The Hangman's Daughter

by J Lily Corbie

  "Cold," he laughed.

  I immediately withdrew, my cheeks coloring. "I'm sorry."

  He refused to allow me to escape. His arms caught around my waist again, drawing me close once more. "You could warm me again," he offered. In the dim light, I could see the hunger dawning in his expression. His eyes reminded me of the wolves I sometimes saw lurking just on the edge of my father's land. His voice had lowered, and enrapt, I nodded. "Oh, my Bella," he whispered, holding me up when my legs weakened.

  When I looked over his shoulder, I found my owl again. He was perched above us, watching with eyes that caught the faint moonlight and flashed it down to me. My owl stayed to watch when Henry's hands cupped my rear. The touch was more intimate than my father had ever given, and for a brief moment I was caught between pleasure and the desire to retreat to my familiar room and life. I had unwittingly made the invitation, and I considered withdrawing it, pleading innocence. Before I could make my decision, he lifted me and pressed my back hard against an ancient tree. The bark bit into me no more harshly than the cold while he supported me with only one hand and a knee. His free hand was quickly employed to gather up my gown. His hand reached between my legs, and his fingers moved purposefully against me. I gasped when he pressed one finger into me, but he silenced me with a kiss and forced another by the first. I couldn't get enough breath to encourage or deny him.

  His rough hands had been strangely pleasant against my skin, but were something terrible against my softest places. My protests were drowned by Henry's deep groan, and I was afraid to move while his fingers were inside of me.

  I thought myself stretched to my very limit, and thought my thigh must be bruising when he pulled his hand free to instead catch my leg. He got me to wrap my legs around his waist so he could keep his hands free. I thought of the creak of my parent's bed and of the sound of my mother pounding back against my wall when my father stood her beside their bed and his moans filled the silence. One of Henry's hands rose to caress my breast, and I gasped out when his fingers tightened harshly on the tender flesh. His other hand was busy between our bodies, pushing his pants out of the way. His cock sprang out into the chill night air and touched between my legs. He felt hot and blunt, and I forgot his kiss.

  He let go of my breast so that he could catch my hips, and he pressed me harder into the tree. The owl still watched as he moved his hips back and forth, his blunt head working its way between my legs. When he found the way into my body, he thrust forward brutally to bury himself to his root inside of me. He must have taken my whimper for pleasure, and moaned so deeply it vibrated through my entire being.

  "My Bella," he whispered again, then crushed my lips against his.

  The pain had overwhelmed me at the first. I knew he must have split me wide open. But as he withdrew, then moved back into me again, I found the moan escaping me to not be of pain, but pleasure, and the wetness I felt to not be all blood. I heard my owl's calls, and the sound comforted me further. His bright eyes were peering down on us, and I knew he wouldn't have led us here if it weren't right. I relaxed to welcome him into me and opened my eyes in surprise when his lips jerked from mine.

  My father stood over us with blazing eyes and clenched jaw. The hand in Henry's hair was trembling as he wrenched my boy from me. His eyes widened further when, with a wet sound, Henry's cock pulled out of me, and I slid down the tree to land in a heap.

  "On your feet," my father demanded in a voice thick with passion.

  I drew myself up and reached out beseechingly to him. "Father, oh Father, please don't," I begged. I looked only at him and didn't watch as Henry tugged his pants back up again with my father still clutching his hair. Henry was shorter than my father, but stouter and stronger. Still, he didn't fight so much as hang like a disobedient dog.

  "Return to the house," he said. His voice was too controlled. He bit off the end of each word.

  "But Father," I began, cutting off when the back of his hand met my cheek and threw me to the cold ground. I almost couldn't understand that he had hit me at all, that I hadn't somehow fallen on my own. The owl took flight, passing just over his head. Its clawed feet passed through my hair before it disappeared into the dark with a great sweep of its wings. I barely heard Henry's cry of outrage, instead reaching up to touch my throbbing face.

  "Return to the house," my father repeated.

