It had been almost three years since Leofric was born. Three years, and still no baptism. There hadn't been a rush. Ingrid had always insisted it would happen when the time was right, and Einar—never particularly interested in ceremony—had gone along with it. But we all knew the truth: the longer we waited, the more impossible it became to want to go into the village. The further we drifted from the center of their world, the less inclined we were to step back into it. The less we belonged. The more we feared what waited behind every door we might still have once called neighbor.
Still, tradition is tradition, and eventually even stubborn silence wears thin. We were Christians, at least on paper. And not having Leo baptized after this long was starting to become the kind of thing people talked about even more than they already talked about us. The muttering carried farther. The glances lasted longer. It was no longer a curiosity, it was a sin. A wound in the fabric of their faith they blamed on us just as surely as they blamed us for dead crops and cold winds.
So we dressed in our best—simple but clean. Ingrid bundled Leofric tightly in a wool blanket she'd spent three weeks sewing herself, each stitch a prayer against the world. Einar carried a quiet tension in his shoulders that said more than words ever could. His axe stayed slung across his back, not because he thought he'd need it, but because he no longer trusted them not to give him a reason.
I walked beside them. Hood up. Eyes forward. Each step felt heavier than the last, like the road itself didn't want us to walk it.
I expected discomfort. Maybe even a few glares. We had lived like ghosts on the edges of their vision for so long that part of me thought they might have forgotten how to hate us properly. I told myself it would be awkward but brief. A formality. Just the rite, then home again.
What I didn't expect was venom.
It started almost immediately. Low voices at first, but loud enough to hear. "About time they crawled back in." "Too late for the boy, if you ask me." "Maybe God will save him. Not the rest."
Then came the sharper ones. "Don't look at her, you'll catch the devil." "Witch." "Whore's child."
And no one—not one soul—told them to stop.
They let the children mock me, too. One girl pretended to trip and flailed her arms in the air, laughing, "Help! She's doing her spells!" Another threw a dead twig at my feet and made a sign of the cross like I was cursed ground.
It wasn't clever. It wasn't even loud.
But it cut.
Worse than a mob. Worse than torches.
This was casual. Routine. A public sport. They didn't fear me. They felt safe enough to mock me in the open. And they weren't hiding it anymore.
Einar kept walking, jaw clenched, one hand resting on the axe—not as a threat, but as a warning that he could. Ingrid held Leofric tighter and looked neither left nor right, her lips pressed in a thin, pale line. Her hands trembled only once, when someone hissed a slur too foul to repeat.
I didn't say anything. I just watched them—watched all of them—make space not out of respect, but out of disgust. A corridor of shame we passed through in silence. Even the buildings seemed colder, their wooden bones stripped of warmth and memory. This wasn't a village anymore. It was a wound that festered with every step we took through it.
This wasn't just coldness. This was hate.
And I had thought I'd seen the worst of it already. Thought the whispers, the quiet exile, the turning of shoulders was the limit.
I'd been wrong.
This? This was worse.
Because now they weren't even pretending we were people.
We reached the chapel eventually. Father Aldwin was waiting. Alone.
He didn't smile. But he didn't scowl, either. His eyes paused on me—not cold, not warm, just tired—and then drifted to Leofric, bundled in Ingrid's arms. He gave a small nod and opened the door.
Inside, the chapel was silent. No congregation. No neighbors. Just dust-mottled light filtering through old, warped glass and the faint scent of ash and oil. The wooden pews stood empty, rows of hollow witnesses. No one had come to see Leofric welcomed into the faith. No one had dared—or bothered.
Still, Father Aldwin performed the rite. He moved slowly, but with reverence, voice steady even as it caught once at the name. He cradled the back of Leofric's head in his palm and whispered the blessing over him in Latin. Sprinkled the water. Lit the candle. Drew the cross.
And then… paused.
He handed Leofric back to Ingrid with a gentleness I hadn't expected. His hand lingered for a breath too long at the edge of the blanket, like he didn't want to let go. Then he turned to Einar. Then to me.
"I never believed what they said about you," he said quietly.
The words startled me. I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
"I tried to tell them it wasn't your fault. That none of it was." His voice lowered, like the walls might listen. "They don't care. Most of them… they don't want truth. They want something to blame."
He hesitated, then walked slowly to the altar, resting a hand on the edge like he needed its strength.
"I don't know if you remember… but I was the one who took you in, when you were first born. Just for a time." He didn't look at me as he said it. "Your mother… she brought you to me."
My blood went cold.
"I don't know her name. She never gave it. But she did give me yours, said you were meant to be here, and that she couldn't stay. She wore the habit of a nun, but she wasn't from the nearby convent—I asked. No one had ever heard of her."
He looked up, met my gaze fully.
"She said she'd never lain with a man. Swore on her faith that you were conceived without sin. She told me you were a gift, a sign from heaven, meant to serve a purpose she couldn't explain. A miraculous birth… like the Lord, she said, only quieter. No stars overhead. No angels singing. Just a baby in her arms."
