Martha stared at Elena with wide eyes, hardly daring to blink, as though everything before her might disappear like a dream the moment she looked away.
Afternoon sunlight streamed through the small wooden window, leaving a pale patch of light across the rough floorboards.
The linen curtain beside the window had faded from years of washing and stirred gently whenever the breeze slipped through the gap.
The room was small.
A narrow wooden bed stood against one wall, covered with old linen sheets and a dark, worn wool blanket.
On the other side of the room was a wooden cabinet that had clearly been used for many years.
An oil lamp, a sewing basket, and several earthenware cups sat on top.
Everything was old, but Martha kept it all clean and tidy.
And Elena was sitting on that narrow bed.
Her eyes were clear.
Her words were clear.
A moment ago, she had even managed to explain that the first sixteen years of her life felt like one long dream.
It all felt so real that Martha could hardly believe it.
A smile slowly appeared on her face, even as tears slipped uncontrollably down her cheeks.
She had dreamed of this more times than she could remember.
In those dreams, Elena was no longer confused by everything around her.
She would clearly call her Mama, speak in complete sentences, and understand what other people were saying.
But those dreams never lasted long.
Sometimes Martha would reach out to touch her daughter’s face, only to wake before her hand reached her.
Other times, all it took was hearing Elena clearly call her Mama once before she opened her eyes and found the same sleeping daughter beside her.
After enough disappointments, Martha had stopped allowing herself to hope too much, even in her dreams.
But this time was different.
Elena was truly awake.
She knew who she was.
She knew where she was.
She could even ask questions about her own past.
Martha instinctively raised a hand toward her daughter’s face.
Halfway there, however, she stopped.
It was almost as if she feared that touching Elena would wake her from this impossible dream.
Elena watched her and was briefly surprised.
Then she understood.
From the memories that had just returned, she knew how many doctors Martha and Thomas had taken their daughter to over the years and how many different things they had tried.
They had seen doctors from nearby villages.
They had taken her to doctors in Clearwater.
They had even gone to the church and asked the priest for help.
Nothing had truly changed Elena’s condition.
As the years passed, not only the other villagers but probably even the older members of the Miller family had come to believe that Elena would remain this way for the rest of her life.
Only Martha and Thomas had never truly given up.
Even as their hope grew smaller with every passing year, they continued caring for their daughter, asking for nothing more than for her to grow up safely.
Now the daughter everyone had long believed would never change could suddenly speak clearly and think like an ordinary person.
For a mother, that was not something she could accept as real in a matter of minutes.
Elena sighed quietly to herself.
She was about to say something when her stomach chose that exact moment to make itself known.
Grrr—
Before the first sound had even ended, another series of hungry growls followed.
In the quiet bedroom, they were impossible to miss.
Elena’s expression stiffened slightly.
The noise finally pulled Martha out of her daze.
She stared at her daughter for a moment.
Then she could no longer hold herself back and suddenly pulled Elena into her arms.
“Elena!”
“My child…”
All the emotion she had held in through the night, along with everything buried inside her for the past sixteen years, seemed to burst out at once.
Martha held her tightly as her tears finally broke free.
“You’re really better…”
“You’re really awake…”
Her shoulders trembled as she cried.
Her words came out broken, as though she had countless things she wanted to say but could no longer put any of them together.
Elena did not pull away.
She simply sat there and let Martha hold her.
She had lost her parents when she was very young in her previous life and had later been taken in by the organization.
An embrace like this was unfamiliar to her.
At first, her body even stiffened instinctively.
But when she felt Martha’s arms trembling around her, she could not bring herself to push the woman away.
Martha had probably waited far too long for this day.
She could cry as much as she needed.
Outside the cottage came the occasional clucking of chickens.
Near the barn, someone seemed to be moving the tools that would be taken back to the wheat fields that afternoon.
Wooden wheels rolled over gravel and packed earth with a low rumble.
It was harvest season.
The family members who had returned from the fields for lunch could rest only briefly before they had to pick up their sickles and ropes and return to work.
