Page 18 of Curse of Immortality
Paul’s defense of his wife and daughter didn’t help calm down the group of angry people.
Roger spat on the ground and muttered vile words that should never be spoken among neighbors.
Holding up her palms, Matilda tried to calm the mob, but a woman with a missing front tooth held up her torch and demanded in a shrill voice, “Give us the witch who cursed the Baker family.”
“We have no witches here,” Paul yelled back and pulled Rose behind him.
To Rose and her family, it felt like the ultimate betrayal when Anne stepped out of the shadows and into the light of a torch. “I saw it with my own eyes.” Her lips quivered, and her wet eyes were filled with hatred towards the person she’d once loved as a sister. “Rose claimed she could heal my mother with her medicine, but it was a trick for the devil to claim my poor mother’s soul. After she drank that repugnant stuff Rose made for her, the devil himself came at night to claim her and when I woke up the next morning there was nothing I could do. My mother was dead.” Anne pointed her finger at Rose. “You killed her.”
To Rose, it all felt bizarre. Holding on to her father’s sleeve with her fingers fisted tightly together, her knees felt like they might give in. Everyone knew what happened to women accused of witchery. But the mob of people sending her death glares was the same people whom she had always treated with kindness and had tended to when they were sick. Surely, they couldn’t be serious about wanting to kill her. It was like being caught in a nightmare, and Rose couldn’t fathom that Anne and the others could turn on her like this. She stood frozen while people kept shouting. Her heartbeat was so fast she could hear it thumping in her head like a heavy clock swinging back and forth. Everything became blurry and tears filled her eyes, as Rose stared at the girl whom she had been so deeply in love with that she hadn’t been able to dream or think of anyone else. Anne’s unfair accusation that Rose had killed her mother made it hard for Rose to breathe. It was difficult to understand how Anne could change so drastically since she had always called Rose the kindest person she knew, and now she wanted her dead. Killing clashed with everything Rose stood for, and Anne might as well have kicked Rose physically in the stomach because with her face twisted in anger and disgust, it hurt all the same.
Rose gaped when Anne continued her betrayal with one hand on her pregnant belly and the other one pointing at everyone as she spewed out, “I’m telling you all that Rose is a witch who stole the soul of my mother and gave it to the devil.”
“This is a misunderstanding.” John stepped forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with his father, shielding Rose from the angry mob that was moving closer.
“She has poisoned his mind,” Anne said and looked around at the others. “John is a victim of his sister’s wicked ways. He doesn’t understand what he’s saying.”
The mob moved closer and the old woman with a tooth missing sneered a warning. “Protecting a witch is a crime too. Maybe the whole family is a group of witches.”
Paul backed Rose away from Roger, who stabbed his torch in her direction and spat onto her nightgown. Pressing his nose into her dark, curly hair, Paul whispered to his daughter, “Rose, listen carefully. When I let go of you, you need to run as fast as you can. I know it’s far but go to the old hunting cabin by the waterfall.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she protested but in that moment a large man threw a torch onto their thatched roof.
“Do as he says,” John hurried Rose but when she still hesitated, it was Matilda who grabbed her hand and squeezed hard. “Run, Rose. Run as fast as you can!”
CHAPTER 6
Prince on a White Horse
Althea and Maeve had promised each other long ago to never keep secrets between them. But childhood promises can be hard to keep, and as they grew into women, Maeve began hiding certain things from her sister.
At the age of twenty-two, the few memories Maeve had from before she went to live with her aunt had become blurry. She didn’t remember much about her parents, other than the fact that her mother had been human.
After the dramatic visit to the local town when the girls were fourteen, Maeve had felt so sure she had come close to death, that for years she hadn’t rebelled against Rose’s orders for her and Althea to stay away from humans.
“All humans are dangerous, and some are even evil. They can seem like your best friend and still turn on you,” Rose would warn them.
But Maeve still remembered her mother’s smiling face, and she vaguely remembered being tucked in and being kissed on the forehead by both her parents before drifting off to sleep. That wasn’t an evil face she’d seen smiling down at her. Maeve often wondered about her parents, and she sometimes thought about the two young men she had spoken to in the market square when she was fourteen.
As she grew older, Maeve insisted on foraging alone because it gave her time to herself and a place to think without interruptions. But as she wandered the woods, searching for herbs and rootlings, she crept closer and closer to the few villages she could reach by foot. Sometimes she even dared get close to Lerwick, the town where she had come face to face with a priest.
Now at the age of twenty-three, she often sat at the edge of the forest and watched humans from afar. But she never left the safety of the forest because of fear that she might end up like Ellen if she got too close. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could still hear Ellen’s screams and cries as the executioner hanged the young woman for witchery. Eighteen years had passed but Maeve still remembered how she had felt suffocated by the large angry adults around her.
Nowadays, as she watched the humans from a safe distance, she often fabricated stories about them in her mind. Perhaps the old man riding a horse through town had been married three times but had no children. And maybe the woman carrying a child in her arms was in a hurry because she was having company later that day. In Maeve’s mind, some were good people and others weren’t. Sometimes hours would pass when she sat against a tree and wondered how different her life would have been if she’d been born as a normal human. It was in those moments she found forgiveness for her father who had abandoned her and Althea in the woods with Rose. His need to fit into a community wasn’t hard to understand and Maeve didn’t blame him.
Maybe it had been different for Earthens in past generations who had been bonded with and surrounded by other Earthens, but for Maeve, she could relate to her father’s longing for connection.
She was tired of living an isolated life and watching humans interact showed her how much she was missing out on. Her secret desire to experience love and friendship wasn’t something she could share with her sister and aunt. Rose would be petrified if she knew how close Maeve came to humans, and Althea would worry that she was miserable. But Maeve wasn’t unhappy with her life as an Earthen, she was just curious and wanted to see more of the world.
A few times, Maeve had been close to telling her sister when they lay watching the stars at night. But Maeve knew that though they were twins with the same orange hair color and same strong abilities, they were very different from each other. It was not only in appearance, where Althea had many freckles, beautiful blue and green colored eyes, and large wavy curls in her hair whereas Maeve’s hair was straight but also in personality. It was because they were best friends, and Maeve loved her sister dearly, that she didn’t share her fascination with humans. Althea seemed content and Maeve didn’t want her to develop the same kind of longing that she battled daily.
It was a warm and sunny afternoon as she sat in the shade between the trees. She had already been gone for too long, but her eyes were glued to the young couple that walked hand in hand around the outskirts of the town Lerwick where Rose sold her produce on Saturdays. Love felt like a myth to Maeve, something she only ever heard about in stories. She knew her parents must have been in love because they had decided to marry. But with the few blurry memories left from her childhood, her parents’ fondness for one another was not one she could remember.
On the rarest occasion, she saw a discreet kiss on the cheek or a couple holding hands when she watched the humans, but she’d never seen love up close or felt it herself.
When the couple snickered and ran hand in hand to the woods, Maeve hid behind a tree and discreetly watched with one eye through a gap between some branches. Sucking her full lips in between her teeth she forced herself to keep quiet. They stopped not far from her and wrapped their arms around one another in a tight hug. She was so close that she heard the moans when their lips touched in a kiss. Maeve placed a hand on her stomach, not liking the ache that attacked her without warning. The jealousy and envy she had felt over these past years when watching humans laugh with their friends or go about their daily life paled compared to how she felt in that moment. She was overcome with a deep sadness from seeing the couple kissing and knowing it was unlikely she would ever experience anything as wonderful herself.
The young couple only stayed a few minutes before they left again. With a sigh, she rose from the ground and gave the tree she’d been resting against a hug before she headed back home.
