An extract from ' A Callous Land' an eBook by Susan Williams
‘Are you sure you want to do
this?’
‘I’ve never been so certain and
judging by the look of the rest of my body, and the look of horror on the faces
of the men folk in the fort, I can guess what I look like. But thank you for
your concern and if you don’t mind, would you leave me alone for tonight and fetch
me in the morning.’
‘I don’t mind Isabella. I
understand. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
With that, Mary left the dark,
lonely shack and a little tear fell from her eye. She wanted to be there for
Isabella, but she knew, this was something Isabella was going to have to come
to terms with on her own. She hadn’t wanted to give her the mirror but had
given in when she saw the look of despair on Isabella’s face, and now she was
regretting it.
Isabella placed the mirror face
down on the bed and walked over to the dressing table and poured herself a
glass of sherry which she downed in one, and then another and then another,
until, she felt numb enough to face what was to come. She pulled her long brown
hair up off her face and fastened it with a clip that she had found on the
dressing table. Then she sat on the bed and picked the mirror up.
First, she looked at her
forehead, there were a few small scars but nothing serious and they didn’t
distract from her beauty. Then she looked at her eyes and nose. Her face didn’t
look as good as she’d hoped it would. One of her eyes had a huge scar that went
diagonally across her face and on the other eye, a huge fragment by the side of
her eye had been gouged out. Then she looked down at her lips, fortunately, if
you could call it that, there were just a few scars over the top of them. Then
she looked down at her neck. She had a large red scar around it.
There were no words that could
describe how she felt and as she put the mirror down on the bed, a stream of
tears escaped from her eyes. Silent, knowing tears that she had no control
over. But she felt no more pain than she already did. The black void within her
just filled up with more excruciating hollowness.
She’d endured everything that was
humanly possible and survived, and for that she knew she should be grateful,
but she wasn’t. She had no life and nothing to look forward to and now she
understood why Tyak, the first man she had ever loved, had been repulsed by her
and in that moment, she was no longer afraid, because death would be a welcome
release for her.
No comments:
Post a Comment