(№6.5)

The girl refrained to put her vengeance into motion for that attempted assassination, rather took pleasure and joy in how those two daft as geese girls had screamed and dashed the opposite way, pale as if captured by a wraith, when they gazed her the following week after she successfully survived the nauseating disease keeping her battered and exhausted in bed, a last afterthought uncertain in decision if she surely was to survive, if truly she mastered to escape death's tight grip, this time. She never spoke to anyone about what had happened to her in that well and the girls avoided her like the living plague, mouths shut about this entire matter.

The boys on the other hand took great pleasure in liberty to hunt her down for her lovely appearance and golden hair, considered an omen to catch for luck and success if you possessed her, and which naturally everyone wanted to have.

Fortunately, the forest was her home and a living labyrinth additionally, so she was never discovered and quite happy so; Her hair colour was also a tremendous rarity at the coastal line, for it was normally the girls in the rural areas of the country whose hair was bleached the hues of ripe crops.

And her life truly was an up and down of chance and curses.

The day, she had unnerved her father that badly, as dusk veiled the sky, he had thrown a bottle at her and scored a strike right across her face, issuing to have her flee from, just like all these other women, with their wings caught in his razor-sharp tipped claws. She ran through the dark sombre night, tears and blood mixing a concoction shielding her eyes to glimpse the rocky terrain her naked feet ran on, yet automatically, as if a thread had been sown into her heart, she knew the correct way to the beach even without looking, feeling the right turns beckon her closer and her soul guiding her under the silver moonlight, like beady sobs of lamentation colouring the whole landscape in sorrows mirroring her own, only the moon and it solid light, illuminating such a crime. The beach awaited soon and she halted, when her sensitive feet felt soft sand under its soles and the lingering scent of salt always became apparent and breath-taking, argentine sea stretching in front. Splinters of glass caught in hair, tumbled down in shambles when she ducked and crawled the remaining space, until water would lick her fingers, shoulders kept in perpetual tremor, though probably not in wise precognition of feeling the burden of knowing this to be the fundamental breaking point who initiated everything the way it was supposed to be. Whatever would enfold now, should prove to shape the future as we ought to come to know it.

She kneeled in the cold, grainy sand, gripping with tangible, still growing anger cultivating and spreading since the day she had almost frozen to death, cupping the still luke-warm water to splash her face, as she recently thought of any encounter with other villagers in an atrocious way, especially a little midnight reunion at the common fountains or any location, specifically when her eyesight wasn't equipped to compensate the lack of light enough to run in the forest, a bunch of suitors on her heels.

The salt burned her cuts, but it was bearable.

She considered to run away from her father whose lashes of abuse were more frequent and likelier to occur, perhaps she might even join the family of her mother back in the countryside, leaving this place behind and all those monsters haunting her, perhaps the only solution to this gigantic problem of hers what to take flight an leave, cowardly, in the middle of the night unnoticed and unannounced. She paused, after having washed her cuts to the extent they burned irritably and her hair was combed free of all glass shards, looking more closely at her wavering resemblance staring back at her through the eternal, fluid abysm, her silvery depiction engraved in the watery substance steadying as time flowed on in the silence. The image of her looked saddened, destroyed, the wound caused due to the impact vitiating her normally youthful beauty and her swollen, bloodshot eyes tore holes in her soul of anguish, when she gazed in up on herself, tears shining only an edge away to flow on anew. It wasn't a first for her father to raise his hand, albeit soon it would be the last, the instance he killed her eventually. 

The injustice of it all struck her, the need, the conclusion to seek flight and escape formed resolutely in her blood. For if she didn't her days surely shall soon prove to be counted. And perhaps, she might have succeeded to escape her fixed destiny, had fate not seen this possibility and intervened. Suddenly divine, heavenly pure sounds of tone and cadence unmatched to previous comparisons made  reached her ears and she almost tumbled face-first into the knee-deep coasting water, flabbergasted, breath held back, her gown soaking wet at the hemline.