  "Henry, you'll come for me again," I begged, looking up at him at last. He was staring at me in horror, still trapped by my father's hand and still not fighting. "Henry, please--" My father silenced me with a harsher blow. I tasted blood. He only glared down at me and didn't need to repeat himself.

  Wrapping the shawl around myself again, I gathered myself to my feet and fled across the dead land. I thought I saw pale, feathered bodies sweeping around me like guardian angels. My eyes were dry, and even with blood on my tongue, the thought brought a limping laugh from me. Whether I deserved angels or not, the hush of owl wings filled my ears and kept me from hearing what was echoing from the copse behind until I hurled myself through the door and slammed it shut.

  The hearth was as cold as the ground, and my cowardly mother was still in the room she shared with my father, pretending to sleep. I didn't light a lamp, and so left the house plunged in night as I picked my way back to my little room on numbed feet. It was waiting for me just like any other night, and I was glad to collapse in my bed.

  Light was only just tingeing the sky when my father shook me awake. He was smiling and he told me, "We've work today." He had never worked two days in a row before. But he kissed me on the forehead and withdrew from the room as he did every morning duty called. Confused, I rose from the bed and gathered up my dress. I caught sight of myself in my little mirror, paler than the moon where my cheek wasn't purpled, with lips redder than fresh blood and far redder than the brown crust dried at the corner of my mouth.

  I washed my face, but did nothing to hide the bruise in the hope the sight of it would shame my father. Instead, I clothed myself in my finest dress and curled my hair, decorating it with gay red ribbons. I had never made him wait for me before. My father's gaze was approving, though I could see no more of his expression behind his executioner's mask. He captured my hand in his and kept me tight to his side as we rode to the waiting gallows.

  The prisoner's cart was crammed as full as the day before. Before that day, I had never wondered where all of them came from. Why there were always so many, or why none of them fought for their lives. They came to my father's gallows with hollow eyes and nothing left in their faces. I had believed all of the condemned came to us at once. They breathed their last before my eyes, and my father wasn't summoned again until there were enough for another day of hangings. If there could be so many again, I no longer knew what to believe.

  I couldn't laugh at our old games that day, instead searching the crowd for my Henry's face. He had always pressed close to the gallows before, but I neither saw him that morning, nor well into the day. I thought I caught sight of the pale woman once, but my attention was far from the hangings, far from the crowd, far even from my father. I could not interest myself in the wicked tales told in the lists of the crimes of these men and women. Though my father tried to draw me close, tried to set my hand on the lever, I withdrew to the edge of our grisly stage to gaze hopefully into the crowd until he caught my chin and turned my face to the condemned man being led up the steps.

  There was my Henry, with his hands bound behind his back. His face was misshapen and purpled, and his eyes were reddened. They locked on me while the man on the other corner of the gallows read his charge: he was to be hanged for the violation of a young woman in good standing. My father left me stranded while he placed the rope.

  "Father," I whispered when he returned to me.

  I could see his cheeks rise and his eyes crinkle with a smile hidden by his mask, and my father caught my hand. He looked kindly, and I thought perhaps he would refuse to be the instrument of this death for my sake. He turned
me back around to face Henry and wrapped one arm around my waist, keeping me pressed close to him. For the first time that day, even with the occasional fat flake of snow drifting through the air around us, I felt warmed by his love.

  Instead, he set my hand on the lever.

  Henry's eyes were on mine, and there were tears brimming in them. My own were as dry as they had been the night before, though I trembled against the hard line of my father's body. One of my dear ravens who had so often been a part of my childhood games landed just beside the rope, waiting for a turn at those precious eyes. I shook my head.

  "You will," my father whispered tenderly in my ear, and his fingers tightened to crush my wrist. With my gaze locked with Henry's, I pulled the lever, and the trap opened beneath his feet.

