The Sacrifice / Sacred Ground

The Sacrifice

The earth shakes with every rumble of thunder. Lightning strikes leave fiery craters in parched ground, once ripe lands have turned to dust. 

A procession of wanderer's brave the storm, dwarfed by the shadows of flaming trees.  What's left of the withered grass turns to black sand beneath their feet. The mouth of the great dark cliffs open up before them, through its teeth they must venture. 

The heathens go to appease the Lake Witch, they go to end this before it ends them. 

Every summer, when the fields are at their driest and the forest is at its most vulnerable, she ravages the land. Sending windstorm and hail to break branches and farmers backs, stretching out her sharp fingers from the sky and touching the trees with their tips, setting them to burn. Stroking their pastures with the same greedy hands. Her cruelty has robbed them of the plains and the out cropping forests she's swallowed up in smoke. Her hunger now grows towards the sun mountain and their dwellings. 

Their flocks were without food and threatened by stampedes of wild animals volleying to escape the infernos of their thickets. Wells have dried up, diverted by her tricks, parched tongues and parched soil make for grave diggers delight, until stones cover their own bones. 

The heathens come to a large salt water lake, "Cursed waters," the chief leading them would say, his words a hum and a hiss in some ancient dialect. 

The body of water is dark, undercurrent strong and pulling the surface into a shifting vortex. The bellowing purple clouds above reflect glowing amethyst hues in the otherwise onyx waters. A volt strikes the pool, flickers of eerie green electrify it, giving glimmers into the depths where shadows play. Thunder follows quickly, the heathens tremble, knees knocking as the ground shakes once again beneath them. Each time more violently, as each strike and rumble comes closer together. The next carves another crater into the ground, the sand turns to black glass there. 

They held tight to their sacrifices, metals, golds, jewels, some of their goats, all of their most precious things. To appease the witch at the bottom of this pool, they would give everything. Even their most priceless possession. The daughter of the chieftain, being pushed along at the very back of the procession. 

Her father raises his arms up to the heavens, announcing their tributes. "For you, we offer all we have. We offer our treasures, we offer our livelihoods, we offer all that is dear to us, that you may spare us our lives... That you may spare us what is left!" 

With these words the heathens move forward. Each in turn tossing their finery into the vortex. Gold, silver, precious stones, the animals, whose blood they spilled into the water first with a jagged knife. But the storm does not calm for these mere things, as he had suspected. He turns to his daughter. 

She is slowly brought to the front, dressed in her mother's robes and with the headdress she was to wear for her wedding upon her head. Turquoise stones, red clay beads and carved bone hang down by her wet cheeks, red paint washed down by her tears from the line that had been painted in across her face.  Trembling, she doesn't resist, she goes to her father. The storms rage only seems to intensify with each step, she holds her breath. 

Fear has silenced her, she cannot condemn her people to death by refusing to save them. Still, she turns to her father, shaking her head, the sorrow in her eyes her only plea. 

Her father places his palm over her forehead and eyes, closing his own, he says a prayer under his breath, growing louder so that the whole band can hear him. Then to her, he says, "My child, know that I love you far more now, in this act of sacrifice, than ever I have loved you before."

He now removes his hand from over her head and grasps onto her shoulders, turning her towards the mouth of swirling water. Her feet dig into the rough black sand, trying to find purchase in the rock somewhere beneath it. Finally resisting the steady push towards this fate. She realises she does not want to die. 

"To save our flocks and our lives."  Her father announces regally, taking his bone club up, he shall make it quick. She will not suffer if his swing is true. 

She is struggling back. No. She will not go, she thinks to herself, she does not want to do this. 

The club is lifted over her head, an almighty cracking, she flinches, the heathens all cry aloud. Lightning splits the ground, the roaring of the thunder shaking the very rock bed apart. The water before them begins to be swallowed into a chasm as the cracks appear all around the heathens. Their screams do them little good as they slide with the sands and fall with the crumbling sides, taken into the gnashing jaws of the parting rock. 

The girl teeters on the edge of the opening chasm, tipping on her toes as the hand holding her shoulder firm, gives way. Her father has lost his balance, and his club,  but he does not perish in the quake. No, he is left on the flat of his back as the ground starts to snap back together like bones being set. 

The water from the lake is now rising like a vengeful wall. Fear flashes in his eyes as he sees the curl of a malevolent grin in the foam. It rolls over him and smashes his body against the rocky entrance to this unholy place. As it recedes, his body gone, only his skull remains, cleaned of flesh. 

His daughter had been caught under the same swallowing wave. But she cannot remember the blow, although her skin aches, she is dry. Curled into a ball on the soft black sand, she opens her eyes to find herself safe. Beside her, a calm pond where a riotous lake had been. 

Looking up, she sees bare feet, toes painted white and anklets of blue stones and bone. Her eyes lead up slender caramel skinned legs to layers of tattered fabric which resemble both the scorched earth, the black sands and the now gentle clouds. Before her this woman stands, a raging storm of amethyst and onyx in otherwise jade eyes. Instead of anger, there is only kindness there. With a smile, she holds her hand out to the girl, reluctantly she takes it and is pulled to her feet.

"Inem'o atepo," the woman says. 

You're safe.