Her Secret

Pale indigo eyes watched calmly as the tall, dark-haired man paced on the wooden floor before them. Their owner, a golden-haired girl no older than seventeen, followed the man’s progress back and forth, wondering how the compulsive behaviour could possibly be helping her. She sat straight-backed on a primitive wooden stool behind a low stone wall, the height of a garden fence, facing most members of the small town she lived in.

In attempt to become more comfortable, she shifted the positioning at her pale, long fingered hands, which were bound in chains behind her back. The movement made loud scraping noises as the chains rubbed against one another.

Almost the entire audience jumped at the sound and looked her way, for she had been close to silent up until then. She glanced out at them, strange purple eyes narrowing ever so slightly. How she longed to spit in each of their faces for doing this to her.

The tall man, who finally stopped pacing, turned to look at her.

“Miss Tyse,” he addressed her in his slow, orderly voice. She turned her eyes to him, but not before one last hate-filled glare at the crowd.

“Yes?” her voice was cold, controlled; her breathing steady. She showed no sign of guilt or innocence in her body language.

“You have been brought here today on the charge of using dark magick and delving into forbidden knowledge of the past. You are aware of this.”

It was more a statement than a question, but she knew she was expected to reply anyway. “Yes.”

“Good. Is there anything you would like to say before we begin trial?”

She fought against the temptation to repeat her previous answer. She wanted to scream that they were all dimmer than broken lanterns.

Instead she said, “No.”

“Let the trial begin.” Boomed the loud, forceful voice of the judge in his grand oak chair alongside the Tyse girl. She glanced up at him, hating him more than any of the audience below.

The tiny courtroom fell suddenly very silent and still. The only sounds heard were those of the wind outside.

The girl on trial looked back to the happenings before her, casting her feelings of anger aside. There was no time for that now. The dark-haired man asked anyone baring evidence positive to the charges to step forward and present it. A man in the front row stood first and came to stand before the judge’s chair.

Then he turned to the audience.

The girl watched in wonder as he pulled out of his pocket the smoke- blackened stump of a candle and held it in the distance from his body, hands shaking. “As yeh all know,” he said, obviously fighting not to use high-land slang, “my farm runs alon’side th’ Tyse’s. Not ten days previous teh today I woke up close the midnight an’ heard singin’ from near th’ well tha’ th’ Tyse’s an’ me share. T’was a spooky kinda singin’ yeh know?” He paused, as if he was waiting for a dramatic effect.

The girl knew what was coming next. She sat very still, dreading the sound of his next word.

“Witch-like.” She flinched. “An’ th’ next mornin’ as soon as th’ sun was risin’ I wen’ out teh investigate. All I found was this.” He held the candle stump further from himself, as if the mere mention of it would cause it to explode, or the like.

The girl wanted to hiss at him. There was no such think as magick or witches. And the stump of a candle was hardly proof that there was. The audience didn’t seem to come to this conclusion, though. The girl watched disgusted, as they whispered amongst themselves about what a blackened candle stump meant.

“Mr Coth,” came the judges voice. “May I ask how a candle stump alone is proof of Miss Tyse’s guilt?”

The girl turned to look at him in amazement. Maybe she had been wrong to hate him so. Perhaps he did care what happened to her.

“Well, alone ’tis no proof at all.” admitted the highlander, Mr Coth. The Tyse girl drew her eyes from the judge to look upon her next dor neighbour. How dare he try to prove her guilty? Hadn’t she helped him on his farm without payment every winter since she was six?

“But,” he added, trying very hard not to look at the girl, “with the other stories yeh’ll hear, sure ’twill add teh the provin’.”

Mr Coth turned and went back to his seat and the tall dark-haired man stepped back onto the main floor from where he had been standing next to the girls stool.

“Thank you Mr Coth. Miss Tyse,” he did not look at her, “do you have anything to say against this evidence?”

She knew that she couldn’t say what she wanted to. She knew she had to hold her tongue until the very end. She had promised everyone who wanted he to make it out of this that she would keep her temper.

“No.” she replied grudgingly.

“Very well,” the tall man continued. “May I call forth the next person with proof?”

The rest of the trial went like this. Several more evidence bearers came forward and presented stories similar to Mr Coth’s.

One woman had seen a figure dancing in one of the Tyse’s paddocks late one night.. Another had heard ‘witch-like’ singing coming from the Tyse farm, and then found a broken glass vial. No story was more evidential than the first. And after each the tall man would ask is she had a response. The answer was always “No.”.

Each person who claimed proof was unexpected but the girl managed to accept that most of the town had turned against her. That was until the last evidence bearer stepped from her seat. The girl on trial gazed into horror at the girl, only two years younger than herself, who hurried along the thin isle down the middle of the seats. The younger girl had long golden hair to rival the older’s and features that could only belong to a relative of the girl on trial.

