The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) by L. B. Joramo

Mathew was . . . he talked to me like I was his treasure. What woman doesn’t wish to be cherished by her husband?
    So why was I still going to meet with Jacque?
    Simply, it felt like I would be ripping off my own arm if I weren’t going to meet him.
    On the western line of my family’s land lay a small orchard. Two lines of peach, apple and crabapple trees were strung together next to the stone and split-plank fence, which dispersed itself into the woods that lay on the hill to the north of my land. Above that squat hill was a larger one with even denser deciduous and evergreen trees called, Punkatasset Hill.
    All the leaf bearing trees held tiny, minute buds in their branches that were just cracking and beginning to bloom. Spring was surely coming. I plucked a delicate apple branch and smelled the green growth. While fiddling with the apple branch’s promise, I pondered if I should sow maybe a fourth of the field, then the gamble wouldn’t be too great if the snow would come again and destroy the seeds in the ground.
    I grew barley and oats; although, I was considering a nice red wheat. I loved watching the grain grasses grow. Some blades of grass would cut through the Massachusetts black-brown soil like the elderly, rounded and stooped; some would grow like a claymore, its dagger-like end shooting straight for the sky. Yet in the end, they would all grow uniform, Roman sentry hats of straight, proud, golden-red plumes of fruit waving toward the heavens and finally falling shame-faced back toward the earth when the grain was ready for harvest.
    I was proud that I possessed all the knowledge of how grain grows; I was pleased with myself that I knew how to irrigate from the swollen waters of the Concord. Becoming a farmer, I was rewarded with being able to see how my labor provided for my mother and sister and Jonah, but I had never selected it for my occupation. Jacque had asked me once what I would choose, if given the opportunity. I could only tell him that I, being a woman, would never be given the opportunity.
    That twist of irony didn’t get by me. I was walking into the forest that I knew as well as the deer and squirrels that vacated the lush land, and yet I was not free, while many men in Lexington, men of high rank and patriots to the core, were arguing how to gain more freedom from our mother country.
    What would I do with freedom? Who would I be? I smiled as I thought about moving to Paris to eat chocolate and let French men coo over me. But I knew I didn’t want that. Or would I? I smiled, shaking my head. If given complete freedom to choose my own partner in life who would I choose? Mathew was so sweet and kind and . . . If I could renegotiate with Mathew, and still be considered a woman of virtue in society, would I ask Jacque to be mine? I laughed at the absurdity. Why even think of freedom when I knew my fate was handed to me the day I was born? Yes, it was best just to put freedom, true love, and fairy tales on a high shelf far away from me.
    But why, then, was my heart tormented so? Why did I even have these thoughts? Why couldn’t I just build a resistance against Jacque and wanting more from life?
    Although it was too early, I ventured to where Jacque and I would meet. I let down my hair and inserted the natural design of the branch to loop through my locks.  
        My father had told me stories of the Fae people, and one wood nymph who fell so in love with her forest she married it. With my heart lingering on a man I would never get to hold in my arms, I didn’t think marrying nature was so crazy as I had when I had heard the tale as a child. Now I understood why a fairy would want to cling to the copse. I had more fondness for the woods than farming. I knew more about how to walk without a trail than I did about grain. And I had always found such comfort in the trees outstretched arms, the soft floor of needles and leaves and occasional patches of grass or wild flowers.
    But, again, why even