The Faireste Hewed

"Me mette how that I romed up and doun

Withinne our yeerd, wheer as I saugh a beest

Was lyk an hound, and wolde han maad areest

upon my body, and wolde han had me deed."

Your family has always kept chickens, but the ones you remember best are the first. They lived in a coop in the garden. There were three of them: Alice, Mary Elizabeth, and Clucky. You were four years old and you named them all. Ron made fun of you for it and you cried - you buried your face in your mother's skirts. She stroked your hair soothingly. Your mother smelled like dandelions and cinnamon.

Your favorite chicken was Mary Elizabeth. She was white and fluffy, and she never pecked you like the other chickens did. Every morning you knelt in front of the coop and reached under the chickens to take their eggs: one egg, two, sometimes three and they all went into your basket. They were oval-shaped and still warm. Before you took them inside to your mother, you held each one to your ear and listened for faint chicken-like noises. You didn't want your mother to accidentally cook an egg with a baby chicken inside of it.

The chickens were killed by a fox when you were five. Ron left the coop open and when you went to collect the eggs the next morning the chickens were dead, their bodies crooked and still. Only the heads were gone, snapped off secretly in the night.

* * *

Later, you'll tell them that you don't remember. "I don't remember," you'll say. You'll invent memory lapses; create an elaborate fiction about waking surrounded by feathers and feeling terror sharp and frozen inside your chest.

The truth is you enjoy it, the blood congealing on your fingertips.

The chickens squawk and flutter when you draw them out of their coop, one by one. There are three of them. You silence them with a quick charm and stuff them into the bag you're carrying. They flutter and claw. You haul them through the depths of the castle, through empty, echoing corridors.

They peck you furiously when you draw them out of the sack. Later, you'll have a lopsided triangle on the back of your hand, three puckered white spots. You'll develop a habit of resting your left hand on your right, covering, concealing. He's teaching you how to be secretive. It's a lesson you'll learn well.

Their necks are so delicate, so easy to break, these chickens. You wonder if this is how the fox felt when he killed Mary Elizabeth. Except he used teeth, not small pale hands. You press your mouth to the third chicken's neck. It's still alive, its pulse fluttering, fluttering beneath your lips. You hesitate, then draw your face back and give a sharp twist. The bone breaks with a satisfying crunch.

And the blood - so much of it, more than you expected. It's warm on your hands and sweetly coppery in your mouth. You write what you've been told to write, burn the limp corpses, go back to your bed like a shadow. You sleep without dreams. When you wake in the morning, the sheets are smeared with the blood you forgot to wash off your hands.

* * *

Later you'll tell them it wasn't your fault, it had nothing to do with you - oh no, not you, so shy and awkward, still chubby-kneed and blushing. A deception, you'll say; you were used; you were wounded. They'll believe you. They'll have no reason not to.

The truth is you haven't been forced. He's asked you sweetly and you've agreed.

The truth is you enjoy it, his hands on the secret places your mother's told you to keep hidden away. You're tired of being told what to do. You're tired of being a good girl, unquestioning, docile.

"You're all that matters to me, Ginny," he says. You know it's a lie but you don't care. You crave the spectral touch of his hand, gliding over your hair.

- End -