Young Writers Society

AN: This still feels like a .. draft. It represents about half of the planned storyline, and will be followed by another "chapter", or an extension at least. I haven't been online here in what feels like for ever, so I don't know if anyone will go to the effort of reading this, but I'd be really grateful for considered feedback. I haven't been writing regularly, and if it hadn't been for Neil Gaiman, who turned up in a dream last night, I probably wouldn't have finished this, either. Be honest but constructive! Merci. 

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There was the stench of pig; shit that had become part of the air whirled into her face as she pulled the dead man through the muck. Unrecognisable, like most of them. Bloated and heavier than anything that could be alive.

Maybe not that unrecognisable. A glint on his left ring finger snapped to her attention. Anne dropped to his side and clasped the band of metal tightly. She slipped a little in the shit-mud as she pulled at his finger, but braced herself against the bloated body and managed to pull the wedding ring off, along with a strip of skin and gore that sluiced off with it.

Shouting and the sound of running feet from behind. She shoved the ring into a breast pocket and jumped to her feet, hands in the air. The men wouldn't come too near to her anyway. She put both hands on the corpse's waistcoat, and pulled it along to the others.

When she had twisted him onto the heap, she turned to make out the remaining bodies. Only one left. Wearily, she approached the last corpse. As bloated as the others, purple face in the mud and distended stomach bare and as purple as the rest. This one was easy to recognise. Borent. There had been ashes in the air when he had kissed her, and heat had pushed them away from the crowd. He had snuck his hand under her top in the pitch black of the first trees. But those ashes hadn't filled her nostrils with the stench of burnt flesh.

She knew that they wanted to kill her. They had made her pile the dead on three bonfires, two of which were already lit. Burn them as soon as possible, their leader had told his men. And then burn her. Don't let any of it escape. Burn your clothes. Scald yourselves, burn it out of every hole in your stinking hides. Then we leave. The water already boiled on campfires to the back. Clean clothing would wait for the men who stepped naked from their baths.

They can wash themselves of this. While they wash, will I burn with the dead? It smelled of pork. Pork, that she only tasted maybe three times a year, and they smelled of it. But there was the sickly smell just under it, and the dead clammy mud around her that the ashes pattered into.

While the men washed, their provisions would lie unguarded. They didn't want to risk anyone passing anything on to anyone else. All were to bathe at the same time. That should be her time to act, but Anne knew she would burn like a pig before they stripped. She wanted to live. All around her piled the rotting carcasses of those who had peopled her short life and she wanted to live. There was only one way out left. And if she was to die anyway, why not die running?

Borent was heavy. He had been heavy before, but every corpse seemed like a trunk of wood dragged from the river once you started pulling.

The men's attention did not seem focused on her any more. She had the last corpse, the job was nearly done. Also, they did not like to come too close to the fires. They left the lit area to her, to stumble and leave furrows in. She was like a dog in the pit, lit from all sides and unsure of who watched.

She was nearly there. The last unlit pyre was directly ahead of her, she could even see what looked like her mother's head lolling out of the side. Not far at all, and she knew what would happen when she reached the heap. The men wouldn't want to touch her, but they'd have to, if they wanted to kill her quickly. She wasn't done yet, though, and they would much rather wait for her to deposit the corpse than leave a job half-finished. Now was her only chance. She would take it.

That day, the day she had known would be the last, had numbered fifteen corpses. Her arms were water and her legs had the consistency of goosefat. Anne had not been fed in three days. She dropped what had been Borent and ran. The first steps were heavy, her boots sucking into the mud, her legs like dead things themselves, heavy and clumsy. But with each step her body seemed to regain something of life, and before she knew it she was behind the unlit pyre, then the burning, stinking blizzard of ash enveloped her.

The provisions were in the other direction, alongside the tools she could have stolen and the furs she would need in the night, but she ran. She ran through the golden light, the pulsating heat, the ashes that rained on her. She ran, and she heard nothing behind her save the cracking of firewood and the occasional bang as a corpse exploded in the flames. She was nearly by the forest when the first cry went up.

"The girl! She's -" She dove out of the hull of light and warmth and into the black. Here was the path, somewhere, but she had no way of telling it from the rest save by a slight ease in passage. She pushed and her thin, emaciated frame helped her; she flitted under boughs that the men would bash their teeth in on and eventually seemed to make quicker passage, be met by less obstruction. Anne hurried along the path, short of breath, empty, hollow, spurred only by the fear of more pain to come. Behind her, the shouts of angry men receded into the occasional yell, then nothing.

*