Page 1 of Pretty Savage: Defy

Prologue

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Roanoke Colony

Weather-worn planks of wood turned grey and warped by humid air and the relentless sun make up the walls of the small meeting house.

The colonists had built on a low, rocky hill, one of the island’s few places where the land rose above the marsh and didn’t flood after heavy rain. From here, the entire settlement could be seen below. The smattering of simple cottages and low gardens. Beyond that stood the palisade wall they’d constructed of sturdy logs driven deep into the earth with tips sharpened into points and angled outward to ward off unruly wildlife and defend the settlement from attack. It had been built to keep danger out.

But disaster had come from inside, and the wall had not been able to save them.

First the animals sickened. The chickens and the goats. The pigs. Even Mistress White’s prized milking cow had folded onto its side beside the well and had never risen again.

Then the meager crops they planted on hands and knees had failed. Roots that couldn’t grow in the wet, sandy dirt. That rotted rather than sprouted. What little survived the soil drowned beneath endless rain or withered under brutal heat.

Empty bellies made for angry men; quiet arguments became loud. Petty grievances grew into grudges that couldn’t be forgiven. Whispers passed between cottages after dark while the children slept nearby, unaware their parents had begun looking at one another like strangers.

Then came the pestilence.

Little Virginia Dare, who had only just begun to walk, burned with fever first. Jacobson soon followed. At fifteen, he was already taller than many of the grown men, but the sickness dragged him into the grave all the same. Like matchsticks, one lighting the next, children gave the fever to grandparents, who gave it to fathers and mothers until they ran out of fabric to make shrouds to wrap the bodies in.

Now, what started at one hundred and fifteen souls has been whittled down to four.

One man.

Three women.

They cluster together in the meeting house while a storm rages outside, wind rolls off the sound and rattles the wall, howling around the corners like it grieves with them. It slips icy fingers through cracks in the walls to caress their exposed wrists and throats.

“Sister Osborne,” Carr Ashford pleads softly with his hands outstretched. “Give her to me.”

Ruth shakes her head violently, eyes wild in the candlelight as she clutches the small body against her chest. Rainwater drips from the hem of her dress onto the floorboards in a steady patter.

“No,” she whispers. “I won’t leave her.”

Outside, thunder rolls across the thrashing bay hard enough to shake the walls.

“Please,” Ann Norwood says gently. “I know she was your child, but we must go. Once the storm passes, we leave this place or we die with it.”

Ruth’s face crumples.

The child in her arms cannot have seen more than six winters. Her skin has already begun turning waxen beneath the candlelight, lips faintly blue, curls damp with sweat from the fever that burned through the colony faster than prayer ever could.

“She was breathing this morning,” Ruth says hoarsely. “She spoke to me this morning.”

No one answers.

Because they had all said the same thing. About mothers, brothers, sons, and lovers. All cherished and all lost.

Carr bends slightly at the waist and inches closer to the grieving mother, as though approaching a wounded animal liable to bite.

“The dead cannot cross the marsh with us,” he says in a quiet voice, like the child is only sleeping and might awaken if he speaks too loudly.

The words make sense, but, as they leave his mouth, even he wonders what place logic has in a world gone mad.

Ruth rocks the child gently. “We cannot leave them alone.”

Outside the meeting house lie shallow graves already half-flooded with rainwater, the marsh threatening to swallow them whole. Some had crude wooden crosses. Others were left bare because, by the end, there had not been enough strength, or enough survivors, to fashion markers for the dead.