Marriage

There was no concept of time in the Village. It was always night, so there was no time to sleep and no time to wake up, with us all needing to rely on our internal clocks to know when we need to go to sleep and when we need to get up from bed.

So when I was done crying my sorrows in the woods I got up and started to wander. I couldn't go too far otherwise I could get lost. In the dark, all the dead trees could seem identical. Tin branches stretch to the sky like the fingers of a dead person trying to dig out from their own grave.

When my memories flooded me back to when I was five I was unconsolable for an entire week - having nightmare after nightmare of the silent woods outside, where the dark trees seemed to be always covered in blood, alongside everything else.

I hate this red moon.

I hate that it makes everything 100% more creepy than it should actually be.

But now, 11 years later I am used to it. The woods are not a creepy monster waiting to jump on me anymore, rather, they are an old acquaintance always ready to listen when I cry and ask what have I done to deserve this.

And so, I embraced them and walked further in then than any men in the village would have ever allowed. I learned from them, learned to hear for birds and squirrels, to search for their dropping, and to know what they are eating so I can trap them and have something more to eat.

Father doesn't know I get my own food out here.

No one knows I can build traps using memories from my past life. I won't lie and say I managed to get it right on the first, and not even on the hundredth try. But my persistence was worth it when I caught my first wood mouse.

Father did notice I wouldn't be as hungry as my siblings and ultimately decided to cut down on what I could eat because I was a disaster at knitting, meaning I wasn't worth the food he was giving me.

But I preserved even then, by myself, and myself alone.

"Rose!" I heard a male voice I knew all too well calling in the woods. It was quieter than Mother's call, so he wanted to make sure people in the Village wouldn't hear.

I sighed.

I don't want this.

I don't want to live the rest of this miserable life in these woods, in this village, with these people.

I don't want to be treated like a live incubator to simply generate kids and hope all my children are boys otherwise we would be fucked.

I don't want to need to kill my baby girls just because there isn't enough food around for them to eat and I have no boys in the family.

I kept breathing, looking with a glassy look in the distance. I heard the dry ground crunching as someone approached.

"Rose?" Rory asked.

He came closer to me and I see him looking me up and down.

"Come on. Not this again please" Rory said, crouching down to be on the same eye level as me.

"Leave me alone," I said weekly. I can't support this anymore.

Rory sighed. "I waited for you to leave the house and while I was waiting I saw your Father," He said, sitting down by my side. "I asked him to give me your hand in marriage"

I curled and put my hands on my face, hiding the tears that started to fall down once again with a newfound fury for my predicament.

"Rose. I also don't want to marry you" Roy said.

I blinked. What?

"Don't you see I am doing this for you?" He finally asked. "If you don't Mary soon your Father is going to kick you out, and knowing him, he will do it in the middle of winter, when there will be NO way for you to survive" He ranted.

"I am still 14 while you are 17. Of course, I don't like this. My Father doesn't like this. My Mother doesn't like this. I can wait. But you CAN'T" Roy took some deep breaths to calm down.

I lifted my head to look at him.

"I love you like a sister. I don't want you to die" He finished quietly.

"I love you too Roy. You are and always will be my little brother. But this isn't right. I won't marry you" I said.

"Why not!" Roy asked, getting up and closing his fists in anger.

"Because it isn't right. You deserve better" I said. Not disclosing that I also didn't want to marry such a young kid. It felt deeply and utterly wrong to do so. And I don't want to keep on living like this.

"Roy you should have let me hang myself" I whispered and averted my gaze.

"No!" Roy gripped me and forced me to look at him.

"You are NOT going to do that!" He said.

Roy was so young at the time. But he knew all too well what I was doing. Because his older sister did the exact same when she didn't find a husband and his father kicked her out.

The poor kid was only 8 when he found Maine hanging...

"I'm sorry," I said, more tears falling from my eyes. "But I can't take this anymore" I finally stated, a flood opening inside of me and making me cry the loudest this forest has ever heard.