In the spring we made a boat
Out of feathers, out of bones.
We set fire to our homes,
Walking barefoot in the snow.
It was a brutal winter. The air was much colder after one of the hottest summers many had ever experience in this small village. The lack a people on the roads was worrying. When the noise reached his ears bare feet a tad large even for a boy his age slapped the cobblestone road, ran at full speed toward a loud gathering in the middle of the village square.
The crowd was huge, consisting of almost every person in the village all gathered in the square. There was a pyre The wooden stake in the center reached the top if some of the surrounding buildings, though not as tall of the church directly behind it. The crowd was thickly packed together around the platform to the left of the pyre, which on it the priest of the village was addressing the people, beside him were what looked like two burly men, maybe three holding two figures, a man and a woman from the looks of it, whose faces he couldn't see from where he was hiding behind a large house. Mathias peaked out more from behind the house's back wall, see that there was definitely three men holding the two captives, one for the woman and two for the man whose back seemed to be heaving, like he had been kicking and screaming, only recently deciding to give it a rest. His eyes widened as he clutched the side of the his hiding place till his knuckles turned white.
The snow around them swirled and blurred his already limited vision, his thoughts racing as he silently prayed to any gods that happened to be listening that the people held prisoner on that platform where not who he thought they were. His eyes searched the crowd in vain, knowing that even if they weren't the ones captive on the platform, they would never come to a gathering like this. Mathias hoped anyhow, and when his searching the crowd turned out to be fruitless, cold dread grabbed onto his heart and dug in its claws. He felt numb, and not just from the cold.
The priest spoke for the first time since Mathias had arrived at the square, his voice condescending and sending red hot spikes of rage straight through the cloud of fear hanging over his mind.
"These vermin have brought us misfortune for too long!" is how the priest began his speech, his balding head covered in a snow dusted black hat and his fat face a picture of barely concealed smugness and easy to pick out in a sea of faces clearly starving. That priest made him sick.
The priest continued, "Not only have they committed acts against God, oh no, but acts against their fellow men! If they even deserve the privilege of being labeled human, God's most precious creation." Mathias clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth. The priest shook his head in a way that he may have been aimed to seem disappointed, but all Mathias saw, even from his distance was the gleam of victory in his eyes and mocking on his face. It took all of his willpower not to burst into the square just so he had even the slightest chance of wrapping his hands around that bastard's neck.
The faces of some in the crowd where upset looking, almost sad, and the fact that he knew them all made the hand of dread around his heart squeeze. He felt a very strange swirling mix of rage and nausea in the pit of his stomach, suddenly aware of the frost biting his fingers and toes.
The snow was coming down harder, faster, stinging his face with such a renewed vigor that he began to tune out to the priest and his nonsense drawl to focus on the fierce cold penetrating his thin clothes. That was a mistake, he realized, as the rising volume of the crowd snapped him out of his thoughts and brought his attention back to what it should have been on in the first place.
Mathias tuned back into what that pig of a priest was saying, and he immediately wished he didn't after the priest's words registered.
"Anete Bondevik, you are hereby charged with witchcraft and treason against this village. Bárekr Bondevik, you are also charged with treason and the murder of Dagfin Jørgensen. Do either of you have any words to speak in your defense?" It was not a question the priest expected an answer to.
His eyes felt stretched as they widened further in shock, the dread replaced entirely with an all consuming fear he couldn't force down. Mathias felt bile rise in his throat, and if he had had something to eat for breakfast earlier that morning, he probably would have thrown it up. He ran, no longer caring if he was spotted in his panic, until he reached a building that faced the platform on the other side of the small square. There was no more denying who was on that platform.
Once Mathias got a behind what he believed was the village bakery if his memory served him correctly, his mind reeled once he saw their faces and he took a step back. Anete had a fist shaped bruise on her left cheek, her hair down and a bit tangled, the blond hair falling into her face where just earlier that morning it had been neat and tied up in the tight bun she always wore. In comparison, it was obvious that whatever struggle the two had been in, Bárekr had fared much worse than Anete had. He was heaving like he had thought, mouth and nose bloodied with multiple bruises, big and small, visible between the tears in his shirt. Despite how much Mathias hated the priest with all his heart, thinking back to what the a Father had said, he had to wonder, as he locked his gaze on Bárekr's shirt, how much of the blood on him was his. Mathias stopped that train of thought dead in it's tracks, knowing that Bárekr would do anything necessary to protect them, all of them, including him. He locked onto Bárekr's bloody shirt again. Anything at all.
