This should be my last one for now. This one's the longest yet - 15 pages!
My 9th grade english class had to write a novella for the final assignment. It had to be set in a historical period sometime before World War 2, and that was the only requirement.
This one is set in the Iron Age, inspired by an article or two about the Yde girl. Google it if you're curious. It involves swamps and dead bodies.
Father said that Mother knew from the beginning that there was something wrong with me.
There had been no time to send for a doctor. In the villages of the Netherlands in the age of Iron-making, there were few doctors anyway. I had just been born, and my mother lay dying.
“Brent,” she whispered softly. She called my father’s name, and he came closer, trying to hear the words in her rasping voice.
“She is a gift,” Mother whispered. “No matter her outside, she is lovely inside.” Her rasp grew quieter and quieter, and Father strained to hear. “Cherish my gift, dearest. Cherish my gift.”
“I will,” he promised, “I will, Ena. I love you.”
My mother, Ena the doll-maker, closed her eyes and never opened them again.
The town says it was the first time my father cried. I have never seen him shed a single tear since.
My name is Gytha. I was named for the gift my mother gave to my father with her last words. I am sixteen years old. And I am about to die.
It is easy to remember the time my father first turned his back on me.
I was thirteen years of age, and I had been feeling a little off that day. I dismissed it that morning however; it was a beautiful fall’s eve morning, when summer gives her all before the leaves turned gold. I woke to a sunbeam on my face.
Smiling, I enjoyed the warmth for a minute before rising. Father was snoring in the other room, and I let him lie. It was not often we got to sleep late.
My room was simple, with a bedroll raised on a wood platform in the middle of the room and the head up against the wall underneath a window. There’s a chest up against the south wall of the room, which is used for my clothes - the chest is about waist height with a heavy lid but no lock, and made of light brown wood. There was a low, medium-sized table against the north wall corner, with a box on top of it made of dark oak. The window faced the east, so the rising sun woke me every morning. The walls were gray clay and the roof was made of wood. I selected a dress from the chest and pinned it up carefully.
Moving to the center room, I began to work on the fire. Father woke as I just gathered together breakfast.
“Gytha?” he spoke as he walked into the center room.
“Here, father,” I answered, “I have some blackberries and I am finishing the bread now.”
“Thank you, Gytha,” he sat down and leaned against the wall.
My father was handsome: he had dark brown hair the color of the forest trees, a beard relatively small for men in the village, and friendly hazel eyes. He was medium height, standing only about four inches taller than I. His entire face radiated joy. He and Mother built this house.
Our house was small, as houses go. As the other houses in the village, it was made up of a three rooms: the first room is the main room, with chairs at the walls and a fireplace in the center. The front door was found in this room, and this was where we met with other neighbors. The room in the eastern side of the house was where we slept. The western part of our house was the stable, where our livestock were kept. We do not have very many animals compared to our neighbors, but we had larger fields than they do. Father and I worked in them together sometimes, but he wished for me to stay out of them most of the time. He was mildly embarrassed by the fact that I could work the fields better than he could.
"Marlo and his father will come later today," Father said, leaning against the wall and watching me prepare breakfast. "Marlo's father wants to learn how to better raise his crops, so it is up to you to entertain his son while we are in the fields."
"Yes, father." I didn't mind Marlo. He was an energetic boy of nine with crow-black hair and a cheerfully hyperactive personality. While I had thirteen years, it was still fun for me to spend time with him. His father lived on the hill near the lake, on the outskirts of our town, and spent most of his time fishing. He had fields as well and was very lucky with them, for the soil was very fertile near the lake, but he didn't know how to work them. Marlo had been taking care of them for several years now, but he didn't know much more than his father.
I gave my father the blackberries and the fresh-baked bread. He thanked me again and began to eat. I sat back as well and popped some blackberries into my mouth. They were deliciously tangy. I leaned back and stared out the window. The sun was still rising, and I could see golden rays of light shining through the pine trees near our fields.
A few hours later, I saw Marlo skipping up to the house. Behind him ambled his father up the walk. I rose from the flour I’d been grinding and went out to greet them.
“Good morning, Marlo,” I smiled at the boy. “Father is out in the fields,” I said to his father, and he thanked me and left.
“Wanna go out an’ play, Geetha?” Marlo grinned.
Marlo’s playing was running around the house and fields, hiding and waiting for me to find him, jumping on the cows and petting the goats, and generally laughing about everything. None of the children my age were this carefree; children became more serious at around age twelve.
When Marlo was exhausted from his play, I invited him inside the house and sat him down on the bench at the table as I gathered some hazelnuts and berries for a snack. As I walked back to the table, I noticed Marlo looking at me oddly, the innocent smile sliding off slightly.
“Something wrong?” I asked, and got an innocent headshake for an answer. But I continued to endure the unnatural silent stare.
The moment that followed marked the first time my father turned his back on me. My father and Marlo’s father entered the room and heard Marlo blurt the question that would be regretted for years to come:
“Geetha, why is your back bent?”
Father froze in the door, and looked at the boy curiously. “What are you talking about, boy?”
“Geetha’s back,” Marlo pointed at me. “Her other shoulder is shorter and her back is bent. Why’s that?”
Father blinked and looked at me. I was scrutinized, studied and judged. I considered my own back - what I could feel of it - and felt nothing unusual.
