The Legend of Sierryah Daniels

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 1

Nathaniel had not thought it was so late, but when he glanced at the clock hanging near the bar, it indeed informed him that it was about midnight. He sighed with defeat and looked back at the fire for quite some time before he spoke again, rubbing his eyes as he did so. This was only after he realized Otis would not mind waiting all night if he had to.

"It's my fault what's happened to her!" he said in a loud enough voice that those nearest him stopped what they were doing and looked at him for fear of accidentally being hit by flying bottles or perhaps even a table or two.

"What's happened to whom?" Otis asked, seemingly unaware that Nathaniel had raised his voice.

"I tried to save her, but it didn't work. There's no way to stop it" Nathaniel said, his voice filled with a mixture of pity and sorrow.

Otis tried to find something to say that would comfort his new friend, but after not having come up with the right words in his mind, he remained silent and just let him finish at his own pace. After a few moments of silence, Otis spoke again, asking another question.

"It's a sad fact that we can't undo what's been done. Who was it you're trying to save?"

Nathaniel shook his head in disgust with himself and looked at Otis with his answer.

"Sierryah Daniels! It's not right what's happened to her!"

The entire population of the pub went silent at the mention of the name. Otis' eyes immediately got the size of saucers, and he leaned in close to make sure that he had heard him right. After seeing that every patron was staring at him, mouth open, Nathaniel tore his eyes away from them and forced himself to focus on the conversation at hand. Sierryah Daniels was a name that everyone knew very well and everyone seemed shocked that a man such as Nathaniel would be trying to help someone like her.

Sierryah was born eighteen years ago today, on March seventeenth, sixteen forty-three. If anyone were to look at her, she looked like a normal eighteen year old girl, with pretty blonde hair and blue eyes. Her smile warmed the hearts of everyone in the village, even from the time shortly following her birth. Her parents were very proud of her, and always assured her that she was quite special, even though she felt very much like she was ordinary.

And then, strange things began to happen. One morning, her parents awoke to hear her screaming, and rushed into her room to find a series of messages that looked as though they had been burnt into the wall, but did not consume it. As she grew older, the messages still appeared regularly, but they no longer frightened her. One day while she was outside sitting on the steps near the schoolhouse, an old blind man happened to be led in front of her in passing, and from the moment he came near her, claimed he could see again.

News quickly spread about her, and soon, people from all over the village were coming by her house, asking her parents if they could just bring their sick and elderly into the same room as Sierryah so that they too could be healed of their ailments. Then, only a few short weeks ago, her parents died, leaving her very much alone in the world with not a soul to talk to. No one really understood her, and so she was to be excluded from all forms of fun that the children played in the schoolyard for fear that she might somehow do something supernatural to them.

Two days ago, a man passed by the Daniels house on the way to his own, and saw Sierryah sitting in her room chanting some sort of thing he deduced to be witchcraft, and so he accused her of being a witch. She was sentenced to death by the stake two days later at sunrise. And all of these thoughts brought Nathaniel's mind out from behind its haze and back into the reality of the conversation.

"Where did they take her?" he asked Otis in urgency, hoping against all hope that he might somehow have the answer.

Much to his despair, Otis replied: "No one knows. The only thing for sure, she'll be dead before breakfast."

Nathaniel hung his head low and sobbed bitterly. Not knowing what to do, Otis sat quietly, willing to stay with him until he decided to leave. However, Nathaniel didn't leave. He stayed all through the night. Moments before sunrise, Otis and Nathaniel went, along with the other stragglers from the pub that had not gone home, to the village square where a single stake was set upon a hill of logs and straw. Apparently there was to be only one death today. The whole of the village had come out to witness the spectacle, and Nathaniel was surprised to see that women had even brought their children, as if to show them whom not to be like when they got older.

They all stood there, chattering loudly to one another, until the exact moment the sun peeked out from over the horizon, lighting the morning sky on fire. It was at this time that the elders from the village took their places, four of them, two on either side of the stake. The chatter faded out in an instant, people eager to watch what was going to happen. Nathaniel and Otis turned to face the direction everyone else was looking, which happened to be directly behind them. They had all heard the shuffling of footsteps in the dirt.