1727, Bermuda

Has your mind ever reached a place so far past the point of humiliation that everything becomes paradisiacal? 

Tranquility. Serenity. 

The sun’s rays stung my eyes after having been locked away for so long, but still, I stretched them wide and looked up. I felt the corners of my mouth curl as I watched the gulls dive towards the sparkling harbor and swoop back up to the sky. Oh, how I envied them....  

Without so much as a glance at my face, Benjamin pulled my hand down to my bare foot. I absorbed the aggression in his movement, but my lack of resistance only further angered him. I wasn’t trying to upset him, but my mood was too peaceful for a fight. 

“Maybe you should tie a double-hitch,” I suggested. 

Anger leapt from his eyes to my heart, and he tightened the rope securing my right thumb to my left big toe, forcing me to flinch. 

“Much better,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to be accused of conspiracy charges. Aiding in my great escape. Can you imagine how cross Mother would be with me?” I laughed with innocence. He remained unamused.

“Or maybe I would really just be further incriminating myself? If the ropes became loose, surely that would be further evidence of my diabolical behavior?” My voice trailed to a whisper as my conversation turned inward. “Then again, maybe I can control the ropes….”

His expression changed to the one of which I had grown accustomed: the stare people have when they are looking upon a lunatic.

As he tied my left thumb across my right foot, I studied his perpetually sun-kissed face. His skin was so tanned, you could hardly see the dust of freckles that I knew to be across his nose. His hair almost achieved a deep shade of honey, always the lightest at this time of year thanks to the sun’s strokes. He stood, hunting for anything to focus on so his golden-brown eyes wouldn’t have to meet mine. 

From my view on the floor, his lean, swimmer’s figure felt towering. He wore a white shirt I had never seen before. Clean. New. Pain flicked beneath my chest, knowing Benjamin now had a shirt I’d never seen. That I hadn’t stitched for him. The threads may have been foreign to my fingers, but the sleeves were rolled to his elbows just like they had been since we were children. I thought about the hundreds of times I had rolled his cuffs to keep them safe from the water and sand. How many times I had scrubbed tobacco plant stains from the creases.

His clenched fists caused the muscles in his forearms to protrude. His arms were taunt. His shoulders. His back.

His shirt wasn’t the only thing unfamiliar. Something else looked different. We had only been apart for six months, but he now looked like a man at nineteen. Stern. Strong. Radiating spite.

My elbows awkwardly crossed between my knees, and my muscles shook as my legs strained not to flop open beneath the layers of skirts. Stuck in the unnatural position, my corset jutted into my ribs. I cursed myself for not removing it this morning. Had there really been a point in wearing the contraption today? I had already been robbed of my modesty... of every shred of dignity I had come into this world with. My thoughts drifted to a place of fields and flowers and flowing, loose-fitting garments.

I squirmed, trying to find comfort, but the movement caused me to teeter left; I lost my balance completely and tipped to the side with a thud. Lying like a babe with my cheek pressed against the splintery, wet dock, the sight of the sea reclaimed my view and my head cleared, once again. The cold, damp wood felt so good on my cheek, only then did I realize how feverish I was. My brother attempted to pull me back upright, but my shoulder stiffened, longing for one more moment.

I inhaled the salty air deeply.

A strong gust blew into the harbor from the ocean, picking up my dirty, matted hair, spinning the curls wildly until they lay all over me, a cascade of auburn, covering the elaborate white dress my great-aunt had brought me for my day at the gallows. Despite it’s simple color, the death shroud was by far the fanciest thing I had ever worn. The layers and layers of white and light pink cotton engulfed me like a swirl of frosting. The top layer of finely embroidered tiny eyelets were like a whitewash of tears. The gift hadn’t been an act of kindness. More so that I wouldn’t bring further embarrassment to the family name by wearing the rag in which my dress had turned into over the last few months. I moved my shoulder so that my hair spilled down my chest, hiding my bosom, which was in danger of spilling out of the low cut ruffle of the bodice.