“I don’t see anything, son,” Marlo’s father admonished him, though he was looking me over oddly too.
"It's there, I promise!" Marlo protested. "Why is her back bent?"
Father seemed to have frozen. "Gytha -" he said in a clipped voice. "You - your back -"
"It's not bent," I protest. I twist around childishly trying to see my own back. "I'm not bent. I don't feel anything."
"It is," Marlo shouted. "Geetha's all bent, father, what happened to her?"
"Marlo!" His father shouted back, looking angry. "Be quiet!"
"Gytha?" Father's voice was quiet, but there was something suppressed I could not make out. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything," I retorted - too sharp to be polite, but I was frustrated. Father's eyes narrowed at my remark, and he snapped back, "You must have done something, Gytha. Something went wrong. What did you do?!"
"Nothing, father, I have done nothing wrong!" I hold back as much bite as I can this time. This was completely unexpected. I never snap at my father. But there's an expression on his face that I've never seen before.
“Brent,” Marlo’s father intervened, “Brent, she’ll be fine. You see? The bend is hardly even there. I bet you won’t even notice it tomorrow.”
“Why?” Father muttered, but he finally let it go. He fixed me with the strange unsettling look as before. I replied with a puzzled one. Mumbling under his breath, he left the room angrily.
“Marlo, son, I think it’s time for us to go home,” Marlo’s father told him, eyeing my father’s retreating back.
“But father, I want to play with Geetha,” Marlo protested.
“Time to go home,” his father said sternly. Giving me one last uncertain glance, he gently but firmly escorted Marlo out of our house.
I stood there for a while, still trying to see this supposed bend in my back, trying to comprehend my father’s violent reaction. Never had he looked at me with anything but a smile, be it with his mouth or in his eyes. Never had he spoken to me in any way other than gently - the closest we’d come to disagreeing was my involvement in the work at the fields, and he never raised his voice or fixed me with that look he’d just given me, a look of surprise, shock and even repugnance.
After all he’d done for me, after all the ways he’d shown me he loved me, to fix me with a look of repugnance for a bend in my back that wasn’t there?
“Father?” I called into his room cautiously. “Father, Marlo has left. Can you tell me something?”
“In here, Gytha,” I heard his reply in his bedroom. Quietly hoping he had calmed down, I walked slowly into his bedroom.
Father’s bedroom is even simpler than mine. A window is on the south side and the bedroll is up against the wall underneath the window. A smaller table is at the foot of the bed with his own box, similar to mine of dark oak. He has a faded wooden chest against the northern corner of the room.
“Father,” I began, but paused when I saw his expression. It was again that look of revulsion I’d never seen on his face before now.
“Father,” I tried to begin again, “I - I want to know why you are acting this way. I don’t feel anything different. I don’t bend, do I? I’m no different than what I was yesterday.”
“Gytha,” he sighed, “There really is a curve in your back. I see it now, though I didn’t notice it before.”
“I doubt it,” I insisted.
There is nothing in the house that serves as a proper reflective surface, but Father did his best. He left his room, telling me to stay for now, and returned with an old tarnished mirror. It is the last thing in our house with any value upon it that we have not yet sold. I wonder often if it once belonged to Mother, but I don’t have the courage to ask Father.
“See, Gytha,” he said, almost sorrowfully.
I studied the reflection in the old cracked glass and felt my heart sink. I didn’t quite see the curve Father was upset about, but I could see how my right hip was slightly higher than my left. Was this what he was talking about?
“I see no curve, Father,” I protested obstinately. He sighed and angled the mirror so I could see my back. I was skinny enough that the bones in my spine could be seen, and I saw that my spine curved to the left.
It was a small curve, hardly consequential. But I could see in Father’s eyes that he did not see it that way.
“Father...” I hesitated, too long. He had already left the room.
I did not understand his feelings for a long time.
Father saw me as more than his daughter. At that time, he took my mother’s words quite literally. I was more than his daughter, I was Mother’s gift to him, to love him while she was gone.
He saw me as perfect. Mother was perfect, so her gift was as perfect as she.
It is several years after this incident with Marlo, and I have only realized this scant hours ago. Father was convinced that when I became imperfect, I was insulting Mother and her own perfection.
But Father was not a bad man at heart. He wanted to try and overcome his inner misgivings.
He avoided me for a while. It was heartbreaking. Father and I had always been close, and now he actively sought to stay away from me. He avoided my gaze and averted his eyes from mine in the mornings when I made breakfast. There were no outbursts, no arguments, but his aloofness hurt. I had never been so far apart from him.
This treatment lasted several months, but it seemed to me much longer. I often exiled myself to the stables just for some attention. We have very few livestock, but our large fields make up for that. I would morosely tend to the animals as I pondered Father’s change.
Summer sank into the hills and autumn began to rise. The days were cooler and moist. Father sowed new seeds into the fields. I offered to help him plough but he shook his head every time.
One day, the rain clouds began to roll in. It was dark and gray that afternoon, and Father had to stop working early in the evening as the rain began to pour. He stumbled in just as the sun vanished, soaking wet. We heard the crack of thunder overhead, and shivered. We were united for a brief moment, as we drifted closer together for warmth and reassurance - but Father shuddered at my touch and shied away, averting his gaze, and moved over to the fire.
