The Girl With the Golden Egg
By Cathrin Hagey
Copyright 2012 Cathrin Hagey
Smashwords Edition
Cover Design by Cathrin Hagey
Image of girl by Cattallina/iStockphoto
Image of frame by herkisi/iStockphoto
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Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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This story is dedicated to my husband, Chris, without whom there would be no magick.
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Far away and long ago, Ada slept on her bed of straw until the moon and the sun traded places for yet another day. In the morning, she awakened to a sharp pain in her back.
"Get up," barked Ada's mother from where she poked the surviving embers of the hearth fire. The hearth was nothing more than a pit in the earthen floor.
Ada rolled onto her side and watched her mother fan the embers with a smoke stained apron. Her father's bed was empty and Ada knew that he had gone to the fields with her brothers, all except the youngest who was still a baby.
"For the last time, get up."
Ada fished around in the straw for whatever had caused the pain in her back. There was something there that felt cool in Ada's hot hand, something hard and smooth.
"If I have to haul you out of bed, you'll wish you had to break your back in the fields like your brothers."
Ada couldn't help it. Beneath the straw, she cupped the hard, smooth thing in her hand and took its weight: about as much as an iron kettle, she figured. Then Ada brushed enough straw aside to be able to see the top of it, and there, gleaming, was a golden egg.
There was a golden egg in Ada's bed. It was not in her mother's bed. It was not in the great bed shared by her brothers. It was not in the baby's cradle. The golden egg was in Ada's bed, and although she had never kept anything to herself before in her life, she buried the egg deep in the straw and told no one about it.
That day, and the next, Ada kept the golden egg out of sight.
When two more moons had come and gone, Ada shed her first blood, a secret she shared with her mother who showed more kindness to Ada that day than she had for years. Ada was so moved by her mother's gentleness that she nearly told her about the golden egg. Just in time, Ada closed her mouth and sat quietly while her mother fetched a secret basket.