Milk E-Book

Ithaka O.

• Herausgeber: Imaginarium Kim
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

In the quiet village of Eldham, ninety-year-old Sonje Rapp holds a secret more enduring than time: her cow, Anabelle, whose milk carries the power to heal, preserve… and perhaps, reverse fate itself.

When Sonje’s estranged grandson Herrick returns, desperate and debt-ridden, he sets his sights on her most precious companion.

But Anabelle is no ordinary cow, and Sonje is no ordinary old woman. What begins as a quiet standoff between generations spirals into a battle over memory, legacy, and the mysterious bond between a woman and her magical beast.

Will Sonje protect her secret or pass it on?

*A tender tale about the magic we find in staying put and the freedom that comes from letting go.

Leseprobe

MILK

A LONG SHORT STORY

ITHAKA O.

IMAGINARIUM KIM

© 2021 Ithaka O.

All rights reserved.

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

No part of this story may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Also by Ithaka O.

Thank you for reading

1

Sonje wished she had the energy to glare at the lazy farmers in the fields while she ran up the steep hill. But alas, the blazing sun burned the back of her neck and she was supposed to turn ninety tomorrow. When she’d been their age—thirty or fifty, twenty or forty, really, the exact number didn’t matter, what mattered was that all of them were less than half her age—being seen in the vicinity of an old lady panting and struggling like this would’ve been enough to get a kid clobbered to its senses, so it could remember its manners. But kids these days? Kids half her age? Oh, no. No such thing as offering an old lady with snow-white hair some help. To think that she had given them her precious cow’s precious milk when they were sick and wounded!

Maybe, to them, Sonje didn’t seem like she was running at all. To them, perhaps her “speed” wasn’t speedy enough. After all, Sonje had been known for her slowness since childhood. “Sonje the heavy-footed.” That was what the villagers of times past had called her. Villagers long dead.

But for heaven’s sake, couldn’t these villagers right here, very much alive and comparatively young, see how hard she tried to effectively breathe the air in and out? Couldn’t they hear her? It simply didn’t make sense that the definition of the word “run” depended on absolute speed. If that had been the case, anybody except the Olympic gold medalist would be forbidden from using that word because everybody would be too slow in comparison. In Sonje’s carefully gathered opinion of ninety years, the word “run” depended on how much the person performing the act was straining themselves. Hence it should’ve been abundantly clear to these youngster farmers that Sonje was most definitely running and needed some help, not strolling or ambling and therefore should be left alone.

She really wished she could have a cup of Anabelle’s milk.

Ah, but impossible! Also, Sonje should know better than expect anything from humans. For nearly all her life, she had guarded the village of Eldham against unnecessary sickness and sorrow, together with her dear cow Anabelle. But of course these younglings didn’t know that, just as the villagers of times past hadn’t known just how much literal truth their use of the word “heavy-footed” carried.

Only the cicadas kept her company with their steady buzzing. They hid under the thick foliage of the zelkovas. Those trees had been growing all around Eldham decades before there had been an Eldham. Thinking about the days in which she could’ve covered this short stretch in a heartbeat, Sonje wiped off the sweat stinging her eyes.