Barnaby the Wanderer

Chapter 13: Jewel, Novice to Sainted Mother Hecatatia

I want to walk on their faces. Yes, just that. Give me a path of all the faces I ever saw in city street or country road. Set them like cobbles beneath my feet. You will have to bury the bodies in ordered rows. Leaving each head a bit above ground. Angle them so I don't walk on top of their heads. That wouldn't do. No, I want to grind my feet into their noses and eyes and mouths, without really paying attention to their stupid idiot expressions.

Damn all the faces of all the people in all lands. What has any face ever given ME? Just leers and sneers. All my life I have been servant to eyes and mouths you could exchange with chewing cattle, barking dogs, grinning monkeys. Oh, Sainted Lady Hecatatia, I treasure every honest glare of hate or anger. At least THAT says 'you exist'. I am at war with the world, and the idiot world is too thick-headed to take note. Shit! I am beating my fists against a giant's leg, while it stares stupidly away, too dim and dull to feel how I hate, hate, hate it.

So let me speak to every face of the world with my foot! Let my step declare that I am someone of worth. Not a gray faceless meaningless worthless penniless servant in a boring tyrant's farmhouse. Nor a failed farmer's daughter. Not even a lesser witch of a lesser coven in the meager backwoods of a land ruled by squires and cows. Ha, my foot shall tell each face: here passes someone of worth.

When I spied the idiot boy chatting to sky and butterflies, I could have eaten him alive. It's what the world does, you know. You're a liar or priest or poet or fool if you claim aught else. But I only had the boy fetch water. Then I stole his lunch. Nothing worse. Easy as taking milk from a nanny goat. Why feel guilt? Seriously, he was a kind of human cake walking down the road, calling out happy greetings to knives and forks.

And yet... I liked his face. Taking his pathetic meal was coven work. But I could have given him the kiss. He did fetch the water. He had that dreamer's look in his eyes, like pappa's when he'd talk about mamma. Long, long ago. No reason I had to cheat the boy out of a kiss. But I've learned. Wisdom is this: take all you can, and give little as you can. Little? No; give nothing! Make it habit. Even when need is little and the boy is comely. He had hair yellow as wheat straw; curling and tangling about a freckled face. Yes, I could have kissed. But best not.

And then to find that he cheated me! Tricked me out of my summoning! And set the coven to blame me for a broth of poison. I dare not return to the farmhouse; dare not face my coven sisters. And now my face, MY face is damnably scratched by that cursed and traitorous cat!

Best I walk the road myself now, seeking boy and beast. I will set things right. I will NOT be a thing walked upon by others while they grind their heels, using me yet ignoring me. I will not. Not by farmers nor covens nor anything. For sure not by an idiot dreamy-eyed barnyard fool of a boy.