The girl sat in the corner of the rough, turf cottage, watching the dust swirl around her. The cold from the window soothed her. The physical pain in her body matched the ache in her heart. Her mind turned again to her mother and her brothers and her father. Only last winter she'd been with her mama. Her brothers. How little they understood her! The thought drifted their her like a snowflake. She felt the lump in her throat, but her tears would not come. They came seldom anymore.
She wondered again what life was really like in other kingdoms. Children would attend the village school. Did they have to marry young? Some girls here shortly after their first bleed at sixteen were to have their first children in a few months. They had married the village headman's fine sons. They had a choice. Wealth. Prestige. Honour.
Her Mama had married at eighteen. the same age she was now. Her Mama had moved to the next valley with her bridegroom. She had heard from the gossiping farmgirls about a cousin who didn't have to marry a farm boy. She married into a wealthy family. An honourable, handsome, strapping man who gave his bride a traditional wedding that lasted four days. Not a feast of chewy, roasted meat, tankards of grog, jesting and teasing, crude comments, or worse. Beatings. Of course, her family lived only in a small village. But the girls whispered the stories when they went to milk their father's sheep and goats, the milk pails sloshing with rich, creamy milk.
"It was a braw banquet lasting three days with every scran under Dost."
"The groom gie his bride siller of gold that was worth a talent!"
"Floer cost five million golden Sterling! Rosettes in shades of lemon yellow, glowing apricot to a white heart."
"Her dowry alone was six laden donkeys of linens, silk, gold, and bronze."
Her thoughts were interrupted by footsteps as she heard someone approaching. A fist of fear struck her. Would they beat me again?
Would they beat her because she wasn't working?
Panic nearly choked her.
"Ailsa!" a rough woman's voice called. "Come back here, lass! The ashets are not washed and dried! What about the sacken sark and your broders' brògan?"
It wasn't them! she huddled closer to the wall and held her breath. "Ailsa!" Silence. A young girl muttered something and turned away, her buxom figure bumping against the heavy basket of mixed berries slung against her hip. She had been out for over half the day gathering. And from the looks of it, she had collected a bounty of elderberries, redcurrants, cherries, whitecurrants, and gooseberries. When the summer ripened over the highlands, one would find wild, sweet strawberries throughout the hills. She waited until the girl's steps faded before scrambling to her feet and closing the front door. She needed to do something quickly. Before they came back.
There was baking to be done.
The stores were dwindling, but enough until the merchants came. She dipped a scoop into the sacks of barley, oats, beans and pease. She would soak them overnight with water to cook broses in the morning for breakfast. Oat bread would also have to be made.
Her mama had already ground out a measure with the stones days before. She poured it into a bowl and stirred in leaven and salt with her fingers. Inside a terracotta pot was the buttermilk along with some small rounds of cheese and jugs of milk. The pot had been soaked in freezing water and placed on a slab of slate to keep their produce at a low temperature for about a week. She added enough buttermilk to the dry ingredients until a sticky dough was formed. She tipped it onto a surface floured with barley flour and kneaded it briefly. "The secret," her mama said, "Is to just knead it enough to bring it together. Overdo it, and it becomes as tough as wood."
The fire had been kept alive with the peat, and she removed it with iron tongs. Oil was used to grease the frying pan and the dough was patted in and the pan was placed on the flames to toast. She knelt beside the fire, frying the bannock until it was nicely browned. As she watched the hot oil sputtering, she wondered if it would happen today. The splash of oil on her skin just before she heard the strike of flint. She imagined her skin, blistering in flames, and pictured their faces as they watched her burn to death. She listened to the sputtering of oil in the pan.
Her body still showed the burns from the first encounter. Once she healed herself and when they had discovered her, they beat her face unrecognizable.
Her father would say," Don make trouble."
Her mama would comfort her, taking her up in her arms, and apply poultices to the worst of the injuries. She would watch over her at night, covering her with warm blankets, and keeping her safe throughout the day.
But she was no match against them. A match, just waiting to burst into an unquenchable fire. Only she would be the one consumed in the flames.
They would tell the villagers, "it was an accident."
And they would believe their words. Some pretended to.
"She's just a glaikit girl. An ass."
"Too glaikit to go near thee flames."
"Accidents happen."
"She needs to learn the hard way, to never do it again."
She turned one wedge of the bannock, and jerked her hand back suddenly as the oil spattered, burning her. She plunged her hand into the bucket by the grate, and sunk her wrist under the cool water, biting her lip as the tears spilled over at last, cool rivers on her cheeks.
*************
The cherries were going sour.
She avoided the women at the harvests. The men were worse, seeing nothing wrong in killing a cursed woman. The woman hurled insults at her.
