Even the mythical phoenix

It has been awhile since I ` ve seen sunlight: it stabbed my eyes with its thousand stings of molten gold, leaving me more parched than ever.

The two men by my sides were dragging me with them as they walked. My resistance had melted and my backbone had melted with it. The silhouette of a man in black was swimming before my eyes, getting closer with each second - an unlikely suitor waiting to invite me for a dance, with a burning rose in his hand. My eyes were mesmerised by the violence of light after the numb darkness of my cell. I forced myself to look up.

They have built a pyre just for me. Their own little witch, getting her own little punishment before the eyes of the Lord. Only the only eyes I could feel on me were the ones of the people, standing around in a huge circle. Boys I have danced with, girls I have lent clothes to, even little kids I brought back from the brink of death. Was it worth it?

Death was hungry and I ` ve been snatching babes from its mouth, thus never allowing its hunger to be quenched and now...

The men held my shoulders while they were tying me to the stake. I tried to straighten a little, tried to find a trace of defiance or pride, but was it worth it? Pride burned like hot embers, and I was longing for water. I gazed down from my firewood throne and I saw Thomasine Allen in the arms of her husband, both of them wearing black to mourn the death of their daughter. They were looking at me like I was some kind of a strange bird that landed in their garden, their eyes filled with wonder and confusion. Then Thomasine spat on the ground and Preston closed his eyes, shutting the world out - and me with it. Some men were simply standing next to their wives, as if to provide comfort and shelter from the storm that I apparently was, but Roger Harris was closer to the pyre than everybody else, clutching a Bible in his hand for everybody to see - perhaps he had hoped it would burn my eyes. Where did he even get a Bible, that illiterate half-wit, did he borrow it from a neighbour? I doubted he could even read the word on the cover. And Lucy Dunn, my herb picking companion, was standing out in this drab crowd like an enchanted dream. Her hair of summer gold was covered with an ugly, flower-adorned hat - I couldn `` t quite make out if they were bluebells or foxgloves. And her cheeks were soaked with tears.

I suddenly found a spark that burned harder than my parched throat, brighter than the torch in the executioner `` s hands. My back stiffened like the stake I was leaning on; thank God they have deprived me of water for the last two days - no tears were left in my body, so when I glared at the people, gathered before me, my eyes were dry and unblinking. 

I made myself believe, if only for a second, that the pile of firewood beneath me is a real throne and I `` m sitting on it, in my shimmering, embroidered dress, and a crown is resting upon my head and it` s shining so bright, that everybody trembles in fear and awe of its power.

`...Rosemary Bell, you were found guilty of all of your crimes. Speak your last words, if you have any. `

