Page 3 of Curse of Immortality
The air hung heavy between the sisters as they silently carried on walking down the dirt road until they saw their father, John. He stood outside the stables, stacking hay in his brown pants, worn leather shoes, and a shirt that had once been white.
Althea and Maeve were overcome with excitement to see him and once again set off into a run. Of course, their father spotted them long before they reached him. With the sun beaming down on John’s sweaty face he watched his beloved daughters run toward him. Their locks of bright orange hair flew in all directions matching the summer sun perfectly, like an extension of its flames.
John was a devoted and protective father who loved his daughters deeply. Anyone who knew him would say he was a kind man known to be warm and helpful.
He waited patiently, and when the girls finally reached him, he got down on one knee to embrace his young daughters in a tight hug. “I’ve been waiting for you. What took so long?”
“Mum let us run to you because she had something important to do,” Althea explained, dodging his question while using her hand to cover her eyes from the bright sun.
But seeing Ellen executed weighed heavily on Maeve, who craved her father’s comfort. Despite their mother’s instructions not to mention it, Maeve blurted out, “They killed another witch again this morning.”
His eyes narrowed. "I’m aware, but you didn’t see it, did you?”
Althea bit her lip before admitting, “I closed my eyes, but Maeve saw everything. It was Ellen from the mill.”
John was upset with his wife, Anne, for allowing their daughters to witness something as cruel and horrible as another execution. They had talked about it and he had been clear with Anne that he didn’t want the young girls to catch a glimpse of the hanging. That’s why he had made her promise to bring the girls straight to him after breakfast. He was well aware that Anne thought she was protecting their girls by showing them to be careful of witches, but John wasn’t a superstitious man and didn’t for one second believe that Ellen had been a witch. The whole situation saddened him and brought back unwanted memories from the night his sister was accused of witchery. As far as John was concerned, witches were a made-up construct by the church to scare people. He wished he could speak openly about the healing powers that ran in his bloodline, but in these times, it was better to keep those sorts of abilities a secret and blend in.
“Girls, why don’t you take some hay to Henry and go say hi to him?” John suggested. With the subject of the witch hanging feeling like a knife in the stomach to him, he needed a moment to find the strength to comfort his daughters.
Maeve grabbed her sister’s hand again and headed into the stable where Henry, the brown horse lived. Both girls loved it when they got to visit their father at work. Unlike the other five horses under their father’s care, Henry was old and calm with a friendly personality. While the other horses were down at the large pasture, Henry had a leg injury that required him to stay in the barn.
“Hello, Henry,” Althea greeted the old horse while separating the hay in her hand, giving half to her sister and the other to the horse.
The girls stood on both sides of the large animal petting it with the tender hands of five-year-old girls. Maeve was careful to do as her father had instructed and laid her hand flat for the horse to eat the hay from. She was already having a hard day, so when Henry sniffed Althea’s hair and nuzzled her arm instead of taking the hay that Maeve offered him, she felt rejected and hurt.
“Come on, Henry, let’s go outside,” Maeve said and untied the rope holding him.
“What are you doing?” Althea yelled after her sister when Maeve led Henry out of his stall. Running to catch up, she added, “He’s not your horse. I’m his favorite person.”
“No, you’re not. I am,” Maeve yelled as she guided Henry outside in the warm sun. John was on the other side of the stable and didn’t hear how the girls were bickering at each other. It was a silly argument to get so riled up over but when Althea grabbed Henry’s face and pressed her own against it, Maeve pushed at her sister, shoving her away from the horse.
Henry moved and gave long and loud neighs when the girls’ yelling turned into screaming. Using words to express your emotions takes time to learn and being only five years old, yelling into each other’s faces with their eyes closed was as good as it got for Althea and Maeve.
The sound of Henry running off reminded the girls what the argument had been about. Alarmed, they both opened their eyes and stopped screaming. Althea jumped back when she saw red flames running up the stable and scattering around her and Maeve. Henry, who had gotten scared from the screaming and the fire, was now far out on the fields.
It was summer and everything was dry and dusty. The flames caught the hay and when John came sprinting around the stable, the fire was already spreading fast.
“Get away from there,” he shouted, and the girls were quick to run and hide behind him. Moving them to a safe distance, John gave them firm instructions.
“Stay here.”
What the girls saw made no sense to them because as their father ran to the stables, his hands flew through the air extinguishing some of the flames as if invisible water had been poured onto the fire.
He disappeared into the smoke and reappeared with his arms full of saddles. Four times, John went inside and brought out more things, but the fire had reached the roof now and roared with such strength that loud cracking sounds told him it was a matter of time before the building would collapse.
Coming to find Althea and Maeve, John pulled them into a tight hug and asked them, “What happened?”
“We didn’t do it,” Althea hurried to explain. “We were screaming at each other and when we opened our eyes there were flames all around us.”
John closed his eyes, knowing that his daughters had powers they didn’t understand. Ever since he found out that Anne was pregnant, he had prayed that his daughters would be born as humans, like their mother. But despite wishing on every shooting star John had seen, it seemed Althea and Maeve had been born with the abilities that ran in his bloodline.
For a long moment, John stared at his frightened daughters. Thankful that they weren’t hurt and that no one had been there to see what had happened, he sank to his knees and began to cry. Althea and Maeve had never seen their father cry before, and it left them quiet and feeling unsure about what to do. What they didn’t understand was that in that moment, John’s world collapsed as he understood that he couldn’t keep his daughters safe in the village. Their powers would make them a target and he couldn’t allow them to end up like Ellen or the other poor souls accused of witchcraft. It was of paramount importance that the twins learn how to control their powers and he couldn’t teach them that without them accidentally setting everything on fire and their mother finding out. It broke his heart that keeping his daughters close would be to risk their lives. Faced with the only option available to him, John sobbed for the first time since the night his sister had been accused of witchery and his whole world had collapsed for the first time.
Even Henry came back to investigate the strange noise that his beloved caregiver was making and tried to comfort John with loving pushes. Pulling his daughters closer in his lap, John kissed their red hair and for a long moment, he held them tight while crying and rocking them back and forth.
With no other choice left, John made the decision he had tried to avoid at all costs. Rising from the ground, he worked fast. Getting the strongest and fastest horse from the pasture, he put a saddle on the large stallion. The girls asked many questions, but it was as if John couldn’t hear them because he was so lost in his thoughts.
Picking up the girls, he placed them on the horse before hoisting himself up and riding off. The Clifford family and their servants were spending time in one of their other houses by the seaside, but the fire was large enough that it would attract people from the village. John had to get away before people came to ask questions.