For the first time, I had to fight back tears at this separation. I desperately wanted to ask him what was wrong, why he was so affected by the slight bend in my back, but I knew by now that he would not answer me.
“Father,” I said quietly, “I have not changed because of my back. I will never change because of this curve. But I will change if you keep treating me this way.”
If Father heard me, he did not reply. The dancing flames illuminated his face in strange ways, and he looked ghostly.
I stood, grabbed a blanket from the bench near the table and strode to my bedroom. When I was almost there, I paused. Walking slower, I moved towards Father and draped the blanket across his back, being careful not to make physical contact. He was still dripping wet. He gripped the blanket closer to him, but did not say anything.
I paused and stared into the fire, silently pleading him to talk to me. When he did not, I turned and slowly walked into my bedroom.
The box on the table in my room was made of rich dark oak. It was lined with black cloth, the softest I could find. Inside the box were things that were worth more to me than the old tarnished mirror.
They were old possessions of my mother.
Ena had been a doll-maker for many years before she met my father. It was not an arranged marriage or even approved by her parents, but she moved in with him anyway. She made wooden dolls for the children in the village, and cut clothes for them. She used old yarn from the sheep as hair to make the dolls look like people she knew. There were many dolls made of my father that he keeps in his own box in his bedroom.
I rarely look in this box on the table. Although I never knew my mother, Father described her many times and told me how she looked, the way she acted, her little habits that seemed so nondescript to her, like saving old scraps of cloth and yarn, working on the wooden doll’s face for hours longer than the rest of the doll, the way she winked at each child she gave the dolls to, how she scrutinized Father’s face with a smile before turning it into the face on a doll, the quietly triumphant shine in her eyes whenever a doll was finished. She was from a nobler family, and learned how to read and write, a valued trait in these days. She’d taught Father, who’d taught me the skill. He described her so well, it wasn’t hard to paint a picture of her in my mind: dark brown hair with hazelnut eyes, high forehead and bright smile.
Her grave is out in the hills overlooking the forest lake, where the sunrise colors shine in the soft rippling water. Father said the bright colors would inspire her.
So even though I never knew my mother, I loved her, from the sheer radiant love that emanated from Father whenever he spoke of her. I loved her because Father loved her too. And that was why I treasured the scraps of rags, the practice wooden carvings, the strand of hair, the golden braid of yarn that were held inside that box.
Tonight, I wanted to see my mother again, in those little pieces from her. I wanted to be reminded that I was loved by my parents.
Reverently, I opened the box lid. The soft black cloth framed the mementos inside with clear contrast. I reached in and grasped a round wooden ball Ena had carved a face into. The detail was brilliant, but I did not recognize the face. Father told me before that she had carved many faces he did not recognize, as she tried to picture the way I would look like.
I reached again and pulled out a golden-brown braid of yarn, the color of honey. My hair was only a little lighter in color than these braids. The top was cleanly cut, as if it had been snipped off from something.
I brought the box down to the ground next to my bedroll so I would be more comfortable, and continued to empty it. I held each piece of cloth, each wooden carving tightly in my hand, wondering what my mother had been thinking at the time she crafted it, trying to imagine the happy shine in her eye as she declared the piece finished. Trying to imagine the way my mother would treat me if she were here now.
I had never completely emptied my box before. Rags, cloth and wooden carvings were scattered all around me like daisies in the meadow when I reached into the box and felt my hand touch the underlining of black cloth.
I peered into the box, seeing what was left. Then I caught my breath.
There was a complete wooden doll in the bottom of the box. The expression on the little girl was serenely happy, with a high forehead and honey-colored yarn hair delicately sewn around the top of the head. She wore a simple blue pinned up dress. Although there was no color on the actual wood, it was easy to imagine the bright lake-blue eyes.
I was stunned. The doll looked exactly like me.
This discovery sent shivers down my spine. How did my mother know what I would look like - in so much careful detail? I was spooked. I dropped the doll and pressed myself against the wall. The doll gazed serenely at the ceiling.
My hand slipped in my haste to get away from the doll and landed on something rough. I fell, startled, and saw what it was I had slipped on.
It was a slip of folded paper. I frowned. I didn’t take that out of the box... It must have fallen out of the doll’s dress.
I picked up the paper and unfolded it with trembling fingers. There was writing on the inside.
Dearest Gytha,
I am sorry that I will never know you - or that you will never meet me face-to-face. My dear Brent does not want to believe that I am dying - but I know, in my heart, that I will not live to see your real face. This doll is for you, Gytha. This is how I imagined you would look like. I tried so many times to make a doll perfectly in your form.
My time is coming, Gytha, but I want you to know that I will always love you. When I die, I will be your guardian angel and I will watch over you.
You must always love your father for me. Even though I am gone, we will still be a family - bonded by love for each other.
-Ena
I read the note, then reread it. My world had eclipsed to this scrap of paper I held in my hands.
Were these really my mother’s words? Did she mean what she said, that she would watch over me?
Dimly, I heard someone saying my name. I didn’t understand what they wanted. Who would be calling my name here? Unless it was my mother herself? Telling me the letter was truthful?
The voice continued, then got angry. I woke to see my father standing over me with a furious expression on his face.
“Gytha!” he barked, and the illusion ended. “What are you doing?!”
I looked down and saw the doll and the letter both in my hands.
