It was a small convent at the northern edge of nowhere.
Miria Lowe sat on the shabby cot she had been given, hugging her knees. The window had no glass, and through the gaps in the boards the winter wind blew in like needles.
This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
Those words alone had been circling in her head for months now.
I was meant to be a Saint. Wanted by the Crown Prince, more beautiful than anyone, more beloved than anyone. And yet, how.
That woman who ran from her duties had arranged it all from behind the scenes. The old men of the Church had cut me loose. Prince Alfred had traded me in for a new woman.
—None of it is my fault.
With frozen fingertips, Miria repeated it, over and over.
That night, Miria slipped out of her cot.
She sat, dazed, on the rim of the old well out back, half frozen over. The bottom was too dark to see. It was deep enough that if she leaned over, she felt it might swallow her.
Enough.
No one called her anymore. The voice that said "Miria" had faded long ago. Mother of the heir. Saint candidate. Fake. Only names like those had ever passed through her.
She could no longer even remember the face of the child she had borne.
If it ended here, no one would be troubled. No one would cry.
Miria hooked one knee over the rim of the well.
"—Cold one tonight, isn't it."
A voice.
She turned to find an old nun standing there with a lantern in hand. It was Hanna, the eldest sister in the convent.
Miria braced herself. She was going to be scolded, she thought. Here came the sermon.
But Hanna only lowered herself onto the rim of the well with a little grunt.
"It's a good well. Sweet water. —I've got to draw from it again tomorrow, you see. Can't have you falling in."
That was all she said, and she laid one wrinkled hand gently on Miria's back.
There was hardly any strength in it to pull her back. And yet Miria's knee came down from the rim all on its own.
After that, a strange stretch of days began.
Hanna asked nothing of Miria. Not remorse, not gratitude, not even prayer. She simply worked, every morning, without fuss.
She drew water from the well, baked hard bread, cooled the foreheads of feverish children, and scrubbed floors no one ever looked at, in silence.
At first, Miria didn't lift a finger. Menial work like this wasn't for her. Not for the eldest daughter of a baron's house, a former Saint candidate.
Hanna didn't reproach her. She quietly did Miria's share of the work as well.
One day, the snow left them out of firewood. Hanna was down with a high fever, confined to bed.
If the fire went out, the bedridden old folk would freeze.
For a while, Miria lay in her cot with her hands over her ears. —Someone else can do it. It's not my fault.
But no one came.
Before she knew it, Miria was outside. With frozen, trembling hands, she was splitting wood. For the first time in her life, the skin of her own hands tore and beaded with blood.
When she carried the split wood in her arms and fed it to the fire—
one of the old folk spoke in a hoarse voice.
"...Thank you kindly, miss."
Miria's hands stopped.
Thank you.
It was a word no one had said to her in a very long time. Not once, while she was revered as a Saint, nor when she was called a consort.
And then she realized.
Back when she was revered, she had never done a single thing for anyone.
Her fever gone, Hanna got up and headed for the well as always.
Miria followed her back and found the words slipping out.
"Sister... why don't you get angry? At a woman like me. A woman who ruined everything herself."
Hanna laughed as she hauled up the bucket, without turning around.
"Me, I used to live blaming everybody else for everything too. My husband's fault, my parents' fault, bad luck's fault. —And that's how I lost it all."
"..."
"It's easy, while you're resenting people. Means none of it's on you."
The water in the bucket glinted and swayed in the morning light.
"But you know. As long as you're blaming other people, your life never gets to be your own."
Miria stood rooted to the spot.
Big Sister Rosalind's fault. The Church's fault. Prince Alfred's fault.
—All this time, I've been handing my life over to someone else.
Wanting the Crown Princess's chair—really, she had only wanted someone to acknowledge her. If she took it from Big Sister, it felt like it would prove her worth. So she took it. Dirtied her hands, brought people down.
And in the chair she had won that way, had she ever once stood on her own two feet?
"...It was my fault, wasn't it."
Said aloud, it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. Why had it taken her so long to see it?
No tears came. Instead, it felt as though the thorn that had been lodged in her chest all this time had slipped out with a small, quiet click.
When the snow melted and the soil of the fields began to turn dark and damp,
Miria was sowing seeds in the furrows she had tilled with her own hands. She was no longer ashamed of her dirt-caked nails or her knobbly fingers.
She paused and looked up at the southern sky.
That child—Lionel—was surely growing up healthy in some palace now. Never knowing anything about her. That was fine. As she was now, she had no right to call herself his mother.
But, Miria thought.
Someday.
However many years it took. Once she had become someone who stood on her own feet, earned her keep with her own hands, and was thanked by someone—then she would hold her head high and go to see him.
Not as a Saint, not as a consort. Just as one person, named Miria.
"I'll come to see you."
She said it softly, to the empty field.
Her voice no longer trembled.
At dusk, when she came back with water from the well, Hanna spoke as she mended.
"Working hard, aren't you, Miria."
Her name. Someone had called her name.
Miria set down the bucket and, for a while, savored the sound of it. Her own name, which no one had called for so long.
"...Yes."
As she answered, the corners of her mouth lifted, just slightly. She knew perfectly well why.
That night, the cot was as hard as ever. So was the wind blowing in through the gaps in the window.
Even so, she was done hugging her knees.
Miria gently opened both her hands.
Palms covered in calluses, smelling of soil. Hands that belonged to no one but herself.
—Someday, without fail. I'll hold my head high and go to see him.
That was Miria's one and only dream now.
And Miria walked on, like someone who already knew that dream would come true.