Seven Deadly Sons

Insert 1: Let the Wind catch her.

Sitting in her orphanage, Melanie wondered if things would ever change.

As a child, she had wished for change, change from the isolation, change from the obsession her parents had. Though, she supposed she was still very much a child.

But now looking at the holes in the ceiling and the damp collecting around the skirting boards - she immensely regretted the enormity of that wish.

The other girl in her room had requested to be moved as soon as Melanie walked in, looked into her eyes and shuddered.

"Witch." she had breathed.

Down the hallway that day, Melanie had heard her demanding that she not be housed with some so savage, 'a murderer,' she had said. Melanie did not know what a murderer or a savage were, so these words did not upset her. Though that ignorance would not last long. Her neighbours bed was quickly moved to another much, much lower floor.

Now, today, she was alone in her room, though it was so small it could hardly be called such a thing. The slant of the ceiling had meant every time she woke up with her nightmares, she hit it so hard she almost knocked herself out again. It was funny the first few times, but then her head had gone straight through the rotten wood and it was suddenly not funny at all - especially when winter came and she woke up blue-lipped, eyelashes frosted. This image did nothing to stem the rumours of her otherness.

No one adopted her, no one ever even saw her as it was much too cold all the way at the top of the old building.

Melanie rubbed the sleep from her eyes and got up to relocate her bed. She considered the other pitch, but she didn't dare create more holes in case the ceiling gave up on her too and caved in on her. One of the walls housed the stout door, so small the matron had to bend herself in half when she came for her checkups every other month. Melanie dragged her bed one foot, inducing a long and prolonging creak so it sat square in the centre of the room, which meant now when she woke up she had to crawl over the bedstead to get to the door - or crawl to get out of bed at all for that matter. 

The bed had been constructed the wrong way round and no one had ever bothered to change it, which was why Melanie now stared at a blank wooden wall. It wasn't too bad though, it meant Melanie could — if she shoved her face right against a panel, squishing her nose — look through the knot holes and out into the world beyond. On a good day, this meant she could see the ocean and the pretty sails bobbing out to sea and the freedom beyond.

Occasionally, there would be a race.
For an hour prior the sailing boats would clot and gather in the estuary, taking turns to circle around some invisible circle. Then, in a rush, the horn would blare so loud Melanie was convinced the next county over could hear it's call.
That start would be slow going, but when they reached the open ocean the wind would catch them and see them off on their trip.
Melanie wished the wind would catch her and take her away sometimes, too.

Thinking about it now covered in the rough hemp of her thin winter blanket, she considered the opening in the ceiling and wondered what it would be like to just - to simply jump. Would the wind help her on her journey too? Melanie so did want to fly.
Then, the robin - her only friend - landed in the hole she had made with her thick scull all those weeks ago, and she decided.

The blanket was not always quite so thin and rough.
When she had first made her home here, the blanket was a duvet, they had said. Made of down feathers from the happiest of birdies. She wondered if those same birdies lost their flight for that blanket, and Melanie had simply refused to use it in the dregs of her posh youth.
Then the blanket had gone, and the thin hemp version had become an every-season blanket, sometimes renamed to trick her.
The matron would take her hemp, go stand outside the door and fiddle, then bring it back to her and tell her it was what she deserved. She supposed that was true, she was terribly ungrateful.