I do not understand the conclusion my father came to in that moment. I believe that earlier, when he was calling my name, he wanted to talk about what he’d refused to say for months - the inexplicable curve that had appeared in my spine. Father was not a bad man at heart, as I said before, and the shunning had hurt him as much as it had hurt me. He wanted to overcome his repulsion, to try and atone for what he had done, how he had acted, and whatever I had done to bring the badness to my spine.
But this open-mindedness lasted for merely seconds, and when I did not respond to his calls, he grew angry at me. Here he was, trying to be accepting in the face of sheer shock, and I was unresponsive?! It is hard to anger Father, but he grew into a rage when I did not answer and stormed into my room - whereupon he saw me holding my perfect mother’s work in my imperfect and unworthy hands.
“Gytha!” he bellowed, and snatched the doll out of my hands. The note fluttered to the ground, forgotten, as I stood up, scattering scraps and mementoes all over the room.
“Father!” I gasped, shocked. “What are you doing?!”
“What were you doing with her things?!” Father yelled, “What were you doing with her things?!”
“I took them out of the box -”
“How could you do this to her?!”
“I’m not doing anything -”
“You’re not worthy to touch Ena’s dolls, you -”
“I’m not worthy?! What have I done?!”
“You must have done something!’ Father screamed. “You did something to bring in the badness that has curved your back! What did you do?!”
“Father, I -!”
“HOW DARE YOU DEFILE MY WIFE?? WHY CAN’T YOU BE PERFECT, GIRL?! WHY CAN’T YOU BE LIKE THIS DOLL? PERFECT, LIKE HER??”
“Father!”
“Never touch her things again!”
“I’ve done nothing wrong, Father!” I yelled back. “Mother loved me too, didn’t she, Mother would never have treated me this way, Mother would have understood that I have done nothing wrong and you are acting like a fool for blaming me for something not within my power!”
“DO NOT SPEAK OF ENA TO ME!” Father was beyond reason now. He lifted the doll in his hands and threw it as hard as he could out the window, into the rain-soaked fields outside. A stroke of thunder illuminated the doll in midair before it was lost to the night.
“F-Father!” I stuttered. “You just threw away Mother’s -”
“I’LL NOT HAVE YOU DEFILE HER THINGS AGAIN!” he roared, scooping up all the precious mementoes I’d held onto for years and tossing them into the center room, his bedroom, everywhere away from me. I glimpsed one of the rags flying into the fire and flaring up in flames.
“Father!” I cried. “What are you doing?!
“UNGRATEFUL CHILD, EVERYTHING YOUR MOTHER AND I HAVE DONE FOR YOU, AND YOU BEFOUL HER WORK WITH YOUR DIRTY SINFUL HANDS!”
My vision blurred. I never cried, yet I had to fight the burning in my eyes as I glared at the monster that had taken over my father. He was still wearing the blanket around his shoulders.
“If Mother were here,” I whispered, “she would have understood.”
Father glowered at me. Then, apparently deciding he had had enough, he whirled and left the room.
I gathered up what remnants I could find of my father’s destruction and shut them back in the box.
The storm continued all night, but I went out in the rain several times to look for the doll he’d tossed out into the fields. I gained nothing from my search except a piece of torn clothing from a few days ago.
My dress had been soaked to wrinkled tatters. The pins were barely holding up up anymore. My hair fell in lank curls. My face was white from the constant adrenaline rush the crash of thunder brought. All I had to show of my efforts was a damp cloth.
Several times I thought I saw Father looking out at me in the fields, staring at my back. I ignored his gaze.
Around midnight I came back inside through my bedroom window, so I wouldn’t have to face Father again. I wrapped myself in a blanket from my bedroll and leaned against the corner, shivering, until exhaustion took me and I fell asleep.
This confrontation happened in the middle of my thirteenth year. My fourteenth year passed, then my fifteenth, and my father refused to speak to me.
He would rise well before the sun and go out to the fields to work. If I rose at the sunrise and came out to look at the reflections upon the lake, he would drive the ard to the opposite corner of the fields. To ensure he ploughed all the fields equally, I stayed inside most of the time, or went down to the forest to pick berries, or sitting melancholy in my bedroom with a small chunk of wood in my hands, trying to imitate the way the doll of me had looked with a small whittling knife.
I watched Father morosely from the window in the center room, as he drove the ard with the oxen back and forth over the fields, or plucking weeds, or planting seeds in the earth.
But as I watched over the months, I began to notice that the crops were beginning to die.
It might have been a corner of dried earth with too little water, or a corner with too much water where the seeds rotted, or the crows that flew down to peck at the seeds, or the over-ploughed fields that left deep rivets in the earth, keeping sunlight away, or the never-ceasing rain that pelted down every night, flooding the crops at times and washing the seeds away. But the crops were failing, and Father refused to listen to me. Each time I walked out of the house, feet squelching in the mud, to speak with him at the ard, he would immediately drop the plough and hurry away, or he’d unhitch the oxen and lock the ard in the stable, leaving the oxen lowing and trampling the fields. I led the confused animals back to the stable doors so it would be easier for Father to hitch them back up with the ard or to shut them in, if he wished.
In the middle of my fourteenth year, the pain started. I woke in the middle of the night feeling like my spine was burning. “Father?” I called softly, panting as the pain grew worse. “Father?”
