Midpoint

I can’t help but wonder at it - how it is that I left my house with the intention of bringing back a quail and instead returned escorting a vagabond trespassing on my property. My land hasn’t much to harvest, but we’re close to the eastern border and maybe that’s what attracted the lost soul to cross my land with nothing more than a small satchel and a few layers of torn clothes. Not even a weapon. I suppose she saw an older woman like me walking down the path and assumed I could not keep my hands on my rifle in a scuffle. Well, she thought wrong and her trophy for the encounter is the prod of my gun’s barrel against her lower back as we move closer to my home.

She’s young, can’t be too much older than my daughter Abigail. She reminds me of the stories my mother told me of dryads and wood spirits, her hair is thick with dirt and a crown of bramble. But there’s nothing mystical about the dark circles marking her haunted eyes. She hasn’t said a word. Abigail, with her tightly bound braids and clear face, has never known a life like this, and she likely never will. My daughter’s certainly never had the look in her eyes that this woman does - the distant anger of a muzzled dog.

The trees thin out as the path reaches the house, and I can see Abigail emerging from the front door, brow furrowed as she takes in the sight of me and my prize.

“Abigail,” I cut off the question emerging from her lips, “Go get the cellar key. Grab one of our blankets too, maybe that tacky one.” She visibly hesitates from the oddness of it all before she returns inside to comply.

The vagabond stands there awkwardly, gazing down at her filthy feet. My gun prods her like cattle and she takes a few more steps forward. Abigail returns, blanket draped on her shoulder, as she swoops off the porch to the trap door at the base of the house. The lock is old and the doors are heavy but she pushes them apart with a grunt of effort.

“Thanks, girl,” I roll my head for a moment, my tight shoulders aching, “Now do me a favor and go down there and take out anything pokey or sharp. I’m pretty sure there’s a rake down there somewhere that we don’t want our guest getting ahold of.”

Abigail’s eyes burn with curiosity but she does as she’s told, retrieves not just the rake but also a few other candidates for weaponry. Without ceremony, I prod the vagabond again and she takes the cue to walk, and we go down the creaky steps of the cellar.

The cellar is dark, save for a single window with metal bars that lets in some dying sunlight. In the low light, I see the blanket on the floor, as well as a single bucket, and a locked chest. Not much else remains.

I reach and gently tug on the bag around her arm and she lets it go. It’s surprisingly soft as I swing it on my shoulder.

“Alright. Go ahead and take a seat.”

The vagabond’s back leaves the mouth of my rifle and for a wild second I anticipate another attack, but she simply walks to the bucket and sits down on it tenderly. When I leave her, she looks to me like a broken doll.

-

“I know who she is.”

Abigail’s words drift across the kitchen table. After locking the vagabond in the cellar, I find myself looking down at a vegetable dinner with an anxious gut.

“Oh?”

“Yes. There’s been posters for her all over town. There’s a bounty on her head.”

Bounty. A criminal. My stomach tightens.

Abigail catches my gaze by leaning forward with eagerness. Her voice is tight with excitement, “The reward for her return is 20,000.”

“Such a high price for a single person.”

My daughter shrugs, “Her husband, a rich noble up North, he’s the one funding the bounty. He’s very wealthy.”

“What is she wanted for?”

Abigail replies casually, “Murder of a child not yet born.”

Ah.

I’ve never committed the act but I think I’d know the feeling. Abigail is the only child I’ve birthed, but I was supposed to bear another a few years after her. But - well. I remember that morning so well, the loss. I haven’t lingered in sadness, but there was a long time when I wondered if I did something to cause it, or if it was simply nature taking back what it gave me. My husband took it harder than I ever did, it was heavy in his heart until the day he died. I wonder if we ever did tell Abigail...

“Explains how she ended up on our little homestead, doesn’t it? She was trying to cross the border. 20,000.” Abigail’s repeating the number incredulously, “Just imagine that amount of money. The leaky roof, the broken fencing... we could hire someone. We could hire a man to come in and fix these things.”

“I told you, I’m gonna fix those things in the spring, it’s too cold now.”

“Momma, you could hurt yourself.”

The taste of an old argument is bitter, I smother it with another forkful of greens. 20,000 is a lot. But I’m not thinking about this stitched-together home and the endless cycle of seasonal repairs, I’m thinking about the girl across the table from me. About education, travel, trappings for a life that she reads about fervently but never believes she can achieve. Outside of a widow’s ability to provide, but 20,000 is such a large number indeed.

“How do you kill a baby inside of you?”

I snap my head up. Abigail’s got that wondering look on her eyes. Always so curious.

