Page 1 of Curse of Immortality
CHAPTER 1
The Fate of a Witch
Most childhood memories blur in your mind with time. Others stick like glue to your subconscious where they hide until they occasionally come back up to remind you that they are still there. The memory might as well have been yesterday because you can still smell the air, see every vivid detail, and most of all you can feel the emotions as if you are still that young child. These types of memories can stick with you until you are eighty years old, or in Maeve’s case, five hundred years old.
Back when Althea and Maeve were born in the early sixteenth century, most days looked alike in the small English village, Abingdon, that they called home. People were hard-working and woke up with the sun, ate breakfast, went to work, did chores, ate supper, and went to bed to do it all again the next day. Like any typical morning Althea’s and Maeve’s father, John, had already left for work before their mother woke them. Old Janet who lived next door had stopped by to chat as she did so often, and breakfast consisted of porridge.
Today, however, wasn’t any other day. Many of the villagers would be late to work because they were hurrying down to the square. The loud shouting from outside made the five-year-old twin sisters Althea and Maeve look to the windows in their small house where their mother, Anne, and old Janet were pressing their noses at the glass to see what was going on outside.
“Oh, look at them marching down the street. They’ve all gone mad, they have,” old Janet muttered.
“What’s going on? Can we see?” Althea asked in her young high-pitched voice, but old Janet was quick to refuse, “No. This is not for children.”
Still sitting by the wooden table, the young twin girls felt left out. Althea followed Maeve when her sister pushed the clay bowl away and crawled up on the bench to stand tall enough to catch a glimpse of the action outside.
“Why are they shouting?” Maeve asked feeling unsettled by the angry noises from the people marching through the narrow street in front of their house.
“They’re on their way to the market square to hang the witch,” Anne said and received a reproachful glance from her older neighbor.
“There’s no need to tell them that. They’re only five,” Janet whispered in a disapproving tone.
“Why wouldn’t I? They’ll see it with their own eyes,” Anne argued and dried her hands on a cloth before hanging it back on the small nail on the wall. “It’s good for children to know how the church protects us.”
Janet shook her head and made a small step to the side for Anne to pass her in the tiny kitchen. “John won’t like it. You know how angry he got when you brought them to the hanging last year. Remember how it gave the girls nightmares for months?”
It was rare for Anne to use a sharp tone with old Janet, who was kind enough to help them so often. But it was as if the anger from the people outside seeped under the doorway and made her hiss, “John won’t find out because we won’t tell him.”
“But…”
Anne ignored Janet and waved her hand for her twin daughters to come with her. “Your father asked that you spend the morning with him at the stables. So that’s where we will go after we take a quick stop.”
Althea and Maeve didn’t question their mother’s instructions when she swung the wooden door open and popped her head out.
As the noise from outside became louder, so did the voice in Althea and Maeve’s heads telling them to run and hide under their bed. They remembered all too well the last woman they saw murdered.
“Hold my hands and don’t let go,” Anne instructed her daughters before she rushed them out the door and into the angry mob of people.
Althea turned her body and looked back at old Janet, who stood in the doorway with an expression of deep concern on her face.
“Come along, child.” Anne squeezed Althea’s hand and pulled her along.
Althea and Maeve had played in this narrow street for as long as they could remember, but it seemed narrower and darker now that it was crowded with people. Their heads turned from side to side as they tried to recognize the grown-ups around them. Maeve thought she recognized the tailor that her father sometimes talked to, but his face was so distorted from the shouting that she couldn’t be sure.
Althea and Maeve had to run to keep up with the fast pace of their mother and the others in the sea of people. Once they got to the center of town, the crowd was enormous, and Althea was sure that there were far more people present than the last time their mother had brought them to a hanging. Above all the shouting from the crowd, a soul-ripping scream from a woman grew in volume.
Althea and Maeve couldn't see with all the large grownups around them, but Anne kept pushing her way up front and tugging them along with her.
The woman’s desperate cries for help burned into the hearts of the two terrified young girls. Althea had a tight grip on their mother’s dress and when they got up front, she refused to see another hanging. Instead, she closed her eyes shut and buried her face against her mother’s hip.
Maeve, on the other hand, felt paralyzed and with her unable to look away she saw everything. Wherever she looked, angry people were spitting, shouting vulgar things, and throwing rotten eggs, onions, and tomatoes in the direction of a woman who stood under the large oak tree with a noose around her neck. She was dressed in nothing but her white nightdress, which was torn in places, and full of stains from the rotten eggs and vegetables that had been thrown at her. Standing with bare feet, she had her hands tied in front of her, making herself small as she looked down and sobbed. In some places, her hair was wild and unkempt, and in the front, a rotten egg had smashed on her skull leaving the sticky substance to run down her sobbing face.
Maeve blinked her eyes when she recognized the woman to be Ellen, the daughter of the miller. It shocked her to see the young woman bleeding from scratches and with angry red streaks running down her jaw and neck as if someone had hurt her. A large onion hit Ellen hard on the shoulder and made her scream again, followed by more heartbreaking sobs and cries for help.
Maeve wanted to look away or hide against her mother’s body the way Althea did, but she couldn’t.
None of this made any sense to the five-year-old. Witches were supposed to be scary, but Ellen had once watched them while their father helped the miller, and Maeve could still remember how she had plucked a flower and handed it to Maeve with a gentle smile.
Anne yelled with the others for Ellen to go to hell and it made the young, frightened woman roll her shoulders forward and bow her head, making herself even smaller as she continued sobbing.
