Short story: Imbolc’s Omen by Jonah Jones

Jonah Jones

In that awful dungeon, surrounded by the bones of others who had suffered the same, the young girl sat, her back against the stinking, unyielding wall. Perhaps they would come for her, torture her, set her to the stake and burn her to inculcate fear in any that might follow her graceful path.

Worse, they might simply leave her to rot in the cell, as they had with so many. She would prefer the bliss of torture to the darkness of being forgotten.

Whatever she had done, whatever she might do, had been condemned by those outside the walls of her prison. Outside and in, there were separate Supremes. She and her companion deity knew she was innocent of any crime, but the outsiders’ ravenous God required sacrifice upon sacrifice.

Death of the condemned to nurture the chosen.

She imagined freedom amongst the open lands, farmed by those untouched by any desire for power over others. The husbandmen tilling and tending the rich, dark soil of their farms or the lone seekers on the paths of the spirit. Unaffected and uninfected by convoluted and irrelevant posturing of the court.

Renewal

Soon the ripened ewes would be coming into milk, the snakes sloughing off their dead winter skin and the people of the land would celebrate Imbolc, the first edge of spring with its thrill and fear of renewal.

For many days, she sat in that sombre place with her foolish imaginings. Perhaps the righteous might have a change of heart and set her free to return to the woodlands. Perhaps God might send an angel, wings and body cloaked in purest white light, to illuminate and break down these walls, blackened by death.

As if to torture her with no effort, there was a narrow slit of a window at the very top of the wall. Complicit with the torturers, light would change, moon and sun, reminding her of an outside wherein she once lived. Yet from the darkness emerged unreasonable, unreasoning hope.

Refusing to accept the covenant they held with their God, she began to build a frame with the bones of the long dead, setting two on top of two; her ladder, rising towards the light of the window high above. Using her own filth and the filth of the others to bind it together, she raised the structure to the height she needed. With trepidation, she climbed the scaffolding of bones, step by shaking step until she reached the highest point.

At first, the light was too painful for her darkness-accustomed eyes and so she closed them and enjoyed the sensation of the outside air caressing her face, moving her hair, cooling her shoulders. She listened to the cascading song of a robin, brave against the winter. A distant dog-fox barking to challenge the hounds in the scent of awakening earth. Defiant Life against Death.

Now she was ready. She opened her eyes to see the courtyard outside and the public scaffold they were building in their own bitterness.

Sympathy

One of the carpenters looked up to see her starved face at the window. Perhaps a ripple of sympathy passed through his heart but it was soon dispersed as he returned to his task. There was and always will be a tacit agreement between the builders of killing machines and their victims. The sinner sacrifices the innocent to gain favour and forgiveness of a God they fear.

Another of the builders continued to look at the waif confined in the fortress. As had the first, he felt his heart stir for her, but he wasn’t able to dismiss the emotion. He laid down his hammer and nails, turned his back on the murdering machine and its intended victim, then walked briskly away – an inkling of salvation, like the dawn before dawn reflected from the mountains.

The robin sang again to draw her attention from the construction of their hate.

She turned to follow the sound and there, nestling in the very strength of the castle between wall and gatehouse, were the wings and body of a single pure white snowdrop.