The Starlight And The Storm Of Fire

Chapter the Third

There was a void in her heart, where her soul should have been.

She did not sleep at night. In the daytime, she did not move. Liquid stained the creases around her eyes, because she could still hear their voices, their screams, and she was powerless to stop them. To help herself. One jerk, one snap and they would break her. And that was more painful to try and heal a shattered limb.

Men despised her and women avoided her, hiding their babe's faces in the folds of their aprons. Her family is dishonoured, for she had dishonoured them. And what was left of her family were too brothers, and men, slumped at the broken little table, sipping jugs of cool milk.

Alasdair rose and washed his hands in the basin beside the water jug, blood running off his knuckles. "I had to do it," he told the curious neighbours who had heard the screams. His back was to them, and they saw that his eyes were dry, his mouth set in an angry line. "It was her own fault," he told them, turning back to the basin and taking up a bar of sheep fat soap.

His good brother, Caelan, understood. He didn't hate himself for it. He didn't hate himself when he pushed Laea's head deep into the coals, when her cries reached his ears, her clothes tore, hair snapped, and blood began to trickle. He had obediently followed his brother's lead, saying nothing, hardening his heart to his sister's pleas.

Two hours later, Laea was dead.

She stayed inside the corner of the house, hidden away from Caelan and Alasdair's eyes, alone in the darkness that swallowed her every more the time ticked by.

Soon darkness was that was left.

*************

Her hair wrapped around her throat like a shawl. She does not cry out, and if someone looked more closely, they could see why—her throat was exposed, a wide gaping wound.

Empty sockets were her eyes. Staring up.

The villagers would say it was the only thing the boys could have done. From childhood, all of them had heard about the monster. It is like "cleaning the barley from maggots." They would have done it themselves in the boys' place.

Some of them already had, in case the monster was conceived from them.

From the days of Old, the Story Keeper was telling her story...

"The Legend of the Cursed Ones had spread horror throughout the kingdom for fear of their newborns. A foolish king, King Alexander of Dariuis had loved the stars more than anything. They shimmered like gold and he harvested them from the heavens to store inside of great chests. 'Even if the sky was filled with them,I would never have enough!' he'd boasted.

"According to the Legend, Alexander had invited a fae to have a drink with him. True to his greed for gold, he refused to pay for his drink, so he convinced the fae to turn herself into a gold coin so that Alexander could use that one coin to buy their drinks. The fae did so, but Alexander decided to keep it for himself and put it into his pocket next to an iron coin which prevented the fae from changing back to her original form. Alexander eventually freed the fae under the condition that he would receive a lifetime of wishes for whatever his being desired. The fae was enraged by the trick Alexander had played on her, and kept her promise, but bound him with the curse upon his kingdom.

"She left, cursing his name. 'I curse you! I curse the name of Dariuis, and all who come after! In another day and life, your children of your kingdom will be marked with my curse of the Fae!'

"Women had dropped their babies from the kingdom's walls to destroy the root of the curse from the kingdom. In that year, Alexander killed nine of his children to rid himself of the curse. He had believed his people were immortal from the faerie's curse with his wishes, but the curse was permanent. That night had been filled with the sound of weeping mothers for their dead."

The firstborn of every woman had cut out—like an infection. Precautions were taken to rid the curse from the bloodlines. Women found no empty aches in their hearts, no hollowness in their bodies.

Only Ailís sat listlessly in the semi-darkness of the shed near the boatshed. The stifling stench of gutted fish heaped in mounds by the crates to be taken to market to sell churned in her nose. Her daughter was condemned from conceivement, and now burned for it. No law recognized the murder of those detected with the bloodline of the monster.

Enteniya's destiny had been predetermined by the Fae and humans before she had pushed her way through the dark birth passage, before the cord was cut and her lungs awakened with her first breath of air. Her fate would have been the same as all the other babes in her village, dropped from the height of the cliffs to smash on the rocks below.

But she entered, the world, and as she did, mourning and disappointment her all around her.

Ailís would live in the cottage next to the man called her husband who conceived their daughter, and her two sons who had now killed her daughter.

Whispers buzzed around the women who sat with the sharp gutting knives, their hands bound in rags to stop nicking themselves. Bella Jappy said, "Och! Look at her, poor lass. I thoir her some babs. With some honey and butter."

Annie Watt turned to her, "If ye got naw speed, its naw use." All of them bowed their heads and resumed their tasks. They earned one-and-a-quarter penny an hour for this task. They had to work fast as possible. Breaks meant losses. And you lost money.

They washed their bloody hands in the salty water before packing the stinking herring into the slated wooden crates. "Oi! Blair!"

A donkey cart was driven up and the crates were thrown in by the strapping lad. He counted out the pennies from the heavy purse at his hip, giving each lady her share. "I'll take Ailís coin," Bella Jappy said. Blair handed over several coins.

"Come along, lass." Bella knelt next to Ailís. "It's three in the forenoon. Let's get some food into ye, lass," she urged. Bella Jappy slung one arm over hers, and hand tight around Ailís' waist, supported her up the jetty in a giddy trot.

Numb with cold and shock, Ailís allowed herself to be fed a warm roll from the passing bun man with his basket of piping hot goods under a blue blanket on his head. Bella Jappy broke it open and allowed the warm honey to coat the outside. Ailís ate from Bella's sake. His throat was dry and she couldn't feel her fingers.

"What you need, lass is a cupa snog of tea. It'll warm ye cockles of heart and give you some sleep ye need."

The two women, rolls in hand, wandered up the long, winding path to the cliff point and onward to home before the dawn broke to catch a few winks of sleep.

****************

There should not have been any dawn for her.

It was four in the morning in the poor village of Elgin, Moray. Every soul was asleep, hunched over tables with lolling tankards of ale and cheap grog. Women lying beside their lovers, dreaming. Husbands curled upon rough straw pallets, drooling.

The haze of the mountains blocked the rising sun, itching the break of day.

A rough, homespun blanket was carelessly thrown over the blackened, charred corpse in the corner of the but-and-ben. Two young men were slumped over the table, the smeared remnants of sour cherry jam on the corners of their mouths. The empty pie pan lay between them, the sweet pastry crust gone with only fine crumbs left.

Under the blanket, a fingernail twitched. A crackle of gold power. Raw and powerful ebbing through her bones.

Her hair was restored, long beautiful and dark. Eyes of mismatched colours.

A rattling soft gasp filled her lungs, like that of a fish brought up on dry land.

Her innocent life for their vengeful acts. And blazed as an act of murder.

She forced her body to rise from the ashes once again.