I stared at him.
"I didn't know what to think," he went on. "I kept it quiet. I thought she was… maybe not well. But then, years later, someone found out. A half-remembered story, passed around like fire in dry grass. And they didn't see a miracle."
He looked toward the chapel door, voice tightening.
"They saw a demon."
A long silence settled between us. I could hear Leofric cooing softly in Ingrid's arms. Einar's hand rested near the axe at his hip, not in threat, just out of habit.
"I don't believe you're cursed," Aldwin said, more to the still air than to me. "But I think they've already decided you are. And when people decide something like that, truth rarely gets a second chance."
He finally looked back at me.
"You asked me once why I never looked at you like the others did. Why I didn't flinch."
I swallowed hard and nodded.
"Because I held you when you were a baby," he said, voice low and steady. "And in that moment, you were nothing but warmth and breath and life. Not a curse. Not a witch. Just a child—fragile, human, needing care like any other." He paused, eyes distant with memory. "And no matter what they whisper, I've never been able to unsee that."
He let out a breath, heavy with something older than weariness. "I don't fear what you can do, child. What you are… that doesn't scare me. It's what they might do to you that keeps me awake at night. People can convince themselves of terrible things when fear takes the reins. They don't need proof. Just permission."
He touched me gently on the forehead, fingers cool but steady, and murmured a quiet blessing. He didn't need to—there was no rite demanding it, no rule requiring it—but it felt like something deeper than tradition. A kindness. A reminder that even if the world had turned its back, not every door was closed. And in that moment, it meant more than he could have known.
When we stepped back outside into the brittle light of winter, I felt the world press in on me again—but lighter this time, like someone else had taken a piece of the weight, just for a little while.
We walked home afterward. No one threw anything. No one tried to stop us.
But no one spoke to us either.
Not one word.
And the silence of it was almost louder than the cruelty had been. Like a gaping void where a community was supposed to be. Even the birds seemed absent. Even the wind refused to carry sound.
I'd thought I was numb to it.
But this... this was something else.
This was the day I realized I wasn't part of their world anymore.
And that I never would be again.
We hadn't talked about the village visit afterward—none of us. Not even around the fire, when the nights stretched cold and quiet. We just… carried on. Ingrid returned to her weaving. Einar sharpened tools he didn't need sharpened. I chopped kindling with more force than necessary. We said nothing, and in that silence we shared the weight. A family huddled beneath an invisible pressure.
But something had shifted. Something tensed.
Like the world was waiting for a storm it already knew was coming.
And then it came.
It started with shouting. Not distant. Not muffled. Close.
I was near the back of the house, helping Ingrid wring out a soaked tunic, when I heard the voices rise—loud, angry, panicked. Einar was already at the door when I turned, already holding the axe he hadn't needed in over a season.
They didn't knock. They pounded.
We didn't open it.
But it didn't matter.
I could hear them just fine through the wood.
"She brought it here!"
"The witch! Her!"
"Lindisfarne is burning! Blood in the water! And she knew—she knew—before anyone else!"
"She's cursed this land!"
"God sees what you've sheltered under your roof, Einar!"
And that last one—his name—cut deeper than all the rest.
Because it meant they weren't just here for me.
They were here for us.
Einar opened the door. Not wide. Not like he was welcoming them. Just far enough to stand in the threshold with his axe held low, loose, but ready. The wind carried the scent of wet bark and distant fire.
"I've heard enough," he said flatly.
They didn't back away. Not even when they saw the weapon.
"You knew what she was!" a man shouted—one I vaguely recognized from the outer farms. "You raised her, and now heathens have come to reap the fields you've let her curse!"
"She summoned them!" a woman shrieked, holding a crude wooden cross high like it would shield her from me. "Witch-child, sent to punish us for our sins!"
I stepped into view, beside Einar, against Ingrid's frantic pull at my sleeve. Her eyes were wide with fear, but she said nothing. She knew, even then, that we'd passed a threshold.
"I didn't summon them," I said, voice cold. "I just knew they were coming."
That was a mistake.
Not because it wasn't true.
But because truth doesn't matter to people who've already chosen what they want to believe.
They howled.
Not words, not arguments—just rage.
That feral, righteous fury that comes when people want someone to blame more than they want answers. Their eyes burned brighter than their torches ever would.
"You led them here!"
"You marked our land!"
"You'll burn for this!"
I looked at them, really looked.
And for the first time, I didn't feel afraid.
I felt tired.
Tired of trying to explain myself. Tired of pretending this place was ever going to forgive me for being something they didn't understand. Tired of waiting for kindness from people who had none left to give. Their fear had become a poison, and I had stopped drinking from the same well.
Einar didn't flinch. Didn't budge.
"You come any closer," he said, voice low, "and I'll drop the first man who crosses this line."
A tense silence.
Someone in the back row threw a rock. It hit the side of the house, bounced harmlessly off the wall and hit someone in the crowd.
It had been enough to start the fighting.