Charlotte's Fairytale Ch. 07

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Many thanks to Linda62953 to help me to present this story better.

Chapter 7: Retrieving Clothes

Charlotte stood on the street planning what to do next. She wanted to visit the maiden that had taken most of her other set of clothes and wanted to visit the town leader who supposedly knew her mother. She did not want to bother her best contacts in town, so she walked along the street to look for someone to talk with.

There was one building along the street that had a stonewall and chimney. She could guess that this town even had a blacksmith. Coming near the building, she could hear the banging of metal on metal. There was an older boy in front of the shop, cleaning stones that had spaces in them with the form of horseshoes. He was brushing bits of leftover metal from them.

"Hello, good day, do you know where the head of the village lives?"

The boy looked up from his job. "He lives at the end of the second street, but he's currently helping here in the smithy. He often works here, the last few years, doesn't want to sit at home alone all day after his wife passed away."

"What is his name? I heard Dan Parker mentioning him but only as the head of the village."

"He's called James Cunningham. Just enter the smithy. He is the older one of the two men inside."

That name, at least the first name, did ring a bell with Charlotte. It had been mentioned in different conversations of her mother with guests during her youth.

"Thank you for your help, I will do that." Then, Charlotte stepped towards the heavy door and entered a dark room with a dull red glow on the side with the stonewall. Inside the room, she could see two men working, one was handling the bellows, and the other was holding a newly made horseshoe into the heat of a stone oven. She waited for the men to finish the heating, and the younger smith continued with hammering on it with a metal peg to create the holes in it to fasten it to a horse later.

The older man waved to the smith that he would leave and moved towards Charlotte. He took her arm and let her out of the smithy. It was far too noisy in there to be able to talk easily.

"Hello, Charlotte, welcome into our village, I hope your stay has been very nice so far." Charlotte nodded. "My name is James, and I know your mother from the time she lived here."

Not knowing how to respond directly to this man, that knew her clearly more than she did him, Charlotte just agreed, "Yes, I feel welcome here. Dan made a lovely home for me."

"That is good to hear, Dan is a fantastic carpenter, and he was working quite enthusiastically on it." He was looking at Charlotte with some intent. "I hope I am not imprudent but may I ask your age, I know witches differ from us a bit that way, so I will probably guess wrong if I did."

"That's not a problem for me, I am 30 years old." James did look surprised by it even though he had assumed that he would guess wrong.

"Bianca did not bother to inform me about it, but it could be highly likely that I am your father," Said the man with a thoughtful look on his face. "I did marry since she left us and my children are independent now. I lost my wife again. Almost a full life for me has passed but here is a young daughter I did not know I had."

Charlotte looked closely at the man; he had grey streaks in his dark, slightly curling hair. She had darker hair and more curls than her mother; it would not be so unlikely this could be her father. "What had happened that she went away, 30 years ago?"

James did not answer her directly. "Please walk with me to my home. We can talk there easier. Just give me a minute to say 'bye' to Ralph. Sorry Paul, I am afraid you will have to handle the bellows for some time now." The boy stood up at that and walked with James into the smithy. A moment later, James came out again.

"I like to make myself useful here, I can do some jobs myself but mostly just help Ralph," said James while walking down the street with Charlotte. "He will probably take Paul as an apprentice when he builds enough strength, but until that time, I can help him. I left my farm to my eldest boy Peter, and lived in town since. Nevertheless, you asked about your mother, so I have to begin my story far earlier.

"For as long as I can remember, a young witch had been seen on the other side of the river. She probably lived further away, but she walked the fields close to town now and then. We did not have a bridge at that time, so it was a very long day's walk to go there unless you wanted to sleep in a shepherds hut. As youngsters, we often fantasized among ourselves about this witch. She looked stunning, in our eyes.

"One day at noon a raven pecked at my window. I lived on my farm then, though it was still the property of my parents. It's one of the closest buildings to the river, a bit north of town. I walked outside, and it flew toward me crying something that sounded like 'help'. When I saw it was intelligent in its movement, I decided to help it. It flew to my shoulder and showed me an image in my mind of the witch lying with her legs in a wire trap. I got some tools and the raven showed me the water crossing south of town. It would be a long walk, so I packed food, too.

