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“Mira, are you done?”
Flo puts her head through the skins which hang around the bathing chamber. Of all the people I don’t want to die for, Flo is perhaps the one I do not want to die for the most. She is younger than me, and has recently become Trelok’s favorite wife. She does not yet swell, but it is certain she will soon.
She does not look at me. I do not matter to her. She simply starts speaking to Mira, shattering the semblance of ritual with a string of self-serving demands.
“Mira, I need you to come and do my hair. And wash my feet. And I need you to see if you can scrub and paint my nails. Trelok has asked me to come to him tonight. He wants to celebrate the sacrifice, and I want to look my best.”
“It brings bad fortune to rush the sacrifice’s preparation,” Mira lectures the younger woman gently. “I will come to you when the condemned one is made ready.”
“You’ve taken too long on her. What difference will it make if her hair is clean when she is burned in the mountain? I have to be presentable for Trelok tonight. He says he wants to do something new to me.”
“You’ll not be so eager when you learn what it is,” Mira says under her breath.
Flo huffs a breath at us, then leaves, slapping the skin down so it waves, bringing little bursts of sunlight into what was hallowed space.
She is naive. She is in love with Trelok. She thinks his brutality is strength. She believes she is special because she closes her eyes to the fact that he takes every female in the village. He took her mother’s mother, her mother, and now he takes her. One day, he will take the women who emerge from the swell in her belly. Trelok’s line is pure. They all have his thick flaxen hair, and his bright blue eyes. They have prominent jaws and strong backs, some of them so strong that they hunch over from all the strength. Flo has six toes on her left foot, a blessing, she says.
A moment later, she is twitching at the curtain again. She is so very eager to be ravaged again. It is no secret that some of the women enjoy Trelok’s brutish attentions, as much as others loathe them.
“Please, Mira,” she whines. “My hair will be dry and my nails will be dull and…”
“He will not notice,” Mira says. “Go away. The sacrifice takes priority today.”
“Ugh!” Flo stamps her foot and makes an unpleasant whining sound. All illusion of ritual and meaning has been broken by her tantrum which is so anchored in petty everyday life I can’t believe that tomorrow, I die.
I have known this day was coming my entire life. It was never made a secret, and I never let it concern me more than any of the other more immediate worries, like surviving on nothing more than scraps. We all know that death will come for us in one way or another. Trelok’s wives often pass in the act of bearing his young. Flo is so eager to be taken so she can swell with more potentially deformed life - the cost of which will be death to her and the babe.
I at least have the advantage of knowing when the end will come.
Flo makes a pouting face at Mira and shuffles her feet impatiently.
“It is alright,” I tell Mira. “I can finish my bath.”
“You have to be properly prepared,” Mira says. “You must be clean and dried so the paint adheres to your skin when you are…
Killed. That is what she means.
I wonder for a moment, if there is any way to survive what is coming. The thought itself is blasphemous. I was not made to survive. I was made to be given for the sake of the tribe.
A woman must be given to the mountain every eighteen years. She must be untouched. Trelok respects that, though he respects nothing else. His animal lust is legendary. Barely a night goes by that we do not hear a woman’s cries emerging from his bed. Cries. Whimpers. In the morning, Flo will be bruised, but proud that she has been given the chance to bear his seed. That is something I will never do. I was born pure and will pass that way as well.
“Do me first! I’m going to be a mother,” Flo insists. “That barren vessel can be painted before we throw her in…”
“Flo!” Mira curses.
“I will go out to the fields one last time,” I say, composing myself. Flo cares about this, because she has a life to live here. I do not care, because I do not. “You do Flo’s hair, and finish mine when I return. We have time. The evening is yet to come.”
