Chapter IV • Severin

“Hells, Sapphire, I have told you, for the last time, to stay out of my bloody kitchen, you skelpie-limmer!”

I hear the familiar, shrill voice of the woman I am supposed to call my mother shout from inside the hut. Father had

left to trade in another village, and I had just returned from assisting one of our neighbors harvest their crops. I dash in to see what is happening,

finding Sapphire being beaten by our stepmother with a thick piece of wood.

Where in blazes did she get that?!

Sapphire wails as every swing of the timber comes in contact with her body, causing large, red marks on her skin.

“Stop,” I screech, reaching out to grab my sibling’s arm. “What are you doing?!”

“Disciplining your beef-brained sister for constantly getting in my way! If she cannot learn how to cook for the family on her own, she is best off out of the kitchen, or dead!”

Before Beatrice’s swing hits Sapphire once again, I rush in between them to wrap my arms around the poor, bruised child, and take the hit.

The strength of it nearly knocks the breath out of me as the wood meets my back.

Ow. That is literally going to leave a mark.

“You dare interfere?! Your father will not forgive you for this!” she screams, repeatedly striking my back mercilessly.

With the strength of her hits, she could have ended my sister if I had not interfered.

Risking the pain, I squeeze my arms around Sapphire and hastily carry her to the other end of the hut, away from that woman. Beatrice misses her last swing and hits the wooden dining table instead, damaging it right in the corner and causing splinters to fly. She yells at us to stay out of the kitchen whilst she cooks, else she end both of us. Ignoring her, I gently extend Sapphire’s arms to check for any more damage. She whimpers in pain when I do.

“My apologies, I know it hurts. I do not think you have any broken bones, though.”

“Why does stepmother hate me, Sev?” she asks as I wipe away the tears rolling down her cheeks with my stout fingers. “I only wanted to help her in the kitchen…”

“She does not know how to appreciate help from somebody who wants to help, even if her life was on the line,” I whisper, guiding her to sit on our bed. “She is an irritable old lady, after all. One moment, I shall grab your winter tunic to hide those nasty welts when they change color.”

I plant a kiss on Sapphire’s forehead, reassuring her that she will be alright, and turn to the chest where we store our clothing. My back aches as I turn, and I have to stop to be able to take a breath. Mayhap getting hit was not the best of ideas…

Things were not this dire when I am often away. The first summer, after we moved, Beatrice was, obviously, only tolerating our existence, and only cared about my father. Our stepmother’s patience grew thinner the longer she and Sapphire had to stay alone together, and punishments only worsened since then.

Because Father and I are the ones who often leave this village to trade across the land, my sister is forced to stay home, for I forbid her to go out. Her eye color after Mother’s death is a rather… unnatural shade of blue— well, the same goes for my hair— and 'tis riskier for her to be in public because she is a girl.

Anything that seemed out of the ordinary was deemed to be witchcraft, according to that old fart Lord Edgar, and my sister and I are… under that category.

Lord Davidson occasionally takes a stroll with a small group of knights around different villages in the land and executes commoners whom he assumes are witches, based only on his judgment! These women are simply snatched and brought to trial almost immediately, in front of all the villagers.

A sennight ago, I learned from Father that two women were staked and burned alive in the village I traded goods with. They were female siblings who were stripped in public to find the “mark of the devil” on their bodies, and were eliminated.

Thus, no, Sapphire is not leaving this hut…

“Ah, I've found it,,” I exclaim, handing my sister her long-sleeved tunic. “Do you want me to help you?”

“I can handle it. Gramercy, brother,” she replies, flashing me a toothy smile after she wears it over her head. “May I see your back as well, Sev? Stepmother hurt you too… mayhap I shall kiss it to make it better?”

My sister... is so precious.

“Alright, come hither,” I say as I slip out of my hood and chemise. “Does it look bad?”

Sapphire places her wee hands in the middle of my back, then glides it to the right. At first, the contact makes my skin sting, but all of a sudden, the pain is gone. Any of the aching or possible swelling mysteriously disappears.

“How did you…” I mutter, reaching over my shoulder to feel my back. “The pain is gone…?”

I feel my sister press her lips against the skin of my back.

“All better, Sev! How does that feel?”

I turn to the young brunette, and I tear up. This child… is so pure.

I cannot imagine my life without her.

“Is something the matter, brother?” she asks, blue eyes wide in both curiosity and concern. “Are you in pain?”

“No, no,” I reply, staring at her. “I feel much better… Truly. Gramercy, Saph.”

My chest aches as I picture my sister dying at the hands of the woman who is supposed to care for us.

I do not want that.

