop the attacks, just stared blankly. The shower of stones only stopped when Veny intervened, asking for respect for me. Only then the adults intervened and asked the children to stop.
They stopped.
Veny asked if they could put us up for the night. One family answered yes, but a tall and stocky man (perhaps the patriarch) made the condition that they would lodge in his house if I slept outside.
"Why is the lady going to sleep outside?" The bard asked.
"Because it is black blood," the tall man replied.
"If the lady sleeps outside and I will sleep outside as well."
The tall man didn't know what to answer.
"Okay, Veny, I'll sleep outside," I said.
"No, if the lady does not sleep inside, with all of us, then I prefer to stay with her in the open air, with the company of the stars," assured the bard.
I don't know why they let me stay inside the house. They went reluctantly, but they agreed. Perhaps they were ashamed of Veny's determination. Perhaps they didn't feel capable of saying to the bard "as you wish, sleep in the open."
In other circumstances, my pride would have led me to stay outside. In other circumstances, I would have preferred to die rather than accept the help of whoever had thrown stones at me. But at the time, I was hungry, thirsty, tired, and scared, so I swallowed my pride.
Don't judge me, you would have done the same in my place.
They accommodated us in a small hut, which in the village they only used for visits. Under those circumstances, any place with a roof seemed like a luxury to me.
It's amazing how little we need to be happy.
Before dark, Oskar went out with Mayu to hunt some rabbits in the forest.
Veny and I were left alone.
The bard was plucking the strings of his lute when I asked him.
"Veny, what is that black blood thing?"
He gave me a sad look.
"It's a derogatory word for ..."
"The dark-skins," I completed.
Veny nodded.
"I thought so," I said. "Thank you for ... standing up for me ..."
"With all the pleasure, milady. I could not tolerate such injustice. "
"Veny ... why would someone turn into a pirate?" I asked for.
That was a question that had been in my head since we were attacked. Wasn't that dangerous? Why would anyone want to be a pirate?
Veny sighed and stared at me.
"I have asked myself the same thing many times. Once, among so many trips, I managed to talk to a young pirate, and I was finally able to ask him that question: why choose such a dangerous life? The only two endings for a pirate are violent death or jail, to which the boy replied: 'I really do it for freedom. I don't feel part of this society. I was rejected, so your laws, which were created by the nobles, do not matter to me, nor do they present me, so I live a life outside the law, 'what an answer, it chilled me. "
Freedom…
"Why want to live outside the laws of the kingdom?" I asked.
"Would you follow a law, even if it was unfair?" Veny answered me with another question.
I didn't know what to say. I had never questioned that.
"It is the nobles who enforce the laws," continued the bard, "the common people, the peasants, the poor, have no voice. Believe me, I have traveled all over Alba Terra. I know what I'm saying. "
Were the laws unfair? She until that moment she had not thought about it. He always assumed that he was the Supreme and all his children the saints who imposed the laws, not the nobles.
My head started to hurt from thinking so much.
I left the hut and went into the forest. I closed my eyes and visualized Queen Catherine next to me. Normally the spirit of Her Majesty manifested without my asking and without warning.
Several times I asked myself: "Will I be able to control it?"
So I tried to focus and visualize.
"Appear ...," It repeated to myself. "Appear…"
I felt a tingle that went up to my back to my neck and then ... I opened my eyes and was surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of luminous red butterflies.
And next to me, Queen Catherine materialized.
"Your Majesty," I greeted her with a bow.
"Did you just… did you just summon me? " She asked, impressed.
"I think so, Your Majesty."
"Interesting ...," she said with wide eyes.
"Your Majesty, I ... wanted to ask you ... Do you believe someone like me can be accepted by the people?"
"I see that you keep questioning yourself."
"And shouldn't I? I mean ... I have experienced intolerance firsthand. In Porto Razza… on the ship… this village. "
"I don't understand, dark-skin, why is this all new to you?"
"No ... or well… yes," I tried to explain, "is just ... in the south is different."
"Welcome to the rest of the kingdom, dark-skin," the queen said. "In the other regions, they don't behave like in the south. And to be honest, from now on, things are going to get worse."
"Worse?" I asked worriedly.
The queen nodded.
"The North is the most intolerant region against your kind. You must fill yourself with strength because we will not be able to face the challenges that are coming if you do not reveal your character. "
"How can I do that?"
