Week 2 of the New

Down to the wire, I have a submission for my friend Tami Veldura's weekly prompt.

It's a "Roll of the Dice" kind of thing. I've participated in a few before, over at Terrible Minds. If you don't know the drill, there are two categories and you roll the dice for a genre from column A and a trope from column B. Plus there's a picture to use as well, or not as you please, and a quote. I'm too lazy and too late to repost her criteria this week. Please use the link for the details.

And 1000 words this week.

I'm coming in at 683 and it was a difficult number to get to.

Because I'm visiting my old Puritan Scarlet Letter girl accused of witchcraft by her own cousin. It's been a while, so get caught up if you wish first.

Installment One
Installment Two
Installment Three

And now, I offer this post in response.

The Last Prayers for the Innocent

Deliverance felt hollow. For months her baby kicked, her own delightful tormentor. The memory of her false sailor was born in the dank and dark, and stripped from her cell the moment the midwife severed the cord.

No one, not the midwife, nor the jailer, no one told her if she bore a son or a daughter. That it lived she knew, hearing it cry mere moments after her last push brought it forth to the cruel world.

Her baby had protected her these long weeks, keeping her from the instruments of torture and the panicked, ludicrous questions from her judges. It was a blessing, they told her. A mercy that they had not ripped the poor innocent from her. Otherwise, a pressing, perhaps, as Old Marshal Whitehead endured. Sandwiched between boards while pound after pound of rocks squeezed the names of his accomplices from his lungs.

All they managed to take was the poor man's life. He was sixty-seven autumns and a grandfather and in her childhood, Deliverance had not known a gentler soul.

Trial by fire was suggested, but Lord Stipling said the smell of burning flesh would make his delicate new wife ill. Hanging was reserved for those who had confessed their sin, and Deliverance had no intention of lying to win an easy death. Christ, the sweet lamb of salvation, was crucified. For her sins. She could not, would not fail Him again.

What was left? she wondered. Water? She heard of trial by water, bound like a hog and tossed in a deep river, rocks tied to her waist. The demon in a witch would float, preserving her life, and a guilty verdict passed...Or was it an innocent soul would float and so when she drowned, they would bury her outside of the churchyard, needles shoved through her eyes to keep her corpse from rising from the dead.

But the question that went unanswered, that bothered her the most, was what would become of her child?

For the first time in months, she prayed for the soul of another. "Thy will be done that I shall die, so be it," she whispered against the stone. "I ask only that my child be safe all his days, that he keeps thee kind in his heart, and that some day he will forgive me for abandoning him to this cruel world. I give him to thy care."

She woke as the light of day crept through the weaknesses of her cell, her knuckles sore from praying. Childbirth had left her so fatigued that she wondered how she woke at all.

Something was amiss. The stale, mildewed stench of of her prison was laced with ash...Her heart thumped in her chest. Had they decided on fire after all? Was this the day she died?

Panic pulsed in her blood, leaving a bitter aftertaste in her mouth. She summoned the strength to rise from the floor and stagger to the bars. Her jailer cowered in the corner clutching a bible to his chest, whimpering like a kicked puppy.

"Mr. Broadshears?" Deliverance smacked the bars to gain his attention. "Mr. Broadshears!"

The terror that gripped him so acutely scalded his face, his bulbous nose crimson as one deep in his cups, spoke that he was as shackled to his fears as she was to her sins. Deliverance tried to make sense of it, but she heard screaming, the sounds of chaos, the hollering yelps of the heathen savages that populated the foresaken New World.

My baby, she thought, and she caught her jailor's fear like a fever. She had to get out, to find her child, to protect him. "Please, merciful and loving Father," she begged. "Please, if this is to be my last day, let me spend my last breath in defense of my poor baby!"

"Deliverance!" Esther's pitched voice wept through the walls.

"Esther! Cousin! Save my baby!" Deliverance staggered to the source of her only hope. "Save my baby, Esther. He's an innocent. Esther?"