The atmosphere in the bedroom had only just begun to settle when several heavy knocks suddenly struck the door.
Bang, bang, bang.
Agnes’s impatient voice immediately came through the wood.
“Martha, what are you crying about in the middle of the day?”
“Your father-in-law just finished eating and lay down to rest.
He still has to go back to the fields this afternoon.
Everyone else has been working all morning too.
Are you trying to bring everyone running up here with all that crying?”
Martha quickly lifted her head. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Her eyes were red and her cheeks were wet with tears, but at that moment she was so overwhelmed by the joy of Elena’s sudden recovery that even her usual nervousness around her mother-in-law had faded.
She turned toward the door.
“Mother, Elena—”
She had barely started when Agnes cut her off.
“What about her now?”
Agnes frowned on the other side of the door.
“She was fine a little while ago.
Has the fever come back?”
“No, she—”
“Then that’s good.”
The person outside the door clearly relaxed, though her words remained as sharp as ever.
“The doctor told us to let her rest.
She fell down that slope yesterday, hit her head hard, and burned with fever all night.
And here you are crying beside her bed.
How is the girl supposed to get any sleep?”
Martha stared at the door.
“I wasn’t—”
“Enough.
Whatever it is, you can talk about it later.”
Agnes clearly had no patience to hear the explanation.
“There’s still food being kept warm for her by the stove.
If she’s awake, let her eat first.
The oatmeal will still be edible if it gets cold, but leave those two slices of rye bread much longer and she’ll break a tooth trying to chew them.”
A faint huff came from outside.
Then heavy footsteps crossed the wooden floor and gradually disappeared.
The bedroom fell quiet again.
Martha remained half turned toward the door, her mouth slightly open.
In the end, she said nothing.
She had been so happy that she wanted to tell the entire family immediately.
Yet she had not even managed to finish a single sentence.
Elena watched the whole exchange, one eyebrow lifting slightly.
After spending half a day around her grandmother, she was beginning to understand the woman’s personality.
Sharp-tongued.
Impatient.
And not particularly pleasant when she spoke.
Agnes clearly remembered that Elena had fallen down the slope yesterday.
She remembered the fever that had lasted through the night.
She even knew there was food being kept warm for her in the kitchen.
Yet whenever she opened her mouth, she somehow made it sound as though everyone around her owed her money.
It was hardly the sort of personality that made someone easy to feel close to.
Still, Elena was certain of one thing now.
Her grandmother was not nearly as uncaring as she had first assumed.
She simply hid every bit of concern behind that unforgiving mouth of hers.
Elena shifted a little closer to Martha.
“Mama.”
Martha turned back.
“Yes?”
“Don’t be upset.”
Martha paused, then forced a small smile.
“I’m not upset.”
Elena looked at her still-reddened eyes but did not point out the obvious.
From the original Elena’s memories, Martha had always been like this.
Gentle.
Hardworking.
And unwilling to argue with anyone.
To her, elders were elders.
Even when something upset her, she was more likely to endure it quietly than speak back.
A personality formed over decades would not suddenly change because of a few words from Elena.
Besides, Elena had only just “woken up.”
There was no need to rush anything.
She let the subject drop.
Right on cue, her stomach growled again.
Grrr—
This time, even Martha laughed.
Elena looked down at her round stomach and rubbed it helplessly.
She really was hungry.
This body had always had a good appetite.
After falling down a slope, suffering a fever through the night, and eating almost nothing since waking up, it would have been stranger if her stomach had stayed quiet.
“Mama.”
“Yes?”
Elena rubbed her stomach and looked at her pitifully.
“I’m hungry.”
After a brief pause, she added with complete seriousness,
“Really hungry.”
Martha blinked.
Then she suddenly remembered why she had come upstairs in the first place.
“Oh!”
She slapped a hand lightly against her forehead.
“How did I forget?”
Instead, the moment she entered the room, she discovered such an enormous change in her daughter that she had completely forgotten what she was supposed to be doing.
“Wait here.
Mama will get it.”
