The Sisters’ Story: The Legend of Queen Brighton and Sister Jasmine

By R.M. Dalton

The Sisters Story - Legend of Queen Brighton and Sister Jasmine

This is the story of two sisters who are born into a peaceful and beautiful isolated valley. But fate or Providence has a job for each of them far from home.

The story tells of how they find a path over the forbidding crags that hem their valley in, although nobody else believed it even existed, and so they make their way at last to the kingdom their ancestors fled from long ago, though as yet they do not know any of their history.

The girls grow into women; they were teenagers when they set out from home, and each finds what seems to be a place in life and a destiny - yet it is not to be.

The older meets her prince charming and marries him. For a while they reign happily enough, yet we see the cares and responsibilities that they bear as the rulers. The younger chooses another path and so they go their separate ways, as siblings generally do.

In differing ways also, grave trials and despair come to each. Each wrestles with hopelessness and temptations, yearning for the childhood love with which they supported each other, but not finding it.

So, still separated, each makes at length for home and peace, where they are reconciled and spend their days fruitfully in happiness, although the way home is not easy either.

The story is about conquest and overcoming, through courage, honesty, faith and love. It is about how two innocents go into the World and gain much, and loose much too. They return home, yet in the wisdom each has learned, the gifts they bring from the outside back to their rustic valley are only beneficial. They also leave behind something of the simple, honest and kindly ways of the Valley in the lands they visited.

This is not an allegory, although there may be parallels drawn about choices and their consequences and the sincere effort that repentance and returning may require. It is not a fairy story either - there is no fairy godmother, no wizard and no magic unless it be the magic conjured by love for another, and courage and a good heart. It is a story embodying hope and purpose, even when the actors in the story do not know at that time what it may be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477148877

R.M. Dalton

R. M. Dalton Roger Dalton was born in New Zealand, spent his boyhood in Armidale NSW and then moved to Townsville where he attended Townsville Grammar School. He studied architecture at Queensland University before returning to Townsville where he worked for several of the local practices. Roger has worked in Townsville, Cairns, Mackay and Port Moresby at varying times. He has travelled to Europe, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Nepal and New Zealand. He is a family man with 4 children.

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Copyright © 2012 by R.M. Dalton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 10/26/2013

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 1

O nce upon a time, there were two little girls and their names were Sophia and Naomi. They lived in a cave in a wood in a valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains with a swamp all around; a desert surrounded the swamp, and beyond the desert was a rough wild sea with rocks and reefs. What was beyond the big rough sea, no one knew. And no one wanted to know, except Sophia and Naomi.

The valley in the mountains was warm and fertile, with green grass for the cows and sheep, lots of bushes and leaves for the goats, crumbly black soil for the wheat, oats, and vegetables, and many big juicy fruit trees. The cave was dry, with a flat floor to make a bed on, and there were plenty of trees for bedding and firewood. There were a few families in the valley; each had their own cave, and they had all lived there forever, and no one wanted to live anywhere else. In fact, everybody believed there was nowhere else, except Sophia and Naomi.

The cows gave milk that they could make into cheese, cream, butter, and yoghurt. The goats gave milk to drink, and it was sweet, rich, and agreeable. All the animals gave manure, so did the chickens (did I mention the chickens?) to fertilise the soil, and the cows, goats, chickens, and geese gave meat to eat. The girls loved the animals and did not want to know which was to be eaten—but they were country girls, as you may have gathered, and birth, life, and death were no mystery to them. They understood that they could not keep every little bull calf and billy goat because the valley would be full in a few years’ time and there would be butting and fighting all day long.

The two young girls were very happy most of the time. The sheep gave soft wool, and the people also grew flax to weave into linen, so they had clothes for summer and winter. The people knew about weaving and knitting, and they could make dyes from vegetables, flowers, and leaves. Some of the sheep were black, but you must know that black sheep are really dark brown, with lighter wool underneath, so the children had white, cream, brown, yellow, red, and orange to choose from, whenever they needed a new garment. They had blue too, but blue dye was hard to make, so blue was only for special garments.