I know he heard me. Our rooms are separated by a thin wall, and my voice would easily carry through it, or through the center room. “Father?” I coughed, “Father, my back. It hurts. Please, Father, it hurts.”
The silence hurt more than anything I was experiencing.
The next night, the burning pain returned and I called for Father again. All I heard in answer was the clattering of rain against the roof.
The pain continued for around two weeks, each night waking me in a cold sweat as I lasted it out. I didn’t call for Father again after the second night. But when he was out in the fields and I was doing the laundry, I noticed that the cloth pillow was damp, ragged and smelled of salt. I didn’t tell Father I had found it, and I washed it last.
The crops worsened.
Nearly half of the fields were dead, the other half dying or growing haphazardly. It continued to rain every night, no matter how baking the day had been before. I wondered what Mother’s reaction would have been had she seen the way Father and I had been treating each other.
I baked the last loaf of bread near the end of my fifteenth year. The rest of the wheat was rotten or not ready yet for harvest. Father began spending less time in the fields and more time out in the town, begging for food.
The villager’s relations can be described as distant-but-knowledgeable: they knew each other, but stayed out of their business. None of our neighbors ever were openly hostile to us until they heard of our failing crops. Now that Father had, as they saw it, lost his wealth, they lost their respect for him, giving him the bare essentials for eating, just enough for one small bowl of thick gruel. I continued to supply us with blackberries, but it just wasn’t enough.
The rain continued, now beginning to wash away the neighbor’s crops as well as ours. The villagers flew into a frenzy, trying different methods of ploughing, sowing, covering the fields from the rain, but it was fruitless.
I wandered into town less often, as I began to notice angry and disdainful looks in my direction. Though no one said it, it was clear they all blamed me and the badness in my spine that ruined the crops.
Everyone in the town wondered what had happened to their crops, and what could be done to save them.
I remember my blackest day. It was the day Channing arrived.
I disliked him the instant I saw him when he entered the town. He was tall, stocky, with scraggly dark hair, curled hands and piercing black eyes. He might have been handsome once, but the glint in his eyes was unsettling, his hair was overgrown and unkempt, and... he just seemed wrong to me.
Apparently I was alone in this impression. The other villagers came out to greet him as warmly as they could, the women showering him with admiring looks, the men with unmarried daughters eyeing him prospectively.
“Are you Irish?” asked one. He nodded, smirking. “Where are you from?” The smirk slipped off his face as he said, “Why do you all look so miserable?”
“The crops have died,” one man said morosely.
His piercing black eyes narrowed as he swept the crowd, and spotted me watching from a distance. My face hardened at his gaze and I turned to leave. I can only imagine the twisted evil smile that curled on his lips as he saw my curved back.
“Your crops have died, you say?” he repeated, feigning dismay. “I’m... quite sorry to hear that. You see, back in Ireland I just came from a famine myself...” By now I was watching again and I’m sure I’m the only one who saw the glint in his eye. I wondered what had happened in Ireland during the famine, and what crimes he had committed amongst it.
He lowered his voice and spoke to the crowd conspiratorially, “However... I know how to cure the fields.”
“You can do what?” Father came out of nowhere, striding over to the man quite suddenly. The crowd jumped, startled and perturbed that the object of their ostracization should just come up and talk so abruptly. Channing simply smiled and said, “I know how to cure the crops, sir.”
Everyone began talking at once - how do you do it? Did you cure the famine in Ireland this way? Can you help us with our crops? Are you married? What is the cure? When can we get it?
“It - well, it’s a rather uncouth method, you see,” Channing said doubtfully, leading on the townsfolk like willing little sheep. “It’s not always approved, you know, and a bit in the extreme... in fact, I’m not entirely sure...”
The villagers were silent for a moment, just before they erupted in pleas.
“Ah... well, you see... Can I ask you, what are you willing to... sacrifice to bring back the crops?
Anything, Everything, Whatever You Want Sir, What Is It, Tell Us Already, We Are Starving issued from the mouths of every villager. All except for my father. He said nothing.
“Well... Quite regrettably, the answer for a cure is in blood. A human must be sacrificed to please the dark gods who watch over our lands.”
The silence was longer this time. Then, the villagers did something horrible - our neighbors all turned and looked at my father. It was not an open look, more like a glance or a tilting of the head, and he paled - although I am quite sure he did not notice it. Channing did, however, and darker and darker my thoughts became as he said, “I understand you are all unwilling to do something as... horrendous... as this, but you must realize that without this one sacrifice, all will die from starvation. The choice is yours.”
I waited for the murmur of dissent to sweep through the crowd, for the disapproving shake of the head, for our neighbors to stand by each other - but I waited in vain.
“Yes! Yes, we’ll do it!”
Shouts of assent echoed through the square, so loud they didn’t notice Channing had slipped away and courteously asked Father for a moment of his time to speak alone.
I followed them back to our house. Along the way I heard Channing ask if the “golden-haired young lady” was his daughter. Father did not respond for a moment, and I was afraid he would deny my as his daughter, as embarrassed as he was of me. Stiffly, he said, “Yes, she was my daughter.”
“Was?”
Father did not reply.