  Part of me had expected to see his head fly off, and I had a wild moment imagining having to fetch it from the crowd. I would have known my father would have no pity on me. Henry's fall ended too soon, and his feet kicked out at nothing. I dared not look away, even when my father sat in his chair and drew me into his lap for the first time since I was but a child. His cock strained through the cloth of his pants and my dress, as though he might impale me right there before the shrieking, surging crowd.

  Henry tried to twist himself to keep his gaze on me, and I looked down to see he was as erect as the night before. His hips jerked hard as he died, and a stain soaked down his legs. I turned my eyes away and did not watch when my father cut him down and threw him into the back of our cart.

  The raven, rather than flying down for his prize, landed beside me. He seemed unperturbed by the crowd, dancing just out of my reach and cocking his head to one side when he peered up at me. I couldn't bear to look at the crowd and so looked instead at his shining feathers. He ventured close enough to pull at the end of one of my ribbons. He looked like he could disappear against my hair, all except his hard beak and glimmering eyes. When he didn't succeed in pulling off my ribbon, he gave me a consoling cry and rose into the air, brushing my face with a wingtip.

  I closed my eyes and didn't open them again until the sun was setting. My father's hand caught mine again, and he pulled me down the steps to our laden cart. His hands wrapped around my waist, and he lifted me from the ground to set me in my seat. I no longer had the heart to watch the familiar path, nor the approaching mountain of bodies and dirt. We skirted around it, back to the wasteland of ash.

  My father left me alone in the cart while he hopped down and walked with a spring to build his pyre over the charred bodies from the previous day, and from many hangings before.

  While his back was turned to me, I climbed from the cart, eschewing my old gambols to lean against the side so I could look for my Henry. He was right on the top, and for the first time in my life, my heart sank to realize a body was unwanted. Where was his father, the blacksmith? I set my hand on his and looked down at his black-stained hands, with their cracked nails and myriad little cuts and burns. His face, like countless others before him, was bloated and distorted. I could still recognize him, so I could bend my head to kiss his snow-cold lips. His cock still stood proudly in his white prison clothes. I had seen his dying pleasure and the stain, but from up close, I could see it wasn't urine soaking him. Very few didn't evacuate their bowels and bladder, and I was well accustomed to the septic reek from the cart, just as I was accustomed to the sweet rot from the mounded cemetery. No, the smell of this stain was different from anything I knew.

  Curiosity made me tug down the waist of his pants, perhaps just the same way he had pulled his down the previous night. I had never before seen a man in any state of undress, and I was surprised by the sight. Even in death, his cock stood tall, still covered in reddish stains. Still covered in my maiden's blood. It was also covered with something thicker, and pale.

  Sadly, I reached over to run my fingertips over the velvety head, and thought I might kiss it, too. A hard hand clamped on my wrist, and my father drew me back.

  "Do you still want it?" he hissed.

  I took a step back, afraid of my father and the feral gleam in his eyes for the first time. He drew the curved knife from his belt that he used to cut down corpses, and I took another step back. Rather than advancing towards me, he turned and gripped Henry's cock, slicing it off. "Do you still want it?" he demanded again, slapping me across the face with it.

  Sobbing at last, I turned to run from him. His heavy weight hit my back, tumbling me to the ground. He wrenched me onto my back, then pulled me upright by my throat. I couldn't imagine raising my hands to him, or even trying to ease the grip on my throat, even while he slapped both my cheeks until they were hot in the late autumn air. "Do you want it?" he demanded again, releasing me. I fell back on the ground and he straddled my chest. I couldn't see if he was still holding the severed organ. I gasped when he jerked his pants out of the way to let his cock spring free. My father caught my hair in both hands and pulled my head up, then thrust himself into my mouth and down my throat.

  I couldn't raise my hand to him, but I clawed at the ground. Ice and ash and dirt lodged under my nails, and when I'd reached the hard earth below, my nails broke and splintered. My father still wore his hood. All I could see of his face was his eyes, locked with mine. My vision began to grey, and I thought he would keep going until he'd killed me.

