Guinevere Emberblight was seventeen years old when she decided it was time to put all her training to the test and become a true musketeer. The year was 1653, five years after the Thirty Years War and fifteen after it nearly destroyed her farm. Every day, after she finished her chores, she grabbed her sword and bow and arrow and practiced until dinner time (or in some cases - bedtime). This was to her mother’s disbelief. Still tormented by the trauma she experienced fifteen years ago as well as what happened in her younger years, she did not think Gwen should become a musketeer. She had to stick to the typical seventeenth century women practices: get married, have children, and start the family over again. Gwen was the heir of the Emberblight family - a solid half of the Illusion, but she was not interested in men. She wanted to protect her kingdom and people from further devastation that came with the Thirty Years War, but how could she convince her mother to let her go? In her mind, failure was a word - it was not the end of the world. Unfortunately, her mother did not think the same way she did.
Today, like most days in her kingdom, it was warm, sunny, and beautiful. Year round, average temperatures peaked between seventy and eighty degrees. The kingdom received ample rainfall, enough to grow crops and raise farm animals.
To give her a little more time to practice, Gwen got up at the crack of dawn and went to the barn where she practiced swordsmanship on a dummy and archery on haystacks. The farm animals watched her intrigued as she performed a front flip roll and shot her arrow. It hit her target, one haystack, with a bullseye. Proud of herself, Guinevere stood tall and proud with her bow hanging from her hand.
She was a beautiful, young woman who had long, blonde hair, gorgeous teeth, and blue eyes. Today, she wore her hair in a bun with a brown musketeer hat over it. She was dressed in a gold-trimmed, red and green dress, red pants, tall, brown boots, and a cream-colored cape that went down to the backs of her knees.
The farm animals did not take their eyes off her as she put her bow on her back, picked up her sword, and cartwheeled towards the dummy she usually practiced on.
Stopping in front of it, she held her sword at the ready and shouted at the dummy.
“Surrender already!” With that, she smacked the dummy’s sword out of his fake hand and announced in a proud voice, “For I am a musketeer!”
The animals were greatly impressed by how much Gwen’s improved in the past couple of weeks. She was a determined, young woman.
She pretended that an enemy snuck up on her from behind, put up her sword, and quickly drew her bow again. She peered into the gap in the barn’s ceiling and called to her father who watched her from the heavens.
“See me, Father? I will not let you down!” But then, she felt her quiver and embarrassingly admitted, “I’m out of arrows. Shoot. Well, it’s time to move on to swordsmanship then.” In the bright rays of the morning sun shining through cracks in the barn’s walls, she tossed her bow off to the side and drew her sword. The young lady held the blade up to her eye and prepared for a vertical slash, but then she noticed something. The sword that she knocked out of the dummy’s hand was stuck in the wooden wall. This was not unusual, considering Gwen practiced so much, but she did not want her mother to find the stuck sword. Therefore, she set her own sword down on a table and approached the dummy’s sword. Grabbing it, she pulled as hard as she could, but she only succeeded with causing the barn to shake a bit. Eventually, she released the sword, but she ended up crashing down in a haystack due to how fast it came out.
The pigs hid behind their ears while the horses lowered their heads, and the sheep tucked their heads in their wool.
From where she rested, Gwen sighed, but she immediately started to panic when she heard boots coming in her direction from outside. Oh snap! If that was her mother, she would be furious with her. FYI, Gwen did not have the best relationship with her. As quick as a flash, she leaped to her feet and stuffed her musketeer supplies in another haystack, but she was too late. Her mother caught her right as she covered her sword with hay.
She entered the barn, with a water barrel under her arm, and asked her daughter,
“Gwen?”
”Nothing!” was the first thing Gwen shouted out. She forced a nervous smile and whipped around to face her mother.
