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Nell was a mean old bird who never had any patience for anyone, least of all me. I didn’t hate people because it felt wrong to do so, but I got real close to it with her. She got mean and ornery simply because she could be and she got away with it. I’d never like someone like her.
People who went out of their way to make other people feel like crap simply because they knew they could get away with it weren’t people I ever cared to have to be around.
But, again, I kept my mouth shut because that’s what I had to do to live in this place. And I’d been told from a very young age that there simply was nowhere else for me to live.
I knew it was a lie.
All the people lied here. There was no proving it or doing anything about it. Change in this place was a losing battle and I’d learned long ago not to fight it.
Nell left me be while I dished out plate after plate of food for the people in line.
I day dreamed about being somewhere else. Somewhere with buildings and indoor plumbing. It was quite the dream.
Clothes that weren’t passed down from person to person.
Things that were just my own and never had to be shared with anyone else ever.
Things I had no business ever dreaming about. We were a community and we were taught to share everything.
When I had scooped food onto the last plate I filled one up for myself. I was starving and carried my plate out of the tent with me. Too many people were still lounging around in there eating and I didn’t feel like being stared at, it would have made it hard for me to keep my food down.
My one true friend I had here was an old woman. She was incredibly wise and had always had a soft spot for me as long as I could remember. And she used to tell me the best stories when I was younger.
She was getting too old now to move around outside of her tent easily and if I wanted to see her I had to make a point and go and visit her when I was allowed free time again.
Everyone was put to work around here, most especially myself.
Anyway, my old friend's name was Plume and she was convinced I was special and that was why most everyone else didn't like me. People feared what they didn’t understand and there was a lot for people to not understand about me.
Take my hair for example. It was a reddish purple color that I had never seen on another person here in our encampment. No matter what they’d tried washing my hair with when I was a child the color never dulled or washed away.
And there were strange markings on not only my face but a good deal of my entire body as well.
The Elders said I had been born that way.
I thought it was bullshit and that they were lying about me, and right to my face no less. I figured they had to be tattoos I received as a baby for some strange reason. No one wanted me to know.
That was another thing this place was full of — secrets.
I sat down on the grass and leaves against the base of tree to eat my dinner in peace.
I felt eyes on me and couldn’t help but feel like maybe my whole life was one giant cosmic joke that I shouldn’t be taking part in because in a different world I would have been born for more.
Maybe that’s what the markings on my face meant, that I’d been born in the wrong place at the wrong time but I’d likely die here in this shithole forest before ever finding out.
And that broke my heart.
But that was normal because everything in my life always did.
2
Autumn
It hadn’t rained in so long that the ground was drying up and the dirt was proving to be worthless. The crops were all dying and sooner or later we were going to run out of food.
There were too many of us out here and not enough food had been stored to last through a drought. The witches in these woods had been cocky and hadn’t planned for something they couldn’t fix with magic.
Stupid, stupid.
