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Chapter  1: Boys and Thieves

            Cain hated washing the clothes. Mommy should be doing it, really. But Mommy couldn’t do a lot of things nowadays, so he had to help her out. And that, sadly, included washing these clothes.

           With an irritated sigh, he bent over the bucket and scrubbed harder. The wooden porch of the old farmhouse felt solid against his brown-clad knees – the material was thin enough to feel the grain through. The harsh daylight made his brown eyes squint and his dark hair shine. Everything was brown in his life. The house, the dirt around the farm, the clothes, this stupid brown stain that refused to come off-

    “Darn it!” he cried as he accidently knocked over the wash bucket, water spilling onto the ground. There was a pause as he watched the soapy water slow in its escape and soak into the floorboards, and then he sighed heavily. Well, that meant more water.

    With a grunt, he picked up the bucket. Emitting another loud sigh at the unfairness of it all, he stood up, letting the sun hit his face. Mommy said his skin was too fair to be out in the sun for long, but he couldn’t help that.

            He took a few steps before his sister, the only thing in his life that wasn’t all brown, dashed out of the house. He caught a glimpse of the crown of flowers in her hair and her bright blue eyes before she was upon him.

    “Cain, Cain!” she squealed happily, dancing circles around her elder brother. “Where are you going? Are you going to the market?”

            Cain chuckled, dropping the bucket before he picked up his sister and gave her a hug. “I’m not going that far, Angie,” he told her. “I’m just going over to the well to get more water.” With a frown, he added, “We can’t go to the market, anyway. We don’t have the money to buy any toys, only things that we need.”

            Angie frowned along with him, her eyes beginning to swell with tears. “B-but… I wanted to go get medicine for mommy. Mommy’s getting sicker and sicker, Cain! She’s coughing a lot and can’t stand and doesn’t eat as much!  Won’t you get medicine for her?”

            “I can’t even do that, Angie,” the boy sighed. He put his sister down gently before sitting down again and patting her on the head. “It isn’t because I don’t love mom. It’s because we don’t have the money for even medicine.  Herbal medicine doesn’t come cheap anymore, and with dad abandoning us because mom’s sick…”

    Cain swallowed his anger down and continued, “We don’t have much money anymore. All we have is the farm. We have to grow crops and sell them to survive.  If we don’t, we’ll lose everything…”

    He felt the tear on his face and wiped it away hurriedly, but he could never hide anything from his sister. She gave him a quick, tight hug.

    “I believe in you, big brother,” she said quietly. “You can keep the farm going and make enough money to get the medicine, get food, and more stuff!” She spotted the empty bucket and picked it up before asking, or rather, pleading, “Can I help? Can I help? Please?”

    Cain quickly snagged the bucket from her hands and snapped, “No, Angie! You’re too young! It’s my responsibility!” Seeing the puppy-dog expression on her face, however, made him change tack, saying, “Not to mention someone has to watch over Mom while I go fetch water. I don’t feel right leaving her all alone.”

    Angie nodded quickly and, after giving Cain one last hug and smile, zoomed back into the house. Cain’s heart swelled as he watched her go.

    “Don’t get into too much trouble, Angie!” he called out after her. With one last glance back, he set off north towards the well. Grass rustled against his legs as he walked. ‘It won’t be too long until I reach the well,’ he thought.  ‘Hopefully nobody else was using it-‘

Cain’s jaw dropped as he finally reached the small stone well. A nice, long line of people wearing all the same darn brown clothing he did already beat him to the punch. What luck. The boy chided himself silently. Of course there would be people getting water around this time! They were probably washing dishes and clothes like he was. ‘Should have gotten another bucketful of water before I decided to wash clothes,’ thought Cain bitterly, gritting his teeth as he waited in the long line of people chattering amongst themselves. ‘Would have saved me the trouble, but nope, I had to rush back to Angie and mom. Stupid me! No use crying over spilled milk, though. Or, in this case, spilled water.’

As he waited and waited and waited for this line to shrink, Cain’s fingers began to twitch. He tapped his foot on the ground, whistled, did a little jig. Wandering eyes turned towards him, eyebrows raised, and he stopped most of his fidgeting, feeling hot blood rush into his cheeks. Darn it, can’t this line go any faster? It shouldn’t take THAT long to get a bucket of water! He had a family to get back to, crops to watch over, and a stupid brown stain he STILL needed to wash out before the day was done!