Peace. What everyone says they want most, but then when the novelty of it has worn off and they forget what it’s like feeling unsafe, they dismiss the notion entirely.

The first time I remember thinking of war was when I was eleven. I had recently received a book of legends– a much yearned for and rare gift in our town –and spent several hours reading it tirelessly by candlelight. In every story of heroism, of which took over the greater part of the book, these legends took place in the face of warfare or conflict. Knights slaying dragons. Good slaying Evil. Princes saving young women from the clutches of cruelty. A brave sailor saving his ship from Pirates. Though all the stories held a different plot, the root remained the same.

I came to the rather abrupt realization that heroism could only flourish in the face of trouble and danger, and thus, in a state of calm and peace, as was our town, everything seemed doomed to be extremely boring from then on.

The second time I thought of war was the evening of my thirteenth birthday. I was rosy-cheeked from the sharp Autumn air, and my stomach was comfortably full of various fine-flour pastries which I was permitted to eat on that one special day.

I was curled up in bed with my patchwork quilt wrapped snugly up and around my ears to keep the cold at bay. Despite this, my parent’s conversation managed to seep in like the chill and I heard every word.

“Another year is on its way out. Has it really been more than a decade since we left the T’cor?” My mother’s voice was quiet but easily recognizable.

“I suppose so. Hard to believe. I’m honestly surprised we’ve not broken into war already, given how delicate things are up North.”

I had begun to fall asleep. Grown-up chatter was of no interest to me, and my father’s voice had the uncanny ability to make my eyelids heavy.

There was a pause, which my muddled brain barely managed to catch before my mother spoke again, this time in a harsh whisper.

“Are things that dire?”

I was awake now. That tone in my mother’s voice had always alarmed me, having heard it only three times before in my life: once, when I was quite small and had eaten half of an indistinguishable creature left by the cat on the doorstep, another, when I was ten and we had come home to find we had been robbed, and the third, when I had fallen out of a crab-apple tree and had the breath knocked out of my lungs. In every situation, it was the tone of fear and danger.

“Seems like it.” There was the sound of wood scraping across the floor and I knew that my father had pulled up a stool and had seated himself by the fire at mother’s side like he often did when the sun faded and the cracks in the walls couldn’t keep out the drafts.

“I received a letter from Deddamou up near Radkka. Says it could happen any time. People are getting restless. Talk of an invasion has spread past Morgot. The people there becoming restless.”

There was another bout of silence, then my mother’s sharp voice. “Is it any wonder?”

“Cheldna?” My own surprise was echoed in my father’s voice.

“We have accepted the way they’ve treated us for years. Do they think we will just sit tight and ignore everything? Over the past three years, travel prices have gone up almost sixty percent. They are cutting off trade routes, and our supply to Upperhalf goods entirely. What they do share is getting more expensive by the month. Good cloth, grain, goats, mules, and fruit have become luxuries now. Seven Hells, I can barely afford baft anymore, let alone wool!”

I realized that what she said was true. Over the previous two years, our monthly material goods had been in a steady decline. I had not stopped to think why, even when I had gone through a fit of hysterics when the pocket of my one fine dress had ripped out after only a few days of minimal use. Pork was a rare sight on our kitchen table, honey even rarer, and I only then understood why my mother had put such pressure on the fact that now fine white buns, cakes, and jam tarts were only for special occasions.

I had only a moment to wallow in shame before the conversation picked up again and I forgot to rebuke myself further.

“I will speak with some people and try to see if I can work more hours from now on. Perhaps I’ll put myself under Orun. Work a few months in his tobacco field this spring. Then when he sells his harvest I’ll get a part of the pay,” my father spoke slowly in his usual manner, but I detected the trace of guilt, as did my mother, for she spoke up again quickly.

“Not those wretched tobacco fields, Noeah. Orun will work you to death. Please, not for such trivial things. I don’t know why I spoke of them like they are important. We don’t need them. It’s true, life is going to be more different without them, but we will manage. Please, do not take on more work. You have enough to do with the horses.”

I knew, even without being in the room, that she was gripping his hands tightly between her own. Each action had a distinct silence. After living with them for thirteen years that day, I could recognize every one.

“I suppose—I suppose I could change our weekly market order to fish instead of beef,” my mother spoke again. “And that rough, brown grain they’re selling down in the fields will do instead of wheat. Oh, of course, I will have to stop buying tea leaves, but that’s no bother. It’s only a matter of time before the trade of Tea leaves is closed after all. And there’s always potatoes. If you could go to town tomorrow and pick up a few to be planted, we could start growing potatoes.”

