Leaving Home
The young girl of eleven years could not be sure whether it was the pain or the voices of the assembled crowd that first brought her to consciousness. What she did know was that her arms hurt: Sharp, deep pains in her forearms and back from long splinters that only pushed deeper in her attempts to alleviate stress on the joints of her bound limbs. Her shoulders and elbows ached from an unyielding twist, and the rough rope that rubbed flesh away from her wrists reminded her of the small mercy that she could no longer feel her hands. Perhaps if a thinner post had been chosen, the wait could have been easier. At least now, the night was nearly over.
The girl possessed only vague awareness of the semicircular gathering before her pyre. Blurred vision and ringing ears told her little of those who had chosen to attend, and movement of her head only invited waves of nausea to join the pervasive throbbing in her skull. Green eyes stung as she imagined the expressions of those she knew to be in the crowd, and tears began to roll down toward her chin. Perhaps there was a blessing in that she could not see or hear any of them clearly; Guilt and shame had been at the forefront of her mind since the other’s death, and seeing the faces of the hearts she had sundered would worsen the dwindling moments before the flames.
A pitiful whimper left the girl’s throat as she heard the crackling approach of a lit torch growing louder, accompanied by heavy footsteps that brought fear to mingle with guilt and shame. Murmurs and the shuffling of many feet made it so the girl’s eyes need not be open for her to tell the crowd parted to allow the torchbearer forward. Footfalls ceased mere feet before the bound girl’s post, and a man’s voice assaulted ears made sensitive by the injury to her head. Hysteria bubbled in the pit of the girl’s stomach and she failed to understand what was said as the fear rose into her throat and chest to spread into what parts of her arms she could still feel. A clattering of wood on wood was the last thing she was aware of before woodsmoke mixed with burning flesh, and the sound of her own screams drowned out everything else.