Another gust rolled over us, this one stronger than the first, the kind that indicated a storm was brewing in the distance despite the perfect sunshine. I imagined myself being blown out to sea. The wind carrying me far, far away from the exotic island and it’s insolent inhabitants. Once again, the corners of my lips turned up.

“Okay, it is time!” I yelled into the oncoming breeze. At least I think I yelled. I heard the words, and they sounded like my voice.

“Stop it—” Benjamin spat, finally looking me in the eye. 

“The spectacle can begin, now!” I shouted over him.

“Susannah, I beg you. Do not make the situation worse.” 

“Worse?” I choked, from the ground, unable to keep a short laugh from slipping out with the word. The laugh yearned to grow into a cackle, but the seriousness in his eyes ceased the sounds.

The laugh may have disappeared, but my smile wouldn’t fade, despite the muscles in my face beginning to ache, not having been forced into the position in months. No one could take it away from me. Not even Benjamin.

Despite my cry of surrender, nothing happened right away, allotting me a few more moments of the sparkling ocean horizon. As I lay against the wood, watching the gulls, Benjamin paced the width of the pier, occasionally obstructing my view. We had used up all of our words. There was nothing left to say.

I had made peace with this life on the isle.

I couldn't think about him anymore… about everything that had happened. My heart began to ache.

No, I thought. 

My pulse began to climb. 

And then it was too late.

Tap.

Tap.

Crack.

A tiny hammer knocked the protective bubble that had formed around me, shielding me from the outside world. Reality.  Tap. Rap. Tap. A tiny fracture. Panic pierced the euphoria.

“Don’t think about him,” I whispered to myself.

I knew what would happen if I continued to think about Benjamin even for a second. That tiny fracture would turn into a crack. A crack that would split me open in front of everyone. Which is what they all wanted. For me to totally unhinge. 

Tap. Tap. Rap. Rap.

Louder and louder.

I hung on to the smile, and with great intent, I listened for the birds, desperately holding on to the glee, rocking back and forth, until I was humming along with their sweet song. 

“I’m ready,” I whispered to no one and everyone.

And I was. Ready. Ready for whatever was next. Nothing could be worse than this place. The bottom of the ocean floor with the fish? The Devil’s den for all of eternity? I didn’t care anymore. I wanted it. I wanted out.

I wanted off this island. 

I wanted to fly away.

I stared straight into the noon sun, until my vision spasmmed and everything turned a whitish-blue. A wave crashed over the pier, spraying us both. I welcomed the sparkles that now danced across my vision. Slowly, my mind began to float away, back to the state of bliss.

Another wave crashed into the pier.

Now drenched, lying in a puddle, my gaze still did not break.

“I’m ready.” The words came out louder.

Benjamin paced faster.

“I’m ready!”

And faster.

“I’m ready! I’m ready!”

“She looks like a drowned mouse!” someone answered from behind, causing Benjamin to slow his pace and calm his breathing. I watched his chest heave up and down as more and more of the townsfolk gathered behind me.

“That’s ma point! If she’s guilty as the Devil, why don’t she morph herself into mouse and get out of the ropes?”

“Because silly woman, witches can’t turn themselves into mice. Don’t be absurd! Everyone knows witches turn themselves into cats. Black cats to be precise…”

“Well then, why don’t she just morph into a cat and get out of the ropes?”

“My dear woman! Witches can only turn into black cats under the light of a full moon.”

“Oh, well, that is most unfortunate for her, seein’ that the sun is glowing bright.”

“But most fortunate for us!” shrieked a random voice in the crowd. The words sounded faint and distant, as did the eruption of laugher that followed. Next came a a mumbled rumble of chatter. 

The sounds of the crashing waves on the rocks faded. The squawks of the circling birds, and the whooshes of the trees swaying in the breeze disappeared one by one as the voices in the crowd became louder and more distinguishable. I didn’t have to turn my head to know the crowd had gone from thin to full. I didn’t have to turn my head to know every single person in the population would be present today.