“Ah, I see.” Channing said, though Father had said nothing. “You see, sir - you said your name was Brent? You see, Brent, a human sacrifice is needed for returning the crops to normal. The villagers out there seemed... a little mad to me, mad from hunger. They’d do anything to get their food back, to stop this pain... including sacrifice a person for their greed.”
They entered the house, and I, not wanting to be seen, climbed through my bedroom window and listened to them talk in the center room.
“You are perhaps the man who has undergone the most suffering in this town. Your wife has perished, your daughter is disfigured, your crops were the first to wither, and now your town shuns you for something beyond your control. I understand your pain, Brent. I felt it myself. My family refused to support me during the famine and left for England, left me to survive on my own. I never felt more alone in my life. But I found the solution, you see: I realized that I was not the cause of the dead crops. Oh, no.
“The people in my town harvested peat from the bogs. They grew wealthy from it, but never repaid what was due. The swamps are interesting places, you know. Dark and brooding, portals to morbid gods with terrible power. These gods gave our people wealth and great gifts, but were never paid in return. So I returned the debt. I gave the gods a body, and they gave me back my crops.
“They punished me, though, the people in my town. They drove me out and called me a criminal. But they were the ones who were to blame. They didn’t give the gods what was due, and caused the whole land to suffer.
“I understand you have a bog nearby, yes? One with peat? Do you harvest it?”
“Of - of course,” Father’s voice was hollow and throaty. “There’s some in our roof here.”
“Did you ever repay the debt, Brent?” Channing’s voice lowered to a malicious purr. “Did you ever give the gods what was due?”
“We don’t -”
“The gods are punishing you, Brent,” Channing’s voice grew harsher. He softened it with false sympathy. “I understand how hard this is for you. But you have the power to end the suffering of your neighbors.”
“I -”
“Do you know what I’m talking about, Brent?”
“Don’t you -”
“You are not entirely at fault here, Brent,” Channing interrupted. “I understand a few years ago, you found your daughter’s spine to be curved?”
“I - yes,” Father growled.
“Did you ever wonder where the curve came from?”
“I - I thought that - Ena -”
“Your wife would have grieved sorely at the news, I’m sure. But did you ever wonder... perhaps that it was your daughter that brought the famine into the town?”
“N - no, I didn’t.” Father’s voice began to change. My eyes widened, alarmed.
“Did you ever think that it was the badness in her back that infected the crops?”
“Are you saying -”
“Yes, Brent. I am saying that it is your daughter that is at fault. None of this would have happened had the badness not infected her.”
“How did it happen to her?” Father whispered. “How did it come to her?”
“The god’s ill-will, I’m sure,” Channing hissed. Father’s face changed again - it seemed almost like it lifted slightly. Channing did not notice as he continued, “Fortunately... there is a way to erase this badness.”
“By -”
“You have to do it, Brent. You have to save the town. This was all your daughter’s fault. She’s been troublesome to you for a while, I understand - defiling your wife’s things, I hear. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if she were... sacrificed?”
Father was silent. I was breathing heavily with panic, trying to keep from screaming.
“Gytha?” My father’s voice was hopeful, soft and pleading. “It’s... infected Gytha? She didn’t... do anything wrong? It wasn’t Ena?”
“Ena is not at fault at all, Brent. It’s all your daughter. The only thing to purge the badness is a ritualistic sacrifice at the bog where you and your neighbors harvest peat.”
“Her fault?” Father repeated as if in a trance.
“Will you do it, Brent?” Channing’s voice had softened again. “Will you do the good thing for your neighbors? For the good of all?”
The silence lasted a long time. Channing did not break it. I could imagine the cold, calculating gleam in his eyes as he watched Father struggle. I waited for him to say no.
“Ena,” I heard him whisper, “What is this that you have given me?”
In the strongest voice I had ever heard him use, he said, “I will.”
“I’m proud of you, Brent,” Channing sounded for all the world like a parent reproving the child. “You’ve made a hard decision for the good of all.”
He stood and left. At the door, he paused and looked into my bedroom. I was leaning against the wall, breathless and stunned. He gave me an evil, triumphant smile before he left.
Father had not yet moved when I stumbled into the center room. “F-Father,” I stammered. “W-what -”
“Hello, Gytha.” His eyes were dark and cold. “Did you hear our conversation?”
I stared at his stony expression. “Y-You -”
“Did I not ever tell you it is rude to eavesdrop?” he asked coldly. I felt like crying. This was not my father.
“What have you done, Father?” I gasped. “Why would you do this?”
“It’s for the good of all, Gytha. It will -”
“No!” I shouted. “I don’t want to hear that! I don’t want to hear the words again of that snake -”
Father opened his mouth to interrupt, but I continued shrilly - “Have you forgotten Mother’s last words to you?”
“I told you not to speak of her ever again!” he snapped.
“‘She’s a gift, Brent.” I continued doggedly, “No matter her outside she is lovely -”
“SHUT UP!” Father roared. “SHE WAS WRONG!”
I stopped, stunned. Father continued his rampage. “Ena was wrong! This gift - a gift of what? Plague? Famine?! What kind of gift is that! Ena was wrong, she gave me a problem, not a gift!”
“So that’s what I am now,” I said, my voice shaking. “A problem.”
“You brought famine to this town!”
“I did?! I did nothing!”
“You! You and the badness in your spine!”
“What badness?!” I yelled.
