The Wood

Part 1, Entry 17

Day Twelve, Second Moon, Hunting Year Five Hundred and Four

I messed up. Mama warned me again, yesterday, to stop going to the edge of the wood to pick berries because we don't know what's out there and we don't want to tempt fate or witches - especially with a witch hunt on the horizon. I said I've never seen a witch in the woods, and she said that doesn't matter. She even marched me down to the place where the last witch was strung - the one with ram's horns in place of eyes and hooves instead of hands.

"Do you want to turn into that?" she asked me. Her voice trembled in a way I've never heard before.

I told her, "No, of course not, but I don't even know the first thing about witchcraft, so I can't grow antlers or paws or even a bushy tail." She grabbed my face when I said that and gave me a little shake.

"Quiet," she told me. "Just be quiet." We didn't say anything else the whole way home.

That's not the real reason I messed up, though. This is.

I tempted fate. I went back to the blackberry patch and cut through to the other side where it's darker and more protected. There are more berries there because the birds can't see them from overhead. I filled my apron halfway before I messed up bad. I heard a soft crunch when I put my foot down and then I felt them - tiny, sharp, angry pinpricks across my feet and up my legs, under my skirts, and then I heard the buzzing and started running. I fell through the blackberry thorns and tore up my clothes and my skin and yet, I hardly felt anything the whole way home. Now, I feel all of it. I've got welts and scratches everywhere. They burn, and my fingers and toes are numb, and it's getting hard to write.

I don't know if anyone but me will be able to read this, but I'm sorry. I messed up and now it's going to be harder to hold the soup bowl and spoon to feed Michael or walk to the market to sell things and I'll do all those things anyway; I'm just worried I won't do them as well. What if the beehive was placed there by a witch and I stepped right into the trap? Mama's going to be furious.

*****

Mama is livid. She keeps yelling even as she wraps up my cuts and covers my skin in poultices. I'm too scared to tell her that it's kind of hard to breath but she must have figured it out because she keeps bringing me blackberry leaf tea. I'm not allowed to leave the house anymore except to help around the gardens and only if I have a chaperone. I don't know if it's in case I fall and hurt myself or in case someone sees me from the road. Mama's looking anxious, fixing the wards every few hours, as if they've moved in that time. Dad and Grandpa don't say much aside from tutting over all the swelling, but they seem tense, too.

*****

Sorry, this week's upload is late! I got thrown off with the holiday on Monday. What do you think is going to happen to our narrator?

Thanks for reading!