With this thought, it came to me…

 “Sapphire,” I whisper, raising my forefinger and pressing it to my lips. “Let's run away.”

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

It is nighttime. Beatrice puts away the last of the dishes and makes her way to her bed. Father had just tucked himself in, and stepmother is undressing to make herself comfortable. Across their bed is ours, where my beloved, blue-eyed sibling pretends to sleep, preparing herself for tonight’s objective:

escaping the hut in silence, and without a trace.

“Oi. Go to sleep, you wandought,” our stepmother says to me, for I am still visibly wide awake. “You still have work to do in the morn.”

I clench my jaw to avoid saying anything and close my eyes. I turn away from their bed and face my sister.

“Any moment now, brother…” Sapphire whispers. I open an eye to find that she has one eye open as well, and raise my finger to my lips. I slowly peek over my shoulder to find Beatrice lying on her side, facing away from our bed. 'Tis a good thing this woman falls asleep fast. I nod at my sister, and we get off our mattress in complete silence.

Creeping to our clothing chest, I snatch my hood and the trousers I’ve folded in it on top of it, and my mother’s odd journal from under the bed. Sapphire pulls onto her bag she had expertly hidden at the foot of our bed, hidden in plain sight. Together, we walk on the tips of our toes towards the door and grab our leather shoes. As I open the door at a snail’s pace, Sapphire whispers to me once again about her blanket that is hung outside the hut on a clothesline, and reminds me to take it before we leave.

When I take a step outside, I hear a loud grunt, then a snore.

My sister and I freeze in place, our heads snapping towards Father and Beatrice’s bed. I take hold of Sapphire’s wrist and drag her out the door without hesitation, uneasily wearing our shoes in front of the hut. I pull the linen blanket off the clothesline as soon as I finish the laces of my shoes, and find my sister struggling to tie her laces. She seems to be nervous.

“Saph,” I whisper, kneeling on the ground to speak to her. “Be at ease. We have time.”

Taking a deep breath, she pushes her disheveled hair off her face and calmly does her laces. Successful after a couple of tries and a few hints from me, we walk towards the forest edge, hand in hand. We stray away from the path, the light illuminating from the nearly-full moon guiding us beyond the cluster of foliage over our heads.

As we go deeper, it becomes darker and colder. Sapphire stays close to me in fear of getting lost.

I feel like I’ve forgotten something, but I cannot seem to remember what it could be.

At the crack of dawn, I find it: a house surrounded by vegetation. I feel like this is the reward for our resolve.

“Sapphire, look,” I exclaim, waking the sleeping blue-eyed brunette I have given a pickaback to after she asked to be carried. “We have a new home!”

“What…?” she replies groggily.

I bounce about to wake her up, unable to contain my excitement. Despite the tiredness, the energy I feel is incomparable. My sister gets off my back after rubbing her eyes and lopes toward the house before suddenly becoming cautious when she is a few paces away. I catch up to her and carefully examine the place, making sure there is no person or animal in waiting.

The roof is made of old planks, sticks, and thatch, and the house itself is partly dug into the ground. Its walls seem to be made of logs and earth, and there are no windows or holes, except for an entrance, which is simply an opening framed with boughs.

It is a pit house!

The only small damages were crumbling parts of the wall near the rear of the house. This can be easily covered up with some wood and mud for the time being. I call out to Sapphire, who responds from the inside of the house.

“Watch your step, brother! There are no stairs, and 'tis a rather large gap from up thither to down hither, and I… fell…” she states, laughing it off until I see her knee bleeding.

Alarmed at this, I hop down with ease and check on her for any more injuries, and begin tending to her bleeding joint. I press the front of my chemise to her knee to stop the bleeding, and look around. 'Tis very cool and dim in hither, and I can barely make out a mattress placed on what seems to be a skillfully-made bed frame. Opposite the bed is a small hole in the ground with ashes and sticks, supposedly for a hearth or a small fire.

Other than a low, wooden table, the place is spacious!

“If we get this repaired, Saph, we have a new home,” I utter, smiling at my sister. My smile grows into a grin, unable to contain my happiness. “We have a new home!”

“Stepmother cannot hurt us hither! I am so happy! But… something else would also make this day even better, Sev,” she replies, and before she follows up with this, her stomach growls.

“Of course, food,” I mumble, hastily removing my hand from her knee.

I realize her knee had not only stopped bleeding, but there is no trace of a wound. How odd…

I stand and look for Sapphire’s bag. When I find it, I rummage it for my purse, only to realize…

That is what I forgot to bring.

Ah, ballocks… What do I do now? I've no money, and almost nothing to sell…

I look at my sister, before weighing my options.