They were speaking to me. My lips were so chapped I was not sure I could open them, but I had to, I had to...I found a trace of non-existent saliva in my throat, swallowed hard and said:

``````` Knowledge is my crime and you are all my accomplices! My crimes will live through you and through your children, and through the gifts I bestowed upon you...`

I made a pause to look at Thomasine and her husband. Bitterness seared my tongue, but I finished nonetheless:

`...and through the love I have given.`

` Enough!` - shouted Thomasine. `` `Her words are poison! Set her ablaze! Burn her!`

` Burn her! `

Was that Anne James?

` Burn her!`

The man in black was next to me now. Ah, he was coming to steal one last dance from me, this bold suitor, and the flaming rose in his hand was burning brighter than ever. Hotter than ever. I could feel the warmth now, tugging playfully at my dirty skirt, creeping towards my skin...

` Rosemary!`

This was Lucy Dunn, sobbing like the child that she was - not yet 14 years of age. But I was not a child and I was not going to scream. I grabbed my loosely braided hair with my teeth and sunk them in as hard as I could, tasting birch bark in my mouth.

The words of my forgotten song were coming to me now, so

I spit my hair out and started singing, but my cracking voice was barely heard over the fire:

` Shadows will rock you in their hands.

 Moonbeams will guide you through the land.

 Whether you sail or walk, or fly

 always remember to say goodbye.`

 And now I was becoming fire, the flames had finally stripped me to my bare skin and were now reaching inside me and nobody could hear me sing, and I couldn `` t hear them scream or cheer, and they couldn `` t hear me cry like a new-born bird spreading its wings of fire, wings of pure gold, wings of insatiable light.

                                                    ***

Today is my last day in this cell. My wish to be done with it will be granted: tomorrow, after breakfast, they will come and drag me into the sun and then - into the fire. Thirst changes you. You think pride and righteous indignance will sustain you for long enough and then your body starts failing from under your spirit. It becomes frail, foreign and unstable and you can feel it buckling down under the weight of your defiance. What insults me it how fast it happened. Few days in a cell and I ` m already broken. What would mother say? In a way, she is responsible for this: she only taught me how to be free, pick herbs, make my own rules, dream of my own things. She never taught me how to be a good prisoner. Perhaps she had hoped it would never happen. 

And yet fear triumphed over her hopes.

I never got to go to London. Never got to wear a bejeweled dress, dance in a in a whirlwind of candlelight, sail on a ship, carry a child...

I never got to really change the world. I cured fevers, stitched wounds and delivered babies, but what of it?

My throat is so dry - like a cornfield in August.

And my thoughts are disappearing.

There are words I `m trying to remember, a string of words, wrapped neatly around a simple melody, but my body is failing and my mind is following.

I have no memory. I have no voice. I have no eyes - I can see nothing, but darkness.

I wish I didn ` t have a heart.

                                                   ***

This cell stinks of urine and stale food. There are lumps of damp hay on the floor and no windows on the walls. So I am to sit and ponder the nature of my crimes in darkness. The fools, they think this is going to break my spirit, make me crawl on my knees and beg forgiveness...Never. Never am I going to let them triumph over me like that. The triumph of ignorance over wisdom is being celebrated all around the world - but here, I will make them mourn it. They want to see a flame? I will show them a flame: I am the flame! All of their fires can not burn brighter than me. I lit up the whole village - to guide them through the darkness, but they could only sense danger and stomp around, like a herd of frightened animals.

They all witnessed against me and the ones who didn `` t witness, watched. Pretty little Lucy Dunn watched with her bluebell eyes, open wide in shock, and good old Anne James watched, and that hypocrite Roger Harris nearly fell over in his vigour to climb up there and tarnish me. I heard so many things about me that day. How it was sinful of me to run around without a hat, even though half of those times I was in a hurry to tend to a sick child and was not thinking about my hair and whether it`s covered; how I was almost twenty years old and still unmarried, and full of unnatural lust and opinions, unbecoming to a young woman; how I knew too much about herbs and could cure such diseases, that it aroused too much suspicion in my good neighbours; how I had a familiar - well, this one got me to laugh, because they wanted me to name my familiar in court and I said "her name is Barbary Bell", and watched them all swallow their tongues. And finally, how I bewitched a young man and enslaved him with my dark powers, and then killed his firstborn child out of pure spite.

And while they were speaking, the coward was just sitting there, watching the judge with his innocent blue eyes and shaking from time to time, for good measure. I had a good mind to go and sit in his lap, and show them all some "witchcraft". He only opened his filthy mouth to say, with a faltering voice, that I had a "Devil `` s mark" on my left thigh. So I had to show them my birthmark, but at least they didn `` t have to strip me naked and search for it themselves... They didn `` t even put me through the water test! Not that anybody would care if I sank, but they could have at least pretended...At some point I started saying the Lord’s Prayer just to spite them - to show them I can, and they gagged me.

Apparently it was Satan saying the Lord ``` s Prayer through me, and this could not be allowed in court. 