The most delicious, sweetest chimes on earth and likely beyond rang through the night, fine and faint, but proud and mighty, the underlying warning obvious to all those who heard them before prosper and attract souls with their gift of smooth, ineffable, ethereal music.

She had never heard anything alike that could produce such harmony, symphony, cacophony of tempered noise. Twittering birds and the hissing of the wind seemed ridiculous, unworthy after this instance of resonating deeply with such sweetness, appalling, failing in comparison to this.

Stories of fishermen sailing over the ocean, foolishly in the middle of the night, when the full moon reflected just like this, a perfect ball on a surface as smooth as black mirrors, the colour of iridescent nacre foam rinsing the bank of the sea, right where the sand was at its finest and softest state, sirens would sing, their wailing seductive and desperate, charming and irresistible, from beyond the veil parting the horizon with the land, their appetite for lusting men concealed by their song. The men were powerless against the spell awakening and daring their lusty desires resulting in their doom.

She was no man, yet she imagined alike all of them to take step upon step into the dormant quiescence of black water herself and simply stopping to breathe and quietly drown under the surface. This music was worth dying for, as this music was even worth living for at the same time.

Yes, it was that mesmerising, that enchanting, bewitching, that phenomenal, that it hurt so terribly, only death the exit equipped to cease such aching, oh, so much agony in these voiceless songs, it would rip all those listening slowly apart. Still it presently may exact whatever if wanted from her, she'd provide it even if rendered impossible, compelled to the brink of irresistibility.

That must be the voice of the God, the muttering and chanting of angels, that it drove anew tears to her eyes, stirring and having all her wants overflowing and rolling straight out of her, her blood and bones boiled with the intensity of one piece reaching her heart and twisting a blade in all the way, until she came apart in an explosion of ecstasy.

It was so invasive, explosive, it reached her core of missing something constantly, habitually, that it interweaves with your flesh, your character, your soul, deep, deep where no eye was capable of seeing and no capable eye would understand.

It ached and healed, it sealed her wounds and cut her scars open, it was serene but charged, full of action, an assortment of dichotomy and likeness, the perfect resumption of living. It broke and wrecked her, all sorrow, all held-back resentment, all stifled lust for revenge, all ever-burning ire brutally surfaced and was probed and probated in the naked light of the all-knowing moon, it ripped all of her apart and made her shed tears like she felt all of the sorrow and grief in this world concurrently.

A colossal dark, black ship came into view, stalking the grounds of water unlike anything assimilable, as there was not one other vessel on this world, that would not pale in comparison.

Waves hammered against her legs, as she blinked incomprehensibly, unable to process, her emotions stifling her reason to understand, as all sentiment was laid back in much sharper contour, all painfully clear so long as she was entranced.

This ship radiating with power and might, glowed bluely through the saturnine night and something was right staring back at her, from the deck, tipped in careful shadows.

*

The next morning, she would be awakened by the tide rippling in, splashing over her wet body and rays of sun burning down at her.

Coughing up water and quietly abashed to have fallen asleep on this scene, she hurried through the woods back to her cabin, revelling in the vivid images of the dream, it was worth to occupy this dry and pinching bed for a night, wiping only slightly perplexed her cheeks crusted in salt, not stemming from the sea but from the most inner flaps of her heart, she had cried out.

She entered the wobbly cabin, astonished to find it empty besides the sickly smell of grease, human odours and tipped over flasks in disarray and variable shape, rapidly stripping of her sultry, soggy clothing she hung outside to dry and chose an unobtrusive brown wool gown and leather shoes fabricated by clever hands to afterwards step outside, to acquaint with her father lingering at the door who looked at her as if she was a becoming the similitude of ghost, disbelieving to his eyes to see her, captured in shock even.

His neutral expression, cracking to reveal his true colours, was painted with something unreadable she would have deciphered as gratitude if she didn't know any better.

He kept staring at her for several seconds through bloodshot eyes and an unshaved face, pulling himself conspicuously together, stumbling to the door and closing it with a loud bang.