Charlotte remarked then, "That would probably be a fairy in disguise, but also trapped in raven form; otherwise it could change and talk normally."

"That would explain it, yes. For me, it just was a mystical raven." James continued with, "I walked to the ford in the river, and there the raven was waiting on me. I asked if I should go north, near the farm. It nodded and flew off. It was probably busy helping Bianca because I saw it again, when I was already close to her. She had fallen and hurt herself. She had a badly broken leg and had probably knocked herself unconscious, against a tree. Pretty lethal for a person on her own. I used tools to cut the wire and lifted her onto my shoulder. The raven flew to a small hut where some of her things were. She awoke when I moved her, but she was still delirious.

"I helped her as much as I could for two days. She healed rapidly and returned to herself, rather quickly. The raven had probably used some type of power to heal her. I made an improvised splint, and with it, got into town with her. The raven was gone as soon as she could move. Bianca stayed on the farm rather than in town and used some magic to correctly connect her broken bone again. After two weeks, she wanted to leave again. I insisted on traveling with her. Moreover, the fool that I was, by that time, I had fallen deeply in love with her.

"Bianca accepted my help, and we travelled through the mountains to a small house there. Then she told me to go home. We had sexual intercourse during our time together. She still had that mystical aura I remembered from my childhood and I was quite heartbroken. She gave me a small flute that I could call her with, if I really needed some assistance in the future. Then I left."

Charlotte added, "She needed things to have a balance, you helped her a lot, probably saving her life. We help people back and return the favor after such things happen. But, she clearly also wanted a daughter at that moment. There are very few men deep in the mountains. She had chosen you as my father, so it is nice to meet you." That moment, they entered James's house.

"Would you like to stay for lunch, Charlotte? I need some time to come to terms with the fact that as an old man, I suddenly have a very young looking daughter visiting me."

Charlotte laughed, "Of course, I want to visit you a bit longer. I knew there would be a man somewhere that was my father, but I did not realize you'd live in this village."

They then talked about life on the farm compared to life in the mountains, getting to know each other better. After that Charlotte asked about Bianca's visit last year. "I heard about you via Dan, when he told me about my mother's visit last year. Did she stay here?"

"Yes, she stayed here, but we did not have a long talk. She was already tired when she arrived, due to her amazingly fast traveling. Then, she immediately began with the healing. I had to carry her to my bed to sleep. She slept for 3 days, only being awake to eat a little bit. That magic had really worn her down. After that, she had been away from her home longer than she had planned. I understand that she had animals around her house that could handle themselves for some time, but eventually needed care.

"She went home pretty quickly after she'd recovered. I think that was a letdown for me, but not something I can complain about, after how much she'd helped this town."

"Don't be sad about it James. Bianca is bound to come and visit me in a few days. She will wait long enough for me to settle, and then she will be at my doorstep. So I will just invite you then, and you can talk with a less exhausted Bianca for as long as you like."

"I would love to do that. She looks much younger than I do, though. I hope she likes to talk to such an old man like me."

"Oh, she will. I like to talk with you and we differ a lot more," said Charlotte laying her hand on his arm. "We are accustomed to age differences between witches that are much more pronounced than with the other people. So please come, she would not care about that."

During lunch, a farm hand came by the house looking for James. A traveling salesman had entered the town, and asked for a place to stay. They both walked to the main street to welcome the man.

The salesman had a few horses with him, a cart and two helpers. Everything was overloaded with goods. Half the village had walked out already to greet him, or just to look at what was happening. Lots of children were pushing each other to have the best spot to look at them. Dan, Louise and Ralph the smithy were with him already engaged in the first business talks. James walked up to him and officially bid him welcome. There was a house ready where an old widow had lived until recently, that he could use for his stay. The merchant named Ferdinand Randall was glad with the generous offer.