“This... this evil, this plague, infestation - has changed you, and the town. Ena’s gift was wrong. It was never a gift!”
“I’ve changed?” I spat breathlessly. “Who was the one who changed, Father?! I never even noticed the curve! I would never have changed due to something I didn’t notice, something I didn’t do! It was you who changed! You shunned me, avoided me, left me by myself... It hurt so much, Father, you left me alone...” I was pleading now, but the cold look had not yet left his eye. “Father, how will you feel... when I am dead... and you killed me? You’ll be more alone than you have left me for years...”
I thought I had convinced him. I thought I had brought him back. I wanted him to be brought back. I wanted this monster that had taken over him to leave.
But he shook his head. “A small sacrifice for the good of all.”
I was locked in the stables for the night and the next day. Channing apparently had to prepare the ritual in the swamp. This involved acquiring a sacrificial knife, witnesses, plants that would have some kind of effect on the victim, a belt or rope, and a leather cape. I overheard him mentioning these as he passed the house on his way back to the town for “witnesses.”
I did not cry. Nor did I become hysterical. I felt ghostly calm in the stables. The animals all looked reassuringly towards me, and I would stroke them and murmur words of comfort. Around midnight I found some dried blackberry in a small basket by the locked door, and I helped myself.
In the morning, the door was opened and I was seized by Channing and brought to the swamp. On the way, I never lost my composure. All I said was, “Why do you do this?!”
He looked down at me and cackled. “Power, girl. Do you know how much power a man has when he cures the deathly malady?”
I have been closely watched for hours as the snake waits for the sun to sink again. I realized what he meant by “witnesses,” a man and a boy from another village, shaking in fear. I was allowed to bring an empty booklet, which I am writing in now.
This booklet is for Father.
When I am gone, he will be alone. Just as I felt alone those years as he avoided me. When he finds this, I hope that he will remember my words in my voice, just as I imagined Mother’s voice in that scrap of paper that fell out of a doll. I hope when he reads this he will not feel so lonely anymore. And I hope that he hears what I have to say.
After all this time, I understand my father. He wanted to keep things perfectly the way they’d always been. This is an impossible wish; but when my back was found curved, his wish began to rule him. My impossible wish was that the curve would not affect us as a family; but that is not to happen. In hindsight, our wishes are the same: but things are not meant to stay the same. Things are meant to change. These changes are tests of our humanity, our wisdom, and our strength: I feel so much pity for my father that he failed. Though he failed, though he has sentenced me to death on the word of a scheming snake, I still love him. And I always will.
Just as Mother always loved me though I was the cause of her death. So I shall be like Mother. I will love my killer, because he is my family.
And I will watch over my family. I will be his guardian angel. As Mother has been mine.
And we will still be a family. Bonded through each other by love.
* * *
The man strained his eyes and held his son close, shaking with fear. “Has he come yet?” his son asked in a quavering voice.
“No, son. Not yet.” He held him closer. “Don’t worry, son. I won’t let him hurt you.”
“I know, father.” The boy did not stop shaking. Suddenly, he pointed. “Who’s that?!” he asked shrilly.
“It’s - it’s okay, son. It’s not the bad man.”
“Who are you?” the approaching person asked.
“My name doesn’t matter,” he replied grimly, “it will soon be lost to the swamp.”
The person did not reply.
There was a rustling sound and the boy gasped. The snake-man emerged from the night’s shadows dragging a girl with him. She looked no more than sixteen years old.
“Father, it’s the bad man!”
“It is, son. Don’t worry, now. He won’t hurt you now.”
“But he’s gonna hurt her,” the boy whispered and pointed at the teenage girl.
“There’s nothing we can do about it, son. I wish I could...” He looked with pity at the girl. She had honey-gold hair and lake-blue eyes that were clear and bright - she looked absolutely calm. When she turned away from him, he blinked - her spine seemed to curve slightly.
“The rope,” the snake-man muttered maliciously, just as the girl broke free and ran towards the person in the mist. The snake-man shouted, but she didn’t go further. She hugged the person in tight embrace.
“I’m sorry, Father.” she murmured. Unseen by the person or the snake-man, she slipped a booklet of paper and something made of wood into the person’s heavy black coat.
“Get back here, you -” the snake-man growled as he grasped her arm and yanked her away from her father. Her hands lingered in the air, reaching out for him, and for a moment his hands did too.
The snake-man grabbed some dried plants from a pile on the ground and held them to the girl’s face. She swayed and fell asleep. He grabbed the rope and wrapped it like a noose around her neck. Her expression hardly changed as he pulled the noose tighter and tighter.
When she went limp, it seemed like her father did too. He slumped slightly and stared in shock at her body on the ground.
The snake-man pulled out a knife, raised it high above his head, and stabbed her deep in the throat. She barely moved, but the sound of the knife going in was the most horrible sound the man had heard in his entire life. His son sobbed silently against his chest.
When the snake-man pulled it back out, the man could hardly bear to look anymore and rested his head against his son’s. In his peripheral vision he saw the snake-man dragging a leather cape over the girl’s body. The father walked over and knelt by her head. Her eyes were closed. Her expression was peaceful, serene - she might have been asleep.
“Move back, Brent,” Channing clipped harshly. Brent barely moved, so he shoved him back, almost toppling him over into the swamp. Channing threw the body into the peat, listening with satisfaction at the splash.
