Claire and Ella were having the same nightmare.
In Mineral Town, Claire thrashed in her bed. Beside her, her partner Doug woke with a start as her heel slammed into his leg. "Claire!" he whispered, shaking her. "Wake up! You're having another one of those dreams!"
But Claire didn't wake – through her dreaming eyes, she watched in horror as her husband Pete lay motionless and pale in a hospital cot. Ella, a wee thing at three years old, fussed in her lap and fought against her mother's arms, reaching out to her father.
Claire knew what the doctor was going to say before she said it. "We are so sorry, Mrs. Kelley. He isn't responding to the treatment. We need to discuss a care plan."
Far away, in her quiet little cabin in the Valley, Ella kicked off her blankets. "No!" her three-year-old dream-self screamed. "Leave us alone!"
Suddenly, the kindly dream-doctor scowled. She sprouted long green braids and rose until she towered above the family. "I warned you," she hissed. "I cautioned you this would happen if you did not mark me. Now history repeats itself! How short your mortal memories are."
"We are listening, O Goddess!" sobbed Claire pleadingly, pressing her toddler against herself.
"What more do you want from me?" toddler-Ella cried. "I moved to my own farm, just like you ordered me to! I'm not talking to Mom! I didn't even tell my friends where I am!"
"Don't let anyone distract you from your duty," the Goddess thundered. "Consider this the warning your father never heeded. You stand to lose your mother, too!"
"I'm not contacting my daughter," Claire gasped out. "I swear it. You know it!"
"Can't you see that I'm doing as much as I can, as fast as I can?" Ella added, failing to fully dull the snarl in her voice. ""
The Harvest Goddess loomed over the toddler. "I will be assured once glory is returned to the desolate Worship Pond in the Valley. Until then, I accept no excuses. No half-measures. No wasted time—and absolutely no diversions. You have 1 year. Am I understood?"
"Yes," Claire said, almost pleadingly.
"Yes," Ella answered, a moment later.
In Mineral Town, Doug was shaking Claire's shoulder. "Wake up, Claire!" he insisted. At last, the farmer awoke with a gasp. She panted for breath and allowed her partner to ease her back down onto her pillow.
"Are you all right?" the innkeeper asked with concern.
Claire closed her eyes. "It was just a dream."
Far from home, her daughter woke with tears in her eyes. She shivered into the darkness of her lonely cabin and quietly retrieved the coverlet from the floor. Rolling over, she looked up through her window at the pale moon hanging stoically in the night sky and remembered the scent of her father's aftershave.
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"Easy, girl," Ella murmured later that morning, her teeth gritted. "Easy does it."
Gently, the farmer attempted to steer the huge, slow-moving bovine into her newly rebuilt barn. It had just been completed the day before by Gotz, who had kindly agreed to travel from Mineral Town to work on the project. He had taken one look at her cabin and refused to begin work on the barn until she allowed him to repair the leaky roof—free of charge. Just as Ella thought, the sight of the cabin nearly put the master craftsman in tears.
The structure smelled of freshly sawn lumber and green hay; the young farmer felt a ridiculous amount of pride swell in her heart whenever she stopped to admire it. It, and the cow, were the first solid indications of growth on an otherwise dilapidated homestead.
The cow, however, was less impressed with Ella's accomplishments. Nonplussed, she stood in front of the great barn doors and snorted derisively. Her tail swished irritably with Ella's efforts to dislodge her firmly planted hooves.
"Please, come on, girl," Ella pleaded. "You'll like it here, I promise. It's new and clean and you have all this space to yourself."
Behind the disgruntled cow, Takakura stood with his arms crossed. Ella could see his laugh lines deepening in a grin.
"Come on, Marcy. You're going to have a great life here. All you have to do is let me sell your milk. Honestly. You can spend the rest of the day eating and sleeping, I don't care. Just please get in here."
As if catching sight of the mangers, brimming over with a bounty of fresh fodder, for the first time, Faye charged forward. Ella stumbled out of the way and narrowly avoided getting a crunched foot. The cow beelined for the food and stuck her muzzle in, chomping contentedly.
Vividly, Ella remembered the smell of the barn back home. It smelled of manure and hay and dust, of the pasture, of musty haylofts and leather harnesses. She looked around her own barn, awash in the scent of freshly sawn timber, and wondered if it would one day feel the same. But how could anything feel the way home felt?
She wondered if her mother had once stood in her own empty barn, feeling the same mix of pride and self-doubt.
A week ago, the field had been pocked with sharp stones and twisted twigs and all manner of exotic (and prickly) weeds. She had spent the last half-dozen days on the back-breaking task of clearing it off, and at last, it was beginning to look workable. The salvageable rock and wood materials had been stacked neatly beside her house, and much of it had gone to the construction of the barn. Next, she decided she would focus on rebuilding the coop.
"Hey, Takakura," she said suddenly, just as the lean farmhand turned to go, "We should celebrate. Today was a big accomplishment. Cup of tea, on me?"
Takakura glanced sidelong at her cabin. The roof had been repaired, but it still needed work. "Better make it my place."
Ella had never had reason to enter Takakura's neatly maintained little cabin before. It sat parallel to her own, in front of the great field, and the inside was just as tidy and rustic as its exterior. "I know. Pretty spartan, isn't it?" Takakura said as he showed her in. "Grab a seat at the table. I'll throw the kettle on."
Takakura's table boasted four actual chairs. Heavenly! Ella took a seat and reclined gratefully against the back of the chair. "I will never take back support for granted again," she moaned.
Takakura granted her a gruff chuckle as he turned on the stovetop. "Floor cushions not doin' it for ya?"
"Hardly," she snorted.
