4

                                        

                                              

Today was it, I had to let Racheal take Stephanie. 
She'd been gone for days, never this long. I didn't call out to her, fear gnawing that someone would see and she would be taken by the pope. 
We had water soup for breakfast. The haunt I let in, caught, had eaten the harvest, all dried brown. 
I had to stray a little further, past the trees connected with red and white sheets. I had been close once but reaching it wasn't a feat, finding it was. 
Today, after Stephanie would be taken, I'd give Father Benedict the answers he'd craved, for weeks on end. 
 Maybe then the horrors would begin, being watched by the older seers. A voice always caused silent panic on the kid's face, Father Robert. 
I had seen him, once, between the pages of a book in the library. 
His image was struck, almost living but the pages that followed remained blank. That was the first book he was seen and the last. 
We all shared a belief—that books held pictures. The library, shelves stacked with books, back made with polished leather, each worn by a hundred cracks, some had grown thin to tearing but never did. 
On a few books as those which had faces, many others were, some with pages blank whilst some, pages overflowed with the same symbols. One look, Racheal said they weren't. Each meant another. They were written in an old tongue, like markings carved in dried wood, identical to the nooks.
I was walking in circles. I looked up to the sky, trees tall, adjourned, creating a foreboding canopy. 
 They moved silently, with determination to keep the connected trees hidden. I had strayed in when I wasn't allowed, it wouldn't let me close again. 
I picked up my basket, half filled with black cloves, and headed down, fallen branches snapping in my wake.
The cloves added a flavor to the blood soup we had. Liters of blood were boiled with lime until thick lumps formed, like egg white. The cloves were added and ladled together for enrichment.
The liters were fetched from the weeping willow down the creek. No one dared ask the silent questions we shared. 
 The convent was in view, hidden faintly by shriveled trees, soaring and weaving to form a looming canopy. A building stood taller with peeling paints and fallen roofs, strangely illusioned to appear closer. 
A pit formed in my stomach, making each step stiff. 
I marched until I was standing amid the trees, the perched birds looming above, beaks an arm's length, and eyes bloodshot. 
I turned and watched the woods. It had ceased moving. Whatever wonders and curses it harbored, it was a better confinement than this convent.
 I watched as some girls dragged wooden barrows, each filled with metal containers inside the kitchen. Doorless, they entered with ease and unbundled them. Then the boys took over, emptying the redness into cauldrons, red bubbles resurfacing. 
I lifted my hands to shield my nose. Everyone had on a pinafore apron and torn sheets over their nose.
 The girls stirred and stirred until the stench was gone then lemons were added for thickening.
The kitchen light dulled, sunken by the sudden black clouds that now covered what little beam cascaded down the uneven cracks. A flash brightened the kitchen, time slowing as our eyes watched beyond the ajar windows, one planted on each side. Then came a deafening thunder, soaring and rippling through the clouds.