Mr. Mortok's Hall of Curiosities

The Girl in the Darkness

     They say that she was born in a fairy ring, the child in the darkness. They claim her mother was a gypsy and her father was the devil, but who knows if that is true or not. It is said that as a baby she would only cry when the rains would come and that she would scream when the wolves would arrive. That last part is true. The child has always been sensitive to the rain. Did the rains come because she cried? Or was it because the rains were coming that she would cry. What is known is that she cried, and the rains came. If people pinched her viciously, or if they placed the brand of the fire too close to her small body to cause tears, they were really only doing it to save the tribe. She has always known when danger was coming. When the wolves came, she screamed.

     They said she has no soul, the child in the darkness, that such a part was left out of her when she was born. They claimed she was left incomplete in spirit as penance for a sin of her forbearers. Some said she never had a soul to begin with, or that it was sold for the power to tame animals. What they do know for sure is that animals (except wolves) loved the child. They would bring her meat and gifts. The dogs would curl about her and sleep at her feet, and the birds would sing to her. The animals loved her. All except the wolves.

     She was an unsettlingly beautiful child. Dark, straight, limp hair, skin that was pale as if made for moonlight. Her eyes, though very beautiful, had a way of hurting your heart. They were large and dark like pools of midnight and within was a sad emptiness which tugged uncomfortably at the soul.

     The wolves in the outskirts were not the noble creatures of nature and legend. These were red of eye and yellow of fang. They had gained a taste for manflesh long ago and hungered for it constantly. It was said that these wolves were wrong inside and nature herself reviled them. It is said they hated the child with every fiber of their being for she foretold their coming and ruined their hunts.

     The animals loved her but her tribe did not. She had no mother to speak of. No father to claim her. Yet she was of the tribe just the same. Where did she come from? Why did she appear? This is lost to time. She had always been there and always been condemned, some say.

     She spoke the language, she knew their ways from watching, and try as they might to neglect her, someone always took pity on her. She had clothes, she had food, and as the tribe became a proper village, she had a house of sorts. A shed more than anything but something that kept the rain off, kept the wind from cutting into her bones. She had the animals to play with, they protected her. When a woman would blame her for a stillbirth, she would cower and cringe and the dogs would growl and snarl. Never mind that the child had predicted the stillbirth, that the child had known about it. Did she know the baby would be born dead, or was the baby born dead because she said it would be? Some saw it one way, some saw it the other. No matter what one thought, it was true that she possessed the sight. Once she grew a little older the rains no longer came when she cried, though it took a cruel burning to learn that truth. The dogs and cats licked her wounds and brought her small and delicious food that she cooked on her tiny cookfire. They curled around her as she wiped the poultices onto her wounds.

     Some sought the child out, believing she was a shaman. They asked her to tell them about their future in the stars, but she saw nothing in the stars. They asked her to read the tea leaves, but she saw nothing in the leaves. They pleaded and threatened but she saw nothing in the fires either. They would prick their fingers and she saw their future in the blood. Would they be healthy, would they find love? She gave the answers she saw but not the answers they wanted. Some of the fools who had their foul luck revealed, taunted the girl. They would spit on her or call her a witch, but they dared not strike her lest the dogs savage them, the cats claw at their eyes. It was as if there was a mark upon her and any who struck her would suffer.