Historical Setting: An unknown time in a cold land
It’s late in the day when the men I follow arrive at their village. Here, the houses are clustered together, with a wall of wood planks and the doors facing the sea. The other ends of the houses are nearly buried in the berm of earth. Mosses and wintering grasses show at the edges from under the light snowfall lingering. The threads of smoke rising speak of several families clustered here – walls shared — but not shared home fires.
I watch as the two men with the sled stop beside this cluster and are greeted at the first door by an older woman – likely mother to these sons. One returns to the sled and drags the logs into the house. They leave the thrall fettered, hidden in the sled. I can so easily go and set her free right now. I lay down my pack of firewood, and creep across the snow to the sled, and I whisper to her.
“Mara, I’ve followed to see where they were bringing you. Do you want me to break your chains, and take you away?”
She stares at me with a clenched jaw and wild eyes, like a captured creature. She tells me to go away or she will call for help. We share a language. I know what she says, and I do understand that with all that has happened to her, losing those she loves and with her village destroyed she finds more safety now in being enslaved. She pays the price for some kind of security by giving herself over to brutality.
Watching again, from hiding I see the wet logs added to that fire, the waft of smoke from that first house is broad and billowing, releasing enough sparks from the roof opening to rival the sunset. I return back into the wood, as one of the men comes out to get the thrall. He sees my tracks in the snow and he knows his thrall has made the choice to stay a slave. May he find no reason for brutality, as though cruelty was ever reasonable. He chooses not to follow me.
From another doorway a milk maid takes a torch and her pail into the early darkness and treks to an animal shed attached to the houses. I watch from the edge of the wood into the night. Some houses have opened shutters, with candles for light.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 