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se1kie · 2 years

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The sky was red when Jetta finally stepped off the drove road.

‘Shepherd’s delight,’ she said softly, with a humourless snort.

She turned up the pebble-and-dirt road that wend its way through the village, and towards home, still gazing upwards.

Clouds had been hanging low and thick over the village since Beltane, and even now, with Lammas fast approaching, the dour weather had yet to break. Jetta couldn’t bear to look at the fields, where the crops, stunted and blackened, withered in the dirt.

She’d heard whispers — the crops were rotten; their heads oozing an ochre sludge, their stems weeping like a wound when cut with a scythe.

Auld wives tales, her pa insisted.

But there was still something wrong.

The knowledge was a lump in Jetta’s throat which she could never quite swallow.

Pausing at the crest of the hill, she gazed back down the glen, half hoping to see Seoras and the cattle at her heel. But he was nowhere to be seen.

Of course he wasn’t.

She’d seen the glint in his eye when they parted at the bridge.

As they’d readied to part, Jetta had tweaked his tourie, tugged at the plaid around his shoulders. Seoras flapped his hands at her. ‘I’ll be fine,’ his tone was exasperated. ‘I bet Ma set you up to this. Tell her no to worry.’

‘How far south are you going?’ Jetta asked, with as much nonchalance as she could muster.

He shrugged. ‘Inverness, maybe. Crieff. Pa wants a good price for the beasts, ken?’

They could only shake their heads, exchanging knowing looks. The family’s once-healthy cattle were now little more than a rickle of bones. Their big dark eyes looked sunken and dull. Their udders, however, were chapped and swollen. They’d never stopped producing milk, though it came out sour and dark. Once it had been full of lumps.

‘How long will you be gone?’ Jetta asked.

Seoras had looked away down the glen before he responded. ‘I’ll be back before you know it. You’ll no even have time to miss me.’

But Jetta knew better than that. Seoras had always had a faraway look in his eyes. Before the loch had begun to run dry, she’d often seen him at the shore’s edge, waves lapping at his toes, his attention on the twinkling horizon line.

The drove road would take him to Inverness, yes. To Crieff. Or even further south — Edinburgh. England. Even once he’d sold the cattle, he would never outrun them. Their painful lowing would echo in his ears. Just as it did in hers.

Jetta would never see her brother again.

She glanced up once more at the red sky. The pale full moon was already peeking up above the distant hills. The village was quiet as she passed through, with only the thick, acrid smoke from the croft chimneys for company. Gooseflesh crawled up Jetta’s arms, and she rubbed at them distractedly.

She felt a surge of relief when the family cottage finally came into view. She hurried towards it, her skirts whispering against her legs. But, just as relief began to swell in her stomach, the sight of the door lintel made it turn.

Her heart hammering, Jetta stepped towards the door.

Curls of pale fresh wood clung to the ragged edges of fresh new gores. A circle, filled with a flower-like shape of six interlocking petals. The cuts were jagged and rough under Jetta’s fingertip. She frowned, and pushed open the door.

The air inside the cottage was thick and acrid. The smell of rotten milk and livestock still clung to the floors, no matter what Jetta did to scrub them clean. The sour tang of fever and unwashed bodies curled around her nostrils, and she grimaced. The curtain around her mother’s bed in the kitchen was closed, and her father sat by the dying fire in the grate, sucking thoughtfully on his pipe.

‘Pa, pass me the boot stop,’ Jetta said.

It was as though she had sluiced a bucket of water across his head. ‘Jetta!’ he said, almost breathlessly. ‘Where did you…’ then he breathed in deeply, and his eyebrows settled. ‘Your brother’s away, then?’

‘Aye. Pass us the boot stop. I want to open the door.’

‘Dinnae.’ Jetta was taken aback. It wasn’t his usual commanding tone. It almost seemed as though her father was pleading with her.

She opened her mouth to respond, but he nodded towards the bed.

‘She’s taken bad?’ The lump was back in Jetta’s throat.

Her father’s tanned face looked drawn. He’d aged a decade in just one summer. He ran a hand through his beard. ‘We cannae go on like this.’

‘Seoras’ll sell the cows. That should set us up for a while. We’ll get by.’ Jetta reluctantly closed the door.

He father chuckled hollowly.

‘We can’t live on air and empty hope, Jetta.’ Her father’s steepled fingers were dry and cracked. His knuckles were pronounced.

Jetta breathed out heavily, and shrugged off her cloak. ‘What did you do to the door lintel, Pa?’ she glared at him.

He looked away, almost guiltily. ‘What with Seoras leaving…your ma, she just…’

‘Someone told me that was all just auld wives tales,’ Jetta rolled her eyes.

Her father glowered at her. ‘It makes her feel better, lass. A wee charm never hurt anyone.’

‘Fresh air would make her feel better,’ Jetta countered.

He scoffed. ‘The air in this village is foul.’

‘Well, we could go—’ Jetta began, a prickle of hope flaring in her chest. She thought of Seoras and the drove road.

‘We cannae move her,’ her father snapped, an echo of his old self bubbling to the surface. ‘I will not lose another…’

A shard of ice embedded itself in Jetta’s heart. Just before the cattle had first began their pained keening, when their milk had gone bad…

‘Pa, the bairn wasn’t…’ she protested weakly.

He held up a hand to stop her. ‘We cannae move your mother.’

