Excerpt

Here’s a bit of my upcoming novel, completely out of context. All I’ll tell you about it is that it’s intended to be one of several short, standalone bits (so not about a main character or directly tied to their story).

ALSO – I’m using “the lord” in this draft, but I expect something more unique later. It works here, but I’m working on developing the cosmology, and I think that’ll force a bit of changes in the draft scene below.

Clara the midwife couldn’t recall when the dreams started. She felt like she’d always had them, nearly every night… but she had a vague notion that there was a time as recently as the last winter when she’d been free of them. Back then she’d been much less pious. 

Her life then was just helping the people of the village and doting on her daughter and the kind man she’d married. 

It had been a wicked time in her life. 

Clara didn’t know it was wicked. Not before the dreams.

They always started when she was laying in bed, and every night she wondered if she was having trouble sleeping or if she had fallen into slumber and was now in another of the dreams. Most nights it was the former.

But on some, the walls and roof of her little house would fly away like they were leaves on a breeze, and a star, way up in the sky, would sparkle brighter. It would glimmer and shine and seem to grow bigger, and then it would grow bigger. Clara could feel the heat radiating from the star as it got bigger and brighter and closer, but she wasn’t afraid.

She may have been that first time, but she couldn’t recall that. 

She was comforted.

The star became a shape and then the shape solidified (or transformed) into a man. He was lovely and tall and gave the impression of being beautiful and terrible and naked and clothed all at once. His voice was how she remembered her father’s voice – not how her father’s voice had been (especially not when he’d been in his cups), but how she remembered it long after he died and she would remember the times he’d been kind to her.

She didn’t know it was that voice, but she felt drawn to it, soothed by it. 

The man settled lightly onto the floor by her bed and came to sit with her. He took her hand in his, and his touch was gentle and warm. It was the touch of blankets warmed by your body; it was the feel of socks left to dry by the fire, still warm and perfectly soft as you slip them on your cold feet.

“The Foster girl,” he said. He smiled. He never said everything he meant, but she knew what he meant. He was proud of her. She had brought the girl’s two children screaming into the world and kept the mother alive. A rare feat with twins. The man squeezed her hand as if to say that she should be proud too.

The man seemed to hear all her thoughts, and she shared them freely, feeling unburdened. When these dreams came, she always woke refreshed and happy and at peace with the world.

Because the man was there to help her. And he came to her because she was good, and God was pleased with her.

“Clara,” he said, his warm voice sounding sad, “do I not bring you comfort?”

It was strange for him to say everything he meant, and Clara was taken aback. Still, she nodded. “Yes, of course,” she said.

“And do I not convey that we are very happy with you. Very proud of you.”

“You do, sir,” she said, nodding again. Clara squeezed his hand now, as if, for once, she was comforting him.

“Do I… do we ask anything of you?”

“No, my lord, never. Nothing save that I have faith and love for God and his chosen.”

The man inclined his head as he regarded her, his mouth drawing into a warm, kind smile. “If, Clara, we needed to ask a favor of you.”

Clara thought that she would return the smile just as he had, but her mouth split into a wide, happy grin instead. “Oh, my lord! Anything! You’ve done so much for me, for all of us, and I would gladly –”

He patted her hand to stop her and said, “Good.”

And then he told her what to do.

***

Clara did not understand why. It wasn’t her place, of course, and so she tried not to think about it. 

She told herself over and over that it was important, essential, as she gathered the red milk thistle that grew on the edges of the swamp. 

She reminded herself of how much she loved her dreams and the figure from them as she waited for the milk thistle to dry.

She pushed away the doubts that arose in her mind as she ground the dried herb into a fine, red powder and slipped it into her bag, nestled in a pouch beside the other herbs.

When little Martin from the Watchell Farm pounded on the door after supper a night or two later, Clara felt sure of what must be done. Had the man not told her it would be little Martin? Had she not known before he even opened his mouth that he would tell her about the Watchell Widow’s labor?

All her doubts left her as she saw that the man had known all of it. 

She didn’t hesitate as she grabbed up her bag, even knowing what it contained.

It was much easier than she thought it would be. She needn’t have been so careful to hide the red powder as she added it to the mixture in the cup. No one was watching, and everyone trusted her. She knew what she was doing; Clara was the best midwife in living memory. Clara had never lost a mother, and only the one child these last four years.

The Widow didn’t hesitate to drink the tea, either. No one but Clara knew how off the tea smelled. The calming scent of chamomile and the slight acrid tang of the willow was lost to a biting, fierce, fungal smell from the red powder – it was so strange and obvious and wrong – but no one thought it strange in the least.

When the labor pains came and they were worse than they should be, Clara forced a steady mien and assured the maid and the widow that it was perfectly normal. When the pain only got worse, she offered more tea and held the widow’s hand and told her it would be over soon.

That part wasn’t a lie.

By sunrise, she had lost the widow and the child. 

If anyone saw the tears in her eyes, they probably thought Clara was distraught. Only she knew that she was thrilled. She had done it – the will of the lord.

And the man had been right. She didn’t feel guilty in the least. The Widow had to die. The child of Salvian Watchell had to die. Clara was but a tool in the hand of the lord as surely as the red milk thistle was a tool in her own hand.

Clara wondered if there was more she could do. She wondered if she would dream of the man again. 

She didn’t know that the maid was, that moment, wondering about the red color in the dregs of the cup. 

And when she was burned as a witch by the next full moon, Clara knew that was the lord’s will too.