Pilgrims by Darcy Pattison

Author:Darcy Pattison [Pattison, Darcy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mims House
Published: 2017-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

The first time Utz saw Mitzi Adams was when they were three-years-old. The Seehafers were staying at the Crown Jewel resort for a couple weeks. Her father owned the resort, and her sun-kissed golden hair set her apart from all the other dark-haired island girls. She and Fritz built a sand castle together. Mitzi refused to let Utz help; she only wanted Fritz.

Jealous and angry, Utz waited till the castle was built and then crashed through it, playing monster.

Mitzi ran away crying.

Meanwhile, Fritz had jumped on him in their first real fist fight.

After that, Utz found other island children to play with and left Mitzi and Fritz to themselves. They were inseparable that holiday and every holiday after that. Utz and Mitzi tolerated each other for Fritz’s sake because Fritz desperately wanted them to be friends.

When the boys turned thirteen, and their father, King Seehafer, had announced Fritz and Mitzi were to be engaged, no one was surprised. The engagement party was lavish and full of merriment. They wouldn’t be wed until they were both eighteen, but this sealed the alliances and gave King Seehafer control over the crucial Jewel Islands. They were in the middle of a growing trade route, and before the alliance, they had paid heavily for the Jewel Islands to be a refueling station for their ships. With this alliance, everything would be renegotiated.

However, only a week after the engagement, Fritz died in a cave when a quake dislodged a slab of the ceiling, and it crushed him. Mitzi and Utz mourned together, sobbing and clinging to each other at Fritz’s funeral. With Dad so stoic, Utz had nowhere else to turn. He spent time with Mitzi, but when the grief subsided, he realized that he still didn’t like her.

Then Dad did the unthinkable. He told Utz that he and Hideaki agreed: Mitzi would now betroth Utz.

Fritz wasn’t gone but six months when another celebration was held. He remembered the binding ceremony, how Mitzi looked so forlorn as she walked down the aisle toward him. Wispy tendrils of hair framed her gaunt face, and fragrant beche blooms were woven into the braids. She was so achingly beautiful that he thought maybe everything would work out. He could spend a lifetime with someone so regal. Just as she stepped onto the dais, she slipped and almost fell. A look of fatigue passed over her face.

We should’ve waited longer, he thought. It’s too soon for her.

But she brightened, and Utz thought it would be okay.

Hideaki was resplendent in a white and floral sarong; he was covered with beche flower necklaces and had beches in his own hair. Hideaki’s big hand put Mitzi’s small one into Utz’s hand. Somehow, Utz got through the ceremony without embarrassing everyone.

But afterward the smell of beches always reminded him of Mitzi and how she looked up at him with bewilderment and quietly moaned, “You’re not Fritz.”

Yet another way he had failed his father.

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