Sophia was nine and Naomi was seven when their grandfather died. Never before in their lives had a person died. There were two other children born in their time, but while everyone grew older each year, they did not notice, for the changes are slow and gentle with country people living happy and comfortable lives. So they never knew people could die. They could have known if they had thought about it. After all, did not Grandfather have a grandfather of his own? He used to talk about him sometimes. Great-grandfather was not living in the valley, was he? But the children did not think about that, and why should they?

Grandfather died of old age, and very peacefully, so there was nothing so terribly frightening about it for the two girls, but they began to think about things they had never thought about, and this was the beginning of growing up. The older thought more deeply than the younger, which is only natural. Even though Grandfather’s body was respectfully buried on a small rise a little distance from the cave, they knew he was gone. All the families gathered for a memorial when the old man died. There was no church or priest in the valley, yet still they had their simple ceremonies for important things like marriage, naming babies, and burials, and they had festivals each year, one in spring to welcome the fruit blossom and the new grass, and one in autumn to celebrate the harvest. The people gave thanks, and up until now Sophia and Naomi had not asked who they were thanking, nor at that time did they wonder where, if anywhere, did Grandfather go—the real him that is, not his shell that they placed in the ground.

Afterwards all the families gathered in the cave and had a party. It was a slightly sad party, because they all missed the old man, but they were grateful for his life—it was that they were celebrating. They began to talk about him. Mother and Father remembered when they were children, when Grandfather, who was her father, was a young man. He had seemed old to them at the time. All children think their parents are old. Now, looking back, they remembered his brawny shoulders, brown hair and big beard, and loud merry laugh, whereas Sophia and Naomi remembered him as soft spoken, grey haired, wrinkled, gentle, and kind. So this was a surprise.

The other children had been sent home after dinner, but the girls were home, and so they stayed, just beyond the firelight, and listened to the grown-ups talking. Naomi was dozing off, her head resting, round and heavy like a melon, on Sophia’s shoulder as they sat cross-legged, with their arms around each other. The grown-ups forgot to tell them to go to bed. Sophia was half asleep too. She had been surprised to feel the hollow place inside her chest that had appeared just when Poppie died—the place where happy feelings about him used to live, where he had always seemed to be, even when they were apart, when he was out fishing, or she was away with the goats.

Did he take a piece of me with him? she wondered, her eyes beginning to brim over, and do the others all feel the same way too? But she did not know quite how to talk about it. Very suddenly, but in a warm joyful way, as all the talk about Grandfather’s life wrapped itself around her, she felt the hollow place fill up with memories, and that was when she began to doze off too. Oh, Poppie, she whispered, I will remember you. I am glad I knew you.

Then something they were saying caught her attention. Mother was recalling how Grandfather used to tell her about his grandfather, Abel. Mother said how she had forgotten all about it. Old Abe had left the valley when he was young and come home a year and a half later almost dead. They had to nurse him for months before he was strong again. Sophia sat bolt upright: Naomi mumbled a bit at being moved. Leave the valley! thought Sophia, I did not know you could leave the valley! Where did he go? What happened? What is there to see outside? And are there people outside?

But it was a long time before she had any answers.

The other thought that began to worry her was this. My grandfather had a grandfather. Did Old Abe have a grandfather? Did he have a grandfather? Where did we all come from? Was there a first person in the valley, and if so, when? Then she realised (and she tossed her head and clicked her tongue for being silly) there must have been a whole first family at least, or more, otherwise the first person would have died alone, but instead, now there were lots of people. So far as she knew, the whole world lived in the valley, and that was what she had always thought, not that she had thought about it very much, really. But now, she was thinking about it and was often caught daydreaming, when she should have been gathering eggs or bringing in the black-and-white milk cow or combing out some wool.

You must realise that these were quite grown-up thoughts for a little girl of nine. But Sophia was a thoughtful child. I would tell you she was intelligent and precocious, only you might not understand. That means she was clever and advanced for her age. Her hazel eyes glowed with wisdom since she was only small. She was a quick learner, cheerful and willing, and was often saying things that were observant, making the grown-up who was teaching her smile and nod or look surprised.

