"Shaena" by Maleah Schmitke

She read over the letter again, her brows knitting just slightly. Something just wasn’t right. Her brother’s writing was clear, crisp. It almost seemed as thought he tried to hide his emotions and yet…and yet there was nothing in the letter itself that was out of the ordinary. Gareth was coming home! She smiled. He’d been gone so long; he’d be home soon. Soon things would be as they had been.

Half a week passed before Gareth finally arrived. Shaena couldn’t help but draw in a breath when she set eyes on him. He was drawn and pale and he seemed almost gaunt, and in his eyes…there was something in his eyes that frightened her. She embraced him just the same, her elder brother who had always cared for her and their parents. Her elder brother who had selflessly gone forth to join the army in their father’s stead so that the aging man could have peace in his last years of life, however many he had left. He smiled at her now and it seemed he was his old self again.

“Shaena,” he said softly, playing absently with a strand of her blond hair, “sweet Shaena, I’m so happy to see you again.” She thought he would say more, certainly his eyes spoke, but he lapsed into silence again and said no more to her, nothing about the war. She didn’t press. It was better, far, she was certain, to let him come to her in his own time. They’d always confided in each other before, why would this time be any different?

They didn’t bring up the subject at dinner either that night. They talked about mundane and everyday things. About what had gone on while he had been away. The foal his favourite horse had birthed two months earlier, what the neighbours had been up to, events that really weren’t of any significance or importance but were simple and relaxing. War could wait, wait until it was no so strongly on Gareth’s mind. He’d talk about it when he was ready. Shaena told herself this again as she studied his pale and haunted face from her place across from him at the table.

Several days passed and Gareth said nothing about the army. He said nothing about it to his parents and nothing about it to Shaena. She continued to tell herself that he just needed time, but she couldn’t deny her concern nor the little niggling of fear that hung over her heart. Gareth’s eyes were sad, haunted and there was that -- that glimmer…a glimmer of something that frightened Shaena. Was it madness? She tried to push the fear aside. Surely she was being irrational, but even when she was able to brush it aside, whenever she looked into her brother’s eyes the fear came back stronger than before.

It wasn’t until two weeks later that something came out of it all, that everything fell to pieces. Shaena left early in the morning, just when the sun was at that position where it dries the early morning dews but was still not high enough to heat the air significantly. Shaena would go out and pick fresh mushrooms to have with their breakfast. Both her father and brother were quite fond of mushrooms with their eggs and smoked ham. She had been up at dawn and the sky had burned almost blood red as the sun rose. She recalled how it had felt, as though fire had shot through her veins. For a moment she had felt something clench in her heart and she had felt something close to an irrational sense of fear, but she had ignored it. She thought it would be a beautiful day and nothing would spoil it; she wouldn’t allow it. She dressed, wrapped herself in her cloak, a simple garment made of the wool of her own black wooled sheep, but it was warm, simple though it was, and despite the glorious sunrise and the clearness of the morning sky, their was a chill in the air. She took up one of the baskets they used when picking mushrooms or gathering herbs and vegetables from the garden and then slipped silently out the door before there was even a stirring anywhere else in the old farmhouse.

By the time she’d filled the basket to brimming with succulent brown and white mushrooms, however, the sky had spilled over with clouds so dark they seemed nearly black. There would be rain after all that day, surely a great storm with not only rain, but thunder to fill the air, lightening to split the sky wide and gales to make their snug house shudder on its stone foundations. And it had started out so lovely too. Ah well, she had to shrug it off; they could certainly use the rain. She wrapped her cloak tightly around herself and pulled the hood up over her head and then took off toward the house hoping she’d beat the rain there.

As she moved through the woods a sound reached her ears, the sound of shouting, of an argument on the verge of breaking out into violence…no, the voices were too shrill for anger, it was fear the two voices cried out it. It then clicked in her mind that it came from the direction of her own house. She drew in a breath and started off at a run toward her house, her heart feeling as though it rose up in her throat to choked off her air. It didn’t even occur to her that the mushrooms were tumbling free of her overly filled basket and into the dirt as her feet flew over the ground.

