Sacrifice

TW: SA, unwanted pregnancy, murder

Notes on lore: This short story is based in the fictional realm of Silence, where the primary divine power is a large mythical lake known as The Well at the very center of the land.

Agh, my dear, this work is wasting me. Do you not find the water ever-saltier? 

My hands can barely take it anymore, the lord doctor says there is nothing to be done for the cracks but time.  Soon enough we’ll have to bring even our cleaning water in from Albor… 

Ah. Yes, yes, so you heard. 

Sent away? No, no, that’s not it at all…

Fine, I shall tell you, if only to distract from this stinging.  

She was only fourteen when they burned her, and not because of anything she’d done, but for the sheer delight of hunting. 

No, not a public burning. You know how it is in Torreah, we won’t go a week without a new pyre of birch bones being lit and coating the air with the smell of smoke and sap and quick-burning flesh. Everyone would have found out, even if they’d gagged her so her screams were but a whisper of agony beyond crackling wood.  

But when they took Aedith, she hadn’t done anything wrong, that much I’m sure of. 

Pass the soapstone, will you dear? Yes, that’s the one. Thank you, petal. 

Everyone is fourteen once, everyone discovers their blood and then shortly after discovers what, or rather, who, sets it alight. 

Yes, I’m fine, just a tickle dear, I’ll take a sip of ale, thanks.

This Esvadan Pale is a delight this year, isn’t it? 

Hrmph, anyway… 

I’ll be the first to say I am no stranger to the inflammations of passion, but I swear by the Well that those sorts of thoughts had never crossed Aedith’s mind. She was always slow to bloom, and at fourteen had not yet found her Protector and so none kept her in her bed that night. She padded barefoot down to the kitchen, I would have heard her elsewise. She must have been freezing against the stones, willing the water to boil if only so she might warm her hands around the mug of steaming fenúl she was to bring the Lady, whose late-night feasting of suckling pig has been setting her stomach ablaze of late.

No, no, she’s not carrying, I know that for certain. The lord doctor has checked her personally and says she must stop eating beasts at once and break her fast with seed-mash if she ever hopes to conceive. But will the Lady ever listen to the sages when her stomach howls for meat? Well keep me from ever having to step into her chambers after supper…

I stirred that night, but thought not much of it as I’d been sleeping poorly, ash-headaches are treacherous beasts. 

Yes, I am perfectly alright, thank you dear, the lord doctor says I am just susceptible to them this time of year.

But I heard a clattering in the kitchen and dashed down until I heard a gruff voice and hid myself, for I was not dressed to be witnessed. And I saw as Aedith’s poor, trembling feet were swept up and crushed by a mass of unwanted power and the folds within her were insulted and her arm was slashed straight down to keep her from moving. I was the one who picked her up after, see, I coated her wound in suet and bound it to keep her from bleeding out or succumbing to fever, and as I wrapped her arm she couldn’t but rock herself forward and back with that vacant look, as we all do when we are trespassed in some such way. 

No, no, nothing so grave ever happened to me, thank the Well. I am very lucky, I am. The worst that’s ever happened was some runt tried to unlace my gown at market. Still, these kinds of men, they’re all the same, really. Curses be on all of them, I should clean their clothes with spit. 

By the Well, yes.

So, a Cedar was planted within Aedith, whether she liked it or not. 

Don’t look so surprised now, you saw the Lord and Lady at prayers last night, was there really any love between them? 

And she prayed to the Wild God, Aedith did, I know this because I caught her once, kneeling in the same spot as the blood from her arm had pooled into an immutable brown stain on the kitchen floor. Her altar was a measly, desperate circle. Around that rusted bloodstain, she lay a half-eaten whetefowl drumstick the Lady pecked at and set aside, finding it gristly. As though the Wild God would accept such rubbish in lieu of nothing at all. 

Yes, He is a selfish bastard, knowing no clemency. 

And she also offered a tiny broken-off candle stub in the centre, its flame like a tired eye, shuttering slowly. The poor thing was startled half to death by an owl, she was so easy to frighten, and her ragged breathing blew the candle out and it took her four attempts to get it lit again. Then she spit on the ground, bubbly and steaming, a flash of rage across her eyes that I never thought I’d see in her, and finally, a gold piece, a half-year’s salary. 

I know, I know, I cannot believe they didn’t retrieve it and use it to give her a decent burial. Makes you want to hide your own somewhere deep and dark and never tell anyone where you put them. 

But she sang to the Wild God, she sang.

For the longest time, I wondered who in this Well-forsaken city told her the Wild God listened to that kind of nonsense, until I realised the Lady Cedar herself wore a useless prayer sack of yew berries and birch bark around her neck to appease His roaring. I wonder if, thinking her generous, Aedith didn’t tell the Lady of her condition, who then, seeking amusement, sent her on goose-chase for a God that laughs at death and relishes despair. 

And when, despite herself, Aedith could no longer hide the swelling that took her, the branches and leaves grown through her every breath, the Lady sought to have her hidden at first, a final gesture of kindness. 

Short lived, yes, it always is.

For the Lady discovered a bloody kitchen knife in the Lord’s dresser, and her kindness vanished with her love, and the crows cawed as Lady Cedar took that same knife to Aedith’s only clean arm left and sliced even deeper than her husband. 

They burned her body in the fireplace on Feast Day. The Lady tucked into more suckling pig. The Lord dipped his bread in wine, and in the flames scorching through Aedith’s distended belly I swear I heard the Wild God laugh.