Twisting Every Way

Chapter 1

The night sky glowed with a thousand stars, one for every living soul. Emya stood, head thrown back, strands of her long, dark hair, pulled away by the wind, wisped gently around her. Her wide, brown eyes moved across the sky, as she wondered which of the stars had not been there the night before. Had she known what was going to happen, she would have looked up at the sky more.

The buzzing voice of the chief councilor droned on, unintelligible to Emya. Grim-faced onlookers clicked their tongues disapprovingly but Emya ignored them and continued to gaze up at the sky. She would look anywhere other than at those somber expressions watching her with a mixture of pity and disdain as she stood before the two caskets.

After a time, the speeches and rituals were finished, and the chief counselor ended the ceremony. As the crowd dispersed, Emya stood motionless, trapped by indecision. To follow the crowd felt cowardly. She deserved to witness what came next; it was her fault.

When the crowd disappeared beyond the shadow of the squat village houses, four burly men were left behind to finish the task. As the caskets disappeared below the dirt, a heavy weight lifted from her shoulders and settled permanently in her stomach. They were gone and she was well and truly alone.

A firm hand clapped her shoulder. She tore her eyes away from the graves to gaze dully into the stern face of Councilor Hai.

"The mourning gathering has started, Emya. Why don't you go and eat?" He'd never spoken so softly to her. It was almost sympathetic, but he couldn't quite mask the twang of disapproval. No one would miss her if she did not go to the mourning gathering. It was not for her, but for the few people who had liked her mother and father despite their having a child such as her. The others would gossip and speculate on what would become of her. Yet, if she did not attend for at least a few minutes she would be labeled an uncaring daughter and contemptuous of the village traditions. This would translate to crueler treatment, scolding, and further punishment.

Her boots softly scraped the dirt as she trudged up the path from the cemetery to the cobbled village street. Not even the soft calls of the nocturnal birds that lived in the thatch dared to break the eerie silence. Strange though it was, Emya felt it fitting. On either side of her sat squat, stone houses with narrow, canvas windows and roofs thatched with long, serrated grass. Built closely together for protection from the occasional violent storm, the structures were sturdy, warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Nestled indistinctly among the others, close to the village square, one house stood, its windows dark and empty. Emya stopped, transfixed by an ominous mark that had been carved into the door —the mark of tainted blood.

Painted with animal fat mixed with umber and red ocher to indicate murder, her parents' murder, as though anyone in the village didn't know, it was a warning to stay out. The tainted blood contained an evil that could infect anyone exposed. But Emya already had evil in her blood.

The villagers said she must have gotten it, the bad blood, from her parents, but her mother always insisted Emya hadn't. Emya never knew for sure. They had never shown any symptoms of the condition. So, it didn't matter if she went in the house or not, but she didn't want to give the fearful villagers another reason to mistreat her.

On to the village center she went, dragging her feet with every step. Fewer than eighty people lived in the village and the largest structure, the council hall, could barely hold that number. When Emya slipped in, she found nearly twenty villagers scattered around in small groups, their heads together as they whispered in tones that sounded more conspiratorial than mournful.

After the last tragedy that struck the village, a house collapsed killing a family of five, the whole village had turned out for the funeral gathering; the hall was packed to bursting. This small turnout came as no surprise.