03. 👧

[undread]

You're in a small cottage, a little medieval home with a warm fire crackling in the hearth, a modest simple kitchen and a small dining table. There's an older man with salt and pepper hair and a bushy beard with rough hands trying on an ill fitting suit, while an older woman in an apron finishes the final touches on sewing a simple cotton skirt.

You're standing in your slip waiting for her to finish; she lifts the finished skirt and unfolds it to show you. It's simple and the fabrics will show as cheap, but it's clean and in a more modern cut than some of your clothing, and it has a richer purple color than you would usually wear; not as fancy as some of the materials used in a fine lady's gown, but something many of the townsfolk would not have. It's very lovely. You stand, nervous, in the center of the room as she helps you with the skirt and cinches the waist. You finger the bunched fabric of the skirt over and over again, nervous.

"You look beautiful, Matilda," the woman says.

"It's very fine," you say, a bit shy. "Thank you, mother."

"This is a wonderful opportunity." Your father speaks up suddenly. "Lady Briarwood is a trained and accomplished magic user. If she'd be willing to teach you..."

There's quite a big difference between a trained wizard and someone like you, someone who can simply do magic, who sometimes does it in ways that are creepy or odd or unexpected. The former is respected, a scholar, a talent. The latter is the strange witchy girl everyone in town tries to avoid. But getting an invitation to the castle - you're so nervous. You've never been anywhere that fancy before; you've never met Lord and Lady Briarwood face to face. And since a few years prior, when the Briarwoods came to this city and overthrew the old ruling family, things in Whitestone have been dark. There are many vicious rumors about the Briarwoods, suggestions that they do experiments and practice dark magic. Since they arrived, the holy tree in the center of town, the Sun Tree, withered and died, and some of the old ruling family wound up hanging from the branches, made an example of for any would be rebels. But people say odd things about you, as well. What reason would the castle have to suddenly request your presence, an insignificant farmer's daughter, if it wasn't for this? The chance for an education?

"I'll do my best," you promise your mother and father.

Your father, in his ill-fitting and patchy suit, looks self-conscious as he leads you up the winding road to the castle. The guards are stone faced and don't seem to acknowledge you, but he wants to show he knows how to formally introduce his daughter, so he comes with you as far as the entrance doors.

Once inside, you're led to the dining hall. You're seated at an impossibly long, lavish banquet table. Watchful guards have their eyes trained on you and the other guests, and there's an uncomfortable silence. You see a collection of others from the town - another young man and woman your age, an older man with mutton chops, a large fat man, and two small children, a boy and a girl. You recognize all of them as neighbors and other residents of the city, but you can't imagine why all of you were summoned here. But your thoughts vanish as plates of food are brought out. It's a feast, with food that's far finer than anything you've ever seen before. Goblets of wine, plates of fancy fruits and meats, dishes of lobster that must have been brought from the coast.

Lord and Lady Briarwood are even in attendance. Lady Briarwood is the most beautiful and refined woman you've ever seen - aging elegantly, dressed in a beautiful gown with a high collar, her hair neat and careful. She is the one who speaks, primarily, with Lord Briarwood near her always. Maybe it's your imagination, but her piercing and lovely eyes seem to catch on you, make eye contact directly for a moment. You're less comfortable as you notice the way Lord Briarwood watches you. He's handsome enough, but there's something predatory in his expression.

You're too nervous to talk to the others, or pay much attention to what Lady Briarwood says.

"We're all so glad you could attend. You have such an important part to play in the future of Whitestone, and Sylas and I are truly grateful." She has a kind and reassuring way of speaking.

And then the meal ends, and the rest is a blur. The guards move. Flashes of knives, of blood, the sounds of screaming. You watch Lord Briarwood sink his teeth into the neck of the other young woman and hear her scream and then her screams fade. You hear one of the children weeping. You see the older man with mutton chops try to resist, his stomach gashed open, blood streaming from the wound, crawling across the floor. You're too in shock to do anything but tremble and freeze in place. You're dragged or carried or perhaps you faint, but you find yourself in another part of the castle, in an underground room that smells like blood and is full of sharp implements and devices and parts of bodies that you can't bear to look at. Some sort of torture chamber, or ritual room - you can't make sense of it and your mind won't focus on it. You hear more screaming, you know the others are nearby. You don't know what's happening. You're in pain, too, you're bleeding, but your adrenaline is such that you don't know where it's coming from. You realize some of the screams you hear are yours. There's blood trickling down your face and it takes you a moment to realize they cut your ears, but you can't imagine why they're doing that or why they're doing any of this to you.

They - there are multiple people here, but the person you focus on, again, is Lady Briarwood. Her piercing gaze. You think wildly, for a moment, of asking her to help you, as though she isn't the one causing this to happen. But you know what magic looks like and feels like and you feel what she's doing right now - she's casting some sort of spell, or ritual, and this is all intentional.

And then it goes dark.

You wake up again, and you're dying. There's a pressure around your neck and you won't survive it. The immediate feeling is panic, the animal drive to escape. You reach with your fingers and claw at your neck, at whatever is making it impossible to breath, this pain that's like nothing you ever felt before. You claw and feel rope, the thick braid of a noose. You kick your feet and feel nothing. You're dangling in the air. You twist and struggle and cry out.

You open your eyes. You situate yourself. You're hanging from a branch, in the air. You can see other bodies nearby. You realize what you're seeing are other bodies, also hanging from branches. You recognize the other corpses from the party; there's even a bear hanging. All of you are dressed in strange clothing, different than what you wore; your skirt and dress are gone.

They're dead. They look... hours dead, at least, if not a day.

But that isn't quite right. You see that the others' eyes are open, staring vaguely, but once in a while they blink, move, turn their heads slightly to look at you. Dead, but moving. But not struggling, the way you are. They said Lady Briarwood was a necromancer... They said Lord Briarwood was a monster who drank the blood of the living, and that turned out to be very true.

But somehow, despite hanging here with them, you lived? You refuse to think about it too closely; every time your thoughts wander in that direction the pit of dread in your chest deepens and you have to dismiss it. You just have to find a way down. Even if you're alive, choking this way is too painful. You struggle and claw and eventually you manage to get free, the rope loosens, and you fall, crumpled on the ground.

You run. You just want to go home. You want your mother and father, you want this all to have been a terrible dream.

But as you run, you run into a group of people from the city, some armed with weapons and others with farming tools, pitchforks, torches. They're roaming the streets, looking for something.

"It's one of them!" a man with a torch yells. "Cut it down."

You want to scream and beg them to listen to you. I'm just Matilda. Don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me. But your throat is too raw and sore. You cry as they start to try to attack you. You don't want to die. After all this, you just don't want to die. Darkness, inky black and magical, descends around you, shielding you from them, and you run. You don't go home. You just run as far as you can, until you can't take it anymore, and then collapse, somewhere in the pine forest beyond the city walls.