Mariah

Mariah focused on the light blue feather she had found on the ground outside her room. She squinted her eyes until she started feeling a headache, beaming her will at the feather. It did not move. She believed she could do it. She really did. No one believed as much as she. This was what she was meant to do. She knew it.

Her brother Micah always teased her. Always tried to make her feel small. She would show him. He did not know as much as he thought he did. Except . . . it never worked. It was discouraging, at least it would be discouraging to a person who did not have the belief of Mariah. She redoubled her efforts. There! It moved. No, wait, that was just her breath that caused it to stir.

“Mariah,” her mother called. “Come fetch the water.” Mariah groaned. She hated her regular chores. So tedious. So ordinary, so hard. Why couldn’t she just focus her mind on the bucket and make it fetch water for her? That would be something. “Mariah?” her mother called again.

“Ugh!” she picked herself up off the ground in the back yard. The dirt had ground itself into her skirt where her knees had been pressing. She rubbed at the stains half-heartedly and went to fetch the water bucket.

Micah was bringing a load of firewood from the woods. There was that ever-present smirk on his face. “Mind you don’t spill any this time,” he said as he went by. Why did he have to treat her like a child? She was eleven. Almost a grown woman. In another couple of years Mama would be talking about marrying her off. That’s what they did to girls. That’s what they did to her older sister Shay, and Shay had disappeared from their lives. It was because they thought girls were not good for anything else. She would have to prove she was good for something, if not magic then what?

She filled the bucket from the creek. It was so much heavier with water in it, and awkward. It made her walk like a drunkard. Her arms were aching when she got back to the house. She took it in and set the bucket on the table. She looked at the water rocking back and forth in the bucket. Magic must be real, she thought to herself. Because the alternative was dreadful. If this was all there was to life, then what was the point? She noticed the little waves of water in the bucket as they rocked back and forth, like a wife mindlessly attending to her duties. Never changing, never stopping.

Her mother walked into the room. Look at your skirt!” Mama said, shaking her head. “Go wash up and make yourself presentable. We have the healer coming to supper tonight.”

The healer? That was wonderful. She had never actually met him before. Healing was tantamount to magic wasn’t it? Mariah washed her face. She brushed her hair and even changed her skirt to one that was mostly clean. She wanted to be presentable to the healer. Mayhap he would let slip some of his secrets. She helped her mother clean off the table and watched her as she tended the stew on the fire. She hoped it was rabbit, and not mountain beaver. Why would a healer take any notice of a family that served him mountain beaver?

Her father returned from the field just before the healer arrived. Her father had invited the healer who, it was said, had no permanent home but was put up by this family or that, as he made his rounds among the five villages that made up The Wold. But others said that he lived in a castle east of The Wold and only occasionally dropped in on families. Some even said he had a pet dragon in the castle. Whatever the reason, she was glad he was coming. She would have to find a way to speak to him alone. She could not bring up magic in front of her parents and certainly not in front of her brother who would tease her and tell her she was chasing faeries again. Perhaps after all had gone to bed, she could steal into the common room where the man would be sleeping and ask him about his magic. What elation it must bring him, what joy! And to impart that knowledge on others must also be a joy, even a sacred duty to one who is like-minded as he. She would wait. She would have to wait, she told herself.

The healer swept in to the house. He was a tall man in black robes and a gray beard, His black hat was of wool, but finely made, not like the rough-spun stuff that she and her brother wore. Her father introduced the healer to the family. “This is Stote, our healer and guest for the evening. Stote, this is my wife lyra, my son Micah and daughter Mariah.” At the mention of her name her father ruffled her hair. She was mortified. Why did he treat her like a child or a pet in front of this guest? And she wished her father had washed before coming in from the field. His odor clung about him like a cloud around a mountain peak.

Stote gave a grunt to the family and sat at the proffered chair. Her mother ladled out the stew for her guest and placed a hunk of bread before him. Then she served the rest of the family. Stote began to eat first as was custom for a guest. Mariah tasted her stew. Ugh! Mountain beaver. She was embarrassed for the guest to have such a low meal. Stote himself did not appear affected one way or another but continued to eat.

Mariah felt she had to distance herself from this family. She sat up as tall in her chair as she could. She tried to affect a wry knowing smile. The light outside was fading. The glow from the fire and the candles was only bare enough to illuminate the faces at the table which were cut in hash shadows. Each one looked like a caricature of a human face, like the drawings her friend Saisa did. She wondered what her face looked like. Her wry smile faded. Her mother looked as anxious to speak to the healer as she was. The smile pinned to her face her eyes twinkling. But Mariah knew her mother could not speak until someone else began. The guest was too engrossed in his food to converse. Father could start a conversation or even her brother, that was acceptable, but they were equally intent in feeding their bellies as Stote was. The tap, tap, tap of spoons in bowls was the only sound heard.

Suddenly a voice burst out of Mariah, “do you do magic?” She hadn’t planned to speak. She knew she shouldn’t, but she could not help herself. Her father put down his spoon and looked at her. The guest glanced up from his stew as if he had seen a head sprout fully formed from the table. There was silence. Mariah knew she had overstepped, but there was nothing she could do about it now.

The healer grunted and said, “some.”

“Magic,” her brother scoffed. “She’s always on about magic.”

“She’ll grow out of it,” her father said.

Mariah was incensed. Grow out of it? No. She would not grow out of it. She felt bent like a twig to the breaking point. She had to know. “Can you teach me some?” she asked.

Her mother dropped her spoon in the stew spattering her front. “Mariah!”

It was too late to take it back, the only choice was to go forward, though she would suffer for it later. She sat defiant and gazed at the healer.

He regarded her lazily and said, “magic is not for girls. They have no aptitude for it.” Then he returned his full attention to his stew.

Mariah’s world collapsed. She was undone. If the healer had struck her in the face, he could not have done more damage. Her brother started to laugh. She threw her spoon down and ran from the table. “Mariah!” her mother called, but she was out the door. She ran out back into the thicket. Branches jabbed at her one poked her in the face, but she did not care. She was crying now, full on sobbing as she knelt down on her knees by the stream.

It was cold and misty. That was just one more thing adding to her misery as the dampness sank into her clothes. She threw herself down flat against the earth. “No!” she yelled. “No, no no!” She shook her fists and screamed at the blackness in front of her. She saw a spark. The spark turned into a flame. It was at the center of her vision. The flame illuminated the ground around her When she looked away the flame went out. She refocused on it and it burst forth again. She was doing this! She had lit a twig on fire. Now she understood. It was her pain, her emotions that allowed this. If it took pain to perform magic, so be it.

She sat up and watched her little fire, her new accomplishment “I will not be a bride for some local bumkin,’ she said, drying her eyes. “I will make my own world.” The flame grew.

THE END

Bio: "I work as a Cartographer on the Oregon Coast. It should go without saying, but I will say it anyway: I am not a bot. I have published one novel: Star Liner (Copypasta Publishing, 2018). I have published the short story “Sussurations” (Daikaijuzine, 2021), and a few nonfiction articles including “Problems with Artificial gravity” (Utopia Science Fiction, February, 2021)."

E-mail: Scott Branchfield

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