Excerpt: The Vinegar Smuggler

Juno was bored out of her mind working at the general store. By far she felt that the sad little store filled with all the same little people buying the same things week after week was the worst fate she could have ever had to endure. She looked on the names of the places the goods were sent from with absolute longing. She didn't know where any of the places were, but she wanted to be in those places anyways. The little town bored her... ironic since it had always said how bored it was with her. She couldn't get much of anyone to talk to her, which was fine, she wasn't interested in any of the things they had to talk about. This year's corn yield, the rain that was supposed to be coming, these were all of absolute importance to the town. Juno knew this, but she couldn't help but want to spend her waking hours thinking about something else.
She thought about the places on the crates. Gergundium, Oedekirk, Longroof, where were these places? Were they countries? Were they cities? Did a lot of people live there? What did the people do there? Were there mountains? Juno wanted to see real mountains. Durgaard was in a valley, so she could see far in the distance where the little ridges of foothills started, but nothing of the range of mountains that surely must be behind it. She had dreamed of the nowhere out in the mountains. By herself out in the nowhere, maybe she could have some goats, a little house away from anyone who would talk about how much wheat was selling for, and how hard it was to keep a souffle from falling.
She wanted to use her hands and her knowledge. What knowledge that was she didn't know. Her lack of schooling made it hard to deal with anyone other than Anna. Anna lived with her constantly ill parents out at the edge of town. If it was possible, Anna had spent even less time in school than Juno had. Anna lived in a run-down little shack with a few goats and a lone chicken. Once they had been relatively well-to-do for a small farm. They had made their money in eggs and a few things they made with eggs. They had managed to save up quite a bit of money before coming down with some strange sickness the doctors couldn't name. Anna was able to pay for her food and clothing, but couldn't afford school anymore. At the age of seven she took over her family's finances and tried to keep the egg business going, but she couldn't keep the birds fed, and had to sell them all to another farm.
That was where Juno decided she wanted to be nowhere. The edge of town where there were only fields and fields of corn and wheat and soy, and the occasional unclaimed plot, Juno felt like she could really see. She could really smell something that didn't have to do with the carriages and fires and amrkets in town. The air was fresh, nothing like the oppressive smell of musty dried flour in the general store. She stayed away from the town when she could, but her father insisted on setting her up with all of the stray men in town. The matchmaker had given up on her only a few months after the first meeting she had gone to. She just didn't see anything in the people in the list of available men in town.
The one man she couldn't get to go away was the owner of the saddlery. He was extremely attractive. That was really the only thing that was terribly exciting about him. He had been much like Anna and herself, not well educated, his family had required him to help with their ranch for most of his childhood. He had decided on his own that he no longer wanted to go to school. He had no mind for numbers, and no interest in the oratories of Kikler. He was boring. He only wanted to talk about saddles, and horses. What he was interested in was purely looks.
Juno was not an ugly girl. She had no problem with finding men who were willing to attempt a courtship. She was petite, and thin with long blonde hair that fell to her backside. She kept it plaited in a long braid down the middle of her back so that it wouldn't get in the way in the store, but it was so fine that there were always strands falling out and framing her heart-shaped face, giving contrast to her nearly navy blue eyes. She kept an olive tone to her skin from walking through the fields out in the near-nowhere out by Anna's farm. It was like the boys in town would periodically forget that she and they had nothing in common at least once a year since she started looking for a husband three years ago. At the beginning of the summer, just as spring was fading, Juno could expect at least a dozen invitations of courtship. It seemed that springtime showed off her beauty the best, and all of the boys just needed the season to build up the nerve to ask her, then they only required the fall and winter to completely forget why they gave it up.
It was March, and Juno was working the counter of the store. She noticed the saddlery boy, Derek sliding into the store. He never entered slowly into a room unless he was planning on asking some sort of favor. When he was coming into the store it always meant that he was going to ask to court her yet again. Her father, as always, puffed up his chest and smiled at her in encouragement. Juno was sure that her father couldn't care less about what she thought about Derek. He thought she was a total loss, and it was painfully obvious. Derek sidled up to the counter on the side where Sheamus was standing expectantly.