The colour was gone now from Braz. The fever that had
possessed her had whittled away her weight first, and stolen her colour second.
She was still brown, but the life and vibrancy was gone from her. The girl
confined to the bed paled and shriveled was not someone those men and boys from
the village would have recognized.
It was
almost over. Braz had not regained consciousness in over three days and as
Ferin stood beside her, the sunlight cutting into to illuminate the bed, she
thought of the last words Braz had said to her. Ferin had been using a damp rag
against Braz’s forehead when unexpectedly her eyes had opened. It was not the
sleepy, slow opening of eyes like when one awakes from a dream but as if Braz
had been jolted awake. Her eyes were wild and panicked. Braz half rolled and
lunged at Ferin, the grip she took on Ferin’s forearm surprised her, she would
not have thought that she would have been able to muster such strength. Braz
said only one word, ‘Run.’
Ferin loved
her even more in that moment, that she had somehow summoned herself back from
death’s gates to try and save her. Ferin had never lied to Braz before but she could
not bring herself to tell her the truth, that it was already too late. Instead
she nodded mutely to Braz and her grip lessened, she slipped back into indention
her body had made over the weeks in the straw mattress. Her eyes seemed calmed,
and once more before they closed for the last time, she summoned the strength
to repeat the word. Ferin responded without thinking, ‘I will.’
Standing
there in the morning sun though she was not sure she could. She had never
ventured far from the stead, only to the village and that would not be nearly
far enough. It was not some sense of responsibility towards her brothers, at
twelve and nine they were usually to busy working in the rows often enough that they did not need much
looking after, that made her hesitate. It was not even the practical concern
that outside of a little bit of weaving and trapping she had no real skills in
order to gain work.
It was
fear. Not that she would be caught and dragged back- but unexplicable fear of a
world of which, as she considered keeping her promise to her sister, she knew
nothing about.
* * *
It was the
way they laid her in the ground that decided it for her. Her brothers had dug
the hole the next morning with an indifference that did not for some reason
surprise her. When Ferin suggest that they bury her on the ridge where Braz
used to go to watch the Kethin birds, she was met with blank stares. They dug
the hole out behind the house.
Ferin made
her brother carry Braz out wrapped in a blanket. Even at twelve he was tall and
strong enough to carry her, though not strong enough to lower her into the
hole. He placed her on the ground next to it, where Braz waited for her father
to say some last words. He did not. He peered and Ferin and shook his head,
knelt and unrolled Braz from the blanket. Ferin realized then that he would not
‘waste’ a good blanket on his dead daughter.
And that is
when she knew she was leaving. They buried her without ceremony, but after they
left Ferin sang to the All-Mother for her, pulled a wooden carved horse from
her skirt pocket and pushed it deep, to the elbow, into the wet, cool dirt that now
entombed her sister.
She
prepared her roll while her father and the boys ate dinner. The flint she had
stolen from the kitchen, she had wrapped her mother’s treasured coins in a
scarf and then placed them in a small bag where she hoped they would make no
noise. The hardest part of the preparation was stealing a pair of her brother’s
pants, they each had only one pair but the youngest had not yet grown into
these, they were stored in a chest in the main room of the house, she had
snatched them when she sent them away to gather water. She took Braz’s clothes
and a copper bracelet a man had once given Braz during a fair after dancing
with her. She lowered these things in a blanket, quietly out the window where
she hoped it would lay undiscovered until that evening.
She was
almost caught in the final stage of her rushedly conceived plan.
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