Martha hurried to her feet, opened the wooden door, and left.
Elena remained sitting on the bed, looking through the open doorway.
Only then did she get her first proper look at the place where she now lived.
Her bedroom was one of the small rooms in the old orchard cottage.
The cottage stood in the old orchard on the western side of Miller Farm, separate from the main farmhouse where George and Agnes lived.
Outside her bedroom was a narrow wooden passage leading toward the main room, where Thomas’s family usually ate and rested.
The kitchen was on the other side.
It had a stone-built cooking hearth and an oven for baking bread, with a small storage area for grain beside it.
Through an open door farther away, Elena could see the sun-bleached gravel outside the cottage.
Beyond it stood a low stone wall.
Several chickens pecked at the ground near a wooden fence.
An old cart loaded with rope and empty grain sacks stood nearby, while the old horse that pulled it was tied near a water trough, drinking with its head lowered.
Beyond the old orchard stretched the rest of Miller Farm, with fields of ripe wheat farther away.
Golden heads of grain rolled in waves beneath the wind, stretching far into the distance.
This was Oakridge Village.
And from now on, this was where she would live.
Elena was still looking outside when footsteps sounded on the wooden floor again.
Martha soon returned carrying food.
A large earthenware bowl.
A small pottery plate.
And a cup of water.
She sat beside the bed again and placed everything in front of Elena.
The bowl was filled with thick oatmeal mixed with chopped beets.
On the plate were two slices of rye bread, along with some beans and cabbage that had been stewed until soft.
It was hardly a rich meal.
In fact, it was extremely simple.
But the portions were generous.
The smell of food immediately made Elena’s already-empty stomach growl again.
Martha laughed.
“Go on.
Eat.”
Elena picked up the wooden spoon and tasted the oatmeal first.
The grain had been cooked until soft, though there was still a slightly coarse texture to it.
The beets added a mild natural sweetness to the otherwise plain oatmeal.
It was not exactly delicious, but it tasted better than she had expected.
Next, she tore off a small piece of rye bread.
The crust had already begun to harden, and the inside was far from soft, but it had a strong grainy aroma.
Once dipped into the oatmeal, it was easy enough to eat.
The stewed beans and cabbage were just as simple.
There was very little fat, and not much salt either.
In her previous life, a meal like this would have been completely ordinary.
But for a poor farming household with more than a dozen mouths to feed, simply making sure everyone had enough to fill their stomachs was important.
Only now did Elena truly understand something.
She really had been given another life.
But this life had no cities she knew, no modern conveniences, and no food that could simply be bought whenever she wanted it.
Instead, she had an old stone-and-timber cottage.
Fields of wheat waiting to be harvested.
Grain stored on the farm.
And a farming family that was far from wealthy.
It was not exactly the best beginning.
Still…
Elena looked down at the rye bread in her hand, then glanced at Martha, who was sitting beside her with a smile.
It wasn’t so bad either.
She tore off another piece of bread and slowly put it into her mouth.
Martha remained beside the bed, quietly watching.
She watched her daughter pick up the wooden spoon by herself.
She watched Elena realize the bread was too hard and dip it into the oatmeal before eating it.
She watched her chew slowly instead of rushing through the meal as she had in the past.
It was still her Elena.
Her face had not changed.
Neither had her voice.
Yet somehow, everything about her seemed different.
She was calmer.
She spoke clearly.
She understood what other people said.
She could think about things for herself.
Even something as ordinary as watching her daughter eat lunch made Martha feel as though Elena had grown up overnight.
Her nose began to sting again.
But this time, she did not cry.
Martha simply sat beside the old wooden bed and looked at the sunlight streaming through the window as a smile slowly spread across her face.
She no longer cared why any of this had happened.
Perhaps the fall yesterday had somehow changed something.
Perhaps the fever had brought a miracle.
Or perhaps God had finally heard the prayers she and Thomas had repeated so many times over the years.
It did not matter.
As far as Martha was concerned, she only needed to know one thing.
This time, she wasn’t dreaming.
Her Elena was truly awake.