Burning Red

The wind shrieked through the weathered branches of the leafless tree. Rattled the greying bones and snapped the weak outstretched fingers. At the tips of each branch, a few resilient leaves tried to hold on. A single rope cut through the dancing patterns in the bark. Under the massive tree, illuminated by the stark contrast of lightning against the night sky, stood a young woman. Her dress billowed against her thin form; the wind whipped thick red hair away from elegant features. The rope around her neck had rubbed the skin raw; the other villagers had been droning on for what seemed like hours, barely audible over the roar of the wind. 

Witch! They screamed, anger their burning into her wind-chapped skin. Little ones hugged their mothers’ skirts, small shoulders quivering with fear. A small dark head darted into her line of sight and her breath caught in her throat.

Wood pricked the skin of her bare feet, thousands of shards of pain flickered through the frozen flesh of her toes. Furtive eyes glanced in her direction as if after all this she might pull a last-minute escape. 

The rope was pulled tight against her neck, she played with her hands tied behind her back. The frozen metal of the stake had yet to thaw against her fingers.

She forced her fear away.

Raised her head.

As heavily booted feet approached the mound of wood and dropped a match.

Three hours earlier…

            A small fire crackled in a red brick-lined hearth. Smoke and soot, stained the brick, cloaking the warm red in years’ worth of grime. Several small boys darted between their mother’s legs, laughter hanging in frosted clouds above their heads. The smallest, with raven hair, smoothed back from a soft face, tripped, and stumbled after the others. He landed with a small thud on the packed-dirt floor, tears dripping down his plump cheeks and turning a tiny portion of the floor to mud.

            Having heard the racket of her younger brothers, light footsteps crept down from the loft above. Ivory fingers swept the tears from the boy’s cheeks and lifted him onto her soft lap. She moved nearer to the fire, her autumn hair caught on the golden light, and turned to liquid rubies, pouring over her shoulders and down her back. She murmured soft words of comfort in his small ear until his eyes grew heavy. Dark feather lashes fluttered over mismatched eyes the color of jewels. One the color of the thick moss, soothing the sound of nearby voices. The other the color of amber with a pupil trapped in the center. She smoothed his dark hair from his face as the last glimpse of their only shared trait disappeared behind closed eyelids.

            She laid his head on one of her mother’s old quilts and gently shifted him away. 

Raked her fingers through her blood-red curls.

As a heavy fist thumped against her door.

Three hours earlier…

            Chilled fingertips flicked through the thick pages of a book. They quivered gently, despite her attempts to steady them. Elegant dances and rhythms were tapped out in sporadic movements; her heartbeat throbbed in her ears, pulsing red in the corners of her vision. A small sigh leaped from her lips like a lark taking flight, swooping, and twisting to the ground. 

Her plan was ingenious. Reckless. Deadly. Each step was planned to perfection. Pride and fear performed a dangerous dance in her nerves, each pushing and pulling in flawless synchronization. 

His warm voice spoke in her mind, thick with barely concealed panic, “I can’t. No! You really want me to call you a witch to save my own life?!”

Her voice played through her thoughts; a fragment of memory, “I cannot let you lose your life. Just say that I forced you to do it. That I controlled you and made you sabotage the troops. They won't question it! I will take your place!" Her resolve glistened in her eyes. Instead of talking her out of it, he pulled her close as sobs splintered through his lips, raw with unbridled grief and pain.

Vivid images of past witch burnings flickered past her eyelids; women being engulfed by flames for something as simple as their neighbor’s field dying. Traitors against the Crown begging for their lives, to no avail. But that was the price she was willing to pay to save her loved one from a similar fate. 

Anxiety built in her chest, like water rising against a dam. It threatened to burst, to roll over her and wash her away in the current.

She knotted her fingers tightly together.

Racked with sobs that she forced away the best she could.

As she looked to the first rays of the sun, nearly invisible through the oppressive grey that pressed down.

Three hours earlier…

            “It will happen today… there is no stopping it. Why couldn't I have just stood by? Ignored it all?” Her gemstone eyes filled with tears at his words. Her fingers laced through his, soft fingertips rubbing small circles onto his calloused skin, worn rough by the sea. By the ropes that had lashed against his fingers and the rough-hewn timbers of his ship. A small hiccup rose in her throat and she had to fight it back down before it could emerge as a fully formed sob. His steady breathing filled her ears as she laid her head against his chest. 

The first traces of dawn were filtering across the indigo sky, traces of grey staining the perfect canvas. It shouldn’t have been so picturesque. Not with what would surely happen. Her heart fractured into dozens of fragments and their glittering remains caught on the starlight. 

“No. No! We cannot just let them do this to you. There has to be another way.” Her words had lurched out of her throat with a drunken tilt; swayed boldly in the moonlight. “We can still save you. I can still save you.”

She ignored the twist in her stomach and replaced it with courage.

Raised a plan that saved the one she loved.

As her heavy heart sank into the midnight depths of her soul.