Chapter 3 Corabeth
Three
Corabeth
The next time Corabeth opened her eyes, darkness had claimed the land. A thousand stars had blinked into existence and looked indifferently down at her still body.
Cold panic gripped her when she realized she was still outside. The Beast could be waiting for her just around the corner.
She rolled herself to her side and then pushed up on all fours. Standing up, she felt the pain in her head throb in time with her heartbeat. Corabeth spotted again the sack of flour and thought it would have to wait until morning. Hopefully, it would still be waiting for her.
There was an odd glow about the road ahead, she found. Taking a few unsteady steps and looking out towards the quiet village, Corabeth saw the lit torches lining the road. The shadows danced, but there was no sign of the Beast.
Somewhere in the distance, the bleating of an animal got cut short.
But when Corabeth looked towards her own home, just three houses away, she saw where that odd glow emanated from. Flames hungrily licked the walls of her home and had already swallowed most of it. Part of the roof had collapsed.
“No!” she cried and ran towards her home as if the illusion might dissipate when she got close enough. But then she felt the heat from the flames on her cold skin, and something inside of her shattered into a thousand pieces.
For a moment, the world fell away, and there was only the roaring fire, devouring all she had in this world. Devouring the home she had grown up in and everything she had left of her mother. The memories of soft mornings with her, moments when she still felt loved, turned into ash before her.
Lips quivering, tears spilling down her cheeks, Corabeth fell to her knees. How could this have happened? There was nothing but cinder left in the furnace when she had left home, and no candles were left burning. She knew this because she hadn’t had the coin to buy candles for a week.
Somewhere, between the pain and anguish echoed the words: We should leave her to the Beast. That was exactly what her village, her neighbors, had done to her.
Another part of the roof collapsed, sending embers flying into the blackened sky to join the stars there. Corabeth didn’t hear over the roar of the fire the baaing of a sheep that went silent, closer this time.
In a flash, she remembered she wasn’t supposed to be outside. Corabeth scrambled to her feet and ran to the nearest house. Edmund, a bitter sixty-year-old man, lived alone in the house next to hers, and she hoped with her whole being he would let her in.
“It’s Corabeth! Please, let me in! There’s a fire,” she called desperately, banging on the wooden door with her mud-covered hands. The fire raged on, spilling embers into the night. But she was only met with silence.
“Please!” she begged to no avail. The door remained shut.
Corabeth ran from house to house, her heart in her throat, pleading to be let in, for someone to save her. Splinters embedded themselves under Corabeth’s nails as she scraped and pounded and thrashed.
One after the other, the doors remained shut.
It was by the fifth house that she realized no help was coming.
She was now dangerously close to the center of Gravebrook, to the pillory where several animals were served up for the Beast to feast upon. She might as well have been among them.
Corabeth’s shoulders sagged as she walked off the porch of… Whose house was she at? Who was among the people who condemned her? The list was too long now.
If she had looked towards the pillory, she would have seen a large shadow looming over a calf. Instead, Corabeth turned back towards her home, engulfed in flames. She half-expected the Beast to snatch her up along the way. But she walked, and nothing happened, so she kept walking.
Corabeth got as close as she could suffer to the flames and sank down to her knees once again, allowing the events of the day to roll over her. She had been taken advantage of, mocked, abused, beaten. And as she watched her home burn, she realized she had nothing left in this world.
The people of this village had been the death of her mother, and now they were to be the death of her. Come tomorrow, would any of them help her? Or did they think she had finally earned her punishment? It was better this way, better if the Beast came to collect her.
Accepting her own death came with a hysterical feeling, Corabeth’s limbs trembled, the muscles twitching involuntarily.
Her teeth chattered as if she were cold in the heat of the fire.
But there was also a strange kind of calm inside her.
There would be no more struggles, as that’s what Corabeth’s life had been—a struggle to simply survive.
She would no longer have to live amongst people who never accepted her.
Perhaps she would even see her mother again in whatever afterlife existed.
The call of a raven pulled Corabeth from her thoughts. One was sitting on a branch, its black feathers painted orange in the glow of the flames, its beady eyes trained on her.
Suddenly, it was as if a thick blanket had been placed on all of the sounds in the world. The rush of the fire was muffled as Corabeth felt a presence behind her. A chill ran down her spine.
Death had finally come for her.
Corabeth turned to greet it.