Within the group of villagers, Charlotte could spot the fair maiden that Patrick had brought to the meadow the previous day. She was wearing a much more plain dress than the last day. She was clearly impressed by some of the cloth she spotted in between the merchandise. Because James was busy, she joined her for a moment, in her search to spot the nicest cloth.

"Hello, there is certainly a lot of cloth for sale here," was Charlotte's rather neutral opening.

"Yes, I am always looking for better cloth. I am trying to make the nicest clothing possible. I hope to make a living with it eventually," said the maiden. Her attention was almost completely on the wares around her. "But I do not have that many assignments yet, so I can not afford much."

Charlotte chose to be forward with her. "Why don't you ask that nice young lord Patrick to help you there? He could probably afford everything here."

That got her the attention of the maiden. "What do you know...? Oh, the woman wearing black." She had turned red the same instance and was swaying visibly thinking about what to do. "Please, come with me. I want to go inside now."

Charlotte followed the maiden, till they were inside a nearby house away from the general public. "You have some clothes of mine, that I would like to retrieve," was Charlotte's remark. "But before that, I am Charlotte Cartwright. I moved recently and started living near this town."

"Eveline Mills, hello," was her somewhat lackluster response. "I will fetch your clothes directly." She stumbled into a room where she had been trying to repair her nice dress; it did not look like an easy job to Charlotte.

"That is a hard job to repair those tears. You really should ask Patrick for some form of compensation for it. Thanks." Eveline had handed over her extra blouse and skirt.

"I would not know how to ask that. I can hardly walk to the castle and shout for him to come out for me. Besides, whatever you saw yesterday, please do not tell anyone else about it. They could haunt me about it forever."

"Then why did you follow him? You knew he would take advantage of you."

Eveline was now even more red headed than before, but answered with defiance, "Do not judge me, I know that I am poor and not suited for farming at all. I need every opportunity I can get to draw the attention of people to the clothing I could make for them."

Charlotte laid a hand on Eveline's arm. "I will not judge you about it; you clearly follow your heart here. I really hope you succeed with it." That helped a lot to ease Eveline's mood; she had clearly doubted her own actions of the day before.

"But I cannot repair that dress into something satisfying, and also cannot afford new cloth. This adventure did not help me. My family helps support me with offering me a place to stay. Also, I don't have to worry about food. However, they cannot affort to buy me materials, too."

Charlotte looked at the cloth. In some parts, it was ripped into threads and a needle and thread simply could not repair it. She still wanted to help the poor maiden. "I could go to the castle for you, and talk with Patrick. Eventually, I would like to visit the place anyway. But before that, I would like to have a go at mending this cloth."

Eveline stood looking at her with an unbelieving look on her face. "How would you manage that and why?"

"I do not really like the way Patrick treated you. I think there is something more about him that I would like to investigate." Charlotte picked up the dress and folded it slightly to get the tears out of sight. Then she let her mind trace the threads in the cloth and willed them back to their original patterns. With some extra effort, she managed to link the broken threads together again.

"Here you are, have a look at it." She handed the dress over to Eveline.

"What's this? The cloth is like new again." Eveline traced the cloth with her eyes close to it. "That is impossible, even the original weave faults in it are gone completely. This is now of a higher quality than it was before. It feels much stronger."

Charlotte had already thought that it had been a little harder to correct the cloth then, only by the tearing. "Please trust me. I would like to help you more to get that job."

Eveline cried tears of joy while hugging Charlotte. "It would be wonderful, I will be forever grateful for your help."

"I think people, and mostly the men, should consider the effects of their deeds better. And if they do wrong, they should do their part to help out afterwards."

"I could never be as bold as that," said Eveline. "I would like to accept your help, but I hope you do not anger the lords at the castle about my case. I cannot defend myself against it, if that would happen."

Charlotte hugged the maiden to provide some comfort but stayed determined about her next goal. "When everything works out, you could make me a dress as compensation. I would tell everybody around that you made it for me. And, you can make it in any color you like."

Eveline nodded to that. "When you get me materials to work with, I would gladly help you with that."

After saying farewell, Charlotte left Eveline and turned towards the castle above the village.