They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Etxe
The deed to my father's house came down from Santa Grazi in the second week of March.
It was in the old priest's own hand, with the seal of the assembly pressed in green wax.
I could read it.
I could read every word, slowly, with my finger under the line, because Gotzon had spent four evenings at my kitchen table making me.
*To Itziar Etxeberria, daughter of the house, by the ruling of the Biltzar, the house and fold above Larrau and all its flock, free of any man's claim.*
I read it aloud twice.
Then I put it on the dresser, beside the broken bowl.
I had glued the bowl with sheep's-milk paste and set it where I could see it.
The snow went off the high pasture that week.
The ground came up brown and wet and smelling of iron.
The first lambs of the spring dropped in the lee of the wall.
I was out among them from dawn.
It was the happiest work I had ever done, and I did it in a skirt.
I wore my brother's coat over it for the cold.
The cap stayed in the pocket, and I did not put it on.
The Bear came every third day.
He came on foot, as he had the first night, and left his horse at the fortress.
I never asked him to.
He stopped at the pen gate and waited for me to say the word.
Some days I said it at once.
Some days I let him stand there in the wet while I finished with a ewe.
He took it every time.
On the second Sunday I stood at the gate and told him my terms.
I had been working them out for a week, in the lambing pen at night, with my hands in the warm sticky straw.
"You will not buy me," I said.
"No," said Aitor.
"You will not keep me.
"You will not hold me, in any house of yours or of mine, with a door or without one."
"No."
"You will court me," I said.
He looked blank.
"I do not know what that is," said Aitor.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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