He cut of his own thoughts by looking into Anete's, then Bárekr's, before he forced himself to look away. He almost punched the rough brick wall of the bakery. They looked calm, almost accepting of this. Anete more than Bárekr, which Mathias expected considering how hard he must have fought before he had arrived, just like he had always known him to, but the people who had always been strong no matter what for his entire life seemed to have just given up entirel. No, their faces weren't accepting, not really, is the conclusion he came to once his mind had cleared a bit and he could really look at them. Their expressions were more tired than anything else. The kind that's bone deep, that only comes after years of the world feeling like it's going to crush you.
Anete's cool gaze searched around the square in silence, as if she was looking for something and she seemed almost relieved when she didn't find it. That is, until she caught his gaze. The relief that passed on her face told that she knew what his being here meant, but it immediately changed over into something akin to anguish when she realized that also meant for what he had seen, what he knew.
Mathias made a move to leave from behind the building, the rage from seeing them like this blocking out everything else, the fear, the growing pain turned numbness from the winter cold and snow that was now rising to cover his feet, the pressure of what this entire horrible situation meant. Everything. Then she shook her head, a quick and tiny motion but it stopped him dead in his tracks. She moved her head to the right, toward Bárekr, and Mathias saw her mouth move. Whatever she said made Bárekr snap back to attention, and with a jerk of her chin in his direction, Mathias made eye contact with the man who saved his life. Bárekr's eyes looked so tired, the bags under his warm brown eyes visible from across the square, but in some strange way peaceful. He was still one foot out from behind the bakery, and the soft smile that Bárekr sent him was a warm as freshly baked bread. In truth, everything about the man was warm, to his strong arms to his smile. His vision blurred. Mathias wanted to cry.
The priest spoke after a few minutes had passed and Anete and Bárekr said nothing.
"Well, if you have nothing to say in your defence, I hereby, by the power invested in me by God Almighty, sentence you both to burn at the stake."
The snow just kept coming, wind howling and sending sharp pin needles of cold through his thin clothes. Mathias could feel his world crashing down around him. Even with all his winters and storms, he could have swore the sky never seemed so gray.
The crowd roared their approval, only a few staying quiet amongst the noise. After the yelling died down, someone spoke up.
"Father Hellmuth, Anete is this village's best and only healer, she has saved many of our lives countless times. I can't imagine her being the reason for our suffering, even if I did believe she was a witch." Said a plump woman with rosy cheeks a bit away from the platform, her haired braided and wrapped in furs that clearly told of her status. She held a small child also wrapped in furs to her chest. The child might have been sleeping through all the commotion.
"And that man, that man taught my boy more than I could have ever hoped to know about this world at his age, even now. He has done all our children some good I don't think we can ever repay him for." Came another voice, this time an aging man holding the thin hand of a boy who looked about seven, his eyes filled with horror at the reality that he was probably going to see his teacher burn.
There were murmurs of agreement from the crowd that were getting louder every passing second, as people took what the two said into consideration. Mathias' heart filled with a renewed hope. It was crushed when Father Hellmuth, in all his wickedness, opened his mouth to argue why Anete and Bárekr deserved the fate he had dealt them, but a woman in the crowd did it for him
"Are you fools really even considering about arguing for their lives?!" She bellowed, her face red with fresh tear tracks running down it. She continued. "They killed him! That man you say did your children good took away my child's father before he even got to chance to meet them!"
Mathias felt his heart clenched, because it was then that he noticed this woman was very pregnant. Bárekr flinched at Mrs. Jørgensen outburst, it almost seemed like he was going to open his mouth and say something, but along with being very pregnant, Mrs. Jørgensen was also very angry and she was not done.
"And that bitch!" Her finger pointed straight at Anete, staring her in the eye. "She is the reason why we all starve, she is the reason our crops failed and she is a witch, a filthy fucking witch and her and that godforsaken man have been planning our demise for years!" Mrs. Jørgensen turned her eyes to the priest. "Isn't that what you said, Father Hellmuth?"
Father Hellmuth smiled an ugly smile, a cruel one, before schooling his face into neutrality. "Yes, yes I did, Brettiva and that is all very true. She is why we starve, why we have no money and why we all face death now!" Lies. It was because of that liar on the platform's greed and the stupid war raging in lands far from there. Mathias clenched his fists. Anete caught his eye again and shook her head. Right now she was the only thing keeping him still and out of sight.
"Tell me, don't you find it odd how she could cure even the worst ailments, how things any normal healer would have no power to treat suddenly became child's play in her hands? It has to be the work of magic, what else would it be?!" Mathias sneered, tighten his fist around the edge of the bakery until his hands dug into the brick hard enough to bleed. "She raked in whatever money we could scrounge up from our limited funds, and I think that in God's name it would be safe to say she did something to cause at least some of the injuries and illnesses she treated, if not all! These are the dangers of witches! And now that we have nothing to offer her? She kills us slowly under the guise of crop failure! This is why she is sentenced to death, along with her murderer of a husband. We can get another healer, a real healer that won't kill us the moment we run out of money!"
