Sahra

Sahra grew up in a small village a ways outside of Beregost. The village is pretty simple - peasant farmers growing crops and tending animals, raising children and generally living a peaceful existence on the edge of the forest. A local cleric taught the children to read and write, and taught them something of the world beyond the village. Occasionally families would take goods into Beregost to sell on market days, but otherwise life was largely the daily chores of milking cows and sowing crops, washing laundry in the river and preserving stores for the winter.

Sahra was the eldest of three, her mother’s helper and then her sister’s, when Hila married before her and got busy having children of her own. Life was full and busy, with few to no moments to stop and think about it - just work and family, family and work. She had a place and a purpose, though, and if she had had time to think she would have found herself happy overall, despite the small frustrations of never quite getting time to herself, and her mother’s occasional nagging about when she would have her own children to add to the family brood.

Everything changed in a day. It was a market day - Sahra’s father, Aiden, his good friend Alf and her brother Lars had packed a cart full of cabbages and potatoes to take to sell in town. The rest of the family were sick with a fever - Sahra’s mother, Lula, was back on her feet, but Hila, heavily pregnant with her next child, her partner Sam and their two-year-old Bitty were all still moaning in bed. Hila and Sam’s eldest, Inga, had not even had the cough, and was bouncing off the walls with the clear spring weather, wearing on everyone’s nerves. Sahra, who had also evaded the cough, decided to take Inga out for a walk in the woods- maybe they could find some healing herbs along the way, or at least some mushrooms to add to dinner.

The light was golden through the trees, the air humming with insects and birdsong. Sahra had to keep reminding Inga not to run too far ahead - she always had been the most fearless child, the bonniest golden babe that no sickness or sadness seemed to touch. When everyone’s tempers were not so shortened by fever her energy was usually a source of great joy in the household, the laughter and connection that carried them through the days. Sahra found a patch of feverfew and called to Inga to wait while she cut some heads and wrapped them up in her bag - only just flowering, but maybe they would help. Climbing to her feet - she was getting older, she realised, as an involuntary grunt passed her lips at the motion - Sahra noticed all of a sudden the quiet in this part of the woods. They hadn't followed the usual path, which she knew would have no feverfew or other herbs at this time of year, but had wandered off the track into a new part of the forest in search of new forage.

“Inga?!” her voice fell flat between the trees - there was no birdsong, she realised, and even the insects seemed to have quelled their buzzing. “Inga! Inga I’m here, come back now” - she’d last seen her between the trees up ahead, skipping along to a song she’d invented. Sahra tied some cord around a branch to mark her way then strode forwards into the increasing quiet, calling as she went. “Inga! Inga!” Her throat was quickly dry, and her thin voice in the stillness shocked her every time. “Inga?!”

Nothing. She paused to listen - the silence almost hummed in her ears, but she couldn't hear even the rustle of the leaves. Her skin prickled with cold - where had the sun gone? The trees in this part of the forest seemed thicker, older than in the parts she was used to, their leaves smothering the sky between them, the shadows deep around their base. Nothing - but then to her left a deep, eerie cry, “currah-currah currong”. Sahra froze, and it came again “currah-currah curro-ong”. Were there spirits here? Sahra remembered stories that their neighbours would tell, of old places in the forest where strange things dwelled. Ghost stories for impressionable fools, her mother would sniff - but her mother hadn't grown up near the forest, and she never went into it much herself. Sahra wanted nothing more than to leave this place and go back home, but she had to find that child first.

“Inga! Inga enough now, it’s time to go home. Stop hiding - ”

She stopped abruptly as she stepped into a clearing, and the grass turned to dirt beneath her feet. The shadows were still thick even without trees to cast them. At the end of a dead branch on the edge of the clearing, a black-and-white bird with a wicked-looking beak glared down at her, its eye outlined in yellow: “currah-currah currong”. Somehow seeing where the call was coming from didn't reassure her. Through the gloom she could see the rough huddled outline of an old stone building, collapsing in on itself. And was that - she forced herself forwards - was that stairs into the ground? Could Inga have gone down there?

She wet her lips. “Inga?” - it came out barely more than a whisper. Two more steps towards the stairs, and the bird spread its glossy dark wings, swooping towards her with one last “currah-currah curro-ong”, the last thing she heard before the shadows took her memory.

They found her two days later, Alf and her brother and some others from the village. Lars carried her up the steps himself, covered in blood but none of it hers that he could see, no cuts or marks on her. The same could not be said for Inga - they found her limp body at the bottom of the stairs, blood spread in a pool around her, running into the strange patterns on the carved stone floor. Marks up her arms, a deep gash on her head - she fell, they decided. Sahra too, though she must have fallen less hard. They didn't look around long - the place made the hairs on the back of their neck stand up, something not quite right that they couldn't put a finger on but did not want to face. The runes run with Inga’s blood, the shadows that even a new lit torch couldn't banish, the black-and-white bird staring fiercely from the branches - they turned away from these and carried the limp bodies home, one breathing, one not.

What can be said of the time that followed? Everyone in the village heard Hila’s screams when her sunny, sweet-hearted child was returned to her limp and drained of life. Sam’s deep-throated howls too, raw with grief. And everyone felt the pain as their own - had seen the bonny child dancing through the streets, just days ago - had heard whispers of the horror of her final resting place. Everyone but Sahra, who didn't wake until a whole sevenday after the funeral rites had passed, until the hot rush of anguish had settled into the long chill of loss. Lula tended her carefully, sponging sweet herbwater and broth between her lips, anxiously watching the slight rise and fall of her breath through the evenings. She seemed so pale, the usual colour gone from her cheeks, and when Lula took her temperature to check for fever she was cool to the touch, almost cold. She would not lose two family members to such a strange accident though, two eldest daughters - so Lula kept watch, and was just nodding off to sleep on the seventh night of her vigil when Sahra’s eyes finally fluttered open.

Timeline in the ruin: