A story set in the Middle Ages, and explores the lives and relationships of three women otherwise alone in the world.
The last of the mourners, black-garbed and softly-spoken, finally left the wake, still clucking and tutting to one another as they walked down the lane in twos and threes. Cissy shut the front door firmly behind them, bolting and barring it with only a little more force than absolutely necessary. She returned to the parlor and curtsied to my mother who was still sat in the best chair staring resolutely at the fire.
"Well, aren't we a collection of old crows?" Mother said, smiling suddenly, "Flapping around in our own nest, pecking and cawing to one another."
Cissy laughed aloud, and even I cracked a smile, the first in many days. Cissy too was a widow, bereaved at a young age a few years ago by an accident that left her husband crushed and broken. She still wore her widow's black, although dressing with flair and a sassy manner at odds with the dour image such garments are intended to convey. Mother had taken her in as an act of charity, after the local lord had evicted her from the tied cottage that her farm laborer husband enjoyed as part of his wage. She had started as a lowly maidservant, but soon her energy and competence, her smiling face and ready hands, had elevated her in mother's estimation. Cissy now largely ran the household, and was in truth more a trusted companion than a servant.
Mother's face now became more solemn in appearance. Cissy and I set down our teacups and put our hands in our laps, and turned our entire attention to the older woman.
"We have all known the touch of a man," she resumed, speaking carefully in the way she did when she wished us to listen carefully, "And we have all experienced the loss of a man from our lives. I hesitate to suggest that each of our losses were in any way desired, but the absence of men may actually be a blessing in disguise. This way, we women are not exploited or beaten, or made pregnant time and again with much risk to life and health."
Danielle enters a baking contest that the Rainbow Dream Trains are hosting to impress a small UN counsel that is coming to the Castle of Imagination. But things quickly go wrong, for a very dark reason.
