Dark and Deepest Red(48)

And because he is young, he is eager to show his skill and his wrath, like a young snake cutting its teeth.

Lala holds her tongue tight in her mouth.

The whole town is gripped by fear and frenzy, and if she says a further wrong word, she will pay for it.





Rosella


All I had to do was follow their rules. All I had to do was survive them for a few more days.

But that night, I slept through the red shoes bucking to life. I slept through them pulling me into the woods, while I dreamed of my body turning to starbursts of blood-red beads.

I dreamed of the night turning into everything my family’s shoes looked like. The crushed-jewel embroidery. The heels that seemed crafted out of icicles or poured gold. The dancing slippers that appeared woven from moonlight and stitched with threads of spun sugar.

The red shoes dragged me through brambles and briars that tore at my pajama pants and my legs. They dragged me down the embankment, rocks cutting my ankles as I dreamed of the air turning to water. I ran but the water slowed me, like I was running on the bed of a river, my limbs cutting through the current.

I didn’t wake up until my body hit the reservoir, the chill as hard as packed snow.

The dancing stayed in me. It stayed in me even as fighting for the surface took what little breath I had.

It stayed as the red shoes took me under, the cold like handfuls of knives. The motion of my legs became treading, the only way I could fight.

I had a few seconds of being all the way awake.

But in those few seconds, a scream caught in my throat, not just because the shoes were taking me under, but because they had made me silent in the first place.

The reason I couldn’t have told my mother and father about them was not only because it could ruin us, but because I could never confess what I had done. I had turned my grandfather’s beautiful work, and my grandmother’s defiance, into this. I had failed my family. My hands had failed them. All they had worked for over generations, I had twisted into poison the moment I picked up a needle and thread.

The scream of all this built in my throat, and died without breath to give it sound.

I had barely shaken out of sleep when the lack of air blurred my brain, and the shoes took me under again.





Strasbourg, 1518


The friar circles her. “Perhaps you have been taught by your aunt. A fellow witch?”

Lala closes her eyes again. “No.”

Now the friar stands behind her. “Perhaps she has not taught you the way of God, and has invited the devil into your house.”

“No,” Lala says, the start of a sob weakening the word. Now it sounds almost a plea. Not Tante. Not her baby.

“Do you deny the witchcraft in your very house?” the friar asks. “Have you and your aunt not spent the Sabbath concocting poisons?”

“Never.”

“Are you not both among the legion witches?”

“We are not.”

“Do you not hold maleficia in your hearts?”

“We do not.”

The friar sighs. “Must we trouble the Bishop von Hohenstein with this matter? Draw him from his palace?” The man’s breath comes hot on the back of her neck, and he lowers his voice. “If so, perhaps we will have to break the joints of both you and your aunt and see if we can uncover the witchcraft in your very bodies.”

“No,” Lala says, and the words cracks in two. If she speaks a single word more out of place, she and Tante Dorenia will be declared witches. The magistrates will chatter among themselves to decide their fate. They will ponder hanging them as traitors against the city, or burning them to be sure their wicked hearts have become ash.

Lala lowers her head, sobbing taking her.

They have tortured peasant rebels for wanting nothing more than bags of seed and relief from their usurers. What will they do to women they call witches?

The friar bends lower. “Dozens dead or dying, falling down from exhaustion, their bodies giving out, and you cry only when we threaten yours?”

Lala watches the stones at her feet.

The friar straightens back to standing. “It is, of course, not entirely your fault.” He takes a more relaxed posture. “Women are born with weaker minds, more susceptible to demon possession.”

Lala does not protest. If him thinking her weak or stupid will save her and Tante, she will let him.

“So let us speak of other things,” the friar says.

Lala would breathe, if she did not know this to be a trap. He will make her feel safe, absolved, then trip her into a confession.

“You have other crimes, Lavinia,” the friar says to her back. “Let us not pretend you were blameless before.”

Lala clenches, bracing for talk of her and Tante being Romnia.

“You have committed sins of the flesh.” The friar’s voice falls almost to a whisper. “You and your aunt’s apprentice have lain together.”

Lala stays still enough that she cannot breathe. She waits for the friar to go on, praying that the only sin he will assign her is bedding a man outside of marriage.

“You must know that for you to lie with each other is against the natural law of God,” the friar says.

The natural law of God.

Lala feels as though the floor beneath her has broken open and she has fallen into canal water.