She listened to the drone of terror that bled through the walls and heard nothing more from her cousin.

So that's all I got this week. Give me what'chya got!

Week 6: WoE Matyrs Challenge

Write at the Merge gives us a snippet of lyrics from FUN "Some Nights"

"I found a martyr in my bed tonight
She stops my bones from wondering just who I am, who I am, who I am"

and a picture of the stained glass in the church in Domrémy-La-Pucelle titled "Joan of Arc presented to the Virgin Mary and the Infant Christ".

So martyrs this week. It's a heavy topic, no matter which likeness the word embodies. 

I'm returning to Deliverance Redd, recently accused of witchcraft. She is now before the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

I offer this week's response: The Devil's Tactic

Esther took the stand with the stature of a frightened doe. Shackled at attention, Deliverance was forced to listen while her cousin spoke her mind.

“And after your supper had been cleared?” Magistrate Stoddard questioned. Deliverance heard a quill scratching behind her, recording her damnation. She willed her heart still, aware of the hundreds of eyes locked onto her back in judgment. It would not serve her case to yield to her anger.

“My cousin rose like a woman possessed. It was only recently that her adultery was brought to light and I was concerned for her well-being. I felt compelled to follow her.” Esther twisted her handkerchief, as if it was a talisman.

“And where did she go?”

There were tears in Esther’s eyes. “She walked down to the shore.”

“And then?”

Deliverance caught a look. Her accuser blanched. No words sounded from her moving lips. The courtroom air thickened in the silence.

“Mrs. Lovejoy? I understand that it is difficult to image your cousin to be guilty of crimes so heinous, but you must speak for her soul, and for the soul of the unborn baby. What did you witness?”

Her voice echoed. “Deliverance called out to the fiends of Hell to sink her lover’s ship.”

Gasps of horror surged from the gathered crowd. The magistrate pounded his wooden gavel thrice, sending an unexpected shiver through Deliverance’s spine. She closed her eyes against the taste of rising bile at the back of her throat. Lord, God Almighty, grant me the strength of Christ before the cross and bring my cousin to heel before Your Throne.

“And was her lover on the Goodship September? We found the wreckage a few days after the storm.”

Esther frowned, “I do not know, Sir.”

The grim magistrate looked over the rim of his spectacles. “But you said she summoned the storm with a rod and sank her lover’s ship.”

Deliverance felt the climate in the courtroom shift. Doubt flashed in her cousin’s eyes. The magistrate repeated his statement and Esther shook her head, “Never did I say she summoned the storm. I do not know her lover’s name, nor do I know what ship she found him on. Melancholy consumed her so that I feared Satan would twist that, to use her somehow.” She paused to take a breath. “I feared for her immortal soul.”

Shock or anger colored the magistrate’s features. “Without your testimony, all evidence left is merely spectral.”

Discussion erupted among the jury as hope crept into Deliverance’s heart. Magistrate Stoddard applied the gavel again, silencing the courtroom. “What is the recommendation of the court?”

A juror stood. “Put the accused to the question, Magistrate.”

And with that, hope was gone.

Write On Edge: Misinterpretation Challenge

Red Writing Hood challenged this week to use a misinterpretation of a letter or conversation to heighten tension. Word limit is 300.

Back in April I wrote a piece for the Choice and Consequence challenge about a Puritan woman scorned, Lamenting the Tempest. My dad thought it was a story about witchcraft. Soooo I thought, what if the cousin thought the same thing?



I offer the following in response: Betrayal

Deliverance paced at the edge of the Amesbury marketplace while she awaited her cousin. Over the transient noises drifting in the heavy marine fog, the town crier announced the hour. The clamor of his bell summoned the image of her false-hearted lover’s ship. Sweat moistened the hair beneath her cap and trickled down her neck. Her anger amplified the heat of pregnancy so that she thought her woolen dress would burst into hellfire.