"I can tell you how I learned to do it…," the queen said.
"Tell me, please."
"My father never loved me," she began, "it wasn't cruel or anything. He didn't tell me directly. I know it because of how he treated my younger brothers, may they rest in peace. I was supposed to be a boy. The firstborn male. But no, I was born a woman. I was THE BIG disappointment. Then my parents tried to have a boy. They tried many times, but three times my younger siblings did not survive the night. Until the fourth attempt, in which the twins were born. From a young age, they were sickly, but the doctors did everything possible to give them long lives. They didn't. They died at the age of 12. Their deaths hurt me a lot, and my parents even more. So they had to settle for me, their only daughter. I had to try twice as hard to get a quarter of the approval the twins got from my father. I promised myself that I would do something that would make my family proud. And I did it. I became THE QUEEN. "
I gulped and nodded.
"People don't hear words," she continued, "but deeds. You must demonstrate with actions what you are made of. Not only to others but to yourself. Difficult times do not build character, they reveal it. They bring out our inner strength, our hidden force. You must take it out, and then others will respect you, follow you, and you will use that earned respect as armor."
It was hard for me to see myself as THE QUEEN. I hadn't been able to get some villagers to accept me, Veny had to intercede for me. If I wasn't even capable of that, how could I rule?
"I saw it all," she said, avoiding my gaze, embarrassed. "I saw how they treated you. The looks they gave you and I… I've never seen that… "
"Did you not know? How is it possible? This is your kingdom? " I reproached her without fear.
The queen shook her head.
"I ... we ... I must admit that the nobility lives so far from the people ..."
It was true. The nobility only thinks of us when they need slaves, or taxpayers or whom to send to war, to die for them.
The words stuck in my throat. I wanted to yell at her that she will never have to sell her sister to a man like Soto, she will never feel hungry or humiliated.
What would I be like as a monarch? Better? Same or worse? Who knows…
"Your Majesty, why would anyone turn a pirate?" I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"They are psychopaths, I guess."
Interesting…
I wanted to go back to the hut and the queen told me:
"I don't trust that bard."
I stopped.
"There is something about him," she continued. "There is something he hides. Be careful, dark-skin. "
I nodded and the queen disappeared among red butterflies.
"People do not hear words, but actions," the queen's words echoed in my head. I thought about what to do to win over the people of the village.
And then ... it occurred to me.
When Oskar came back with a couple of rabbits, I asked him to let me make a stew with them. I had already prepared that recipe when I worked at the Derderián mansion. Well, I rather helped prepare it, but I knew the recipe and it was delicious.
We built a fire outside the hut, used one of Oskar's pots from his luggage, and made the recipe for Herbed Rabbit Potato Stew.
While I was cooking I was thinking of that moment when Veny danced with the ship's crew, and how they danced with me, without looks of hatred, without rejection.
"If I am not able to seduce a village of no more than twenty people, how will I ever rule?" I kept repeating to myself.
When I finished cooking and the pot was very hot, I took some in a couple of plates, filled them with the stew, and went to offer it to the family who allowed us to stay in the hut.
I knocked on their door and a woman appeared, perhaps the wife of the man who gave us permission to stay. She didn't seem very happy to see me. I gave her my best smile, the one I showed when I worked for the Derderians, and I offered her the hot stew.
"They say it's a delicious recipe," I said.
The woman stopped being defensive, she nodded and a small smile spread across her face. She took the plates and said:
"Thank you."
She closed the door.
"Well, I did what I can," I told myself.
I had shown an act of kindness towards the one who had rejected me. Was it worth it? Who knows.
When I returned with Oskar and Veny I sat down to enjoy my stew.
It was delicious. And I'm not saying it because I was the one who cooked it, it was objectively delicious.
Sometimes I think that food tastes better when you prepare it.
I was shocked when the lady arrived at the hut.
"Excuse me," she said, "could you share your recipe with me? The stew was delicious. "
Veny smiled at me. I didn't know what to say, I didn't expect that.
"Sure, sure, gladly," I replied.
"Come to my house and show me, what do you say?"
"Y-yes ... of course."
I did that.
I was stunned. A light-skinned woman was inviting me to her home after her husband had forbidden me to stay in their village.
Perhaps small, repeated, and constant acts could make a difference.