Fire

I smell it first. A faint air of wood-smoke pours in through my nostrils making them twitch. My eyes snap open. Discombobulated I surface through distorted sound and vision making sense of what is happening. Throat bruised, swollen shut from holy hands throttling. I remember my captors and capture.

They’re making an example of me. I am naked, bound at the feet and hands wrenched above my head. I am extended to my limit against this roughly cut post amid a wood pyre, frozen to the bone by uninhibited easterly winds, soon to fan the flame set to claim my fate.  

I’m in my village square surrounded by the confused and anxious faces of people I’ve known my whole life. I sift through the uneasy looking crowd searching urgently for my mother’s bonnet. She’s not here. I thank the Lord for that.

Look at these bastard men of God,  jaws fixed by their evangelical status. These men in their dense woollen frocks with oversized crosses that swing unrestrained upon their chests. A clear statement of their allegiance; to their law.

Their stringy hair fowl with dirt. Beards grown long, shaped by the habitual stroking of palms, greased with the glory of doing God’s work. 

Their ordinary faces with pallid skin stretched across earnest expressions. Wire spectacles balanced upon malnourished features. Eyes uncluttered by emotion. 

Their hands, soft from choosing the cross over the sword. Their weapon a torch to the pyre, defeating an offender already defeated. These men are cowards. They fear nothing and claim to know everything, but they are cowards just the same.

My chest heaves, my clavicles jump and plummet with rage as I curse these men out loud. I fire red-hot spit in their direction, damning their existence with arrow-headed insults that cut their holy cloth. I fix a stare so direct that despite their discomfort I know they see me, wild with hatred. It renders them nervous, vulnerable to thoughts of superstition.

I see the tiny frame of my great grandmother under the Beech tree, her hand covering her mouth to prevent the horror spilling out. I read the pain in her eyes. Three generations of mothers I have known in my short life here in this modest village on the flatlands. It could have been four. I am with child. But it’s not God’s will.

The wood-smoke thickens and I crave it to fill my lungs and snuff me out. I feel the heat growing at my feet and sob. I have been betrayed by my God and yell with fury to the heavens, begging, in hopeless tones, that He save me.


Thanks to @BethKempton and her @SoulCircle of literary sprites.