The darkness and dampness of this cell is actually a vast improvement over the well lit farce, played in that stinky courtroom. Thank God I `` m not beyond gratitude. I `` m grateful that I `` m finally being left alone, in peace and darkness, with the words of my mother`s song in my head.

I will hum it to myself until I fall asleep.

                                                   ***

I feel a storm brewing today, but the sky is as clear as they come. Lucy Dunn was supposed to come and pick herbs with me today, but she came only to say that her mother needs her and ran away. I looked at her running and it was like watching the sun set and wanting to stop it somehow. 

A black foal with such a fine stature it didn `` t look real was trotting gleefully towards me. I was suddenly struck by the feeling I have seen it all in a dream - the fleeing girl, the skipping foal, the sky, draped in fine blue silk- but shook it off when the foal came near me. Looking into his dark eyes, whose beauty was still unsurpassed, I said:

` Have you come here to chastise me? I know that look.`

Mocking neighing was my answer.

` I know you do not approve. How can you? I do not approve it myself...But if it` s folly, it is a blessed folly that makes my blood warmer, my legs faster, my laughter louder and my heart stronger. I was taught to never deny myself the gifts of life. And this is a gift. A gift.`

I stood up and I felt a chill running through my body. Was this anticipation? I was going to see Preston in half an hour. I was going to feel his arms, cradling my head, his fingers tracing my lips and his legs locking me in their trap, and I was going to talk to him about my dreams and he was going to listen and laugh, but never mock...He believed I can do anything. By myself. That I can defy the rules and bend them, instead of being bent by them, that I can have my own home and travel, and see London...A man of such sweetness and humour, of such understanding and free will was simply wasted on a girl like Thomasine Allen, with her eternal scowl, gaunt cheeks and dull mind. She couldn `` t even laugh like a real person - she sounded like a hen, clucking simply because other hens are clucking. 

But no matter. I had to go and check on their sick baby, Emma - and do my best, because she was Preston `` s daughter and had a trace of him in herself - and then I was going to see my beloved, and shake this strange feeling that a storm is going to tear the bright, silk-draped sky.

                                                   ***

The day my mother let me in on a secret was a very important one in my life.

` We, witches, do not have as many powers as they think. Of course, it is best not to let them know ` , she said, chuckling, and kept embroidering her new skirt with crawling vines. She was, despite her age, the most beautiful woman in the whole village - perhaps little Lucy Dunn would become as fair as her one day.

` But there is a very, very important skill, that we do have `, continued she, without taking her eyes from her work.

` Healing people?`

` Oh, Rosemary.` She chuckled again. ` Any decent woman with some herbs and wits can heal a sick person, or deliver a baby. What I `` m talking about is real magic, the one that melts the borders between the realm of animals and plants and people and blends them into one. It `` s a power I couldn `` t trust you with when you were still a child: the power to turn into something else.`

` Like an animal? ` I cried.

` Precisely, but do not get giddy with happiness yet. It `` s a power you can only use once in your life, and once you turn into whatever it is you heart desires, there is no coming back.`

`Any animal I want?` , interrupted I, not ready to quench my excitement. My mother sighed and waved her finger at me.

` This is not a game, Rosemary. This must be your last escape, a deliberate journey. You should only use it if you are trapped and there is no other way out, but this...do you understand me? Do you? Good, now let us learn the incantation. It will only work after you chew some birch bark, which we will certainly not do right now, but from now on, you must always have some woven in your braid, just like me.

Then she sang and paired the simple melody with a simple verse- to help me remember the sweet harmony that would one day make me become a new, unexplored form, a different being...

` So...any animal?`, I asked hesitantly. ` Even the mythical phoenix?`

` Phoenixes are not mythical ` , my mother smiled sadly. ` They are great and lonely birds who hide from people and die in flames. Is this what you `` d choose?`

` I want to know what it` s like to rise from the ashes. I ` ve seen all the beasts in the forest - I ran with the stags and swam with the fish, but I have never seen it all from above...Mother, what would you choose? When it comes to it?`

`A foal, my girl. A beautiful, black foal. When I am to die, I `` ll want to cheat death one last time and stay near you. So when the day comes, I `` ll become young again and we `` ll run together through the forest.`

` How should I name you?` I chuckled at that image.

` Let me keep my name. Let me stay Barbary Bell, even after I `` m no longer in a woman `` s body. Are you going somewhere?` - she added when I jumped from my chair. I couldn `` t really tell her. I had a secret. The secret had a face that was curious and kind, a voice, deeper than the buzzing of the bumblebees and eyes that followed me everywhere I went. He also had a wife, but how could that stop my heart? And what would she do, even if she knew - scold him, pick a fight with me? Can she imprison me for feeling love and be loved in return? I kissed my mother on the cheek, without answering her question, and ran through the door, humming my new favourite song.  

` Shadows will rock you in their hands.

 Moonbeams will guide you through the land.

 Whether you sail or walk, or fly

 always remember to say goodbye.`