At the sight of her, a suspicious look flashed across Elisabeth’s face, and she set the barrel down. Just like Gwen, she had long, blonde hair, but hers was a bit curlier. Unlike Gwen, though, her eyes were emerald green, and she wore a white, puffy-sleeved with a green dress over it.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as she approached her. “You normally don’t get up this early.”
”Oh, you know,” Gwen sarcastically chuckled, and she waved her hand, “I wanted to start early today.”
”Right.”
Elisabeth was not convinced. As she pushed the water barrel off to the side, her eyes landed on the haystack Gwen stood in front of.
“And is there a reason why it looked like you were hiding your sword when I came in here?”
The second she said that, her daughter turned red from her heels up.
“Admit it, dear.” Elisabeth spoke in a stern voice, “You were training to become a musketeer again, weren’t you?”
”A musketeer?” Gwen asked in a sarcastic voice. “No! Of course not! What gave you a crazy idea like that?”
“Whatever.” Elisabeth said, even though she did it appreciate the fact that Gwen lied to her. “We’ll discuss it later. For now, I want you to get changed into your dress. Lose the pants. We have a few things to do this morning.”
“Like what?” Gwen wanted to know. She followed her mother over to the tack wall in the barn where she adjusted a few saddles, girth’s, and bridles for the horses.
Elisabeth accidentally pinched herself with one girth’s buckle and whispered, “Ow!” Shaking out her hand, she faced her daughter and put her arm around her shoulders. “Just a few chores in the village.”
”Okay, and why do I need to lose my pants?” Gwen liked having the freedom of both legs and hips. Why couldn’t she just keep on what she was wearing now?
Unfortunately, her question made her mom slightly angry, and she snapped at her.
“Because you are a young woman going into public!” She shoved a saddle into Gwen’s chest, knocking the breaths out of her. “You cannot wear pants! How else will the suitors know you’re my daughter?”
”Suitors?” Shocked, Gwen dropped the saddle. It barely missed her toes. “What are you talking about?” she asked in a frightened voice.
”Snap!” Elisabeth smacked her hands to her forehead and hid behind them. “Me and my big mouth!”
”I don’t want to get married!” Angry, Gwen narrowed her eyebrows and shouted, “I’m seventeen now! It’s have the right to make my own decisions!”
”That’s just it.” Elisabeth argued back, “You’re not a child anymore. It’s time for you to find a husband. I’m getting old. I want some grandchildren.”
”Oh, Mom, you’re sick.” Gwen gagged. “This is the seventeenth century.” She was not ready for children. It wasn’t time for her to find a husband, it was time for her to become a musketeer. She angrily pushed past her mother and stopped behind another wall in the barn that had all the gardening tools hanging from it. While there, she pressed her hand up against it and performed some musketeer exercises. The curious farm animals watched the whole argument. Even the chickens.
Elisabeth turned in her daughter’s direction and crossed her arms.
“Guinevere, you are the heir of the Emberblight family. The war took everything from me: my husband, my friends, my family, my colleagues, my farm, and here you are, treating it like it’s some kind of joke.”
”Well, that’s more your problem than mine’s, right?” Gwen asked in a slightly rude voice. She picked up her foot and stretched her leg up the length of her back.
This annoyed Elisabeth. To grab her daughter’s attention, she smacked the back of her head, which messed up her whole exercise.
Guinevere felt the anger boiling inside her, and she turned to face her mother.
In an annoyed voice, she said, “Listen, Jungle Jim. Normally, I would let that slide, but not this time. I know you suffered much in your early years, but you have to learn to just move on. Failure is a word. It’s not the end of the world. You can’t keep me wrapped around your fingers forever. I have a dream, and I intend to follow through with it!”
“Not in this family,” was her mother’s response. Reaching down, she picked up he saddle Gwen dropped and once again shoved it into her chest. “In this family, you are a woman, not a man, and a woman’s job is to keep the the light in the family - not to shroud it in twilight. They do not reach their goals by merely stabbing dummies and shooting haystacks. They reach them by having children, and it’s time for you to have children. Now, I’m going to the house, and I expect you to follow me. The carriage will be here in thirty minutes. Trust me, daughter. You will not regret this visit.” She gave Gwen’s head one last snack and marched out of the barn.