Hours passed, slow as maple sap, as she stewed in her own skin. The crier’s bell thrice knelled but Esther had yet to return. Deliverance set her jaw and walked the muddy path into town, ignoring the gaping mouths of those with whom she once sought fellowship. No longer a part of the community, she was forbidden to trade in the marketplace publicly. She passed the chapel and blanched as someone gripped her arm, dragging her bodily forward.

Esther stood before the magistrate’s office and pointed an accusatory finger her direction. Magistrate Whitson sneered at her approach. “And what happened then, Mrs. Lovejoy?”

Esther twisted a handkerchief into a noose about her fingers. “She called upon the fiends of Hell to sink her lover’s ship.”

Deliverance wanted nothing so badly than to reach across the empty space and throttle her cousin’s dainty neck. “I called for the Lord God Almighty to loose his hellhounds in righteous vengeance against a defiler of virtues. I have no truck with Satan or his demons!”

Whitson growled, “Deliverance Redd, you are hereby accused of witchery, and through filthy fornication with demons summoned the storm that downed the Goodship September, drowning all her hands. You are to be brought before the Court of Oyer and Terminer to be examined and tried. May God have mercy upon your soul.”

Write On Edge: Choice & Consequence Challenge

This week's Red Writing Hood challenge gives us 400 words to explore a choice and/or a consequence.

There is no more unifying need than the freedom of choice, neither is there a more terrifying concept than the ripple of effect. We are taught from our earliest age that there are consequences for the choices we make, and we each face a myriad of choices on an hourly basis. What intrigues me most is how consequences have evolved over time while our choices remain the same. One only has to look at the punishments allowed in the classroom decades ago to realize how far we've come as a society. Of course, one could argue that our social morality is degraded to the point of extinction. Look at the filth we obsess over on television that is lumped into the world of "reality shows".

For this week, I decided once again to provide a historical perspective. Not surprising since I've just come back from a renaissance fair weekend and my recent light reading has been inundated with Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Blake.


I offer the following in response: Lamenting The Tempest

If not for the wind… His hollow words eroded her spirit until all that remained was the stinging poltergeist of his goodbye. If not for the tide…

“Deliverance, where do you go when you close your eyes?” Esther’s words drew her back from the shore.

She opened her eyes and watched the fire crackling in the hearth. Brutish flames banished autumn from the room like a deposed monarch. Ash dripped as tainted snow to the stone floor while the sacrificial hemlock exchanged its charred skin for nothingness. Deliverance wished she could surrender her scorned heart for the promise of oblivion. If not for the tide… “I go nowhere,” she answered.

“You worry me,” Esther whispered through her chronic frown. Deliverance could not recall a time when she ever smiled. “Since the discovery of your sailor’s trespasses, you have become rather…tempestuous.”

She summoned her lie from the eye of her turbulent emotions, "Be at ease, Cousin. I have made peace with his betrayal."

Esther, still frowning, did not respond. She took up her tatting, shifting the intensity of her gaze to the shuttling of picots.

Deliverance found the heat stifling and rose, pleading her need for air. Despite Esther's protests and the foul weather, she walked towards the shore from their isolated homestead, headlong into the lashing wind. Where aggressive waves violated the naked beach, a briny spray raked her eyes. If not for the wind, if not for the tide… Her false-hearted sailor was as cruel as his watery mistress. She glared at his ocean until she could no longer endure the insult. Madness shattered her tenuous peace, unleashing screams to rival howling banshees. “I condemn you! May your ship dash itself upon the rocks! May your beloved ocean swallow you whole!”

Lightning flashed in the gathering clouds, belching thunder and hailstones. A virulent tremor possessed her as her fury became a force of reckoning. “Oh Lord, I beseech Thee,” she wailed. “Smite this foul deceiver! Shred his soul with everlasting fire and command the fiends of Hell to feast on his flesh!”

Heartless rain abused her mightily, yet she screamed and cursed until her voice failed. Buckling, she clawed at the scarlet letters stitched to her clothing. I would stay and we would marry, if not for the wind, if not for the tide… Within her swelling belly, their baby kicked for the first time.