They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Summons

Gotzon taught me my letters at the abbot's table, in the margin of the second ledger.

He gave me a goose quill and a pot of ink the color of old blood.

I could read names.

I could not write a sentence.

"A summons is only a sentence with a seal," he said.

"Say it plain, and I will show you the shape of each word."

I said it plain.

I am Itziar Etxeberria, of the Etxeberria house above Larrau.

I will speak at the Biltzar under the oak at Santa Grazi, on the first day of the thaw.

I will name a man of my own blood who has sold girls across the border.

Let every house-head come and hear it.

It took me the whole of one afternoon.

My hand cramped, and I blotted the second line and began again.

Gotzon sat beside me with his bad leg out and his rosary wound round his wrist.

He said "Good" every time I finished a letter.

Aitor stood at the window with his back to us.

He had said he would not write it for me, and he had said why.

"If my hand is on it, it is a Larrea summons," he said.

"If yours is, it is an Etxeberria's."

At the end I pressed my father's ring into hot wax.

It was a plain brass ring with a sheep cut into it, the only thing of his I had kept.

I had worn it on a string round my neck for seven years, the last five under my brother's shirt.

I stood over the wax with my thumb pressed to the ring.

I felt the whole weight of my name come down into it.

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