Post by Emily on Sept 11, 2015 3:23:03 GMT -8
Their hands were bound behind their backs and there ankles were bound together where they stood in the center of a platform square, accused of witchcraft. It ended in an eerie silence. Not one of them begged mercy. Not one of them screamed. Not even Lily.
In a small Catholic parish just footsteps away, a gaunt man wearing a priest's collar wept for them, hunched over a writing desk and cradling his silvery head in hands that were gnarled with arthritis. The thumb, forefinger and middle finger on his right hand were stained with multiple layers of aging ink. They left black smudges over his salt and pepper brow.
The year was 1620 C.E. England was a raging wildfire of witch hunts, sham trials and public executions.
"Around and around the whole and half-moons dance," he murmured to himself with a distressed, sing-song urgency. His fingers fumbled for the leaky fountain pen that they usually held. "Interlopers all, flowers on flowers on flowers on the lunar eclipse."
A drawing came to life under the scratch of his nib. The page around it was pock-marked with places where he'd lost his concentration while waiting -- praying -- for new messages to come through; to tell him how to stop the senseless, superstition-fueled bloodshed. Sometimes, as in this instance, they didn't come through in time.
In his grief, in his madness, he'd decided: there had to be something more he could do. There had to be something more they could all do.
In a small Catholic parish just footsteps away, a gaunt man wearing a priest's collar wept for them, hunched over a writing desk and cradling his silvery head in hands that were gnarled with arthritis. The thumb, forefinger and middle finger on his right hand were stained with multiple layers of aging ink. They left black smudges over his salt and pepper brow.
The year was 1620 C.E. England was a raging wildfire of witch hunts, sham trials and public executions.
"Around and around the whole and half-moons dance," he murmured to himself with a distressed, sing-song urgency. His fingers fumbled for the leaky fountain pen that they usually held. "Interlopers all, flowers on flowers on flowers on the lunar eclipse."
A drawing came to life under the scratch of his nib. The page around it was pock-marked with places where he'd lost his concentration while waiting -- praying -- for new messages to come through; to tell him how to stop the senseless, superstition-fueled bloodshed. Sometimes, as in this instance, they didn't come through in time.
In his grief, in his madness, he'd decided: there had to be something more he could do. There had to be something more they could all do.