The Arranged Marriage

Luna lived in a small, impoverished village with her mother and sister, Aurora. Her mother had spent years preparing Luna for marriage, the only viable means for a woman to secure food and shelter. After Luna's father abandoned them, they struggled to get food for the three of them, and things were destined to worsen. Luna's mother began to urge her to marry before their situation grew even more desperate.

Luna had only met her father briefly. He was a well-known drunk, layabout and womaniser. He had finally deserted his dependent family and moved in with another woman. Luna had watched her mother weep and wail when he left. Only later did Luna realise it wasn’t for the love of the husband - it was simple economics. Without his scant income, most of which went on booze anyway, the females suffered badly as women on their own were usually left penniless.

The mother spoke to her young, needy family about their situation, and after much too-ing and fro-ing, the mother announced that the fifteen-year-old Luna would have to find a husband before her looks faded. With her beautiful looks, she was to see if the husband could be persuaded to live in Luna’s house and help feed them all.

Luna was not looking forward to her fate. She had questioned her mother about married life to her father, who was a violent drunk. 

“Are all men like that?”

Her mother hesitated, wringing her hands.

'There are men who care for their families, Luna. Some are lovely, handsome men who care deeply for their children. Perhaps not many, but some.' 

Luna pressed, 'Then name one. If you can, I'll visit him before seeing the Matchmaker.'

Her mother fell silent and shook her head.“No, Luna, I can’t. But we have no choice.”  The mother sat helplessly, twisting her handkerchief in her overworked, bony-veined hands.

“Luna, you are a resourceful girl, and I feel certain you will find a handsome husband and be able to keep him under control.”

**********

Luna and the mother visited the Matchmaker, whom Luna didn’t like at all. Luna’s mother took her daughter’s hand and squeezed it tightly in a comforting way. By the end of the visit, the Matchmaker passed a black-and-white cartoon of a remarkably handsome man.  

“Who’s this?” asked Luna, intrigued.

“This is Douglas, your new husband. Isn’t he beautiful?” wheezed the old witch, her gaze fixed on Luna. “A real catch.” 

The Matchmaker's eyes narrowed when asked when Douglas would come to introduce himself to Luna. 

'You misunderstand. Luna will make the journey alone to Douglas’ village. They will not meet until their wedding day. Please understand that when Luna leaves, she leaves for good. What skills does Luna have - able to cook and keep a home? Have you been training her for married life?”

The mother felt Luna stiffen. It was clear her daughter was not looking forward to married life. Both mother and daughter noticed that apart from his “looks”, the Matchmaker had failed to say anything about Douglas’ good character or kindness.

”************

That evening, Luna and her family discussed this disaster, trying to devise a way to avoid a dreadful future.

“The only advantage of my impending marriage is that there will be one less mouth to feed, but there will still be no food for you or my sister. This seems a dreadful choice.”

After many hours of discussion, it was decided that the two sisters would journey together to the faraway village and look for Douglas. Once there, they would assess him for possible husband material. The mother was instructed not to hand over any money to the Matchmaker until the daughters returned.

“We can look after one another. Will you be OK here alone? If he is a nice man, I will stay and marry him and arrange an escort for my sister to return to you.”

*********

The following night, the two girls silently set off, careful not to disturb any of their neighbours fast asleep in their small, impoverished wooden shacks. Within minutes, they were plunged into inky blackness and an all-enveloping silence, excluding their quick but controlled breathing. After walking incalculable miles, they eventually entered a village just as dawn broke.  

The village loomed grey and lifeless, shrouded in damp air that clung to their skin. As they passed, the villagers’ sour faces turned to stare—skin blotched and stretched over sharp bones, eyes narrowed in suspicion. The girls felt they had never seen such unattractive people. The air hung thick with decay, the silence broken only by the occasional creak of a rusted door.

Despite not being cold, both girls, shivering, pulled their shawls over their heads and carefully covered the lower sections of their faces. They passed numerous dilapidated houses huddled together, walls streaked with dark stains and roofs patched with scraps of rotting wood. As they continued their journey, the air became increasingly thick with the stench of damp earth and old sweat, mingling with the faint, sickly-sweet rot of something long dead outside the hovels. Even the crows perched above seemed to watch in wary silence, their beady eyes following Luna and Aurora with unsettling patience.

The village felt cursed, as though happiness had been banished and every face wore the scars of hard, bitter years. A sense of malice lingered in every corner.

“What a horrible place to have to live. If this is where Douglas lives, I will not be marrying him. Keep your shawl over your face, Aurora. You are too young and pretty to live here, and some of those vile men are looking at you.”, whispered Luna. 

Aurora began to whimper with fear, and Luna clasped her hand in warmth and encouragement.

Looming ahead, they see the only reasonable building in the village. It is a large wooden barn, and as the door opens, they can see warm, fresh, clean hay inside. They hear a young female voice calling from within. As they enter the barn, a young, frightened woman greets them. She is a pleasant-looking young woman aged about fourteen.  

“Come in, come in. You don’t want to be walking around out there, " she says as she drags them in.

She takes the girls to a bundle of hay bales, sits them down, and then gets them a cup of water. Alison, the girl, asks them what they are doing here. They explain that Luna needs to get married, and they have come to look at Douglas, whom they have heard is a handsome, single man from the village.

