Water and Wind

Chapter 6

Friday, August 13, 1400. Morning.

The peasant people hurry along, baskets over their arms. They all bustle along. Today is an important day, one of the ones that will go down in history - if it is done correctly. If not, then... there will be no one to tell.

A plump woman, dressed in a dark brown skirt and tan blouse, with her own basket over her arm, stops people on the cobblestone street. "Heard it, have ye? Heard the news? No? Well, lemme tell ya."

But most know the news. They all know the news. You'd be deaf or hard of hearing not to know it. This is the day. This is the big day. One hundred years it's been, one hundred years and the anniversary falls both on a Friday and during the same month.

People are afraid.

Since the first showings of sunset, the children have been locked up inside. Everything has been planned out earlier. The mother must stay with them. They take refuge in the small chapel on the hill. Maybe its holiness will ward off the evil spirits that surround them. Meanwhile, the father must go. Old men are exempt, as are old women.

Only one old woman plans to go anyway. No one thinks it a good idea, no one but herself. She's the oldest person in the village, more wrinkled and dry than a prune in a heat wave, and almost as small as the older children. She walks with a cane, stooped over, each step labored yet meticulous. She has white hair that flies around her head in a cloud, frizzing and flying for all eternity and still walks barefoot, even on Sundays. She is the oldest person, and therefore no one can tell her what to do. That's her job over everyone else. Old wise wisdom, they say.

Her name is Rose Elizabeth Anaheimer and she is the last link to the dark past that Forest Arcadia hides in its thick tangled branches and twisting shadows.