For over a year, she kept her thoughts to herself. The next year after that, about the anniversary of Poppie’s death, when one of the mothers across the stream had a new baby, her thoughts had become settled into an idea. She talked about it with her sister, because the two were firm friends as well as sisters. In trying to explain herself to Naomi, who had not yet grown up enough to fully understand, even though she was a lively and intelligent child also, Sophia had to struggle to set her ideas into order. It is always true that teaching something to someone else is the truest way to learn it yourself.

Sophia decided that some people must have found their way into the valley, long ago, from somewhere else. There must have been people outside once, even if they were not there any more. There had to be something on the other side of the crags. She wanted very much to know what had happened and why with all these things. Naomi sat quietly, listening, sometimes asking a question, and sometimes objecting that what Sophia was saying could not be true. Then there was a pause and she said, Could it? She was drawing wavy lines in the path with a stick. Then she stopped and, in her direct, practical way, said, Let’s just ask everybody. Someone ought to know.

That was easier said than done. If you have tried asking neighbours, uncles, aunts, and great-aunts difficult questions about things they do not understand or do not want to think about or do not think you ought to know about at your age, you will have some idea of what happened. If not, try asking about babies or God, and you will see soon enough.

After many scoldings and I’m too busy right nows and whatever nexts, they decided that it was true that no one knew how they came to be in the valley or what, or who, was outside it. What is more, the people were not bothered about knowing. There seemed to be a vague fear about the other side. This was probably the almost-forgotten memory of how Abel came back so hurt, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. There may have been other even older memories hidden away, now no more than a vague unease; who can say! The children were often answered with a shrug. When they asked what was beyond the mountains where the sun came from or went to, they were answered, Nothing is or The sky. If they kept asking, they were told to go away and do something more useful.

For a while, they stopped asking, since there seemed to be no way to find out. So another year and a bit passed. In winter, the smooth white quilt of snow came lower down the shoulders of the mountains. The stream grew a beard of crackly clear ice along its edges. It had frozen right over for a whole week thirty years ago, but not since. The sky turned a watery pale blue with thin wisps of high cloud, when it was not overcast and grey, and the moon, when it was out, often had a halo around it. Spring came, when the lower snows melted and the stream turned a milky blue, running strongly, then the meadows below the rocks peeped through the snow, showing palest green, dotted with myriads of blossoms, while the cherry trees made snowstorms of pink petals, the apple trees followed with white, the bare birch trees put on their delicate tints, the pines looked glossy and strong, swaying gently, the willows put out buds, lambs were born and ran around giddily, as too did the little goat kids, whose frolics were lovely to see. Summer came with all the trees in full leaf, the pale green turning to rich dark. Pools of shade collected ruminating cows at midday, green baby fruit appeared in the orchards, the grain grew tall then started to set seed, and patient ewe sheep got some rest as the lambs weaned themselves and took to the green herb. The long grass was mowed and dried into hay. Autumn followed, the loveliest season of all. The beeches turned gold, the oaks brown, the maples turned an amazing scarlet, then the leaves all blew away, leaving a straight line lacework of bare branches and twigs to break up the red misty sunsets, which seemed to come so early. The grain turned to gold too and was harvested and threshed, the straw was piled up for bedding, and the frosts high up in the mountains made them sparkle in the sun. The little waterfalls high up turned into white ribbons.

Next autumn, at the festival, one of the girls’ cousins from the next cave married a cousin from across the stream, so it was a jolly festival indeed. The new wine was put away, while the first of the old wine was drunk to their happiness. Most of the grapes that grew in rows on the sunniest slopes were dried into raisins, but some of the richest purple ones were made into red wine. Also the best of the white grapes were made into a crisp dry refreshing drink. The wine was put into goatskins, to be saved for the special occasions. After the wedding, the very next day, the annual hunt was due. The groom caused much laughter when he insisted he would come and leave his new wife at home, while his bride in her blue-trimmed white wool robe and garland of pretty autumn leaves in her chestnut hair pretended to be cross, until they all laughed merrily and he kissed her and agreed not to go hunting ever again if she did not like it. They all laughed again, because they knew how fond they were of the hunt and of each other—she and he used to tag along on the hunt when they were little. Since everyone enjoyed the hunt, they