All the Red Roses

The air is cold and the waters even more so, a slow, chill grave if I’m caught. The sky out is a hazy orange lit by the evening sun, and clouds are hardly to be seen. I wanted to see the full of the sky more than anything in the world. I wanted to feel the warmth on my skin and have the sun’s light fill me. I wanted nothing more than to hold the sun as I used to pretend I could. I wanted to stand on the very tips of my toes and raise my fingers to the heavens just to touch it.

Through another crack in the wood of the ship the land is getting ever nearer, our escape growing ever closer. The island grew out of the fog and shadows like an old memory.

I remember the land from which I fled. The green fields and wooden houses that used to seem so sweet fell away from my mind. The kind smiles of my friends and family faded into darkness. Those happy memories had been replaced with nightmares of fire, death, and twisted faces. My mother had been thought a witch when my father, a holy man said to be cradled in the hand of God himself, died quiet in his bed one full-mooned night. He was a young man in his thirties when he died mysteriously, but then again it isn’t all that uncommon in these times. Many men, younger even than my father, passed in the night without a whisper because of disease and exhaustion. He had been completely healthy and in good spirits when he retreated to his room for the night as so many others had been. Everyone had expected him to live into his sixties, but his life had been cut in half by a cruel twist of fate.

No reason for his death, no explanation, could be found…so the people made one.

The people, our good friends and even our family, could not see how such a man died in such a horrid fashion. Though my mother cried and mourned as no other could for her lost husband, she was blamed for his murder. How they thought that I don’t know and I know I never will. In my mind it will forever be an unfathomable accusation.

My little sister and I watched her burn on the stake with no way to save her, no way to block out her deafening screams from our innocent ears. We had seen her flesh burn and blacken and smoke. We had seen her pretty face twist in pure agony. We watched her silky brown hair sizzle away. She screamed for mercy and swore that she was no witch.

No one listened; no one cared.

Now, Aria and I ran from the superstition that we were witches, too. We had taken our family money and as many clothes as we could and jumped ship to…God knows where, leaving the city of Mar behind us. If only we could’ve known what was going to happen…