Now she could hear her mother’s voice, shrill and almost pleading. She could hear her father’s voice shifting, now loud with rage and terror, now low with desperate beseeching though she couldn’t yet make out the words. Then her brother’s voice, loud, firm…and yes, she could hear wildness to it. She preyed for more strength; more speed so that she might make it in time to…what? To somehow, though she knew not how, prevent the tragedy that she could feel approaching right down into the depths of her marrow. She heard the crack of metal on wood, likened to the sound of a hatchet splitting a long. She heard her mother’s scream, her father cry out. She heard another scream from her mother, cut suddenly short and then when she was mere lengths from the house, she heard a sound that would haunt her until life left her. She heard a wet crack and a surprised grunt. She heard the sound of something heavy hitting the wooden floor. She reached the front door, breathing so heavily she thought she might pass out. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She turned her eyes to the sky a moment, almost in prayer, as she awaited her second wind, and she then wrenched open the door. The basket fell from her suddenly numb hands. Her parents lay on the floor, dead, all that blood, they had to be dead, both slaughtered by a blade. Gareth lay a few feet away, a dagger still in his chest, his sword, blade dyed crimson, lying near his head. She ran to him. Surely she could save him.

“Shaena…” his voice was barely even a whisper

“Shh, I’m here. What happened?”

“I wanted…the war, the death, no more suffering. I had to -- end it. I didn’t know you were gone -- until…too late. I had to…”

“You?”

“Too much suffering…had to save you…had to end it.” She could see it now, the madness in her older brother’s eyes. And then they closed and he was gone, but oh, she understood it all to well. She looked around at the blood soaked floor, at her now blood covered hands and red sodden cloths and finally the horror and grief sank in, sank in and caught her soul in its claws. She let out a keen that seemed even to rise above the violent crack of thunder that split the air, the rising wind, the pounding rain blown in through the still open door to drench her and her dead family

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“We found her just like that.” Gweneth, Shaena’s aunt, spoke in a hushed voice. She wasn’t sure if the girl just in the other room could hear her or not and she didn’t like to be rude. It was as if the horror had eaten away at the girl’s mind. She had been in their home now for three months. She went through bouts where it was as if she were no more than a shell gazing blankly at nothing, unable to move, to speak, as if her mind was gone. And yet, she had ‘woken’ more than once, sometimes it was as if she were herself again, but at other times she spoke to herself, or more accurately, to someone or thing that wasn’t there. And then something would bring back the memories of the horror and she would weep uncontrollably for hours or slide back into that motionless state she sat in now, though it was happening less often now and in shorter bouts. She had once been such a cheerful creature, but Gweneth had no doubt that what Shaena had seen in that house had forever destroyed her. She was withdrawn now, quiet, haunted and melancholy. Gweneth did her best to be patient with her sister’s child, but it was difficult for her. What would become of Shaena? She hated to imagine, but more than once she had discovered that Shaena’s small travelling bag had been packed as if she planned to undertake a long journey. Gweneth couldn’t deny that at times she even wished that Shaena would go, but at others she feared that the poor child would be dead in a matter of days. Shaena was grown, she couldn’t really prevent her from leaving if she so chose, but as she spoke to her neighbour, Elaena, the other shook her head.

“She has a right to go where she pleases, yes, and it would be wrong to stop her, but, Gwen, she is quite mad. She’ll get herself killed or worse…” Gweneth sighed and said nothing. “And even if she were well,” Elaena continued, “she is still a woman and women shouldn’t be travelling on their own, let alone one whose mind is gone.”

“I just wish things were different. It isn’t easy for my family. I feel for her, but sometimes I just wish she would go. Sometimes I think it would make things easier…”

“Yes, easier I agree, but she is still your kin…” They continued to talk, neither noticing the shadow retreating from the door way or the now empty chair in the other room which had minutes before been occupied.