Year of Damnation, Tom Riddle

The Fens. January, 1938.

YEAR OF DAMNATION
O.   The Fens. January, 1938.

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A crack echoed through the tabular landscape, a momentary chaos in the still afternoon air. The breeze had that sharp sterileness of cold weather as it hit the back of Dion's throat; it bit at her nose and the pink apples of her cheeks with its prickly teeth.

     Sasha and Edora had broken the dinner hen wishbone. Sasha won—he always did—he knew to hike his pinky up to the joint and keep his feet planted, whereas Edora pressured the odds to lean toward her with pure will. The wishbone sat on the window sill for three days before it had dried out enough to be cracked, and every night after dinner she whispered threats of lending its splintered remains to the Babayka if it did not abide by her commands.

     But the Babayka was not real and Edora went stumbling back into the snow on the ground. Her footprints left small indents that glimmered in the sun and Sasha's breath swirled above his head into the empty blue tinged pale sky as he laughed at her; he said something that Dion could not hear and her attention was lost. The whole ordeal was quite barbaric, to rip the remnants of a helpless animal apart for something as stupid as luck.

     She turned on her heel, and the snow squeaked under her boot like the feral holler before an abrupt snap. Noises of the slaughterhouse followed her wherever she went.

     Ahead of her stood the house; a quaint carriage dwelling that stood at the edge of the world. Weeds disappeared under the thick blanket of snow that surrounded it, the flatlands spanned across forever and it cut the sky in half with a harsh, white line. It burned Dion's irises, stung her retinas. She cupped her hands around her eyes, squinting. Bronya and Tanis' cherub round faces peered through the yellowed curtains, their breath fanned across the glass of the window in short spurts as they watched past Dion.

     Baby Laika must have been sleeping; she could barely walk, and they did not own warm clothes small enough that they would not be slipping from their shoulders and tripping them with every step. Her own bare knuckles sheened pink with cold like strawberries that were not quite ripe yet.

     Nothing good came of the winter. The Fens became an empty void of muffled noise and bleached vision. It ate everything that lived and continued to eat, and eat, and eat until all the fleshy, biotic things became nothing but a distant memory until spring. Food ran thin, and the trek into town left Dion's ankles numb and throbbing against the frigid sleet. Father did not like this arrangement, but he came home from work after all of the shopkeepers had covered their windows and locked their doors and there was nothing he could do about it. Every day, he worked himself tired and draped himself over the sofa like a big, pot-bellied house cat until nightfall once he returned.

     Father was a strange man who had strange habits, but he said Dion was a strange girl as well so she supposed she was a pot calling the kettle black. Recently, his mousy brown hair had begun to recede. She was not meant to find this funny because her father was stressed but she did anyway.

     He and Mother did not behave like the parents of the protagonists in her stories; she had not a leader-type bone in her body—quite the opposite, really—so, there had been no reason to nurture traits that she simply lacked, unlike the average protagonist. Despite it, Dion found the set precedent harrowing. Her mother often left half-boiled eggs on the stove when her friend, Mr. Simenov, arrived. They talked about things like war and money and Sasha's school grades—adult humdrum. She did not mind that man, she supposed; he brought her fascinating muggle books that made her question the existence of things, as well as textbooks from his time at Koldovstoretz.