Emma Schrader

In the early morning hours, Emma Schrader sat up in bed. Her hands fumbled across the top of her nightstand feeling for the box of matches. She felt the familiar edges of the box; it was right where she left it. She retrieved a single matchstick and clumsily dragged the tip across the rough-hewn tabletop. A bright flame exploded into existence. Emma touched the match to the wick of the candle she kept on the table next to her bed.

Emma took great care to capture her thoughts on paper during these few waking moments. Lately, her dreams were vivid – almost too vivid – but she found that they faded as the day progressed so she decided to write them down as quickly and as soon as possible.

While her dreams were baffling, they were not disturbing. Emma, always eager for a good mystery, was anxious to solve this latest puzzle. This was her personal riddle, and it was hers alone as far as she knew, and not some conundrum she read in a book. In fact, this puzzling turn of events did not even resemble any of the mysteries she discovered in the dozens of books she routinely borrowed from her schoolteacher, Miss Rankin.

In truth, Emma’s dreams were a welcomed diversion from the routine and predictable farm life that she knew during the daylight hours. The seasons came and went as expected. The crops were always conventional. The farm animals were normal. It seemed to Emma that nothing ever changed; nothing exciting ever happened on the farm. She decided long ago that farm life did not suit her. Her birth into this family must have been some cosmic mistake. She was sure that her destiny contained far greater adventures than milking cows and mending fences. Emma longed for intrigue. She convinced herself that she cou...

... middle of paper ...

...e each day. She pulled on her overalls. They were boy’s overalls. The same pair of overalls she wore everyday. Then Emma heard the door of the little brick house smack shut with its familiar “thwack!” That sound meant that Papa was tired of waiting for her and had headed out to the barn by himself. If she did not hurry she would be in big trouble. As he walked across the barnyard, she could hear him whistle an all-to-familiar tune. Although she never knew the name of the tune (if, in fact, it had a name at all), it was Papa’s tune for he whistled it everywhere he meant. It was his routine and Papa thrived on it. Although Emma loved her father, she despised the sameness of the routine. The last place Emma wanted to be was cooped up on a farm in central Pennsylvania. She was destined for adventure and there certainly was no adventure on the Schrader farm.