Gwen was not angry - oh no, she was furious! Clenching her fists, she yelled into the atmosphere and kicked the gardening wall.
The farm animals backed away from her and hid in the deepest corners of their pens or stalls. They let the girl release her anger in peace.
She took her hat off her head and violently swung it back and forth a few times. Afterwards, she chucked it behind her. Backing away from the wall, she tripped over her own feet and fell onto her back in a pool of sunlight that shone through the hole in the barn’s ceiling. The rays covered her in a warm, yellow light, and she held her arms out to her sides.
Gwen looked into the clear blue sky and called to the heavens.
“Father? What am I supposed to do? I want to become a musketeer, like you, but I don’t know how to find a way past Mom’s wall. If you could give me something, anything. A clue of some sort. Please.”
Nothing. There was no answer. The day remained still and quiet. Well, so much for that idea. What sort of father didn’t help his own daughter hop over her stepping stones? The kind that didn’t care - that’s who.
Guinevere waited for a good five minutes, but she eventually gave up trying to communicate with her father. How could she? He was dead. She pushed herself to a sitting position and gripped her knee. Even though a little voice inside her head told her she would never become a musketeer, Gwen did not give up.
The farm animals escaped their hiding places and watched as she stood up and brushed herself down.
With a serious look on her face, Gwen returned to the haystack where she hid her musketeer weapons and pulled them out. She put her bow on her back, restocked her arrows, and held her sword in her right hand.
Under the rays of sunlight, she told herself, “I am a musketeer.” Then, with that said, she started to practice again.
Gwen practiced the vertical slash, the horizontal slash, and the lunge with her sword. She sprinted around the barn and chopped haystacks in half.
“Be strong, Guinevere,” she told herself as she practiced, “I may be a woman, but I am not useless.” Chopping up another haystack, she put up her sword and next climbed a ladder that took her to a platform in the barn’s roof. Up here, there was a rope, and Gwen grabbed it.
Down below, the animals gulped when they saw what she was about to do.
Gwen jumped from the platform, swung forward, and let the rope go. While airborne, she put an arrow in her bow and shot it. The arrow traveled in a straight line and hit the pig's pen down below right in the center of it.
Amazed, the pigs approached the arrow and examined it.
Gwen landed on her feet right when she hit the barn’s floor again and performed one more slash with her sword.
“Ah,” she said from where she stood, and she cracked her shoulders, “That felt good. Now it’s time to make it official.” She couldn't be a musketeer without her hat.
The young woman switched her attention over to where she threw her hat, but a question mark appeared above her head when she didn’t see it! What the heck? Where did her hat go? It was here just five minutes ago.
Confused, Gwen searched the barn, but sure enough, she couldn’t find her hat anywhere! No! She couldn't lose it! That hat was very important to her! It belonged to her father. It was the hat he wore when he died. There were even a few blood stains left over in it.
The teenager checked the animals’ pens and stalls, but she had no luck tracking down the hat. Then, she discovered something. It was a paw print, which had seemingly appeared from out of nowhere in the dirt. However, that wasn’t the only paw print. There was a whole line of them. The prints went out of the barn and in the direction of the forest behind Gwen’s farm. She used to play there all the time when she was little. Strangely, the prints started right where her hat landed when she threw it.
Out of pure curiosity, Gwen followed them. She armed herself with her sword and bow and arrow in case something or someone ambushed her. The young lady held her bow out in front of her and put an arrow in it so she didn’t have to fiddle around with getting it ready.
As she exited the farm, the farm animals exchanged glances with one another and curiously asked each other about what it was that stole Gwen’s hat.
The young lady did not know what to expect on her journey, but whatever it was that took her hat, she was ready for it. After all, she was the heir of the Emberblight family.
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