“Cheldna.” My father’s voice was tender and soft. I pictured him cupping her cheek in his hand. He had very big hands which were rough and calloused from holding the stiff leather reins of a horse cart every day. But they were always gentle.

“I can’t see you unhappy like this,” he told her.

“I’m not unhappy, Noah. If an invasion truly is imminent, this is the best path to take. It is not as if we will starve. Do not let me be the one to stand by and let you make all the sacrifices. If you truly look upon me as your equal in life, let me do what I can to lessen this burden.”

Suddenly, I sensed she was no longer talking about food and expenses, though of what was her hidden insinuation, I couldn’t know.

Another pause of terrible, terrible silence, and then father sighed. “All right. Besides, there’s no telling when and if the invasion will come. I’m sure we won’t have anything to worry about for quite some time.”

The conversation was over, but even half an hour after they had begun chatting lightly about other things, I could sense the remaining thickness in the air. I breathed in the lasting tendrils of worry, and though they were but shadows, I no longer felt the warmth of rosy happiness that I had been basking in.

That was the second time I thought about war.

Afterward, despite how much the conversation had affected me, I had neither the time nor the head-space for worrying about potential wars, and invasions, and having to eat fish instead of meat. In fact, the only thing I worried about was the fact that my dress was two years old, sewn out of a bleak shade of brown, and gave me an ‘unflattering’ figure, as I was most generously informed by one of my playmates. This would not generally have bothered me if it weren’t for that one, very significant reason for me to care. For anyone to care.

Love. Or, as the form it presented itself to me in, Jameson Johan.

The moment a girl was old enough to care what a boy thought of her, the first one to come to mind was always James. Nobody could really understand what it was that drew everyone to him. Of course, there were the obvious reasons. He was handsome, he was skilled, he was optimistic and strong. But then there were many boys who had the same attributes.

It wasn’t just the girls either. Everywhere he went he had a crowd of friends, some up to the age of nineteen. Even the adults thought and spoke well of him. Of course, everyone would speak well of everybody, but thinking well of someone was another matter. I knew for a fact that Boulenna Arghar, the only widow in town who was rumored to have murdered her husband, and the one person who would actually speak her mind–which was always something cruel–had told the butcher, ‘That boy Johan, he’s pretty fine where young men are considered. Did you know that he is the only one who hasn’t dug up my flower patch hoping to find my husband? Not that he’d find anything if he did, mind you.’

If the woman with the sharpest tongue in the town couldn’t find it in her to say something demeaning about him, I knew no one else possibly could.

And then of course there was Sashada’s mother. Sashada Faye was exquisitely beautiful, with flowing brown hair and deep forest-green eyes. She was slight and slender, with a bright smile, and walked gracefully about wherever she went.

I did not like her. I would have liked to say that the reason was that she was selfish, haughty, and miserable, but that would be a lie. Sashada made rounds every Autumn after harvest to deliver food to the less fortunate. She smiled at people when she crossed paths with them. She gave sweets to the little children when she had them on hand, and she never, ever spoke ill of anyone.

I disliked her because people would look at her and then look at me and think I should be more like her. All my friends were content with me until she was spotted and then they would abandon me to ask her if they might try on one of her dresses or play with her dolls.

I could have born it for a while. And I did. But after a time, there’s only so much Sashada this, and Sashada that which I any person, confined as I was to the rough clothes and straw dolls and lesser beauty that was a serf girl’s lot, could stand.

A person can be good, but if there is someone better, then we are all expected to become better ourselves. She could be a perfect angel if she wished, inside and out, but I had no wish to change. I smiled at people when we spoke. I once gave an apple to a boy who was hungry. I rescued a sack of kittens from the lake. I swept the floors. I helped my mother with our daily meals. I made the beds; I wished our neighbor Ciara well at her Troth Ceremony and I cried at Cherome Hastes’s burial. I was in no way an angel and I had no wish to be one, but I was good enough.

In any case, whether I liked Sashada or not, James certainly did. At least, that was what Goodwife Harae Faye told everyone.

It had only been a few months after I turned twelve when we – and by that, I mean nearly the entire village because the Fayes were very well respected – were all gathered at the Faye residence for the annual feast celebrating the send-off of the latest shipment of tobacco. It was there that I heard Sashada’s mother telling my mother, and many other mothers beside, that James had saved Sashada from a group of particularly angry chickens that had ambushed her only two nights before.

