Queen of Hearts

One Stolen Life

My two-year-old daughter Joan's favourite nursery rhyme was The Queen Of Hearts. It goes like this:

The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts
All on a summer's day
The Knave of Hearts
He stole those tarts
And took them clean away.
The King of Hearts
Called for the tarts
And beat the knave full sore
The Knave of Hearts
Brought back the tarts
And vowed he'd steal no more.

I sang this to her while holding her hand over the wooden bridge separating the small town from the huge forest. I breathed in the cool evening air after finishing the song for the fifth time, ignoring her impatient tugs. The trees blew gently, leaves rustling, as if they were trying to whisper to us. Our backs were to the forest, so perhaps the leaves were calling us back. Or telling us to run, fast. You could never know with a forest. Joan paid no attention; after she tired of asking me to sing more, she stopped to throw every stone she could find into the clear water below us.

"Mama," she said, in her honey-sweet, innocent voice that knew no pain. "Is the sun drowning?"
I looked to where she was pointing. The golden orb was sinking below the river, casting its deep orange light across the soft ripples. I laughed slightly.
"No, darling. The sun is way up in the sky. It looks like it's drowning because it's so big, but it's going to the other side of the world."
I tried to explain the science of the sun in the simplest terms possible for a two year old to understand, but even I, aged thirty-one, had trouble understanding myself. But Joan seemed content enough, watching the stones fly from her tiny fists and landing with a splash in the water. I held her waist when she decided to climb up the fence and she moaned when I said it was time to go home. She stamped her feet and pouted.
"Joan Meredith Ackroyd, please behave," I groaned. I was so tired after running around after her all day.
"Mama Florence Ackroyd, no!" she said. Her face was so serious and it was so funny to hear my name come out of my daughter's little mouth that I burst out laughing and crouched on the ground for her to laugh and run to my arms, which she did with her eyes glinting.
"You are such your father's child," I murmured, kissing her ear. I swung her up on my shoulders like Rob always does. "Come on!"
Joan recited the Queen Of Hearts rhyme over and over, until she switched to "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon..."

"That's my favourite," I told her.
"Why?"
"Well. How many times have you seen a cow jump over the moon, or a dish run away with a spoon?"
I left her to ponder that. We reached the house and I set her down, where she immediately ran inside and leapt upon her father. I kissed Rob's lips as he slowly awoke from his slumber.
"You're on bedtime duty," I said to him, flouncing off to get ready for bed myself.

As I splashed cold water on my face and through my light brunette hair, I noticed faint purple shadows under my eyes. I sighed, knowing they were just due to running laps of the world after Joan every day but they reminded me of the time I was locked up and became so ill my face was ghostly. There used to be a time where my hollow cheeks were fuller, my eyes sparkling like crystals at the bottom of a sunlit ocean, my life as perfect as a snow white dove. Those days were ended brutally by conspiracy. 
I shuddered and gripped the sink. My stomach tightened. I hated to think of those long-ago days where I was truly happy. I was happy now, but whenever my daughter's name was said I was reminded of a friend I lost. Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans. She was nineteen years old when she was burnt at the stake for heresy and deemed just another stolen life. As I, also, am one stolen life, smarter than the law but defeated by it too.

I changed into a clean nightdress with small frills around the collar and wrists. I bid goodnight to everyone and fell into my bed where my sleeping daughter was snoring gently in her wooden cradle beside me. I wouldn't be able to sleep until my thoughts calmed down. This happened most nights, where I would lie awake and stare at the ceiling for hours until I saw ghosts in my deluded visions.
When the distant church clock struck eleven, Rob slipped into the room. He got in next to me and held me tight.
"I love you," I whispered. In his arms I felt safer, for he was one of the people who saved my life.

Rob's POV

"Goodnight sweetheart," I whispered into Florence's hair. I had my arms wrapped around her, feeling her tender bones. I sometimes wished we had normal families and that Florence's mother was around to tell me off for letting her get too thin. Sometimes I thought I missed our old lives more than she. I knew she often thought of the past. Her eyes would glaze over and she'd be in some dreaming state, disassociated from reality. I couldn't blame her. She would occasionally wake up shrieking and sobbing and I would rock her gently until she calmed down. We never spoke of what happened seven years ago. Anita and her husband Gregory, who owned the farm me, Flo, Isa, Chris, Mark and Rusty lived at, only knew that Florence had had some sort of traumatic experience back in Salem related to misjudgement by the Witch Hunters but they didn't know the full details.

I felt my chest go up and down as I breathed. Florence's breath tickled my skin. Joan scuffled and kicked her blanket, then fell silent. All was well, all was quiet. Until...

I heard whispers from unearthly voices. Voices that chilled my soul through my spine. They were barely audible but I caught fragments of sentences..."Sorceress...surrender to us...."

 I slowly pushed Florence to her side of the bed and freed my arms to clamp my hands over my ears, as if that did any good. The strange voices were murmuring inside my head now. They were getting louder, louder, more demanding, spinning in my head, until they stopped suddenly to leave a painful ringing in my ears.

My night clothes stuck to my sweating, shaking body, I slipped out of bed. I stumbled through the dark house to the front door and out to the front yard where I splashed fresh water on my face from the  slowly rusting water pump. I knew I  was just panicking too much. 

Am I panicking too much, or not enough? I asked myself when my eyes caught the whisper of a shadow flitting past me. 

Crunch. I felt someone behind me.

Slap. A hand clamped around my mouth.

"We got you now."