Mathias saw red.
The deafening howls of approval from the crowd made his stomach twist. Then it got worse.
"Didn't the bitch and that bastard have kids, where are they?" yelled a voice from somewhere in the crowd he couldn't pinpoint.
His heart skipped a beat.
Anete and Bárekr's faces morphed from mutual disgust at Father Hellmuth's words into pure terror. Anete called out a desperate plea of "Don't, please, please, they're children! Children." On the last syllable her voice cracked. Mrs. Jørgensen grinned madly then, her smile gleaming just like her silver wedding band in the dim morning light. She spat at Anete's feet from her place in front of the platform. "The children of witches are witches. No matter their age" Her silent meaning was clear. You took my family from me, die knowing that the rest of yours is going down with you.
And her voice was cold as the snow that now went up to his bare heels.
Father Hellmuth seemed almost giddy at the reminder of Anete and Bárekr's children existence. "Who volunteers to go and get their children?"
Before a word could be uttered by anyone else, Mathias finally stepped out completely from behind the baker's shop and started walking toward the platform. The crowd parted for him, people looking him up and down incredulously. They knew who he was.
Mathias stopped a few feet away, just close enough to see everyone on its face clearly.
He spoke for the first time since he arrived at the square, which seemed like lifetime ago.
"I'll go and get them." The weight of his words hung in the silence, and then someone else from the crowd, an old man who was obviously drunk from how he slurred his words got in his face and asked and asked in an odd drawl, "You, yer friends with these people, aren't ya? How do we know ya ain't a witch too, huh?"
Mathias did his best to act disgusted, which honestly wasn't hard with beer breath in his face. "Like I would befriend witches. I didn't know until today, and I wanna to go and get 'em so I can watch 'em burn for lyin' to me."
The mid-morning drunkard seemed convinced. Anete's expression was afraid bordering on terrified, but he tried to tell with his eyes what he meant to do. As her eyes melted from fear to relief, a tiny smile on her face, he knew she understood.
Father Hellmuth leaned down a bit to look him closely in the eye, and he used his anger toward the man to make his eyes seem truly enraged.
Father Hellmuth continued to look him in the eye as he asked, "And what do you intend to do if they do not follow you here?"
The air seemed to grow even colder. He swallowed heavily, but all the same answered because he had to.
"I'll burn their house down with the little fuckers inside it."
Anete screamed. Bárekr fought his captors with a renewed vigor. The crowd, no at this point crowd sounded to civil. The mob hollered, their noise as eerie and deathly terrifying as a thousand screaming banshees. And Mathias just kept staring into that evil, fat priest's eyes until the son of bitch looked away.
"Very well, get a move on then." With a wave of the hand, he was dismissed. Father Hellmuth turned toward the pyre. "Light it." The bastard's voice was ice. The pyre was lit, blaze catching quickly, reflecting the gleam in the people's eye. They knew what they would witness next. Mathias couldn't remember a time where he felt more sickened.
He walked away from the pyre as calmly as he could when really all he wanted to do was run, run as far and as fast from these horrible, monstrous people as possible. From the pyre and the liar on the platform's victory. To run home like none this was happening.
He used his numb feet to walk across the cold cobblestones, to just out of the square and almost past the baker's shop before he allowed himself to look back. Anete piercing gaze was pointed straight at him while Bárekr caused a commotion like he always does to keep the attention on the platform. So he understood too.
Anete smiled at him, and she was as beautiful as she had always been, the strong, caring, beautiful woman he used to call a goddess in his younger years. She smiled and as he imprinted her face in his memory, Bárekr's too, knowing this was the last time he would ever see either of them even though he didn't want to believe it, he let the tears he had been holding back fall. He knew that no one was looking at him, and even if they were, he didn't care if he looked weak. Not this time.
She said something. Over and over again until he could piece it together and nod, the motion sealing a promise he swore he'd keep at any cost. She started screaming again, pleading, crying. He wished he was deaf in that moment so he couldn't hear her. Mathias turned and ran, ran as quick and as swift as he could with his frozen toes. He ran until Anete's hysterical screams and Bárekr's roars of rage faded into quiet. He ran until the cobblestone streets with it's loose rocks digging into his bare feet became worn and packed dirt roads. Ran until large stone and brick buildings became significantly smaller wood houses. Ran until home just a dozen feet away. He ran, all the while his memories provided Anete's voice so that her last plea, the thing she put faith in him to do and the weight that came with the promise he now carried, could ring in his ears as the tears froze on his cheeks.
"Protect them."
So he ran.