“Well, folktales describe a few ways,” I sigh, “but I don’t want you filling your head with those thoughts.”

A bath of hot water, a tea with bitter root, a wildflower chewed, these tales danced in the back of my mind. Our faces reflected back to us in the kitchen window, shadowed by night. I can see my daughter’s fine face and imagine it in a ballroom or a distant university. I see my own and my eyes seem darker than ever. I swear I’m fading from this world each day.

“We’ll go to town in the morning and bring her to the sheriff,” I remark as I stand up, wincing at the pain in my knees, “I’m going to go lay down.”

-

As I recline on my bed upstairs, listening to the sounds of Abigail washing dishes, I find myself restless. There’s a distant sound beyond the clatter of the sink. The creaking of the house felt to me to be the sighs of the woman in the cellar. She's expanding in my mind. Her inhalation is expanding the house against its joints and her exhalation carries the wind. Behind my eyelids is the image of her face, her medusa gaze.

I cannot simply lay there any longer. Reaching up, despite my protesting back, I look at the bookshelf for a title to catch my eye, or maybe I could help Abigail with the dishes. Instead, my hands reach down to where I’ve left my slippers, where I’ve also left the satchel I took from the woman. Again I marvel at its softness, no doubt purchased by that wealthy husband-turned-hunter.

Reaching inside, there are only two items to retrieve - the first one is a small black notebook, discreet and simple. The other is a small glass bottle. It’s empty, save for a few water drops trickling down the inside. I leave it aside in favor of the journal.

The handwriting is neat, tidy.

Small snippets of the woman’s day-to-day life filled the pages, reminiscent of daydreams that Abigail might have about her own future. The thorny figure of mythic proportions downstairs seemed to shrink with each page, shrinking down to something raw and human.

The ambassador was kind enough to teach me some of the local dialect. Later I got to practice some at a local café just down the street from my hotel. Tomorrow I think I’ll go to the sculpture museum, to see a showcase from a travelling artist.

It’s exactly the sort of life I envision for Abigail. My heart twists.

The old woman at the café has a cat who I think may be as old as she is. I sometimes wish I had a pet, but I’d hate to leave it behind whenever I worked abroad. It wouldn’t be kind. James reminds me of this frequently.

James, he must be the husband.

At some point, the adventures become less and less frequent.

James tells me it’s important that I rest with my condition. I wanted to see the seashore but I’ve been informed that it’s against his wishes. I suppose it’s for the best.

As for the act she committed, I can find no mentions of the method, no descriptions of tonics or rituals to complete the deed. At some point the journal entries just stop, with one final entry from a few weeks ago.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever leave this room.

The blank pages of untold stories fill the rest of the book.

The night is quiet. Abigail has finished washing the dishes and I assume she’s returned to her room to read her own literature. The small black book is light in my hands but weighs heavy in my mind. It’s like a coin without markings. On one side, the journey to Abigail’s bright potential could start on fresh pages a rich life of winnings and adventure. Flip it on the other side... Well. A story begun could be finished.

I stare at the door.

The money would mean so much for Abigail. She’d refuse it at first but would gladly accept when it manifested into school and boarding.

I’ve always dreaded the possibility of her being trapped in this house.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever leave this room.

I don’t see my daughter when I venture downstairs, pausing in the kitchen to grab a bowl of leftover vegetables, before walking outside and gingerly unlocking the cellar.

It’s incredibly dark, a pool of shadow at my feet. The moon’s small, but just enough light leaks through that I can make out the vagabond’s form at the other side of the room, on that bucket, where I left her. I find myself paranoid that she's somehow dead, but her eyes glimmer alertly in the shadows.

Slowly, I place the plate of vegetables at her feet. My neck tingles and heart pounds from the potential danger, but she only reaches for the food.

I also have the book with me, tucked under my arm. It returns to her, cradled in my trembling hands.

She speaks.

“Thank you.”

In that fragile voice, you can still hear that aristocratic life, but mostly... mostly exhaustion.

I nod awkwardly.

I back up, turning and walking up the stairs.

And I just so happen to leave the cellar door open when I return to the house.

Abigail wouldn’t understand why I did it, and I’ll just tell her that the vagabond escaped in the night. The kitchen chair and my trusty rifle await me; I won’t be sleeping tonight, not until I see that shadowy form disappear into the woods and away from here. I assume she’ll head East, to the border, to a new beginning.

In a way, we’re stuck between two worlds here on this small plot of land so close to the border. Abigail’s bound for somewhere else someday, that I’m sure.

And as for myself, in a house that’s falling down, and I am too... in this midpoint, I plan to remain.