"Get out of here, you monster!"
"Run back to the pits of hell! Where you belong!"
"Go back to your own kind and stay away from our sons!"
The worst words was being called a "whore" and "Cursed." Sometimes she'd ignore them and their pelting rocks, grinding her teeth into her lower lip until it split and blood trickled into her mouth. But she needed to eat. This was the only way for her to live, until her family returned from the fishing markets in the southern lands. The merchants only came once a year in the summer, and that gave her a little more.
Berry picking was the best when the sun just filtered over the mountains and she would reach the low meadows where the bushes were ripe and wildly clustered. Harvesting would be quick, before the sleepy girls would awake to begin their chores of gathering, spinning, and washing. Blackberries! They exploded in her mouth with sweetness and the taste of heaven. It was like clouds of goodness filling her gnawing stomach. She would just sit there and eat and eat and eat, until she was bloated with their sugar. It was worth it, if she bumped into the sleepy-eyed girls on the way down the mountain to glean. She would hitch up her long arisaid, throwing the ends over her shoulders and run away from the hailstorm of stones that would follow her. Once bolted inside her cottage, she would staunch the tiny cuts all over her face, arms, and legs. The little boys would use her as a target, pelting her with rotten fruit and sheep dung, and their mothers would put no stop to it.
She tucked the wedges of bannock towels to keep them fresh and set them aside. Fetching the basket of cherries, she picked through them with her finger and thumb, discarding ones that were rotting.
Very well, she would make some sour cherry jam and encase it in a pie.
The small knife dug into the juicy flesh of the red cherry, flicking out the seed. She dropped the tiny halves into the battered iron pot and reached for another cherry. She was used to her barbs and stings. As Mama used to whisper in her ear, "Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never kill you." But it did not hurt any less.
The edge of the knife stabbed her thumb. Damn! She stuck her thumb in her mouth, sucking the blood. Though, she thought, blood in their pie would be sweet enough for me. Blood budded at the ball of her thumb, between the sliced skin, and ran into the cracks beside her nail. Something twitched in her skin and she stared at her thumb, watching the minuscule threads of skin searching for one another, and knitting together. They bounded, tightening over the slice of open raw skin, and closed up. Again. All that was left of the cut was a drop of blood. She licked it up with her tongue and powered through the basket of cherries. She emptied the kettle of water over the fruit, just enough to cover, and added a spoonful of honey before setting the fruit over the flames to cook.
A pie would be just the thing to welcome her brothers back from their days in the fields, easing their anger on her. The barley and oats were being gleaned, packed in sheaves and carried to the threshing floors to beat until fine. Wheat was scarce, as the climate was too harsh. Merchants brought what they gathered from the far north down the southern capital, and then returned. What they had not sold, was offered to the poor villages along the way. Wheat flour made the best pastry and sweetbreads and it was snatched so fast off the carts by women would clawed each other like cats for it. She need not get into the haggling fight over the bags of flour, for she knew there were always three bags just for her. Kai and his father, headsman over the merchants that crossed over, took care of her plight and always snuck her treats and goodies.
She measured three scoops of wheat flour into a deep bowl and unwrapped the butter. She sliced it into the flour and rubbed it between her fingers until its texture was fine breadcrumbs. One egg, sugar, and salt... She ticked off the list of ingredients before she squeezed the mixture with her hands until it became a dough. She wrapped it in a clean towel and let it rest in a soaked terracotta pot on the slate to relax the gluten.
Stirring the cherries, she made sure none were sticking to the base of the pot. It was beginning to simmer, so she wrapped her hands in a towel, lifted the pot and waited for the flames to die down a wee bit. She slid it back on to reduce and the liquid thickened and found a stale, hard loaf under the folds of a tea towel. Splitting it open with her fingers, she smeared it thickly with butter then with the warm jam. The muscles in her face ached as she chewed, from the last encounter with her brothers. the burned flesh was still pink and tender. She touched it with one hand, wincing at the puckered skin along her jawline. Healing, though. She remembered the crackling of her skin against the fire when she had once forgotten to set the kettle to boil for their tea and no supper had been prepared. Mama had told her to sneak over to Old Mattie until she returned from gutting the fish at the port.
She had tried to lift the old, heavy brown teapot onto the grate, but her tiny body was too weak, and she'd slipped and the teapot had cracked on the floor. She'd been so afraid that Mama would tan her, so she'd crawled into her straw pallet, tears welling. As punishment, her brothers had jammed her face against the boiling metal of the kettle, searing the skin. The flash of pain had been so fast that she reared back, her flailing arm had caught Alasdair right in the nose. He crashed into the table, breaking a chair leg. She fell to the floor, writhing in pain as wafts of steam floated up from her face.