Refusing to look back, I laid still, staring into the bright sky.

The breeze continued to roll off the ocean and over me, causing my wet body to shake uncontrollably. In that moment of blue and breeze, my lashes became wet with tears, blurring my vision. The droplets didn’t fall, but rested between my eyelids preventing anything else to come into focus.

“For the daughter of a prostitute, she seems quite sane to me.”

“Good sir, that is because you have exceptionally questionable character…”

I didn’t have to see their faces: The Baker and the Banker. Ever since I was a young girl, I had heard their voices. All of their voices, as I sat in my attic bedroom, listening to them spill their secrets to the old woman I apprenticed under in the hermitage, begging her to cure their baby’s whooping cough, or symptoms they would not dare tell even their wives about.

More and more townsfolk gathered until it was no longer the breeze that shook me, but the rustle of their voices. I’d been listening to them mock me my whole life, “She’s so strange, that one.” “She talks to the birds.” “No one is naturally that happy.” The only difference now was that they now weren’t trying to shield their whispers. In fact, quite the opposite. They spoke with a ring of celebrated vindication. Revealing in the fact that their years of judgement had not been in vain.

I whispered the words that Benjamin had told me when I was a little girl: 

“Don’t listen to them. Just pretend it’s the leaves in the wind.”

But as I continued to stare into the horizon, a pair of familiar voices rang louder about the rest, no doubt, purposefully so I could hear them. A brother-sister pair of cousins who better resembled a pair of excitable monkeys. They were the same ages as Benjamin and I, but were born to more proper parents. Benjamin continued his pacing as the voices of the strangers who shared our own bloodline flooded our ears:

“If only the legendary Captain John Bowen could only see his daughter now—” said the boy.

“He’d probably get off on all the scandal and blatant blasphemy.”

The third voice who joined was impossible not to notice, for she spoke with an aristocratic arrogance that demanded to be heard. Their grandmother, my great-aunt, Sybil Norwood.

“Silence, you two, before you send my old bones to the grave. You know better than to mention that scoundrel’s name in my presence. After the shame he has brought to the Norwood family, disinheriting himself for a life on the open sea. Even his own mother, Anna, that acquitted hag, didn’t take her bastard grandchildren when she left the island for New York. That entire line of Norwood’s should be locked away and the key tossed to sea...”

“I am sure the bottom of the Ocean floor is what the future holds for her father."

"I've heard that he is already buried beneath crossed bones on the Isle de Bourbon.”

“If only he had never come back and sprinkled his seed around the docks….”

I held onto my smile despite the tears now threatening to spill from my eyes.

The wind pushed away the Norwood’s conversation and pulled in another, causing Benjamin to stop mid-stride and stand over me like a dog guarding it’s meal.

The voices from the group of girls squawked like a gaggle of geese.

“… the way her brother looks at her with such lust— it’s deplorable….”

“I would be quite okay with him looking at me that way….”

I reflexively jerked my arms to pull them over my head, but the result left my ears naked and my toes yanked, having somehow forgotten that my fingers were tied to them. That voice. Her voice.

The voice of Elizabeth Trimingham was enough to drive anyone mad.

I concentrated on the sounds of the ocean. The wind, pulling the water to and from the dock. My tears swelled and swelled, longing to pool with the crashed wave which had puddled around me. I listened for the gulls, but it was impossible to hear them over the rickety-rack of Elizabeth and her mates. The growing waves crash harder and harder against the dock. I prepared myself for an inevitable second douse.  

“Elizabeth Trimingham!” said one of the girls. “You are going to burn for eternity if you don’t run to the priest, this instant.

The next wave crashed into the dock, just enough to spray my face and soak Benjamin’s new shirt. A few squeals of laughter came from children who had been brought to the docks to be entertained.

“She obviously has a false hold over the poor boy, certainly the work of a noxious philtre. What man in their right mind could love her impossible red hair?” Giggles erupted from the gaggle of girls, distracting them from the wind, which ripped across the bay, carrying with it, a wall of water so fierce, it pushed Benjamin down over me. I let him into my protective bubble as it crashed over us and directly onto the pecking hens.