“Douglas is my father," Alison whispered, leading them to the barn's shadows. “He and the Matchmaker sell people to nearby villages. My mother is his prisoner, kept hidden away in the house.’ The girls exchanged a glance, the realisation sinking in.

“The only people still living in the village are the ones Douglas couldn’t sell.”

“How come you were not sold?” asks Luna.

“He has kept my mother as his personal slave for years. When I was born, for some reason, he decided to keep me, too. He is married to Grizelda, who is as nasty as Douglas, and they have never had children. My mother and I keep out of their way as much as possible. I live here in the barn with my friends, the horses. I believe my mother is kept locked up in the basement of the house.”

After a long whispered discourse, Alison says the girls must leave the village quickly before Douglas hears about them and attempts to sell them. Alison tells them they should disguise themselves as old women and keep their heads down so no one can see their lovely faces. As they drape themselves in old black rags, Alison brings a bucket of thick, wet brown mud and tells them to use it to cover their faces, necks and arms.

“Older people always have much browner skin, and as the mud dries, it will make you look very wrinkled. The older you look, the less interested anyone will be in you, as no one is interested in buying old people, so you should be safe.” 

The girls thank Alison for all her help and, with their youthful good looks, completely disguised the sisters, leaning heavily on each other, pretend to limp, as they continue their journey.

**************** 

They see a massive house at the end of the village and assume that it is Douglas’s house. As they slowly hobble by, a nasty-looking woman opens a downstairs window and calls to them:  

“Who are you, and why are two old women walking through the village?” 

Luna squeezes Aurora's arm and shouts back: 

“I am looking for my husband, who went away to work and hasn’t returned.”

The nasty woman tells the sisters they must pay a toll for daring to walk through her village. Luna says she has no money but will scrub her kitchen floor as payment. Grizelda, for it is she, tells them she also wants the evening meal cooked, and if they do a good job, she will allow them some food. She tells them they will find a garden with all fruits, vegetables and chickens out the back, and after cleaning the kitchen, they will cook the dinner. Luna and Aurora, after cleaning the kitchen, wander into the large garden and prepare the evening meal for Douglas and Grizelda.  Aurora asks Luna if she thinks Grizelda will let them both go after the delicious meal they have prepared.  

“No, I can’t imagine anyone as unpleasant as these two letting us go, as we are too good at cooking and cleaning.”

“What will we do, Luna?”

“Don’t worry. I saw something helpful in their garden that will assist us in getting back to Mother.”

Grizelda is so pleased with the dinner that she tells the “old women” that they will cook and clean for Grizelda and Douglas for the rest of their miserable lives. 

Luna whispers to Aurora that they will do as they are told whilst helping themselves to decent food that they have cooked and drinking as much water as they need. When they have fattened up and become more robust, they will work out their escape from the house.

As Luna wanders around the garden full of sweet, aromatic herbs, tomatoes, peas, apples and peaches, working out what to cook for dinner that evening, she returns to the clump of plants growing near the glass house she had seen earlier. Looking at the plants carefully, she begins to plan their escape.  

Each evening, they cook the meal for Grizelda and Douglas. Douglas, although not seen, has been heard. The rough voice and manner, often ascending into screams and threats of violence, can be heard coming from the various downstairs rooms. It is an unpleasant house to be in.  Each evening, Luna and Aurora are told to prepare dinner big enough for two adults, so clearly, there are no guests. Luna tells Aurora this is perfect as she does not wish to poison others.  

The girls carefully prepare delicious meals each evening for their jailors. They also thoroughly scrub and clean the kitchen so that when Grizelda comes in to metre out punishments to the two older women, she finds everything perfect.  

Once Grizelda and Douglas had begun to look forward to their delicious dinner meticulously prepared for them, Luna carefully added a hint of Deadly Nightshade to their meal, watching as their cruel captors grew weaker, desperate for water and increasingly frail. Later on Luna climbed the stairs with poisoned tea for the two ailing monsters who greedily drank it down. Waiting by the bedside for silence to finally fall, the sisters crept through the house, their hearts pounding, ready to reclaim their freedom.

The girls searched the house for valuables, money and ill-gotten goods from Douglas’s slavery trade. Carefully packing the money and goods, they return to the barn to locate Alison.

“Alison, can we use the horses to ride?”

“Of course. Is there anything else you need,”  

“Yes, Alison. We need to free your mother. Where is she?”

“I’m sure she’s in the house's basement. “

“Let’s get her. The house is safe - Grizelda and Douglas drank poison and are no longer a danger to us.”

As the four women assemble in the house hallway surrounded by bags of goods and money, Luna asks if Alison and her mum wish to leave the village and travel with the sisters.

“Let’s leave quickly before Douglas and Grizela are found by the Matchmaker, who will demand our deaths.”

*********************

By now, night has fallen, and they return to their old community.

They silently re-enter their shack.

'Mother,' Luna said quietly, 'Fate is resourceful. We have enough money to leave this place for good.' 

With their few belongings, the five women leave the small community and put as much distance between them and the reaches of the Matchmaker, whilst seeking greener lands where they can all start their lives anew. “

***************

They travelled on horseback for many days until they found a land of paradise high up in the hills. Their journey had taken them to lush farmlands, which were looked after by kind, handsome farmers who had longed to find lovely women to marry. The farmers warmly welcomed their new brides and mothers-in-law,…… and they all lived happily afterwards.