by Lydia Pryba
I have known her ever since.
We grew up together and were like sisters. I don‘t remember the days before meeting her, and with what I‘ve heard lately, I couldn‘t help but wonder about the turn in life she took. Only, of course, when I was thinking about her at all, which wasn‘t that often. We‘d lost each other somewhere along the way. I don‘t know where it started. Probably when she convinced her parents to marry her off to this tailor. Or was he a hat maker? I don‘t even remember. There was always something odd about them. He had only ever moved into our town recently, and had yet to save up to even apply as a citizen, when he was already aiming for her. I wish she would have never trusted him. The thing I‘ve heard about her would probably never have happened, had she not almost run off with an outsider. They stayed within our city walls, but she still seemed kind of lost to us all. I still remember how she was when we were little. She lived next door, and I often heard her sing by the window, especially in the evening. She had a wonderful voice, and we used to make fun of her running away with the jesters some day. Maybe, I should not have said such a thing, but how could I have known. We were little, and she was this friend with an unlikely gift. I also remember her missing out on service as we grew older. When I once asked her about it, she admitted to me that she felt as if she grew too fast and was already much too broad for a girl her age, and that it scared her. „Will someone ever marry a girl that‘s a few heads taller than everybody else?“, she asked me, and I didn‘t know what to say. They probably won‘t, I thought, so after a while, I tried to convince her that she would stop growing eventually.
I was right, but now that I think about it, she never trusted me again afterwards. But let me return to what I‘ve heard.
Anyone in our little town still remembers the terrible pestilence a few years ago. No one easily forgets those days of waiting and of fear. It‘s almost as if time is standing still, once you hope for bodies to last. I lost two cousins and my grandparents, and was very sure it would get me too, and now that I know this thing about her, I understand why people wish to get rid of her. It might have spared us, if it wasn‘t for her, and her hatter.
And the famine in the years before! How have we been fearing and praying through the days of shorter hours, when supplies were rare and those that could not deliver were hanging next to the tower. It might have been her doing as well! Her‘s and her hatter‘s.
But to fully understand the thing that I‘ve heard about her, I will have to remember just another moment we shared a few years back. It was long past our friendship, and also long past our last trusting conversation about her height. I had met her on the market on a rainy day in June when I simply did not want to afford any overpriced cheese the terrible weather seemed to have brought upon us, and when I realized who had been standing beside me contemplating the prices as well, it was already too late, since she had spotted me. I have to admit that I was terrified by her state. She had deep shadows underneath her eyes, and seemed to have aged rather suddenly. Also, she was almost as skinny as the beggars in the street had been when they had starved during the last winter. Although I did not ask for it, she told me very personal things in that brief moment. Almost, as if they were bursting out of her automatically. That is how I know that she had given birth to two dead children very recently, and almost would have died herself with the second one. I also got to hear about an earlier miscarriage soon after her wedding, and I wish I could have felt empathy for that ill woman next to me, but I admit that there was none. All I could think about where her eyes staring at me out of deep holes, and I even caught myself wondering if she was still alive at all, or who I had been talking to.
As it seems, marrying this hatter, which I am more and more certain he was, had been a mistake. She had thrown her life away in a hurry, only out of insecurity. Had she sung by the window a few summers more, she probably would have found someone better and would have never grown a dead one inside of her at all, but that‘s what you get for trusting a stranger.
Now that I remember all of this, the terrible thing I have heard about her makes more and more sense.
I am truly sorry for their parents though. One daughter married a craftsman in Aachen and is far away these days, one son never returned from his journey to cologne as a carpenter apprentice, and their youngest is now also lost as it seems. I haven‘t seen them at church in a long while, but I‘m not surprised. Who would like to show themselves, after their daughter is being accused of having smeared her dead babies all over her furniture? It sounds unbelievable, but now that I recall the ill face she had on that cold summer‘s day, I am not surprised anymore. Something was wrong with her. How often have you heard of two fully grown, dead children being born in a row? Doesn‘t that seem too perfect? Too handy? Usually there is something else in between. Maybe an earlier miscarriage, or even a healthy child. Or a longer break between pregnancies, but this is odd! As I think about this skinny, and shaking woman with the face looking like a skull, I am sure she planned this. Otherwise, why would someone even try so desperately to give birth to another child in years when famines were followed by a terrible plague?
Everyone knows that dead children are quite useful for witches needing to fly off into the hills to consult devils and demons. That‘s nothing new! Remembering how I had fallen asleep so many childhood nights listening to her voice, it makes me stomach sick that I even listened! She probably was summoning demons back then as well.
I think she going to be hanged soon, and I don‘t want to miss it. I will even take my daughters to teach them what happens if you sing too loud and unasked, especially when the window is open.
Lydia Pryba blogs as "Mistress Witch Writes" about things often dark and historical, while working on her first novel. During the day, she works as a museum educator and is currently studying History and Philosophy of Science.
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