It was her baby sister, Rosette.

The younger Tyse was holding a stack of books that the elder girl recognised from her bedroom. Rosette walked right up to the judge, then turned to the audience and dropped the large pile of books on the floor.

“I found these in Lila’s room.” was all she said. The girl on trial, Lila, gasped as she saw the titles of the books. They weren’t just any books. They were the ones she had stolen from the ancient book burning ceremonies that took place in town whenever a large source of them were found at ruins. Lila, like everyone else, knew that knowledge of the past was forbidden. That hadn’t stopped her from finding out as much as she could about the ancient times. Because of this she was more knowledgeable than most of the town folk.

She understood that the people who had forbidden anything to do with the past were only trying to prevent the old ways, the dark ways. Lila, though, thought that it would be easier to do this if the folk knew of the evil the ancients had done. To learn from their mistakes. So she had gained as much knowledge as she could. This included reading old books, most of which she could now see scattered over the floor in front of her. They were books like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Eclipse and The Devil Wears Prada.

“Oh, Rosette,” she heard herself whisper, watching her little sister’s face for any sign of guilt for what she had just done.

The entire audience had burst into conversation. Accusing shouts of “Witch!” and “Traitor!” were being directed at Lila from all through the court house. The girl’s heart sank down to the pit of her stomach as she stared at the chaos surrounding her. That was it. She would burn at the stake before nightfall.

“Quiet!” the judge shouted suddenly, and the noise died down in an instant.

Rosette returned to her seat, leaving the books lying accusingly across the wooden courtroom floor. The tall man, forgotten for a moment, stepped out of the shadows.

“All those with evidence negative to the charges please come forward.”

No one came.

Not one of the audience members stood from their seat. Not one of them could, or wanted to, prove her innocence. She fought viciously with her urge to cry, knowing that now would be the worst time.

“Miss Tyse, would you like to say anything to prove your innocence?” the tall man asked.

“Yes.” The word had escaped her lips before she could even think, “Magick is non-existent.” Her voice was slightly unsteady. She took a breath before continuing with her pre-planned speech. “It is something that exists only in ancient fiction. True, I do not deny that I do own many old books, but as for the charge of witchery? I gag at the word. If wanting to learn from past mistakes is a crime, then yes I am guilty of it. But dark magick does not know a place in this world, let alone am I guilty of it. I beg you to revise your accusations, for the only thing out of the ordinary about me is the colour of my eyes.”

The court room was silent.

No one looked at anyone in those few minutes of tomb-like quiet. Eyes were averted to the roof, the floor, the owners hands clasped tightly across the calico covered laps. Especially no one looked at Lila Tyse as she sat, insides twisting painfully before them, strange eyes pleading openly.

Finally, the tall man spoke, his voice not nearly as calm as it had previously been.

“Does anyone now, want to withdraw their evidence?”

No one moved a muscle.

Lila sought out Rosette with her eyes. When she found her, she saw the golden-haired girl gazing as if mesmerised at a spot to Lila’s right. Lila turned her eyes on the judge just in time to see him bring his gavel down on the stand in front of him.

“Guilty.”

Lila couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t hear anything else in the courtroom. There was nothing but the man beside her. How could he?

He refused to look at her.

When she finally drew breath, it was only to be released in an antagonised scream, “NO!”

She suddenly felt the chains fall down from her wrists and two pairs of hands grabbed her forearm and dragged her out from behind the wall. Her pale eyes never left the man’s face.

As she was dragged backwards down the isle she started to struggle and kick at her holders. She wasn’t a witch! They all knew it and they were going to let her burn her anyway!

Finding it hard to breathe again, Lila kept her eyes on the man. As if he could no longer help himself the man finally raised his eyes to meet her gaze.

“Father!” she screamed out as cyan eyes connected with indigo. A singular tear rolled down his cheek as she was dragged out of the courtroom door, leaving Honour Tyse sitting uneasily at the judge’s stand.

How could a man condemn his own daughter to burning out at the stake? How?

Before she could properly comprehend what was going on, Lila found herself tied to the town’s stake, tears streaming down her cheeks as the crowd chanted “Witch, witch!” over and over.

The purifying flames were lit.

The torches were menacingly close to the stake.

The heat started to make Lila sweat.

The stake was lit.

The flames reached Lila’s feet.

She screamed in agony.

And as the flames engulfed her body, Lila caught sight of her younger sister’s beautiful face. No one saw the exchange between them, but Lila’s dying thought was, Maybe magick does exist.

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Rosette turned away from her sister’s burning body trying to hide the malevolent grin on her face. Now no one would ever know her secret.

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A/N: So, I was in a weird knd o mood when I wrote this, but rereading it, I think I like it. So I thought I'd ask what you guys think.

What'd you think? Review!