"You little cow!" Alasdair had screamed at her, holding his streaming nose. He'd drawn back his boot to slam into her ribs when the door opened and a sharp-hipped old woman poked her gnarled stick inside.
Ten minutes later the two lads had run outside, their faces and limbs sporting plum bruises. "Chickens!" screeched Mattie, shaking her cane in fury after them. "The next time I catch you, I'll bang you on the head with my saucepan!"
Mattie had covered her with her thin shawl and called for her grandson. "Archie! Bring a sheepskin blanket too!"
Archie had taken one look inside and ducked away. Mattie found him loitering on the garden path.
"But Mam!" he protested, "She's evil! I'll get warts from her!"
"Where did ye hear that, me laddie?" she growled.
"Everyone says so!"
"Och!"
"She must be exiled, like the infection!"
"Come here before I give ye peelie-wally ass a tanning!" She pointed her cane at him, threatening to do so.
He stomped down his foot, arms clenched to fists at his sides. His face was red and sulky."If I touch her I-I-I I'll be acur—"
"Wheest!" she'd snapped. The angrier she came, the more her voice thickened. "Och! You carnaptious bhrat! You're in a muckle slap, an-dràsta fhèin, laddie! Droch balach!" she shrieked, hobbling forward and seizing him by neck and ear, frogmarching him into the cottage where the little girl lay, her breath hoarse. "Git!" She slapped him hard over the head with her cane. He yelped at pain, and tentatively stepped over the girl.
What happened after, Archie never spoke a foul word against her. His playmates knew that whatever she wielded set them apart as ever being friends, but he was courteous.
"There you are," purred a cruel voice. Worn down by the scorching heat. Husky from the sun.
The lump of bread balled in her throat coated in sweet butter and cherry jam clogged. Her jaw went slack.
"Little monster."
Two hulking shapes filled the doorway. She could see the glint of their curved, cruel smiles.
How could she have not heard them? Their boots crunching on the gravel. Stinking, sweaty bodies reeking of horse manure and hay, and dirt.
"Father wishes you to retrieve the goats."
Their bodies were taut, hands strong and muscled from the hayfields.
He grabbed her hair, using it as leverage with which to swing her head and smash it into the floor, the window, and the wall, grinding her face along the stones. She had more than once tried to cut off her beautiful hair to give them less leverage.
She peered up at them with one eye from the floor, swallowing the ball of bread and mouthful of blood. "You were in the fields, are you that useless to not bring the goats back with you along the way?" She could make out the shape of Alasdair's crocked nose in the light.
The breath was knocked out of her as his fist smashed into her cheek. His words cut into her. Foul words, jagged and careless. Words that knocked the wind out of her. More so that his fists, and his words left her stunned. Stunned at his viciousness. Stunned at his cruelty.
They were her brothers. And they hit her, beating the health and spirit right of out of her. Oh, how he swung, until her body bled, until her muscles tore, until bones cracked. She took blow after blow because of their jealousy and hatred. Because she would take a beating to keep them from Mama, because she could not, no matter how she tried, to please them.
Villagers may have not seen the bruise marks or swelling that covered her body, wounds she so expertly hid. They did not know how her stomach tightened or how her breathing stopped whenever someone was nearby her. Many did not know that she wished to scream and rage and fight because she lived in daily fear of her own life. She was tormented by the risk of wishing she could run away, but then they would take it out of her mama.
She was their neighbour, and at night she cried and hurt and bled.
There was a bang of metal, clanging against the stones. Another fist to her face. She coughed, blood coating he tongue. She could already feel the splintering pain as it surged through her bones, easing to heal her broken body. It flooded through her ribs, binding her bones back together. It was no use. Nothing would stop this accursed thing in her body.
"You'll wish there was more skin left to burn, sister."
Fear knotted in her stomach.
Caelan tangled his hand up in her hair, bringing her bleeding face up to his. He shoved her against the doorframe, face first. Pain exploded behind her eyes. When she fell, he kicked and punched her as she writhed on the stone floor, using his fist when he missed her with his boot.
"WORTHLESS!" he shouted. " A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING—!" His voice became a hiss as he grabbed her hair again and yanked it back, forcing her to look up at him. "If God has so-blessed you with power, let Him have you, ashes and all!" And he plunged her face into the open flames of the burning fire.
She clenched her teeth and welcomed the burning pain in her face.
Her brain was swirling with blackness and pain, her mouth full of blood and flames licking here and there. And here eyes were swollen. Her face was wet, but where the tears ended and the blood and flames began, she could not say.
She didn't know how long she stayed in the flames. It could have been a few minutes or a few hours. Time means nothing when you are in Hell.
***************
Her charred corpse was found, lying in the kitchen.