Annie Wersching Charmed

In the year 1906, in Schokoladen, Bavaria is just over a hundred miles north of the border with Prussia. The winter is deadly cold and the peasants are starving after the last of the corn harvest has been taken. Annie is chosen to care for one old goat. She's small, stiff, and limping, but the poor creature is still weak and tired from the journey on foot up from Herrsching to receive her own new master. Many of her charges are already dead or dying. Annie learns that a son, Wilhelm, has been killed in battle and that there may have been twelve or thirteen children.

Part of Annie's duty as an heiress was to sell some of her mother's personal possessions to help raise new servants. When she finds that all of the money is gone, she looks for another source of income. She's bitten by a predatory knight called Ernst, which means "monster". She doesn't take kindly to him, and he makes it clear that he would buy her back within a year if she didn't assist him in taking what he needs at a reduced cost. Much of the staff is being fired, and Annie is especially keen to get rid of Ernst since her father died before their bargain was reached.

On the last day of the year Annie decides to open a boutique in town (which isn't a big town) called "Fräulein Lauer", and so on that day of the Feast of St Barbara, Sunday 23 November, the inn she will use to house and entertain her staff, "Ja'im", is taken over by an enemy. Ja'im wants to sell his house to live in a forest and in the night take with him everything that remains of his wife's fortune. On this day, late November, a battle occurs. Ernst and the other thieves have stolen all of the property belonging to "Fräulein Lauer", including the fish, bones, and old tools of village tradesmen. Ja'im sends word to his brother Wunder that if he can save his store, then he will sell his house without further resistance; but if not, he will become the master of all houses, including his own.

The next morning Ja'im has put all of his animals in a cart and set out for the Forest of Perthes.