From the depths of the night came a primal cry. Forest creatures fell silent listening for danger. A mewling sound floated on the breeze before it was quieted with soft cloth soaked in sweet liquid.
More tension gripped those who listened until it built again to a strangled cry of pain. Twice more that wrenching sound split the air and then was muted by soft sobbing.
Dawn’s earliest pale streaks had not yet etched their way upward to sparkle among the leafy treetops. Scrambling noises of many booted feet disturbed the underbrush and scattered small animals from their nighttime cover.
Whispered instructions were passed from man to man. Torches were lit and set close to the foundation of the small thatched hut hidden among the trees.
“Burn witch. Burn and be gone from among us,” someone spat as the fire took hold in the dry tinder of the building. They were anxious to finish the deed and return to the safety of their homes. Hiding their faces with hoods and cowls, they huddled well back, afraid the witch might curse them.
One man ventured near a window and looked in to see a figure on the bed. She was naked with blood smeared thighs. Next to her on the bed were four small bundles, tightly swaddled. Four tiny faces peeked out and sucked hungrily on sugar tits.
Gasping, the man turned his ashen face from the scene. “Truly,” he thought, “she is a witch.” He couldn’t imagine anyone other than a witch that could give birth to four babies in one confinement.
Crossing himself, he stumbled away to spread the news to the others.
“We were only doing the Good Lord’s work to burn the witch and her heathen ‘get’,” he told them.
Not one man gave a thought to who among them could have been the true father of those babies. Almost to a man, they had forced the woman they called a witch. They knew she would never be able to identify them. Each had satisfied his lust while she frantically struggled beneath him. She had not been able to get away as they, each in his turn, bound her to her own bed, hit her with fist or stone until she was unconscious and then raped her.
Within the burning hut the woman, too weak from the multiple births to try to save herself or her newborns, gazed upon their tiny faces. Her eyes turned toward her hearth. Upon the mantle were many crystals. They sparkled in the fire’s light. Quickly she intoned a ‘prayer of life’. Not for herself, but for the innocents beside her.
“Maker of light, Creator of life and love, carry these souls into safety. Bring them together again sometime in the future. Give them peace and joy. Give them lives of abundance and creativity. I commit them into your hand, you who has formed us with your mighty thoughts. We come back to you now.”
All that had been, both flesh and wood, become smoke and ashes, floating heavenward. Carried by the wind, it disappeared into the mists of the dawn. Only a hint of her final words lingered.
“Jennifer’s flowers shall live on.”
As the early morning light heralded the new day, the song of the night birds was once again silent.
ISBN 978-1-9349-4034-1
$14.95
