Sacrifice

They gave her to me. Brought her to me one day when I was outside chopping wood. It was old Nicolaus and some of his sons, or maybe it was Nicolaus’s son and some of his sons . . . the time grows long and my memory short.

Nicolaus was looking old, his beard going gray and his eyes cracked with age. He let his sons carry her. They laid her at my feet while I stood there sweating, the axe handle in my hand growing damp as I looked at her skein of dark hair like a horse’s tail, her honey-gold skin. Nicolaus sighed as he came to rest on a stump and said nothing.

“It’s that time again, is it?” I said.

“Yes.” His sons hung back, unsure of their place in front of me, the legend they’d grown up hearing tales about. “Use her well. She’s all we could get for you.”

I had heard that devotion to the old gods, the old ways, was waning, but I could not tell if Nicolaus’s diffidence stemmed from that, or from his discomfort in bringing an unconscious innocent to me for sacrifice. They had wrapped her in a homespun blanket and nothing more, but now the entirety of her skin was open to the air, to my gaze. The young men holding the blanket averted their eyes, yet could not help steal glances at the beauty they were giving to me.

“Where did you get her, Nicolaus? Steal her...