Created for Odd Noun Out Contest

Siam Goes Home

The morning was cool and crisp when Siam awoke. Fall had truly begun. The leaves in the surrounding forest were tinged with color and the swaying grasses in the meadow, where she had camped the night before, were golden. She breathed deeply, the clean scent of autumn. Stretching out under her blankets, she took in the quiet of the meadow. The birds, whose singing woke her, flitted through the swaying grasses. A single doe tread silently in the far corner of the meadow, first, nibbling at the grass and then watching Siam as she began to stir. Throwing back her blanket, braving the chill air, she rose and began her morning absolutions. Hair brushed and face washed in the sparkling stream that bubbled through the meadow, she stoked up the embers from last evenings campfire and prepared breakfast. Grains from the surrounding grasses mixed with water from the stream and dried fruit from her rucksack made a tasty porridge. The animals, which had all gone quiet when she restarted her fire, began to come alive again.

As she ate, she thought back to her travels so far. Her current journey had begun only weeks before at the home of her childhood companion and nurse, Tali. As Tali lay on her deathbed, she disclosed to Siam her origins.

“Child, your mother was beautiful just as you are. But your father was an evil man. He was handsome to look at but his heart was black. He took your mother away from her people during the Summer Festival and forced her to marry him. You were born to your mother the following spring. The birth was not an easy one; your mother had a hard time bringing you into this world. And then, because you were not the son that he had requested you were to be put to death. Your mother’s heart couldn’t bare any more. She died shortly after she heard the news of your impending execution.” Tali paused for a wracking cough. “She always wanted you to go back to her people, her family. I could never travel that far. Your father, the King, has had other children with his new wife, sons who will inherit the throne. If he ever found out that you were still alive, he would hunt you down and finish the job that I stopped from being done 20 years ago.” Another long pause followed. Her body, so frail in her last hours, struggled to stay going just long enough to finish the tale.

“You must go to the kingdom of your mother’s people in the far reaches of the world. You must go to Barancort.” Tali had pointed to the jeweled box that had been her mother’s and told her what it contained and how to prove who she was when she returned to her mother’s homeland.

She stayed for a couple of weeks, until after the funeral. Then, after closing up Tali house and selling her two goats to a neighboring farmer, she packed the rest of Tali’s meager belongings into her rucksack and set off for the Kingdom of Barancort. Walking through the forest near her home seemed more like a day jaunt than leaving the only home she ever knew. She traveled through the countryside with little trouble. Rarely, she would run across another traveler or a farmhouse surrounded by fields tall with wheat or corn. She traded and bartered with both travelers and farmers for the foodstuffs that she needed for her journey.