The Wretched of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler

Her future is destined for preparing recipes in a privileged household until, unexpectedly a mysterious knight-maston abandons the wounded squire Colvin at the Aldermaston’s kitchen in the middle of the night. Muirwood Abbey is one of the few places where learners are taught to read and engrave, and thirteen year-old Lia wants nothing more than to learn both of these skills-yet she is a wretched, an orphan, and doomed to remain in the Aldermaston’s kitchen, forbidden to read and subject to his authority.

“ Imagine a world where words are so precious they are only etched in gold, and only the privileged are allowed to learn how to read. And by this definition, I say that those children found in this state appropriately named” After laboring and searching the most ancient references, I have thus concluded that the original meaning of the word is this – a wretched is someone deserving pity. They are often born in secret, with no aware of their coming into this second life, except for the unlucky souls who find them abandoned on abbey steps in the dark of night. They have no family, no relations, no one willing to own them or care for them. The necessary rites can or already have been performed for them, binding them through the Medium to their ancestral forebears and the consequences appertaining to them. It is a pitiable state, to be sure, but the child still knows, by means of relations or guardians, who their parents were and what gifts they have inherited. An orphan is literally a child whose parents are dead. “There is a difference between a ‘wretched’ and an ‘orphan’.

The Wretched of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler