Read Online The Fire and the Fog by David Alloggia - Free Book Online Page A

from mess.
Somehow Joahn always got more food on herself than on her bear.
    With breakfast done, chairs were pushed away
from the table, bumping and grinding over the wood floor, and the
family went to work. Erris’ mother and sisters stayed to clear the
table, while her father and older brothers left in the direction of
the tool shed. Her father would pass them out the tools they would
need, post-digger, shovels, crowbar, so that Johan the younger
wouldn’t be able to see the secret project.
    That left Erris with Boll. Unfortunately. Now
thirteen, Boll had at one time been a happy, energetic boy, equally
eager to help and to play. Two years ago however, Dom, the second
eldest brother, had cut off his ties with the family, and had left
to join the priesthood. Apparently the rest of the family hadn’t
been devout enough for him, and while Erris was starting to
understand the fights between Dom and her father, Boll did not. To
Boll, he was missing his big brother; his best friend.
    Erris didn’t remember very much about Dom
anymore. It had been years since he’d left, years since anyone in
the family but Boll had talked about him, and even longer since
she’d last talked to him. She had never been a party to the loud
arguments between Dom and her parents, but she remembered hiding
her head under her pillow some nights, trying to drown out the
yelling.
    What she did remember about Dom was that she
hadn’t liked him. He had always ignored his chores, gone off on his
own, leaving extra work for the rest of the family. And he had been
mean to the animals. Erris could remember him walking through the
yard, distracted, kicking angrily at any of the chickens that
strayed into his path. Erris didn’t think he meant it, he was
just…angry. Violent.
    It was sad really. Boll had followed Dom
everywhere, pretending to be a soldier with him. Back then, Boll
had been happy, as young boys should be, unaware that Dom was,
well, bad. But now, he was angry all the time, and would start
fights at the drop of a hat.
    Erris wondered sometimes what had happened to
Dom. He had left to join the church, that she knew, but she
couldn’t imagine him as an Alde, running a congregation and
delivering Ragn’s word to the people. He had probably become a
Hunar or a Legnar; a soldier of the church, fighting to expand
Rognia, and Ragn’s, influence over Dohm.
    Still, she and Boll had a job to do, and the
work was heavy enough that it didn’t leave much time for talking.
Not that she and Boll ever had much to talk about anyway. He wanted
to run off and become a soldier, or a priest, just because Dom had.
When he did talk, he would talk about Dom only, and Erris had never
liked Dom. He had burned one of her books once, saying it was
heresy. He had been given a good beating by her father as
punishment, and her mother gave him burnt food for a week, but
still. That book was gone, Erris would never get to read it again.
Erris knew everything it said of course, but still. The book itself
was gone, and that was just sad.
    Erris was sweating profusely by the time they
rolled the hay bale into the barn; clammy, sweating, and smelling
of manure by the time they mucked out the stalls in the barn, and
just plain tired when she finished milking Ms. Spots. Her mother
and sisters were in the garden when she got to the house, lugging
the full pail of milk, so she left it on the floor of the kitchen
and quickly threw water on her face before heading back out into
the sun. If her mother and sisters were in the garden, they
wouldn’t need help, so she would have to go off to help her other
brothers while Boll chopped firewood.
    The earlier work hadn’t been as bad. When she
and Boll were bringing in the hay, the sun was still low in the
sky, and while mucking the barn and milking the cow she had been in
the shade. The walk to the fence was short, but the day was
starting to warm. It was with some apprehension that she joined her
brothers, both shirtless and sweaty