“I swear,” she had said to a rapt audience. “I don’t care if he’s poor. When the time comes for him to ask for my daughter’s hand in marriage, I will accept. Really, Patrha, have you seen how hard-working he is? And so dashing! I just know he’ll make a name for himself. Really, I could not be prouder!”

What she said was true. Not just the part about how perfect he was. The other part as well.

James was poor. His grandmother was born and raised poor; she married a poor man. They had a poor daughter who married the poor son of another poor man. Together they had James. Poor as a dirt.

And yet he worked hard to help support his family. There wasn’t a person in our town who doubted that he would one day rise from the hovel he was born into. Everything he did, he did well. He tried his best at everything and succeeded. Because of that, his lack of money didn’t matter nearly as much as it might have. Any family would be thrilled to have him marry their daughter, and many, like Harae Faye, thought he would.

I myself only began to see him as someone to be personally interested in when I was nine years old. The gods knew why. Nothing had changed, nothing was different until one morning when I was on my way back home from the beach and we passed each other. He didn’t have time to look at me, surrounded by a rowdy group of adoring friends as always, but then, something did change. Something inside me.

Perhaps it was the fact that the wind chose that precise moment to ruffle his hair so that a few strands fell in front of his eyes, and he had to brush them away. Perhaps it was the way he laughed: confidently, joyfully, youthfully.

Or maybe I was just hungry.

Whatever the reason, my heart did a fluttering dance inside my chest and for a few moments, I couldn’t breathe. Despite the cold air, my face suddenly felt as warm as if I was sitting close by a fire.

It took me an entire week to diagnose myself with being afflicted with ardor and another two to accept that I could no longer view boys as repulsive creatures to be avoided at all costs.

For the remainder of that year, I followed James like a little shadow. Always close by, but never seen. I wanted to learn everything about him. Unfortunately, I only managed to discern that he liked apple cake and was the first in his generation to jump off Craet Cliff, before my mother found out and told me that if she ever caught me following a boy down to the watering hole again, she would inform my father and then send me off to study with the pious nuns living alone in the Cthorian mountains.

I would not be subjected to such humiliation, so I gave her my solemn oath that I would never, ever even look at him again.

The fever faded, but the sentiment didn’t. For three years I wallowed in the sorrows of unrequited love and dreamed that one day he would rescue me, and we would elope together to a far-away island and live happily ever after.

And then, finally, he noticed me.

“I heard it was your birthday a few days ago,” he told my surprised face when I went to answer the door a few days after turning thirteen.

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just gaped at him with an open mouth. Luckily my mother was there to rescue me. She pushed me behind her, beamed, and invited him inside.

After sitting him down by the hearth and handing him a steaming cup of apple cider, she began the conversation.

“Judeth turned thirteen three days ago. And how old are you, child?”

He smiled back at her. “Fourteen. I’ll be fifteen this summer.”

“Goodness. Children really do grow up so fast these days.”

“Well, I have to,” he told her. “Mother can’t do much of the heavy work, and Father broke his arm so he can’t work hard either. “

“You poor dear,” my mother fretted.

“I don’t mind,” he promised. “By the time I’m seventeen I’ll have made enough money to leave my mother and father comfortable, and then I’ll leave.”

“Leave?” The sudden declaration startled me out of my dumbstruck state.

He smiled at me kindly. “That’s right. Maybe to Kora, or Thessè. Out of Saje but not too far away.”

My heartbroken silence was broken by my mother, who again jumped in to save my dignity.

“That’s very ambitious of you. I’m sure your parents are very proud.”

For a moment a shadow flickered across his face. I only noticed it because I was struck again by how absolutely fine he was. And that the grim expression made him all the more appealing. Of course, it was said in general that handsome men were good-for-nothings and should be avoided at all costs, but James was, of course, the exception. So, I felt no shame in admitting I admired him for it. But it was only after he’d finished his cider, invited me to go to the seashore the next day, and said goodbye that I wondered what that shadow might be.

I didn’t have long to ponder the subject. Within seconds the reality of what had happened sunk in. I grew suddenly dizzy and promptly fell off my stool.

I remember in detail the seashore that next day. Not because of any actual difference in the scene. Indeed, it was much the same as it ever was. The beach was coarse brown sand, mixed with pebbles in the different variations of grey and black. The water was blue and seemed to eat up the shore as it rolled in. I had always seen the sea as a hungry creature. If it had been alive, I would have supposed it to have a voracious appetite. Not content to feast on what was given to it. A giant dog howling and snapping at the sands as it struggled to pull itself free and devour our town whole.

