The Daughters of Warring, Part 1
Isabel moves through the snow, her boots crunching through the ice. Her breath makes clouds of the air as she walks. Her limbs feel heavy. This sensation is one that she has felt before: the slowing of blood. The apathy of muscle that has been exposed to cold too long. Her cheeks are red with the bloom of blood trapped just beneath her skin. She is tired, maudlin, thinner than she used to be.
Father’s house is just beyond the trees. Isabel stops in her tracks.
The smell of food wafts through the air. Pheasant and potatoes, fresh baked bread. Pumpkin pie. Hot cider. She inhales the aroma and her stomach grumbles. She cannot remember how long it has been since she last ate.
She moves slower now, making fists in her pockets. Her fingers are numb.
The trees stretch their twisted gray limbs to the sky in supplication. Blanketed in ice, the barren trunks are as cracked and gnarled as wounds.
If anyone looked out the window from the house, they would see her. It was a risk, coming so close. Still, there was no place that she would rather be. Isabel could not see them, she could imagine them: her father, at the head of the table, drink in hand. Her sisters Margaret and Suzette, chatting, laughing. Mother, sitting at the opposite end of the table, flushed from the heat of the kitchen, but wearing her Sunday dress for the occasion.
The table would be filled with candles and golden glow, the roast bird the proud centerpiece.
Father would lift his glass in a toast. To the good of the family. To a Merry Christmas, and a prosperous and Happy New Year…
Would no one miss her? Isabel wondered bitterly. Had they already removed her chair from the table, banishing it to a dark corner of the room? Did her Mother pass the days sewing clothes for Margaret and Suzette, never acknowledging her third daughter’s existence? Did her father ever speak her name?
Isabel jumped, rattled by a sudden noise.
The sound of birds calling to each other cracked through the air. The black wings of crows flashed as dark and fluid as wet ink against the sky.
***
Isabel woke.
The first rays of dawn stretched out to touch her face like gray, cold fingers. The window of her cell barely allowed light. The snow had stopped falling sometime during the night. All was quiet. After an evening of snow and howling wind, the stillness left an odd void.
Isabel was cold. There was no heat provided in the chamber. She had been given an threadbare quilt, which she wrapped around her body.
The dream began to slip away as she looked at her present surroundings. Anger welled up in her chest. She had done nothing to deserve this.
She remembered the words spoken by the magistrate. The council , made up of the heads of the town’s founding families handed down the punishment. Their words echoed through her head.
Isabel Warring, we have found that you are guilty of witchcraft. You will be executed by hanging.
***
A guard arrived with a meager breakfast. She was surprised to see him place some paper beside her on the cot.
“What is this?” Isabel asked.
He paused before answering. He was not the brutish sort as some of the other men, but he always watched her with caution. As if he weren’t so sure that she wouldn’t go for his throat at any moment.
“I was instructed to give you this.”
“Why?”
“They want you to write it down.”
“Write what?”
“A confession of your crimes. It would be in your best interest to do so.”
She laughed, too loudly. It hurt her chest. It sounded desperate, even to her own ears.
“I am to lie, to clear their conscience?”
“No,” he replied. “It should be to soothe your own. Even the innocent must regret something in life, yes?”
He left then. There was a clatter as the iron lock slid into its place. The sound of his footsteps died away. She was alone again.
Picking up the paper, she held it in her lap. She ran her fingers across the coolness of it.
A tapping noise alerted her that a bird was far above, on the ledge of the window.
A singular black form behind the milky glass, the bird pecked it’s beak against the stone. She had seen three birds joined together, chattering, their shrill call like an argument that only they could understand.
Maybe, they pity me, she thought.
With nothing else to do, she dipped the pen into the bottle of ink, and began to draw the bird’s form. Before she knew it she had drawn four such birds, diving through a cloudy sky as they had in her dream.
___________________
©2010 Lori Titus
Lori’s novella, Lazarus, is now available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Her second novella, Hailey’s Shadow, will be available in early 2011. Other projects are forthcoming.
Until Marradith Ryder and family return in 2011 from their winter vacation, please enjoy The Daughters of Warring, which will appear here every Wednesday between now and February 2nd.
