All Chapters of After They Cut Down My Bonded Tree, I Found a New Family: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

The next day I came home carrying my bridal wreath in my hands. Wendy’s eyes crinkled with a smile when she saw me. "Sif, you're back just in time. Father has something important to announce."I stopped. My father cleared his throat, took out a yellowed scroll of parchment, and pushed it across to Wendy. "Wendy, this is the deed to our family's ancestral woodland in Emerald Valley. It goes with you as dowry."Karl unfastened the emerald-set short blade at his waist, the family's warded heirloom, and held it out to Wendy with a smile. "This one is from me."Wendy gathered up the deed and the blade in delight, turned, threw herself into Karl's arms and thanked him over and over.I stood in the corner with my chest tightening in waves. The woodland in Emerald Valley was the last substantial asset the family had, and the short blade was meant to protect its bearer's life. They had given Wendy everything they had to give.My mother's eyes turned on me, sharp. "Sif, as the elder sister, what

Three days before my wedding the whole family fell into a frenzy of activity. The hall was piled with wooden boxes tied with pure white ribbon.My father was busy writing invitations to high elves from every noble lineage, and every line in them called Wendy "my pride."Karl ran back and forth collecting commissioned jewelry for her. Not one of them asked how my own preparations were coming along.A red leaf with the date of my wedding on it was tucked into the doorframe.For a whole week no one picked it up to read it, and no one noticed that my wedding fell a day before Wendy's.I put on my old cloak calmly and went out to buy Leon one of the fine steel swords humans favor. But when I went to pay at the smithy and reached for the hidden pouch at my waist where I kept my moonstones, my fingers found nothing but coarse cloth.The five hundred moonstones that were all I had left were gone.Something roared in my head.That was the money that kept me alive, lent to me by the master weave

On the morning Wendy was to be married, the elven house was in an uproar. Seran was shouting herself hoarse and Karl was frantically directing the servants carrying that enormous silver-bound chest, until Wendy's panicked scream cut across the hall."Mother! Sif's room is empty. She never came back at all!"Seran froze where she stood, her hands stopping in the middle of arranging Wendy's skirts. "That's impossible! Isn't she marrying that human today?"Wendy rushed into my cramped little room, dragged out the two old, mangy hides and threw them on the floor, furious. "She took nothing. She didn't even take what you gave her out of pity!"Karl frowned and waved it off without concern. "There's no hurry. How much resolve can she possibly have? She's gone off to that shabby tea house on the human side to wait, that's all. When has she ever actually gone far after a fight with this family?"Seran drew a deep breath, pushing down an odd feeling she could not name, and only urged her on. "W

In my second month in the human town, I used the cloth and vines I had saved to set up a small wicker stall at the market.Because it joined elven delicacy to human practicality, my work sold out faster than I could make it. Humans never cared about high blood or low. All they judged was the craft.When the caravan captain put the first heavy bag of silver coins into my hands, I felt a grounded confidence I had never known before.The day I earned that silver happened to be my hundredth birthday. Martha killed two plump long-tailed fowl and stewed a great pot of rich broth, and Tom lit a bonfire in the yard.Human friends gathered around the fire, playing an accordion clumsily and singing human birthday songs at the top of their voices.Watching the leaping firelight, I drifted for a moment.Every birthday I had shared with Wendy, the pitiful little moonlight cake carried only her name, because as a child she had cried that she did not want a noble cake spoiled by a lowly wood elf like