Rating: K
Characters: Jean; Mercedes and Julia [OCs]
Genre: Family, 'Backstory'

The Price of Names

While her grandmother negotiated the trade with the merchant, Mercedes took the opportunity to sneak away. She'd never been to Trost before and was eager to explore, as her grandmother had promised her they would after she was done. Not far away she could hear the sounds of other children – laughter and shrill playful screams broken in as pleasant a way as the dappled sunlight filtered by the trees above her head. She climbed down from the cart and slipped away, down the alley created between a wrought-iron fence and the blacksmith's.

After not long of following the fence, eventually a blanket of green was revealed – a patch of grass situated at the back of a single-storied building with several windows. A bell hung on one corner on the eaves of the roof. Two older women stood talking on the porch while children her age ran around in the little yard; Mercedes realized she was looking at a school.

Mercedes was confronted with a sudden envy and sadness she hadn't experienced before. She and her grandmother had moved to Klorva a year ago, and now she was six – a year past the age she thought most children started school, the age she had looked forward to because it meant an unexpected chance at being around other kids. But her grandmother had homeschooled her. The occasional bouts of loneliness she had felt at the ranch, her home, had grown stronger and more frequent now that she was surrounded by new people, buildings, Walls. The question of why her grandmother had made that decision burned even more hotly in her now that she was staring at the thing she had been mysteriously denied.

Mercedes wandered down the rail some more, trailing it with the fingertips still sticky from the apple she had half-eaten earlier. There were maybe a dozen children, boys and girls, either running after one another, sitting in circles, attempting cartwheels. She'd not known she wanted those things until today. In the lee of another tree wedging itself against the fence, she crouched, watching them. The gaps in the bars were probably big enough for her to squeeze through, but she still felt like it was a barrier she couldn't, or shouldn't, cross. She held onto them instead.

She watched the women too – presumably the teachers. Tired but happy-looking, dressed in pale colors, their hair in practical braids and barrettes. One of them was even wearing an apron. Mothers, out of storybooks. Her mother – or rather the few memories she still tried to keep bright and front-and-center in her mind every day – had never dressed in pale colors, never wore an apron; her hair had been cut short because of all the riding and shooting she did. But her mother had smiled like them, laughed like them.

"Hey. Hey."

Mercedes looked up to see a somewhat chubby young boy with oddly two-toned hair – almond on the top, darker underneath – and a stick in his hand peering quizzically at her. She was suddenly tongue-tied. When was the last time a kid had spoken to her?

"What're you doing out there? Shouldn't you be in school?"

The question stung. She felt her bottom lip twitch and curl downward.

"Hey," he barked again.

"I'm not from here," was all she could think to say.

"Huh?" he croaked. "Don't you go to school?"

She felt a strange urge to explain everything. His amber eyes were scrutinizing, sharp, narrow – they reminded her of a cat's. It made her feel uncomfortable and embarrassed in a way she never had before. "My grandmother homeschools me."

"Why?" he continued to pester. He poked around near her feet with his stick and she stood, stepping up and away onto a tree root.

"Well what do you care?" she snapped back.

"What do you care if I care?" he quipped, and laughed to himself. He braced the stick on his shoulder and put his hand on his hip, standing in front of her triumphantly in the sunshine while she remained in shadow.

She stared at him, half-confused, half-hurt for a reason she couldn't pinpoint. Her frown deepened. "I don't know," she murmured.

His laughter stopped, and he stared back at her. After a moment he leaned forward, craning his face to peer at her again. "Hey. I wasn't serious," he said and for the first time, she heard a trace of warmth in his voice. But she didn't respond to it. For a moment or two they stood there shifting feet, examining the other like a new kind of animal they hadn't seen before. "What's your name?" he asked suddenly.

Mercedes was startled by the question, but was about to answer when she was startled even more by her grandmother's nearby cry of "Ay-yah! Get back here!". She stood at the end of the alley and swooped an arm at her. Her expression was irritated but mostly, and strangely, alarmed.

Mercedes glanced one more time at the boy. "I've gotta go." She stepped off the tree and skittered away.

"Hey wait!" he called.

She stopped and turned.

"Uh…your hair's pretty," he said awkwardly, seeming just as surprised by this admission as she was.

She gave a small smile, and then her grandmother's squawk had her running again.

On the cart ride back to Klorva, Mercedes despondently played with her hair and avoided her grandmother's intermittent stares.

"Did you tell anyone anything? Did you tell that boy anything? You didn't tell anyone your name did you?"

"No," Mercedes said lowly.

"Good. Let's keep it that way as long as we can."

"I don't understand," Mercedes muttered. As always she expected her lack of understanding to be glossed over. Her father would never have done that, but her grandmother was different. This place was different.

Beside her, her grandmother sighed. The cart turned a corner and Mercedes watched Bashka's creamy mane sway in the breeze. "There are only a few people we can trust. And until we know who they are, we shouldn't give them our family name. Your name's a piece of you. Why would you give someone you didn't know a piece of you?" she asked as gently as she seemed able to manage.

Mercedes thought for a moment. "How do they trust us so we can trust them, if we don't give them something?"

Her grandmother said nothing for a moment. After a while, she resettled in her seat and pulled out a canteen, unscrewing it by holding the cap in her teeth and twisting the body rather than asking for help. "There are other ways to compel someone's trust," she stated noncommittally, and sipped. A cloud seemed to pass over her features but when Mercedes looked up, the summer sky was clear.

"What does 'com..pel' mean?"

"It's…" she waved the canteen, "when you make someone happily do, or think, what you want them to do or think without them knowing why. You make them feel like they need to do whatever it is. Your father was very good at it." She sipped again. A pause, and then she looked down at Mercedes and finally smiled. "So instead of paying the price of a name, you get their trust by making them feel like they should trust you – that they want to, that they must."

Mercedes grinned. She suddenly felt very clever. "You do that to me, Granna," she teased.

Her grandmother made a low cooing noise and slung her arm around Mercedes, dragging her closer and squeezing her into her ribs. The cart continued to rattle home.