"Well," Tak said, taking the seat across from her, "I'll tell ya my old partner adored the things. Said they encouraged him to sit correctly and strengthened his core. Or somethin' to that effect. No doubt you can afford to replace them, soon enough."
"Your partner sounds like a masochist." Ella sat up. "I'd like to hear more about your story sometime, Takakura," she continued earnestly. "I think we should get to know each other better, considering we both live on the same square of earth."
"Oh, well. Not much to know about me," Tak said dismissively. He stood as the kettle began to whistle. "I'm just an old man with no family and too much time. Milk and sugar?"
"Yes, both, please." Ella accepted the steaming mug of tea and stirred in her milk and sugar. "But you worked this farm with a partner?"
"That's right. 'Til he up and married a pretty little city girl. Then they had a baby, and he was possessed with the urge to move out of town." Tak frowned, all of a sudden peering closely at Ella with a strange intensity.
"Is something wrong?" she asked politely, the attention making her uncomfortable.
"Ah. Beg pardon." He shook his head. "I ran the farm by my lonesome until it become too much, what with my bum knee and shoulder."
"And you lived here ever since?"
The farmhand snorted. "Can't live nowhere else. I tried. Always ended up coming home. Now, how'd you end up out all the way out here with only a rundown farm to your name?"
"Well, first of all," Ella began, "You know you can call me Ella, right?"
Once again, Tak paused. He rubbed his temples for a moment before speaking. "Now, that wouldn't be short for Eleanor, would it?"
"Yes, but nobody calls me that. It's an old family name. I've always just been Ella."
Takakura rose and went to the bureau by his bed, where he picked up a framed photograph. He placed it gently down on the table for Ella to see. "These people familiar to ya?"
Ella gasped. A young Claire in a simple knee-length white dress beamed alongside a young man with carefully combed brown hair in a white suit. Her hand rested on his bent arm. "Hey, these are my parents!"
Takakura was shaking his head. "Can't hardly believe the resemblance never clicked until I properly sat ya down at my own table," he seemed to be saying to himself.
"How did you know them?" Ella asked, unable to tear her eyes from the photo. It was her favourite shot of the pair, and she wished desperately she had her own copy. But even as she voiced the question, she realized she knew the answer.
"Your father, Pete. A good man. He was my partner, originally worked the land with me way back when. Met your mother as she vacationed here. Rest is history." He gestured at Ella. "You were born. I looked after you many a time, if you can believe it. You never would eat sweet potatoes," he recalled with a chuckle. "Then, when you were about ye high, your father decided to take up a property nearabouts Mineral Town. Never did understand why."
"Did he ever explain?" Ella asked slowly.
Takakura shrugged. "Sure, he did. Talked about doing it for a coupl'a years before they finally moved. Sorta seemed to me like he didn't really mean to go at all, just talk about it. If I recollect correctly, he said he felt called by the Harvest Goddess to expand our operation. Wanted t'leave me handling matters here as he built up another property. Your father, he was a religious man, you understand."
Ella nodded. Her gaze was still fixated on the photograph, but her thoughts were twenty years in the past, imagining her father putting off moving until it was too late.
"Of course, he passed not long after. He'd never had a strong heart, and he worked himself straight to the bone. Don't repeat his mistakes, hear?"
Ella didn't respond. Takakura learned forward. "Ella?"
Hearing him say her name for the first time jolted Ella back to the present. Don't repeat his mistakes. She met his eyes, nodding mutely, and Takakura gently put a gnarled hand over hers in an unexpectedly comforting gesture.
"I miss Pete every day," he said.
Ella sighed as she gave in and allowed a tear to run down her cheek. "If I could make it just one day without crying..."
The old farmhand was flustered. He hurried to find her a handkerchief. "Didn't mean to distress ya. Beg pardon."
Ella shook her head as she accepted the offering. "I'm sorry, it's not your fault. Thank you, Takakura. It's nice to know someone else who loved him. Never in my life did I expect to wind up living on my dad's farm. I never even knew he farmed here. Not even far away at all."
"Life sure has a funny way," Takakura said.
He had retreated back to his kitchen with the photograph and was looking morosely out the window. Ella took it as her cue to give him some space to sort through his thoughts – the stars knew she needed space to process her own emotions.
She looked out across her land with new eyes after closing Takakura's door behind her. She hadn't had the opportunity to know her father long, and in her mind's eye, he was still a young man in blue overalls and a baseball cap sporting an easy smile. She couldn't help but smile, imagining how he lived in her little cabin as a bachelor and made do with just the kettle and hot plate. He would have tilled the same earth, raised cattle and sheep in the same barn, collected eggs from the now-dilapidated coop.
Then he met Claire, and his world changed. Ella was born. She could imagine the renovations Claire would have planned for the cabin and wondered what it would have been like to grow up in the Valley instead. A different life in so many ways – and yet, similar in many others.
And finally, the divine meddling that had cost Pete his life and forever changed Ella's and Claire's. The all-too familiar command to uproot and relocate to another rundown farm, to breathe life back into a dying worship pond through the flourishing farm. The ultimatum. The hourglass emptying. Her father growing weaker, the Goddess angrier, Claire more desperate.
Claire taking up the reins after the death of her husband, single-handedly raising their young daughter and learning her way around the farm that was her husband's undoing. Finishing the work he could not finish. Providing for her daughter, building a brand-new life she never asked for, putting on a smile every day. Watching her daughter grow into a young woman, safe and happy in their friend-filled community, until one day, it happened all over again – and Ella was taken away from her, too.
Ironically, Ella realized, she had been summoned to return her father's farm to the former glory it had enjoyed before he had been forced to leave it for Mineral Town. If that pond-dwelling she-demon had let well enough alone, wasn't it possible none of this would be necessary?