The Pursuit of Liberty: Chapter 1

Preface

This is a story that I wrote for my wife. This first chapter has a lot of inside jokes. The following chapters that will be released every Monday evolve into an epic story of a young woman searching for truth, justice and liberty. If you enjoy feel free to comment and share with your friends. 

Chapter 1

A long time ago in a land far, far away was a village just under the ridge of a mountain side. In the middle of the village, across the street from the school house lived a baker, his wife and two children. The baker was a generous man. On every Saturday he would go with his daughter to the other side Hetvenöt Street. This is where the poorest of the poor lived in their village. Most of the people living on this side of the Hetvenöt Street were orphans, single mothers, and widows. When they would get there the baker would go and talk with the leaders of the orphanage and with some of the men that came to help. While his daughter, Liberty, would go and give bread to the people.

“Bread for the poor!” Liberty would say, “Come and get your bread.”

Now she did not say ‘bread for the poor’ in spite, but because when she was younger, people who were not from this side of Hetvenöt Street would come and try to take the bread. Liberty charged the people two farthings for a loaf of bread. This was to give the people pride. The baker always said, “Nothing is free, even salvation had its cost!” He believed that by charging the poor for their food it would encourage them to find work. By working they could earn money and with money they could throw off the chains of poverty and live as free people. Liberty of course thought that this was silly. She did not see the need to charge the orphans for the bread. She said that people were born free. Slavery is a mindset and has nothing to do with the money. She believed that God is the one who granted freedom, not money, people, or government.

She loved her father and had great respect for him. The baker of course was proud of his daughter. She was becoming a strong, educated, and virtuous young woman. Recently more than lately, she had started to challenge him on his philosophy of life. Not that it would ever appear that way, because the discussion always ended with ‘Father is always right’ and a hug.

After they were finished selling all the bread, Liberty would take the money that she had earned from selling the bread and give it to her father. He would then give it to the missionaries that ran the orphanage. While he was doing that Liberty would gather the children from the orphanage around and tell them stories. Today, she was telling the story about a princess named Aurora called Sleeping Beauty. She was never able to finish the stories with the children in one day, so it always took weeks to finish the stories. She had just gotten to the part of the story where Princess Aurora is all grown up and is singing the woods. “What was Aurora singing?” One of the little girls asked Liberty.

“It was a beautiful song that caused the birds in the sky and the leaves in the trees to join with her.” Liberty answered. 

“Sing it for us Libby! Please!” The children were getting really excited, because they loved Liberty and loved her stories.

“Okay, okay but you all have to join together with me. I need the boys to make the sound of the leaves in the trees 'whoosh, whoosh' and the girls have to make the sound like the birds 'chirp chirp tweet'." Liberty turned to a small boy with dark skin and said, “Joi, you have a big part to play. I need you to be the owl. Can you say hoot hoot…hoot hoot?”

Joi’s face burst into a huge smile, “Of course Miss Libby, HOOT! HOOT! HOOT! HOOT!”

As the children began to make the noises, Liberty began:

I wonder, I wonder
I wonder why each 
Little bird has someone
To sing to sweet things to
A gay little love melody?

I wonder, I wonder
If my heart keeps singing
Will my song go winging
To someone who'll find me
And bring back a love song to me?

As Liberty finished the song, the children clapped and cheered. They had been told to by the baker that anytime a woman sings or tells a story you should reward her with applause. Joi said, “Miss Libby I bet you sound just like Princess Aurora.”

 Liberty leaned down and kissed Joi on his cheek. His face became red and he wrapped his arms around her legs. Liberty knew it was not right to have favorites with the children, but if she was allowed she would take Joi home. Joi was a four years old orphan. He had been left at the missionaries door step when he was about one. His left leg had been broken when the missionaries had received him. The missionaries had called in one of their special doctors to come in and examine his leg when they received him. The doctor had told the missionaries that the leg seemed to have been broken for months and had not healed correctly. Every year the missionary doctor would come and give Joi a new brace. That brace had to last him a year so part of the year it was too big and the last part of the year it was too small. The other children made fun of Joi until Liberty had started to be especially kind to him.

As Joi was hugging Liberty, the baker came back and told Liberty that they had to go. The children all whined and asked if she could stay longer. She told them not to worry, because next week the Prince finds Princess Aurora in the woods and there is a battle with the Witch and the dragon. The children became excited and started talking about what they thought would happen. Only a few noticed that Liberty and her father where leaving.

The baker had already prepared the wagon and they were all set to go. Liberty waved to the children and then it seemed they were gone. Her father whistled the song that she had been singing. Liberty wished she could do more for the children.

“Daddo, isn’t there anything we could do for those children?”

“What else can we do Libby? They all need their fathers and mothers to take care of them, to provide for them. People need to start taking responsibility of the choices they make and their consequences. You know back in my time, men provided for their wives and children. Now all these men are running off and to go find gold, other women, and wars. Those children need their families and we cannot provide that.”

“But Daddo, that is the problem not the solution.”

He smiled at her, “You a bright young girl and I am proud of you, you know that?”

Liberty did not smile, because she felt that he was changing the subject and still not addressing the issue. She knew that if you did not smile back with that he would be forced to be kept in the conversation. This was one trick that her mother taught her.

“Your right Libby, I am focused on the problem, but I don’t know if there is a clear solution. We provide them with a means to obtain food. Whenever, we have extra money we have tried to hire them. I work with the council and we are trying to clean up the other side of Hetvenöt Street. I am not sure there is anything else we can do.”

“I think that the solution can be found in their education. Those children are never able to be educated and then they will grow up just like their fathers and chase the dreams of gold, women, and war.”

“Now just hold on Libby, the missionaries take care of their education. You don’t need to go start fixing something that isn’t broken.”

“But Daddo, it is broken! Here on our side of the village we have a good schooling and we are all able to travel to the capital to go to the university. None of those children are getting that type of education. They are being taught how to work, not how to think.”

“Why would teaching them to think be better for them than teaching them to work?”

Liberty could not come up with an answer right away. She decided that she would have to think about that further. Maybe, she would ask her teacher at school on Monday. Just then the sky began to get dark and they could hear off in the distance the rain coming.