He was probably just inebriated, more than the usual.

Unperceived to the danger she had manoeuvred herself just hours ago, she felt starved enough to pay a visit to the village well to soothe her thirst and perhaps purloin some fruit for breakfast. Wells made her nervous in general, but quenching her needs was always a priority.

Her stroll next to the stamped path made her feel ridiculous, considering how she saw absolutely no soul outside and oddly heard no morning clattering at all.

The silence was gloomy, adumbrating, self-explanatory and sent shivers down her spine, her senses grasping something unknown to her yet. Terrible dread marching along with her pinned to the heels in eager excitement, when the reason for all fright would be all apocalyptically revealed, when she had almost forgotten it existed.

She walked the mud path, skin crawling and her appetite subsiding, but curiosity apparently killed the feline, so she continued the curvy trail, unmet by none, not even a soul, not even a bird. The closer the distance to the market place became, the more she heard a soft but persistent buzzing noise, paining her ears, regarding the marvellous and terrific music she listened to yesterday night out of a dream, in a nausea-forthbringing manner.

The girl stopped dead in her tracks all of the sudden, wide-eyed and speechless watching how an entire swarm of dark, teeny flies assembled into a billow, buzzing and summing happily, while five humane skeletons, towelled off of flesh, and muscles and entrails hang from the noose where convicted murderers would hang, white and ivory, seeming unreal, like a farce, like a sculpture created by human hands to prove skill and artistry, only this time it would ensure the evidence of cruelty and brazen insolence.

The entrails, blood, skin and hair were indifferently tossed aside for the flies to get rid off in delighted buzzing.

It was vile, bare, based and a mere iniquity to regard.

The skeletons hollowly clattered against each other in the wind, each dull thud turning her blood to ice.

Such precision, such evil eagerness not even animals were capable of...

It hurt, having the inner core of humankind exposed, denuded in such flippant measure... tainting the dead like this. Though it was possible they had died due to their skin being peeled and their organs gauged off.

She swallowed, cupping her elbows feeling a twin pang of disgust, more and more imagining how her own skin would begin to flake and disintegrate, reveal all the ugly truth within of life, everything they wanted to forget what could be revealed in the matter of mere severing and ceaseless cutting.

The graphic picture would engrave itself forever on her eyelids, the walking example she'd see when she closes her eyes and the contents of her nightmares. Not the worst nightmares she have, but enough to stunt her in her tracks and remind her of mankind's fragile mortality.

They left no message, but the meaning was obvious, declared in the brutality of the killing and what was to be expected, next. So much red, it was so much blood, everywhere.

Bile rose in her throat to the point where she thought she would vomit. But she didn't. Instead she only asked herself if her father was next. Or even her.

The Skeleton Crew had struck and condemned again.

The people were awfully quiet now, as the summer swoll to autumn, where the mysterious ballads resounded from the Sea regularly and everyone was afraid how they would be punished next, what horror and terror would be pushed newly on their behalves, hopes and purpose crushed as devastating and crushing recognition made its rounds through their sensational mouths, excited and terrified in equal measure what was to come, speculating and arguing, consuming more booze that even on their ambitious average.

The few conscious enough to sense the danger they imminently were encircled, ran or at least tried to: Nights after, they would be found pinned with nails on their old dwellings, decaying and rotting only slowly - no one dared to properly cremate or entomb them, their faces contorted with the last glance they would ever do, a negative image of their attackers, speaking of shock and marvel, as the men who preyed upon them were especially vicious and beautiful simultaneously. If the attackers were even human to begin with.

On the nights where the sea was either notably distressed and ill-witted or too tranquil to make it believable, was where the villagers would tend to their homes without setting a foot outside for the following days.

There was no point informing their king of this treacherous tragedy: All messangers were intercepted or either never reached the palace inland and all of their arrogant sacrifices fell only on deaf ears, Zamolxis turning his back on his people, conspiring with the very murderers striking their people down one by one, so efficiently.

