Veronica woke slowly. Her head felt like someone had tried to cave it in, but she knew that wasn't true. She woke up in a hospital bed because she had put herself there. Her vision split into three, then merged back to one as she turned her head slowly to find her father asleep next to the bed in a rickety chair that groaned with the shift in weight as he breathed the deep even breaths of a man exhausted by the events of the past few days.
'Daddy,' she croaked, not recognising her own voice.
He stirred slightly then his eyes popped open, the whites were pale pink shot through with red veins. He had been sleepless until a couple of hours ago.
'Vera,' he lunged forward and cupped her cheek in his spindly, hardworn hand. 'Baby, you're alive. Oh Spatzi they said you weren't like to make it.'
'Don't fret,' she tried to smile but it cracked her top lip, splitting it up the center. 'Aint joining momma yet.' She attempted to lift her hand to cover her father's but found her wrists bound to the sides of the bed. She gave him a confused and hurt look. She was restrained like a common lunatic, like someone who hadn't made the most rational decision a woman could make when faced with an unwanted situation. Her father shook his head and stood, calling for a nurse to come in and unbind her.
'You gotta promise me you won't try and hurt yourself no more,' he told her as the young nurse undid her straps with a skeptically solemn face. Veronica rubbed her wrists and sat up, shaking off the nurse's fussing fingers trying to smooth out her hair.
'Do I still have to marry him,' she asked quietly. The silence between them was punctuated by the din of ships leaving the spaceport that was situated a mile east of the three room longhouse they called the hospital. The whir of the crafts coming in for landing gave her an idea if the answer was not the one she wanted.
'He says he'll still have you,' was all he said.
'One way or 'nother I suppose,' Veronica stood on unsure legs and reached for her sage green dirndl dress that was draped over one bedpost. She smiled when she saw the blood stains had come out and her favorite knitted shawl was there to accompany it. Her sister must have dropped off the laundered dress and shawl, knowing Veronica would want something soft and familiar to change into.
Later that night, after their father had retired with his sipping whiskey, she stood at the basin in the kitchen drying dishes as her sister, Melinda washed them.
'You should be sitting,' Melinda gently chided, 'go pick up your knitting or read a book, Vera dear.'
'Too much to do,' she told her sister. 'Daddy says that dirtbag is still liable to marry me. Getting rid of his little obligation didn't do it.' Melinda gave her sister a horrified look. Not scared of what Veronica had done to escape an unwanted marriage, but that the man who got her into that desperate situation would still have her. 'I gotta leave. He's been havin' at me since I was 13, Melly. He won't never stop if I'm still around.' Melinda dried her hands on her apron and leaned in.
'We could poison him,' she suggested in a stage whisper, nervously looking over her shoulder for their father. 'You could get some lords and Ladies. Bake them into a pie. Or mistake hemlock for angelica one day when brewing tea.'
'Would anyone believe I'd made that mistake,' Veronica asked her sister incredulously. 'We'd have to dose him pretty hefty to do it in one go, as prolonged would leave him still strong enough to have his way for a while. The tox screens before his burial would pick up on it and the cellulose in his belly would point right at us. If he touches me again...' she didn't dare finish the sentence as the stitches in her abdomen throbbed and she placed a hand gently over them. Melinda reached onto a high shelf and pulled down a glass jar with willow bark preserved in it. She handed the younger girl two large pieces.
'Chew,' she demanded and Veronica listened. Her older sister placed her in one of the kitchen chairs and returned to the jobs of the home for the night. She came in and out of the room several times without a word or a glance up. Veronica chewed the bitter bark and tallied up all the money she had in her head. It wasn't much in the way of credits. Once converted the exchange takes five percent. Barely added up to 10 UniversalAlliancePlatinum, but it was a decent week's pay for a couple of hexe that lived in the woods beyond the second smallest village on Agustine. Of course the sisters weren't actually witches but for the people in the small village who could not afford the guild appointed doctors, the term had become a bit of an affectionate pet name. Their momma had taught them about the plants that grew wild and which could be made medicines and which could be eaten. She especially taught them which they were to never eat, touch, or cultivate in their garden. When a brain bleed took her from them in the middle of the night, dear Melinda became the matriarch and finished mothering Veronica where their beautiful Momma had left off.
'If you have to leave,' Melinda's sad yet capable voice broke into her thoughts, 'you need to do it as soon as. He'll be here with first light to make sure you haven't done croaked on him. I heard him on the WAVE with daddy just now.' She thrust a quilted duffle at her and a small wooden box with a metal clasp. 'I gathered your things. Sturdy dresses and some shirts. Gardening clothes and my good boots and a Sunday dress in case you can get to church.' It wasn't much all parceled up like that but it made her eyes spill over anyway. The thought of leaving Melinda and daddy and all their friends was a bit too real. 'The box is all Momma's jewelry and finery,' she went on to explain. 'Don't you dare argue with me Vera. I have her books and her wedding dress and the memory of her. I was going to give you this when you turned 25, but who knows if you'll ever be able to come back, ' Melinda sobbed out but quickly composed herself. 'I won't hold a grudge if you need to sell it on to buy passage. Momma would have told you to do the same. Daddy's bout to go to bed. Kiss him goodnight like you always do and come back here. Once we hear his snoring you steal out the cellar door and don't stop for no one until you've gotten safe passage off this planet and out of this quadrant.'
After kissing her father goodnight and a quiet but tearful goodbye to her sister, Veronica went down to the root cellar and crossed the damp room. She flung open the doors that had brought her to the edge of their property and breathed in the night air. The distant noises of the spaceport like a siren song as she walked briskly, pulling the long shawl Melinda had insisted she take. With her head down and her Titian hair covered so no one recognised her as the young hexe who lived in the woods. One foot in front of the other into the unknown was scary for a someone who was still very much a girl at 22. She walked on, remembering the story momma had told her about marrying their daddy when she was still a girl of 19. She left her home with its sunny summers and endless blue oceans to move to Agustine which was lush and green, yes, but overgrown and scarily wild. It had none of the luxuries she had been used to and momma had to make do and cultivate her knowledge to become useful to these people. An outsider, but useful. That's what Veronica would set out to do. Make a new home that would keep her safe from the evils she'd endured and one that she could make herself useful to.