The bubble kept us momentarily dry and offered a fleeting moment of privacy.

“I’m ready,” I whispered just to him. “Promise that you’ll toss me with all of your might?” I thought about his swimmer’s arms. “I have to catch a wave so big that I could never possibly end up back here.”

“Stop it, Susannah. Stop saying such things.”

“I’m ready to fly.”

“Stop talking.”

“I’m ready to fly away from here, Benjamin.”

“What… what have they done to you, my love?”

I broadened my smile and blinked back the tears. “I’m ready.”

He touched my check and the bubble burst. Water crashed down around us. I whispered the words repeatedly to cover the sounds of the returning voices spilling from the crowd, until they turned into a shout: “I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready!”

“I’d like to to be locked up in room wit ‘er... ”

“Yeh, mate. Whudda fool’s errand this is. Give me one night in ‘er cell and I’ll spank the devil outta ‘er.”

“Nothin’ my itch couldn’t fix!”

And then it became impossible to differentiate who was saying what in the mob of hurricane hysteria.

“Look at her smile. Has a creature ever looked so insane? That girl's been smitten by the Evil Eye girl. Madness, I tell you.”

“Madness.”

“She’s mad.”

“Mad.... ”

“Mad.”

“Mad!”

“Lunatic.”

“Heretic!”

I heard the buzz in my ears before I felt the pain of the stone smash against the back of my head. It had been thrown with such force that it continued past me and into the water, skipping, one, two, three times. Benjamin dropped down to his knees, which held the smile on my face as my eyes slid shut. He always told me that my imagination would be the end of me.

* * *

It's hard to pinpoint the moment the humiliation ended and the euphoria began. Like trying to pinpoint the moment you went from being ill to well. While ill, you notice every ache and every pain – you think of nothing else but wanting to be in good health, but when the aliments leave, you don't think about being back in the regular state of comfort. The state of normalcy. 

Up until this year, I had lived a life of utter normalcy— 

I should perhaps preface this statement by telling you that I am absolutely, undisputedly mad. But unlike my aforementioned state of bliss, I can pinpoint the exact moment, in which, I came to this conclusion. I can remember it like it was yesterday.

Because it was yesterday. Right after I had been given the news that has now got my toes tied to my fingers:

“Everyone in this town is completely mad!” I screamed to no one, pulling myself from the wall, only for the chain to pull back the collar around my neck and jerk me to the floor. 

“The whole society of this isle is worthy of a room at the asylum!” I kicked and screamed from the dirt ground.

It was quite the paradox – when the status quo shifts to irrationality, insanity. As I sat on the floor of my cell and reflected upon my words, that’s when I realized there was no other conclusion to be drawn, except for the fact that it is I who must be mad. For surely it’s sign of madness to believe that it’s not you, but every other person in this malevolent maelstrom who has suffered a break of the psyche.

I’d been ducked six times (a record!). Stripped, poked, prodded. Pricked, bled and burned. Forced beneath the warden (and the warden’s son) all in the name of the Lord. And despite no evidence of the original accusations being found, I was now sentenced to be tested – and the rational behind this test, well, it was too absurd to tolerate. Had it been so long since these people had swam as children? Could they really not remember what is was like to relinquish yourself over to the waves? But no matter what I said they just looked at me like I was the lunatic. For they believed. And the human minds does funny things when it decides to believe.

Not believing in the succubus with whom the Devil had made a pact was just as well as disavowing the Devil himself, and denying the Devil was the same as denying God – good could not exist without evil. And heresy, well that was the most punishable offense of them all. The ultimate treason against the Church. The King. So, therefore, everyone believed in the Devil’s succubus.

And she was me.

It had all happened so quickly, and yet, it felt like a lifetime ago that I had been ripped away from my life of utter normalcy at the hermitage. From my brother.

 The dandelion. It all started with a dandelion.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

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