There was nothing but to wait for the grand final fiasco. Well, all did feel fear and fright but one interesting individual seemingly tired of life, embracing her reaching end with new-found fervour and inspiration, considering how frequently she would spit on the warnings and solitary curfews, sitting at her cliffs cultivating a blueish-green fire, sternly enjoying the appearance and flagrant nature of their music, even on the most freezing nights and specifically on rainfalls, for their roof more and more figured leaky, having her better completely exposed to the elements than in a seeping slaughterhouse were the whiff of gore and blood wrestled with the stinking stench of her father who would win the humid competition of radiating the most foulest smells.

Fall went from dying winter to reborn spring to summer once again, where the Skeleton Crew continued to sporadically torment and mock the village just as per usual.

It was silly she knew, but it was like she understood the creature residing in the ship of no one, on an advanced level than the humanoid monsters walking day and night around in her village, shaming her for her loss of a mother, and the decay of her father, as if she herself carried the plague to such misfortune.

The delicate and fragility, and refined skills of the ship and their music felt like the only right thing to have in the world, scales falling from her eyes to understand the truth:

The Dacians were primitive, based, neanderthalic beasts and coarse ruffians, how they easily could kill and maim each other, how they behaved with their wives, how they would engulf an entire sheep by ripping out its ligaments and tendons and devouring it as there would be no tomorrow, raw and burnt bits of meat planted everywhere and wool hanging out of their flews. Crazy eyes, stuttering of morals and nobility when they could tear apart their neighbours due to a simple dispute heated and incited by too much liquor, and still be renowned and deferential amidst the brotherhood.

They had no culture, no art, no music, no grace, knew no love, no convictions and it would only be mercy for them all if the fair romans came and annexed and exploited their country or the Skeleton Crew would kill every single one of them so their doomed legacy wouldn't be passed onto generations and generations of violent and brutal, angry people.

She resented everything, even being a full-fledged, full-blooded one, sometimes dreaming about spun tales about how a ship would come and sweep her out of her horrid life, of this existence, come to save and bring her to a better world.

Well, careful what you wish for...

The only thing that did change though, was after nearly an entire half-decade had passed, finally one of her suitors had asked her dull-edged father to marry her, one of the twinned sons of the leader of the hunters caste, with a clean-cut blouse and a straight smile, he had come sunday morning, when she was out hunting herself, kneeling in front of the shell of a man constantly carrying a flask of alcohol once used to be and feeding nothing but lies to the gullible, delighted ears, speaking the morphed reality he desperately wished to occur from the day she was born, that her destiny unfolded. Her father had taken in his hideous clothing and his faking smile, goggled at the huge sword nestled at his hip and his short muddy brown hair, an unremarkable face rather speckled with innocent green eyes, glittering like mischievous emeralds. What incredible speech he must have given him. And he nodded his acceptance of the match, much to his daughter's disliking.

She was quite familiar with the national treasure found in the two brothers and relented their presence with every fibre of her being, because they particularly embraced their talents of torturing poor animals and drowning them in the sea, cutting out their entrails and toying with them after, killing mere out of skillful sport than the necessity of hunger, dangerously tipping of the scale that separated them the apparent higher species.

That fatal night, she had swiftly jumped from a tree, golden hair as shimmering as ever, blue eyes confidently piercing through the night shade, as she made her way toward the cabin to her home, her father lucidly and awkwardly awaiting her in the dawning light, features weirdly present, radiating finality and objective.

She paused in the door frame, unsure how to handle him seated in this apparel.

"Good Day Father", she greeted restlessly, eyes taking in how all her dresses were perfectly folded, her shoes stacked on top and her leather garments ordered in length, waiting on a stool. The cabin still smelled stale, but it was a lot cleaner and the clay bottles had been taken out, flasks emptied and hung to dry. Their best candles were lit, beaming the face of her father from below, all crinkles and wrinkles, imperfections shadowed, a weathered, thin face as if reflecting one of the recently dead.

