Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Violet

Sage Flowers

What would you like to be when you grow up?

She didn't know that there was such a question. It certainly isn't a thing she has ever been asked. But recently she overheard this query directed at a boy who lives on a different street to them, a street that is edged with paving stones that get washed each morning.

The borrowed question occupies her as she rushes through her chores. She does not think she would like to be a sheep farmer like her father. Or is he still a farmer now that the flock is so sparse the sheep are like flecks scattered on the grasslands? She peruses the occupations of the women she has met. She is a girl, and girls become servants, mothers, dressmakers, nuns. She knows she doesn't want to be a nun. She doesn't know exactly why she feels this with such certainty, but the thought is as solid beneath her feet as the smart paving stones she is not allowed to walk on.

Her mother, who can normally answer most questions, only laughs at her and tells her she will be a good-for-nothing if she spends her days with her head in the clouds. So instead (when the chores are done) she lies in the garden and talks to her doll, whose bed is on a bank of earth under the sage bush. She has made her a blanket from sacking and leaves from the bush. When the purple flowers come, she scatters those on her too.

Her doll tells her she can be a princess with a large garden full of the most beautiful flowers and that she too will be able to sleep in a bed made of petals.

This is good to imagine, but she thinks that it is not something she will tell her mother.