“And now,” he said in a deadly voice, taking out his knife and advancing towards the man and his son, “let us see if our sacrifice was successful.”
Brent watched the body of his daughter sink slowly beneath the peat. He hardly noticed the frightened cries of the boy or the scuffling noises of the man’s attempt to defend his son. He was unsuccessful, and Channing crowed triumphantly as he plunged the knife into the chest of the older man.
Channing had told Brent earlier how the entrails of an innocent dead man could determine the future. He had been horrified at first, but now he barely noticed as Channing pronounced good omens for the crops while tossing the bodies into the peat as well. He kept staring at the place his daughter had sunk.
Channing had to lead him away, like a dumb child, through the swamp and back to the village, where he patted his back and wished him luck with the fields before leaving. Mechanically he walked home, deaf and blind to everything around him.
When dawn broke, Brent awoke.
He hadn’t fallen asleep the entire night. He’d walked through the threshold, then sank to his knees in front of the fire. Staring at it. Looking for answers in the light. When the sun rose, he blinked, then stood and walked outside to the fields. It hadn’t rained that night. The blue lake reflected the sunrise in soft ripples of honey-gold.
The next week passed in a gray blur. Routine was all that kept Brent doing anything. He rose at dawn without looking again at the lake to hitch up the oxen with the ard to plough the fields. He did it slowly, without thinking or barely putting any work in. Then he would sow the seeds by himself, slowly without thinking. At night, he’d come back in without having eaten anything all day. He wasn’t hungry, but he ate a couple of blackberries she’d saved through the famine. He wouldn’t sleep, instead kneeling and staring at the fire all night.
Seven days after the night in the swamp, Brent was ploughing a corner of the fields he hadn’t been to in a while. The oxen suddenly lowed and stepped back. Coming over to see what the problem was, Brent saw something small and wooden in the weeds.
It was a doll. The doll he’d thrown out the window years ago. With the yellow yarn hair and blue dress. Only the back of the wood was chipped.
Brent stared at it. He stared and stared at it, not wanting to believe it. Wishing so hard that it had been the girl herself he’d found in the weeds.
Suddenly he snatched up the doll and ran into the house. Seizing his coat he’d hung by the door, he plunged his hand into the pocket and buried the doll in the cloth. He never wanted to touch the coat again. It had been there when his daughter had been sacrificed.
Something else touched his hand in the pocket. There was another wooden something in there, as well as some kind of paper. Curious, he took them out of the pocket - and his heart stopped.
The wooden something was another doll. Not made with the excellent craftmanship the other one was made of. It was crudely whittled, but Brent couldn’t mistake the black hair or the modest red dress, or the soft expression.
How Gytha had made a perfect copy of her mother in doll form when she’d never seen Ena, Brent didn’t know.
Feeling rattled, he turned his eyes to the paper thing in his pocket. It was a booklet. He opened it up and began to read.
Father says that Mother knew from the beginning there was something wrong with me...
* * *
The world had changed when he finished reading.
Suddenly, nothing he’d been doing the past week seemed to matter. Suddenly he felt tears in his eyes when he hadn’t cried since Ena’s death, when he hadn’t shed a single tear in the swamp, and he thought he saw his wife’s reproachful eyes beaming at him, asking him, why, why, why did you do it? Suddenly he realized the crimes Channing had done, the way he’d worked that monster into his heart, making him think it was his daughter, his innocent, loving, beautiful daughter who would never had changed if it wasn’t for Brent, who tried and tried to bring him back, and now it was too late, too late to tell her he loved her, too late to tell her he was sorry, that he never really blamed her for anything, but Ena for giving him a gift that really was a true gift, that he’d squandered, wasted, ignored and never really seen...
He missed her so much, and it crashed down like the falling sky, and in his mind’s eye he saw the blue lake with soft ripples of gold, saw her peaceful serene face in the lake with two stars for eyes, watching over him like she promised... except the sun was gone, it was nighttime, and the stars had gone out a week ago, he’d put them out -
And there was only one way, one way to make it up to her, to see her again and apologize, to be with her forever -
* * *
Marlo’s father left his son at the house by the lake and walked down to Brent’s house.
He felt bad for abandoning him the way he did, leaving him alone for a week, especially the week after his daughter had been murdered. He hadn’t been part of the crowd when Channing arrived, but he heard about it when he went into town. He wanted to come and apologize to his friend.
As he walked through the fields, he noticed how the ard and the oxen had been left out and grunting morosely. Deciding to do his friend a favor, he shut the oxen in the stable with the ard before walking into the house.
The fire had died to a smolder. It was colder than he expected. “Brent?” he called, before his eyes lit upon the table.
There was a note there. Marlo’s father didn’t read the note right away, because something had drawn his attention. Brent was asleep on the floor of his bedroom, lying on the bedroll with a dark oak box in his hands and a red kitchen knife at his side.
Brent was gone. The note read,
I’m so incredibly sorry, Gytha, my dearest daughter, my closest family, my wisdom that I ignored, my dignity that I cast away. I’m so sorry about what I did to you.
I hope to see you again now. If not, I understand, I know I deserve it.
I’m sorry, Ena. Dearest Ena. I broke my promise. I wasted your gift. The greatest gift you ever gave me. I love you. We are now all bonded through love.
-Brent.
The end.