His eyes squinted to take her better in, proclaiming from scratch how he didn't condone disobedience situational from her, essentially today, for he had something coherent to speak.

"Daughter, the time has come. I have engaged you to one of the twinned brothers in our town and you two are soon going to marry, for you finally can be useful and repay your birthright", he spoke as if casually conversing about the weather, the catch of today, whereas his unrest compared to her shock of its true meaning.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She felt like he had just slapped her across the face with all his strength. And nausea, devoid of all sentiment with growing irritation.

How he could still hurt her after destructing his body for years with excessive liquor, being a dull, daft, dying person, was beyond her, but he exceeded her expectations just as always.

He had stripped her of all freedom now, by forging the contract to have her wedded off, even though partly she could never imagine such a life for herself, deeply sensing how much pain it caused her mother in response.

Her father had dug his own grave and had taken her with him, trenching six feet deep and throwing her under, with no remorse, no much more than shrugging and an odd grin, showing his yellow stained teeth. And earth was packed and shoved on her body, a firm and grave tomb, as she would slowly run out of air and the worms would eat her skin and her hair, the sun and outside world hid off her, never would she leave the confines of her new cubicle, literally and illiterally. It was as if she was all but trapped again in that well, slowly, agonisingly drowning in a cold so bitter it could splinter your bones and break your spine, silence your dying words and capture your breath.

It was no mystery, no secret how women in the village were treated by their men and in the community, the stupidity burned in her throat while perishing, how she foolishly believed she would be spared of their earthly laws and oaths.

The room blurred in front of her teary, stupefied eyes, first time since forever noticing the all-consuming taint of combusting flesh in the air of their cabin, of the women that had died here, here where her home was supposed to be, the lives shattered and crushed under the soles of her greedy father, the particles of their freed bodies she has stomped fixed, integrated into the floor. Would she flee the misery also like these prisoners? Paying her undying freedom with cut skin, bleeding veins or a broken neck?

Her heart hammered and she only looked at her father, objection must have been as visible as denial and aversion in her face.

He wasn't even looking at her, taking in her disdain, only  seeing the shimmer of her hair, her regal stature and nodded to himself what it felt like to be a traitor of cowardice, staunch to only his convictions.

"No objections, no proposals, the contrast is made and my worth as patriarch is final, I do not want to hear another word of your mouth. My daughter, my blood will make a fine mother, a venerated, dignified present and I will have many grandsons. The matter is solved and didgnity is restored...", his lilting monologue trailed off, as he watched the ceiling, blinking desperately to be in favour of consciousness, when it was so easily slipping away from him.

He was once drunk again, probably. Very likely. Definitely. 

Her body shook with unloaded energy, wishing to be shed brutally, desiring to lick blood, burn his gutless shell until she would only hold ashes. How much she wished, she shuddered with bitter recognition, she could bleed all their shared blood away, anything better than be half of anything of him.

Her anger contained in so many checks and noble sedation swoll to her triple size, barely controlled and put in restraints by her, fists agglomerated to white balls, disregarding how petite she was in comparison to her father, disregarding how feeble, meek, for her rage burned like the sun, comparing this to the flame of a candle.

The light of the foundering sun concentrated on her face the same one focused a glass lens on a bundle of arid grass to watch it lit ablaze and it crossed her mind, that you would have to fight for your goals, for your freedom, for your soul, for your body, if you sought redemption, if you wanted to live. You needed to climb out of your personal hell, to stop it, because no one else ought to do it for you.

"How can I possess dignity if I am married away to a mindless imbecile like you, without any say in that matter! Rather than giving you what you want and suffering greatly for your undeserving hide, I'd jump from the cliffs, ending our tainted family with me!", she snarled in a raised voice, something she would have never dared before, but what had she to lose?

She had a world to see and explore. 

Even if it meant dying in the process, to trade the smallest possibility of realising her dream, it would be worth it.