Chapter One

The countryside's clouds were grey, they almost always were, and even then, I remember I was still not used to that, although I was 10. It was different from my real home, my father's home, my mother's, my ancestors.

Everything was different from it. Back at home, the sun was always shining, beating warmly, down our backs and when it wasn't shinning, it was night and if it wasn't night, then it was a rainy day. In the countryside, the weather was fairly okay but it was not like home and it was sometimes unpredictable, I dislike unpredictable.

Although, the land was vast. A person or family could own several aces or land and you could not see another neighbor for several miles away. Some of the lands and the houses were even passed down from generation to generation, like the Stanley's household.

But as the years went by, I grew to love the countryside. Not only for it's vastness and mellow animals; sheep, cattle, pig donkeys, horses and the Meadows! But also the people, and most especially the Stanley's, whom I worked for.

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I turned my gaze from the sky and back to the millet I was hacking down, standing in a field of it with others such as myself, working quietly with their heads bent in concentration not standing, looking up at the sky, caught in a daydream. My eyes flittered around, restless, while my hands did the monotonous job of cutting down stalks and piling them into the basket by my feet.

My eyes caught on something from between the waving heads of the millets, it was a head. A hat on a head, a nice, quality stetson on a head. And not just any head in a hat, but it belonged to that of Mr Stanley, walking his way through the field, watching as we harvested the bowing stalks. It was not unusual to see Mr Stanley making rounds on his farm and sometimes it was his son, Mr Stanley Jr or it was both of them. But that day, from between towering oats on sticks and people, just as me, littered around - I do remember once, when I followed my mama to buy something's, hearing a woman with a shrilly voice from beneath a ridiculous flopping hat with frillies around the tip say, ' I can't tell one from the other. They all look the same' -, he looked at me. Our gaze met, mine had been the cause of wandering unattended and his had seemed to purposely seek me out.

His hat was drawn low over his brows, and all I could see were his eyes - dark because he stood backing the sun but I knew what colour they were, grey, I had seen it many times not to know, calm grey eyes that made you feel at home with him or the calm that belied the storm brewing beneath -, and a big bush of white beards around his face, reaching to his chest.

I averted my eyes, bowing my head when I realized I'd been giving him stare fore stare for more than a moment.

After what seemed like hours of picking wheat, we had moved around the field when I remembered Mr Stanley. I stood on my tiptoes, turning my head this way and that, searching for the familiar hat. My mama gave me a jab on my side and I dropped down. Raising an eyebrow, her hands reached, yet, for another millet stalk. When mama raised her eye brow, it said about as much as a complete conversation.

We picked up our loaded baskets and pushed our way through, home bound, or more correctly, to the threshing ground, where we'd hand the unfortunate souls our many baskets. They had the responsibility of dividing the harvest into two; the greater bunch went to the mill and the other was threshed by hand. The threshing ground was a large area of hard ground that had several shallow dentation in it. It was where the wheat will be put in to be crushed or pounded, by a heavy stone or stick, Into powder or as powdery as it can get by hand. This flour was mostly used to make round bread/cake also called grain bread and sometimes, the milled flour could be used too. But if I were asked which job I disliked more between harvesting and threshing, I'd choose threshing; I still remember the  time I was assigned the threshing job, my muscles told a totally different story from the soft, sweet looking cake as the end product.

My Mama's taller frame moved before me as she parted the grains before her. My mama was a very tall woman, her black hair coiled tightly into her faded blue bonnet. She was wearing her practical blue gown that was frayed from age, glimpses of her ankles showing from beneath the shortened skirt's hem. Although I was tall for my age, she was still a head and shoulder taller than I.

As we made a detour to the back of the house, after depositing our baskets of millet, I was skipping ahead of my mama, eager to get away from the scorching sun and into the cool room my family lived in, sitting on the  cemented clay ground while my mama knitted or moved around the room. Instead as I moved from the frying sun and into the sweltering kitchen, Mary, a fellow servant like us, stopped us on our way. 'Naomi. Master Stanley wants you in the drawing room '.