The Strength of Love
Chapter 2 - Rebuilding
Two days after the massacre, the women and children, and a few old men that had fled the village, began trickling back home one by one. Rin was never so happy to see someone as she was when these people, friends and neighbors of her family, began to reappear. Most of their men had been slaughtered, however. More than half the population of their village had been killed. Another quarter of them, mostly women and children, had been taken. The ones that came back began to slowly bury and burn their dead. The funeral pyres were lit and going for days on end. The only ones buried were the ones that had farms with soft enough soil for their dead to be placed in it. As their own farm was used to grow cotton, their ground was not nearly as fertile as others’. Her father and mother had been taken and burned together in a pyre outside their home. Only one man came to mourn their loss next to her. He was an older man. He had lived in the village for more than eighty years. He had seen it destroyed more than once. But they always managed to rebuild, he told her. Rin had no idea how old the man actually was. No one looked older than twenty. But she knew this man had been the great-grandfather of one her playmates. He stared at her intently when she said nothing back to him. He grunted in disapproval and turned away.
She watched him walk away with a limp. He had been struck with the blunt side of a sword and his leg had been broken. Their healer had been one of the ones captured, so he had only a crude splint on his leg. She shrugged her tiny shoulders and turned back to her parents’ burning corpses. She watched until they were just smoldering ashes then went to the garden to start her afternoon weeding.
When Princess Aara heard about the slaughter in the village closest to her western border, she immediately sent a troop of Protector Wolves to the area. It was too little, too late, but she vowed that she would NOT have that kind of thing happen in her lands again.
Along with two of her own males, Hiei and Kurama, the Protectors quickly found the bandits that had caused so much suffering. They put up a fight, and instead of being brought back for trial, the entire lot of them had been killed. The Protectors lost only one wolf to the marauders.
With their kidnappers slain, the sad group of women and children and a handful of young men returned to their former homes. Within weeks the houses were beginning to take shape once again. They had help from a few nearby villages as well. Some of the unmated men from those villages stayed. They mated with a few of the widowed women and began their new lives.
The village, beginning to re-grow itself once again, had little time to waste caring for the tiny orphaned child on the outer rim of town.
Two months after the slaughter, Rin was dismayed to find her tiny garden was no longer producing the vegetables she had been living off of. There was a chill in the air, and she knew winter was not far away. She had no idea how she would survive. As she sat on her dirt floor, contemplating her future, a shadow came over her. She looked up with a gasp. The old man was back. He stood staring at her for long moments. Finally, he spoke. “I suppose we can give you a bowl of soup now and then, but don’t go thinking we will feed you all the time. We have our own to worry about.” With that, he turned and walked away. He had taken to mate one of the widowed women that had been captured. She had returned with her three children, all under the age of eight. Last night, she had prattled on and on about the fate of the little girl now living alone. She was the only orphan under the age of fifteen in the village. All the other children that had lost both parents had other family to take them in. That one little girl had no one. However, none of the villagers would take her in either. There were too few able-bodied men to care for so many women and children as it was. It was all they could do to provide for their own families.
All through that first winter, tiny Rin fought for every morsel of food she could. When she could find nothing to eat, she went begging to the neighbors. They gave her what scraps they could, but there was barely enough to keep her alive. At only four years old, she was too young to be much help with anything during the winter. During planting and harvesting season she could earn her way, but with winter hard on, there was nothing she could do but live hand to mouth. And so her struggles went.
When springtime finally came, Rin was overjoyed! She could now earn enough food to keep her through the next winter. She set out every day, pestering whom she could for work. Some farmer would take pity on her and set her to work. But her pay was not what she was hoping for. Each day she earned merely a few vegetables or seeds. The seeds she planted in her own tiny garden, which was sadly neglected most days. She had hoped to earn a sow or a calf, or even a few hens, but livestock was precious, since all had been stolen the previous year. She was even laughed at when she pointed to one when asked what she wanted for her day’s work. She was given a few carrots instead. Her cotton fields lie dormant. Nothing grew there any more. She could not trade it off either. No one wanted it. To farm cotton was a hard task that destroyed the soil after only a few years. She had not known it, but her father had planned on moving, tin roof and all, to more fertile soil the next year. And so the spring and summer passed by, with work tiring her out and only receiving a small portion of food every day as payment. She was no longer hungry all the time, but she knew winter was again fast approaching. She had only a few small potatoes and onions stored away. Nothing else would keep for as long as she needed it to for the winter. She unhappily bent back to her task of pulling the weeds from her tiny plot, shoving thoughts of winter’s impending starvation aside for now. As summer began to give way to autumn, the villagers met to discuss the lack of livestock. The elders proposed a fish reserve. It was shot down by many of the farmers due to the enormous debt it would bring, but Hiei happened to be at that particular meeting. He was only there to check on the progress of the village. The Protectors only made their rounds in the area every few months, so life was still pretty harsh. He had heard reports that the village was once again righting itself, but he wanted to see it for his own eyes.
Hiei took the idea of the fish reserve back to his Princess. She quickly surmised it to be a viable option and buried herself for two weeks with the planning of it. When it was ready, she sent out her own people to the small village.
The villagers greeted the large group of travelers warily. They were not trusting of anyone they did not know. When Hiei stepped forward and told them what had been planned, there was a shout of joy heard all around the village. Rin came out to see what was going on.
For almost three weeks she watched work on the reserve take place. She even managed to earn some eggs from one of the workers by bringing him tools when he asked for them. She had not had meat in so long! That night she was so hungry for the protein in the eggs, she broke one open and slurped it down raw. It was not as satisfying as she had hoped, though, so she was forced to try her hand at cooking the other two. It came out a mess of half-runny, half-burnt scrambled eggs, but they were the most delicious thing she had had to eat in months!
By the time winter set in, the fish reserve was complete. It was well-stocked with fresh-water trout, salmon, and catfish, all of which could survive the harshest of winters. The farmers were instructed to make sure to poke holes in the ice once a day at least, however. The water was not free-flowing, so it was not oxygen rich. The farmers diligently learned what they could about the reserve before seeing the workers off amidst loud cheering and well-wishing.
Rin watched them leave, smiling inwardly. She would not starve this winter after all.