“Saph, listen to me,” I state firmly, approaching her with hurried steps. “I am going to get us some food. Pray thee, stay inside, and stay safe. If anybody finds you, run. Understood?”

She nods, and I give her a hug. I take my hood, wearing it over my shoulders and pulling it over my head to hide my hair. I will have to look for other ways to get food in our stomachs.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

After a while, I find a path and follow it to the nearest village. This village is completely different from the ones I have been to…

Its paths are made of cobblestone instead of a dirt pavement. This place looks like it is thriving more if I am to compare it to the central village. There are more stalls and merchants, most of them butchers selling meat, farmers selling farm animals more than crops, and… men entering a large building where women are exposing their… duckies… to them.

This is normal, is it not?

“I feel like I've entered another world,” I mumble to myself, making my way to a crowded stall. “I do not think I have been to this place.”

These people are buying meat from a burly man in an apron, selling what he claims to be “high-quality” for a low price. It seems that it came straight from the Davidson manor’s livestock, for Davidson knights just brought it to him to sell to the villagers.

That sounds absolutely bloody suspicious.

I leave to peruse the other stalls as the villagers cause a ruckus over buying the meat from the manor. As I approach a stall that sells mutton, the woman manning the stall removes her apron and rushes past me to buy the suspicious meat. I eye a rack of lamb at the edge of the stall, looking around, before deciding to sieze it.

I nab it. The entire thing.

Running is all I could think of.

Not bothering to look back, I carefully dodge anyone in my way. The meat stays unwrapped in my hand as I snatch a loaf of bread from a baker holding his tray with my other hand, ignoring his yelling that there is a thief on the loose.

I don’t stop running even after I’ve left the village through the village edge and only stop to breathe when I spot the pit house. Stopping to hide behind a tree, I listen out to anyone who may have followed me up to hither.

When I hear nothing, neither shouting nor footsteps, I tiredly walk to the dug-out, and find Sapphire carefully carrying a small, metal pot.

Where did she get the pot?

Right before I call out to my sister, I am startled by a flock of black birds squawking and flying above and beyond the trees, temporarily blocking out the sunlight as they pass.

“Oh, Sev! You've returned,” Sapphire exclaims from afar, acknowledging my presence. “There is a stream nearby, and I rummaged around for anything we could use to collect the water, and I found this pot! There are even clay cups and dishes!”

Aside from the actuality that I just stole a rack of lamb and some bread, the house we found has everything else we need to survive?

This is a miracle!

“Give me a moment, Saph! I’ve our meal! You are not going to believe what I have!”

My sister meets me halfway and gasps in delight at the sight of what is in my arms. Excited that we will be having meat for today’s meals, I calm her down and tell her we have to start a fire and boil the water she had collected.

We work together to gather firewood to place inside the dug-out, and I teach the blue-eyed girl how to start a fire. It burns weakly at first, but the flames gradually glow brighter and fiercer as she adds more dry sticks and twigs whilst gently blowing onto it. Immediately, after the inside of the house is illuminated, I discover that the mattress I saw earlier when we first entered is made of wool.

Sheep’s wool? Whoever used to live here left some valuable things…

I take out the mattress and beat it to release the dust and any possible creatures that may be invading the wool. Sapphire assists me in returning it to the bed frame, telling me how odd yet beautiful the patterns on it were.

At noon, we feast. I carefully cut the rack of lamb into chops with a dull knife I sharpened with a rock, and together, we roast it to perfection. Although it is a bit dry paired with the bread, t’was delicious nonetheless.

I have never seen my sister smile this much since our mother and sister died.

After our noontime meal, Sapphire tells me she wants to sleep, for she was awake with me for most of the time we travelled. I tell her to get comfortable and have pleasant dreams when she spreads the linen blanket we brought with us onto the wool mattress.

“My thanks, brother,” she says happily, sighing in satisfaction. “You are the greatest.”

“Anything to keep you smiling, Sapphire,” I reply, planting a kiss to her forehead before leaving her to rest.

As my sister sleeps, I fish out Mother’s journal and scan its pages. If we are to stay here, I must be able to get us food… without getting caught. Flipping through the pages mindlessly, I find a recipe for… a potion?

So, Mother really was a witch…?

Shaking my head, I carefully read the ingredients, struggling to pronounce some of the words. 'Tis a good thing mother illustrated what these ingredients look like, else what I shall attempy to concoct will be an utter disaster.

“Looks like it is time to do some foraging.”

skelpie-limmer – “a badly-behaved child”; sennight – “seven days or one week”; wandought – “weak or ineffectual man”; pit house, dug-out – “house in the ground”; bough – “main branch of a tree”; duckies – “English slang for bosoms”.