The Ruby Dream by Annie Cosby Page A

pushed me over the threshold of the little building. Maybe she was right.
There was no point in my burning another batch today.
    “We’ll make it all up
tomorrow,” she promised. Her smiling eyes were on me, but her hands were
already kneading another batch of dough.
    I tore off the apron and
hung it on my little peg by the door. There were two pegs there – one for
Sarah’s apron and one down low, near my waist, for my own. I’d been Sarah’s
helper for as long as I could remember – since I was only tall enough to
reach that low peg. And I realized just then that there would come a time when
I didn’t climb Diamond’s Peak every morning. If – no when – I went away with Wyn, I wouldn’t wear this apron
anymore. Then who would help Sarah bake for Killybeg?
    Surprised by my own
hesitance at this dream that had been so long in forming, I darted over the
rocks. I needed to see Wyn. He was the only one who would listen to my most
confusing and troubling thoughts without judgment. And his brilliant brown
eyes, warm as a scone fresh out of the oven, were just as comforting as his
words. His mere presence would tear my worries away.
    Or so I desperately hoped.
     

     
    The dusty path wound its way down the cliff
face, and my boots needed no direction. But as I hopped down the steep trail,
eyes on the shimmering surface of the sea, I nearly bowled right into Oren,
Killybeg’s resident boat maker.
    “Morning, lass,” he said
with a tip of his threadbare cap. It was a friendly gesture, but his beady eyes
appraised me with amusement and all his gestures felt threatening. He had a
scraggly beard and skin as tanned as leather, along with a notorious temper. It
was common knowledge that his late wife had disappeared under mysterious
circumstances. Of course, it was only the gossipy children of Killybeg that
claimed Oren himself had slain her with his own kitchen knife. Regardless of
its validity, however, the story sent shudders up my spine and I longed to run
back to Sarah and tell her the vile man was coming.
    “Going to find Wyn?” he said,
raising a filthy eyebrow. He’d had his eye on Sarah’s ringless finger for years
now. And despite her own discomfort with his attentions, and his flagrantly
drunken bouts, Sarah insisted that we be cordial, because Wyn was the boat
maker’s apprentice. He wouldn’t very well inherit the business one day if we
went around shunning Oren, would he? Or so she liked to say.
    He doesn’t want to be a boat maker
forever , I longed to tell her. But spilling about our plans would only
worry Sarah, who was apt to do something brash like lock her only son in the
cottage until she convinced him to stay.
    So I merely nodded in
Oren’s general direction, keeping my eyes low. I might have been obliged to be
polite to him when Sarah was around, but that didn’t mean I wanted to have a
conversation with him on my own.
    “He wasn’t in today,” the
man went on. “So I thought the two of you might be up to something.”
    I could very well have run
back to the bakery, and maybe things would have been different if I had gone
back. If I hadn’t gone to meet Wyn in the fields at all. But the air was cool
on my heated face, and the jagged Lorrha countryside stretched before me,
unending. My feet just wouldn’t turn back.
    Without a word, I moved
forward, and with a grunt, Oren continued on his way, too.
    As soon as I turned the
corner to the old diamond mine, I was out of his vision and the glory of the
day filled me up again, like an empty milk bottle. The afternoon unfolded
before me, a handful of hours for just me and Wyn, my oldest friend, my biggest
confidant. The gaping black hole of the abandoned mine opened to my right, a
testament to past days of furious mining. Lorrha was covered in mines laden
with precious stones – emeralds, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and amethysts.
It had an unnaturally high concentration of gems, which covered the land like a
thick carpet, making it a