The sun hung pale in the sky through the clouds, less a gold brilliance and more of a milky flame. The sea birds skirted the surface of the water, dipping their wings and nodding their beaks as they hunted for the telltale flash of silver fins.

No. No matter the occasion, the seaside was nearly always the same. The only difference was that for the first time I cared when the wind picked up my carefully brushed hair and seemed to purposely, and with no shame, tie it into knots.

So, James found me that day, trying desperately to make myself look presentable again whilst standing in my patched shoes and two-year-old dress, face burning like the cheeks of a baked apple.

It wasn’t at all like the scenes I had conjured up in my head about how our first afternoon together would start off. And truly, if he had been any boy other than James, perhaps he might have laughed at me. And he did, but not unkindly. Then he offered me an apple and assured me that my hair looked really quite nice.

During this adventure, the third time that I thought of war came to pass.

“Have your parents been discussing the possibility of war?” he asked me after we had seated ourselves down by a tidepool and began admiring the little crabs and fish that flitted about in the shallow water.

“Well, not in front of me. But I did hear it all the same,” I admitted.

He tossed a pebble into the rippling surface of the pool, causing the tiny creatures inhabiting it to scatter in disorganized panic.

“My parents talk of nothing else. They suppose it will happen any time.”

“Are you scared?” I asked the question before I had time to think, and immediately felt very foolish. You didn’t go around asking boys if they’re scared of things.

“I don’t think so,” he answered me. “Are you scared?”

“I don’t know. I know so little about what happens in wars and invasions, only that they involve a lot of soldiers and knights and sword fighting and such things.”

“And fire,” James added. “Lots of fire. And blood.”

“I’m not scared of blood,” I informed him proudly. “Not like Gaia Borrow. She fainted straight away in the butcher’s shop when one of them who works there cut his finger off.”

“Yes, well, this is different blood. From chopped heads and slit throats and the like.”

“Oh.”

We sat side by side in silence for a few moments, thinking about this.

“I suppose if there was a war, and it came here, I would want to hide.” I ended the quiet moment and clasped my hands together tightly. “I used to think, when I was quite young, that maybe a war would be good. That lots of exciting things would happen, but now I’m not sure I feel the same way.”

He looked at me inquisitively.

"I think wars cause a lot of trouble, and they hurt people. That’s what I believe now. Mother told Father she won’t be able to afford Upperhalf goods anymore. I don’t really understand all that well, but I suppose the people who want to invade the rest of the continent are the cause of that.”

“That’s what I think too.” He nodded gravely. “My mother says that in a year or two, maybe some Radkkan soldiers will arrive and take everything away or force us to fight them.”

“I don’t know how to fight!” I exclaimed, severely startled.

“Well, you probably won’t have to, since you’re a girl. But my father, your father, all the men might have too.”

“Even you?” I asked.

He pressed his foot into the sand and admired the print it made. “If it came down to it, I would. I think I’d want to defend our town, wouldn’t you?”

“Not if it meant dying for it,” I said uncertainly.

“You don’t have to look worried. I don’t expect I’ll get to. I plan to be far away by the time they come for us. “

“Perhaps to Kora?” I suggested. “Or Thessè? As you said before?”

“No. I’ve changed my mind. A different island. One far away, where the war won’t find it.”

“Which Island is that?”

“I don’t know yet, but when I find it, do you want to come with me?”

I was breathless.

“Me?” I gasped.

“Why not? We could save a lot of money and then when the war comes, we can run away together on a ship and become terrible pirates.”

Just like that, the possibility of spending my life somewhere that wasn’t my home opened up before me. I felt very strange, and everything seemed suddenly so much bigger and real than it was before. If I could leave, would I?

“Well, if I was with you, I might like to,” I said bashfully.

“Good.” He grinned.

That was the third time I thought about war.

In any case, we had a lovely time together, talking and splashing about in the freezing water, and the day ended with him walking me home, which was the crowning achievement of my short and insignificant life. And far more than half the other girls could boast.

A week later I was invited to spend time with him again, and after another month, it was my mother telling the others that Jameson Johan was destined to be her future son-in-law. And neither I nor James bothered to correct her. In our childish lives, with our childish wants, and fears; war and invasion on the far-off horizon of sunny skies could hardly hold a candle to first love and plans of adventure.

Wouldn't it have been wonderful if that's how things stayed?