2. Autumn
It hadn’t rained in so long that the ground was drying up and the dirt was proving to be worthless. The crops were all dying and sooner or later we were going to run out of food.
There were too many of us out here and not enough food had been stored to last through a drought. The witches in these woods had been cocky and hadn’t planned for something they couldn’t fix with magic.
Stupid, stupid.
Magic wasn’t a cure all and it always cost a price. Everything needed balance in life to work out.
The people in these woods had long since gotten greedy. They stopped making offerings to the earth and instead expected everything for free.
Life didn’t work like that. Especially when it came to magic.
Winter was coming and if things didn’t change soon people were going to starve. I wasn’t so sure it was necessarily a bad thing if we did some thinning out of the herd.
I was sure I wasn’t the only one who thought that but no way was I stupid enough to speak my thoughts out loud. They’d punish me, publicly to be sure.
I had scars from the last time I’d been punished. I’d like to think I had learned my lesson well enough that time around. Likely not though because I never did.
One day I’d learn. Maybe.
Today I’d been assigned to laundry duty. I hated washing clothes because something in the detergent peeled the skin off of my hands and left them an angry red color. Nobody cared and I got assigned to it at least twice a week.
My hands were always in a state of agony. Plume made me some cream for them that helped with the pain a great deal. She really was too kind to me and I treasured our friendship.
Today there was a bite in the air that said that winter would be here before we knew it. Then we’d either run out of food or freeze to death.
I mean, it had never happened before but there was a first for everything.
I pulled the shirt I had been scrubbing out of the river and wrung the water out of it.
“Grab her,” a man whispered from close behind me and I was yanked backwards through the water.
My mouth was covered with a foul smelling hand and I instantly bit down onto it. It tasted worse than it smelled. I gagged and my stomach rolled.
He grabbed me by the hair and my head was wrenched backwards at a painful angle. A clothe that smelled even fouler than that man’s hand was shoved into my mouth and I was lifted clean off of my feet.
I was carried backward through the river and deeper into the forest on the other side of the river and further away from camp. We never went this far alone. It was forbidden by the Elders.
We might have lived in these woods but we did not own them. We were supposed to respect the boundaries that had been put in place. Supposedly they were there for our safety. I thought they were more along the lines of a cage.
Now I was being dragged to the edge of my cage for something that scared the crap out of me by teenage boys who had too much time on their hands and clearly not enough supervision.
The children here could always be so cruel.
That was a lesson I had learned from a very young age.
They’d never done anything like this to me before. I hated to admit just how scared I was. No matter how different I was or how much I could tell people didn’t like me they had never physically assaulted me before. I had been physically punished and humiliated, yes, but this was very different. I had never heard of anything like this happening to anyone in the camp before.
My back hit the rough bark of a tree and I heard the flimsy fabric of my worn dress as it was ripped right off of my body.
Oh gods, oh no. Please don’t let this be happening to me right now. Losing your virtue usually came with babies and I never ever wanted to have any of those. Not when you weren’t allowed to keep them. That would break my heart.
The punishment for men who were caught violating women was severe. Their balls were cut off and buried in the field where the vegetables grew as an offering to the gods. Their seed helped the seeds planted there to grow, or something disgusting like that.
I didn’t believe it. I thought it took part in killing the healthy plants because toxic was toxic no matter how you looked at it. Those men deserved to die and their bodies should be rotting in a hole somewhere for the bugs to feast on.
Another piece of fabric was shoved over the one in my mouth and my head snapped back against the tree as the fabric was pulled taut and tied off around the tree.
My arms were pulled behind me, stretched out to their limit and tied at the wrists behind the tree.
Thankfully my legs were left where they were, but a rope was wrapped around both my ankles and the tree trunk, securing me in place.
My ruined dress was tossed to the leaves and dirt on the ground. Absolutely ruined. I’d never be able to wear it again.
I wondered if it was something the Elders would punish me for after they found me out here.
There was a heaviness in my chest that I never quite felt before. I didn’t know what I’d done in this life to deserve this treatment but that useless organ inside my chest that pumped blood and beat out a rhythm had had enough. What was the gods damn point?
Pain and punishment?
Who wanted to live for that?
I felt the thin slices the knife made on my middle and then again on the other side of my stomach. I screamed behind the gag and the sound came out muffled and ragged.
I choked out a sob as I felt the tip press to the front of my thigh and slice down through the meaty flesh.
I screamed and the sound came out a choking sob from around the gag. Still, I screamed until my vocal chords were raw and bloody.
They kept making slices into my body.
I kept screaming.
Blood poured down my body, leaking out of me, and dripped into the dirt at my feet.
The ground immediately soaked it up as if it had been dying of thirst. I guessed in a way that it had been. Though, I didn”t know what good my blood would do it.
My arms were sliced open next.
Silent tears tracked down my cheeks. I wanted to be ashamed of myself for crying them but at this point I felt too numb to really feel much of anything.
My mind was attempting to escape the horrible pain my body was currently stuck in.
They started chanting words my mind was too far gone to make out.
I wished an awful death on them all. I mean, I got it, no one wanted to starve or freeze to death, but that had not one thing to do with me. And I even got that I was different from everyone else, therefore the easiest person to place blame on in this terrible situation.
But I wasn’t to blame, and none of this was my fault.
Once again I was being harmed in this place for having the audacity to have been born different.
I was a misfit among the Forest Witches and they’d never let me forget it.
I closed my eyes and wished for things I shouldn’t.
I wished I had been born to real parents. People who had loved me, maybe even loved each other if I’d been lucky enough.
I wished I had a real home and didn’t grow up a Forest Witch.
I wished I had more than one outfit.
I wished I had a real coven to call my own.
That last one hurt the most to think about. I’d never find my true coven stuck out here in the woods with these people.
And now I was probably going to die out here, naked and tied to a tree as some fucked up sacrifice because the earth had been too used up and refused to grow anything else. All because of the markings on my face, or so they had said. The liars.
I closed my eyes when my vision began to blur and my head started swimming. Keeping my eyes open wasn’t doing me any good. I swore I saw dark shadows moving amongst the trees.
Maybe they were the creatures of the forest I’d heard so many stories about, and they were finally coming to claim me.
I hoped so.
Anything had to be better than this.