  He left me choking and gasping, and the cold air rushed over me. I was still fully dressed, but I felt naked. I curled over onto my side, lifting my hands to hide my face. My nose was filled with a smell like the one that had drawn me to expose Henry. I understood then what the stain had been, and I wept.

  My father returned to his work while I lay tamely in the ashes with clumps of snow melting against my sore cheek. He hummed while he worked, accompanying the crackle of the fire. I didn't move even when the heat from the fire grew uncomfortable against my legs, then began to hurt. I didn't look at my father, instead staring past the grey, dead land and over the pasture filled with snow clinging to yellowed winter grass.

  The watcher was standing on the edge of the pasture, shaded by trees and cloaked as always. I didn't know how long she'd been there, if she had seen what my father had done and only watched.

  My father saved my Henry for the last, and came to me with Henry's cock in his hand to ask if I wanted it for a keepsake. When I shook my head, he tossed it into the fire. He reduced my boy to only so much charred meat and bone. Fire after fire would render him to nothing but the soft ash that cushioned me and made the land around look like it was always covered in dirty snow.

  With his work for the day finished, he bent and gathered me tenderly into his arms. He kissed my forehead just as he did every morning and climbed into the cart without releasing me. He settled me in his lap, and as we rode, his free hand moved between my legs to rub against my sore private places. My tears had died away and frozen on my cheeks hours before, and I rode sedately. I sat quietly through a late meal, watching my mother avoiding my eyes as though she knew just what had passed that day.

  I withdrew to my room as soon as I might and pulled my covers over my head. I could hear my parents as my father boasted of his day and my mother neatened the house for the evening. I heard their footsteps pass my room and their door shut with a loud bang. I tried to shut my ears against the sounds of the bed creaking, my mother's sobs, and my father's familiar groans.

  When they were silent, I at last closed my eyes, resigned to my fate.

  I was wakened late in the night by a rap-tap-tapping at my window, and opened my eyes eagerly. I nigh flew to the casement, believing I had dreamed the entire day, and Henry had crept back to the window as soon as he was sure my father had returned to bed. I thought I would find him there, waiting for me. I thought it was still that same fated night, and he would open his arms again, so we could continue where we had been interrupted.

  Instead, I found a great raven clinging to the sill.

  There were two others circling behind him. When I opened the window to gaze out at them, they lan
ded. The largest remained at my window, but the other two hopped together across the ground. They bent their heads to dig at the clumps of grass with their sharp beaks like innocent birds and then turned to peer at me. They hopped impatiently with their heads inclined toward the line of trees. When I remained inside, one began to walk purposefully, and the great bird beside me reached out to pull at a strand of my hair.

  Understanding, I turned to gather up my shawl again. I didn't ask why they were out in the dark, or how they knew I needed them. They had been there all through the day. They had seen. I waited for the great raven to fly away before I climbed out and to the ice-crusted ground. It crackled beneath my bare feet, but I was glad to quit the warmth of the little room and the remaining echoes of my father's pleasure and my mother's pain.

  My guardians took to the air the moment I was outside. They looped around me in lazy circles, urging me with gentle brushes of their wings to one direction or another. I let them guide me over the frozen ground and through the dark trees. I ignored the piercing of thorns and the cracking of sticks, and soon enough my feet were too numbed to bother me.

  The night wore on, and my owls appeared to watch the daylight-dwelling intruders. I forgot how I kept my body moving, though the trees kept passing, and my raven-guardians kept urging me on. I was trembling with exhaustion as much as cold. When the trees opened up to a great meadow, my ravens landed. I sank to the ground and dropped my head to rest on my knees. I couldn't weep again--I had cried only once in my life, and I couldn't cry twice for the same man.

  Indeed, as exhaustion weighed my limbs and ached through my joints, I thought perhaps I really felt better. The cold had numbed away the throb from my swollen cheek and lip, and though my feet were bleeding into the hard ground, I no longer felt it. I felt more like one of my father's corpses just before they were tossed into the fire--so cold, and yet feeling nothing.