like it needed to connect with something. Ingrid always took the blow for Katherine. She couldn’t stand to see her younger sister hurting. But seeing Father’s expression, and hearing about the job, she knew today he wouldn’t settle for just whipping Ingrid. He’d come after them both. He grabbed a strand of Katherine’s hair and tugged. Katherine cried harder.
“Is that all you’re good for, girl? To make me angry?” he shouted again.
“Let her go!” Ingrid said, pushing his broad chest. It didn’t faze her father. Instead, it made him laugh. Ingrid felt her insides harden. Her anger was going to consume her.
“Ugly, stupid girl,” he said to Ingrid. “You’re even more worthless than she is.”
He pulled his hand back again.
The anger bubbled up inside her like a cauldron ready to overflow. Ingrid was tired of being called worthless and ugly. How could she be pretty when she lived in this hovel, wearing these rags? She would not let him hurt her again, and she wouldn’t let him dare go after her little sister. Pushing Katherine out of the way, Ingrid grabbed the fire poker from the hearth and struck him with it, hitting him in the head. He fell to the floor with a loud thump.
“Ingrid!” Katherine screamed.
But Ingrid didn’t blink. The look of shock that registered on his face after she hit him made her feel good. How do you like it? she thought.
She stared at her father as he lay on the ground, blinking rapidly as if he were in shock. She didn’t wait for him to get up. Instead, she grabbed Katherine’s hand and ran from their cottage. She rushed them down the path and didn’t stop till they were deep into the trees in the thick of the forest. Katherine cried most of the way.
“Where are we going? What are you doing?” Katherine kept asking as they ran.
But Ingrid didn’t have answers. All she knew was she had to get them as far away from that home as she could. She didn’t really think Father would come after them. Why would he? He didn’t love them. But she also knew she didn’t want him to find them, either. And so they kept moving.
“Are we going home?” Katherine asked after a while.
They’d been walking for what felt like hours now, and the sky was beginning to darken. Ingrid looked around for a way out of the forest. Finally, she saw a clearing.
Ingrid looked at Katherine’s tearstained face. “You want to go home to that man?” she asked. “You want to be treated like dogs? Mother wouldn’t want it! I don’t want it! And you shouldn’t, either.”
Katherine’s little lip started to quiver. “But where will we go?”
Ingrid had heard those words before. She remembered saying them to Mother at her bedside when she was near the end of her life. Her mother had told her to be good to her sister and to raise her well. Ingrid had promised, but she, too, had wondered where they should go. She knew Father wouldn’t be there for them. Not in the way Mother had. And Mother, somehow, understood. “Where doesn’t matter,” Ingrid remembered her saying, her breath staggered. Ingrid had wiped the sweat from her mother’s brow. “All that matters is that the two of you stay together.”
She wouldn’t break that promise to her mother. Ingrid pulled Katherine into her arms as her sister cried. “Wherever we go, it will be better than that place. The most important thing is that we stay together,” she said, echoing her mother’s words. She took Katherine’s hand again and led the way down the path.
When the two of them finally stepped out of the woods, they were no longer near their village. Nothing looked familiar. They’d traveled farther than she’d ever been before. She glanced around the planting fields in front of them and stared off at the mountain in the distance. A castle’s turrets peeked out from behind some trees. She wasn’t sure where they were, but this was as good a place as any to start their new lives.
When the farmer and his horse came out of nowhere, she didn’t even startle. Instead, holding Katherine’s small hand, she flagged the man down. His face was weather-beaten and his clothes ragged, but he looked kind.
“Please, sir,” Ingrid said, using her sweetest, most endearing voice, the one she usually only used for Katherine. “Would you have any need for my sister and I to do work on your farm? We’ll work hard, sir.