Perhaps it was the swampy, fever drenched air in the room that was making Jetta feel dizzy. She could feel a slick of sweat in the small of her back. ‘What would you…’

‘Tonight,’ her father said suddenly, pushing himself to his feet. He looked her in the eye. ‘I want you to stay in the cottage. I want you to keep a wee eye on your ma.’

Jetta narrowed her eyes. ‘Why tonight?’

Her father shook his head. ‘Do as I say, Jetta.’

‘Pa, if you’re planning something…’

Her father looked troubled. He glanced away, into the dying fire. Grasping the poker, he jabbed it violently into the grate. Spitting sparks, the embers began to glow more fiercely as he rattled them.

Jetta watched as they faded to nothing in the thick air.

‘Pa…’ she edged again.

Her father sighed, and dropped the poker. ‘There’s to be…’ he began, his voice petering out. ‘That is to say, I’ve heard talk…’

A crawling sense of unease clambered up Jetta’s spine.

‘They say it’s a witch.’ Her father finally found his voice.

Jetta’s laugh came out a half-hearted bark. ‘Just like your auld stories, aye?’ Her smile faded as she realised her father’s stony expression hadn’t lifted at all. ‘Pa, you couldn’t possibly believe…’

‘I don’t know what I believe any more, Janet,’ his tone was resigned. Jetta balked at the sound of her full name — her mother’s name. ‘I just don’t…’

‘A witch, though, Pa?’ Jetta shook her head, feeling as though her head was full of wool. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. ‘Who would…’

‘Hen Garry says auld Meggie Duncan was muttering black curses against him before the spring quarter day.’

‘Meggie Duncan?’ Jetta’s mouth was dry. ‘Who lives down by the water?’

Her father nodded stiffly. ‘Esther Johnstone says she heard Meg speaking in tongues after the kirk session a few weeks back. And, Padraig—’

‘Pa,’ Jetta shook her head. ‘Meggie Duncan wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

Her father’s sunken eyes glittered as he looked into the fireplace. ‘We’ll not make it through the winter without a harvest, Jetta,’ his face looked drawn, ‘You know that, Jetta.’ His voice was firm, and he crossed over to her, grasping her shoulders with his knuckles bone-white. ‘Promise me you’ll stay here tonight, Jetta. Please.’

Jetta glanced towards the window. The sky had faded to a dull grey, and the dark was gather.

‘Jetta?’

Before Jetta could respond, her mother woke with a tortured, throat-scraping scream.

Jetta’s mother wouldn’t touch her broth. She gasped out, begging for Seoras. Calling for the bairn. Jetta mopped her fevered brow, tried to remind her that the bairn was gone, tried to convince her that Seoras would return. She’d almost forgotten her father’s warning until she heard him tying on his boots. He wore an expression of resignation, and she noticed him slipping his hunting knife into his sock.

‘Mind what I told you, hen,’ he said quietly as he reached for the door.

‘Pa!’ Jetta fought to her feet. ‘Pa—’

Suddenly, she felt a bony hand grasp her wrist. She turned. Her mother’s dark blonde hair, flecked with silver, fanned out around her head on the pillow. Her skin was pale, sallow in the low-light, her lips pulled back from her gums as she spoke, her voice raw and cracking. Jetta paused, momentarily rooted to the spot as her mother’s brown eyes pulled into focus.

‘Let him go.’

The lock clicked as her mother faded back onto her pillow, her eyes closing and her breath evening to a steady rhythm.

Swallowing a horrified sob, Jetta lurched away from her mother’s bedside in the kitchen. With her feet feeling heavy on the end of her legs, she threw herself into the tiny bedroom she had always shared with her siblings. Seoras’s things had left with him. And the bairn…

‘Please,’ Jetta whispered, pressing her eyes closed. ‘Please…’

She reached underneath her straw mattress, and pulled out a small wooden box. With shaking hands, she unlatched the clasp, and the box opened with a creak.

Her breath catching, and her pulse fluttering in her throat, Jetta opened her eyes.

There, in the box, lay a tiny corn dolly. One thread of golden-blonde hair twined around the tiny straw girl’s belly, another was threaded through her round, twisted-straw head.

‘No,’ Jetta keened, her gorge rising. ‘Not again.’

It had been a single, harmless charm. Beltane was a day for blessings, for good health. The bairn’s large golden eyes had been so vibrant, even as the rest of her faded. Jetta had held her in her arms, and she felt so small. So weak.

A few drops of the morning dew, a couple of well-chosen words — it sounded so simple. It was simple.

It had not worked. Not really.

Grasping the corn dolly, Jetta ran back to the hearth. With her hand tight around the poker, she rattled the embers. With the other, she cast the straw girl into the fireplace, watching as the tongues of flame curled around the tiny arms and legs, eventually swallowing the tiny head.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, watching the fire, her eyes burning. ‘I’m so sorry.’

From the village square, some distance away, came an ear-splitting shriek.

Yes it’s a witch hunt. But the moon’s full for nine months now, the cows give black milk and scream instead of moo, and we gave up harvest because the cut stalks cry and bleed. All the broomsticks are missing and last night I heard the scarecrow laugh. A witch hunt is the sensible thing to do.

#did anyone order historical angst??? I’ve got one historical angst here for…shit #the names hard to read…#tw child death #my writing #writing prompt #historical fiction #writing #short fiction #short story

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