A Caged Raven, Is A Bounded Raven

Almost on the quiet side of town near a cliff over a creek, a slanted building curving downwards to follow the awkwardness of the cliff's edge, stood the old jailhouse of Salem; a warped, wooden building with a normal enough ceiling which had to be the least problematic because unlike the church because this building needed to exist to hold any innocent or non prisoner.

Perhaps a rush of fear could not be placed with an origin how Evelyn was feeling, but for some reason staring at this poor looking jailhouse made her palms sweat only by locking her eyes on a odd color for a door, a blue entrance door for such an ugly building.

"Just one step at a time." She told herself, forcing her feet to walk to the blue door she noticed would get darker by every step.

No matter what, she kept walking to not stop even though she was terrified to be even in the same place that existed to be a building of broken wood just wasting away in this part of the village she has never ventured to before, "If I'm Orpheus, I must rescue my Eurydice from the underworld." Evelyn told herself, as she blindly walked up the wooden steps of the jailhouse to walk up them with closed eyes; eventually, she opened her eyes to only be struck by the blue door then getting knocked back on the hard, gray ground.

"I am greatly sorry, I did not see you!" The jailer said down to her before lending down his hand which she took, then lifting her up back on the porch of the jailhouse.

Evelyn brushed off her black dress as best as she could, "It doesn't matter." She mumbled under her breath.

The jailers bright eyes widened and his jaw dropped nearly to the floor, "You're that one niece, aren't you?" He said, bringing in a odd tone Evelyn couldn't placed to either be enthused or dismal, "Yes, it's you, isn't it?" He asked again with a blissful smile, "Unfortunately I couldn't attend the trial because I was watching the other one in here, but a few hours later the witch came in here with three men holding her like a snake on a mole rat."

Immediately a shiver ran down her spine how unordinary his speech was to call her aunt a witch and a disturbing rodent, "Are you talking about Lydia Jane?" she asked him with a forced smile she thought was needed until she stated her purpose of being there, "Hopefully you don't mind if I see her," Evelyn said, reaching past the jailer to grab the handle of the door to open it behind him to make little room.

"You can't." The jailer told her in a tone she understood to be cruel and low, a tone she only heard from Judge Stewart, "Miss. Jane is not allowed to have visitors as long as she's under the Salem Jailhouses grounds, I'm sorry." The jailer explained while closing then locking the door behind him in front of her as if he was trying to mock her efforts, "Go home." He ordered her lightly, putting the keys to the jailhouse in his upper left pocket of his shirt that Evelyn would remember.

Evelyn now in a state of misery glared up at the tall jailer to get a better look of his face; a tall man, blonde hair dangling with long bangs over dark blue eyes that were casted by a shadow of his hair to make them look darker than they probably were.

Again, the jailer spoke in a softer tone than what Evelyn was getting used to in a short time that almost seemed spiteful, "It is almost evening and so I must head back home, child, " He said with a hard emphasis of child.

Evelyn stepped aside on the porch to let the jailer walk off down the steps then onto the normal ground, she let him walk to the arch way of trees she walked through until his back was to her,

"I am not a witch." She told him honestly.

The jailer waved goodbye to continue walking away into the forest to leave Evelyn alone on the jailhouse porch, alone with no other purpose in her life except to wait.

"Evelyn?"

Evelyn stirred her head towards the blue door quickly, "Lydia?" She asked through the door, tears dripping from her black eyes to show there was emotion after all, "Is that really you?"

Through the door Evelyn could hear how big the room was, which was small because she felt like Lydia was so close to the door that if she opened it Lydia would be sitting there in a cell.

So, she started to look around for anything to allow her to get in besides the keys; as she looked around on the building from the porch, she saw a window that was higher than her, "I need a stool then I'll be able to-"

"No." Lydia finished for her.

Evelyn's tears froze under her bags, "Why not?" She asked, pleading for an answer, pressing her ear to the blue door waiting for her aunt's reasoning.

With Evelyn's ear so close to the door she could hear things, horrific things that made her stomach turn; chains grinded on wood floorings and constant pulls of a stretched out chain yanking and retracting to the wall to make a loud clawing sounds like a nail to a chalkboard.

Besides the chains movement, it was silent inside the jailhouses tightly shaped frames and cratered wood as the base, "Go home." Lydia told her, pulling on her chains from her wrist that only Evelyn could hear.

Evelyn swallowed hard on her whines, "No, I can't leave you alone!"

Inside the wooden cell that only had iron bars and a window cascading a plain, lifeless glow from the sun through the clouds to only glisten on the braided chains, "I am an adult, you are a child. Go home, I can take care of myself but you can't." Lydia groaned exhaustedly from pulling the chains even harder now that Evelyn was outside which reminded her why she was trying in the first place, "Someone in town will watch over you, go there now and stay there."

Evelyn tightened her frail hands that have never been so stiff to fold into a fist, she began to bang them on the door violently with all of her rage, "I'll get you out of here, Lydia, I promise!"

"Go, Evelyn!" Lyia told her through the cell walls.

As told, Evelyn fled the scene with her head in her hands only to disappear into the woods where the jailer left from, she then removed her hands to journey off into a high speed through the thickets and brambles.

Why couldn't I tell her, why couldn't I tell her it's my fault Dorothy died? Evelyn asked the only voice in her head to be a silent voice, she sighed, Where is a home for me anymore in this cruel land I cannot leave from?

"Get down from there!" A girl shouted.

Evelyn stopped in her tracks of soiled dress shoes to glance around the wood in search of the girls voice, only to find no girl at all.

Thus, she decided to walk until she heard her again,

"Get down or you'll fall!" The same girl shouted again in the same tone of frustration that almost sounded like a plea.

"Who is there?" Evelyn asked in the hollows of the woods, her voice beating against bare bark around the forest to reach the girl's ears, "I am not here to scare you, but I think I'm lost." Evelyn explained carefully not to unnerve the girl wherever she might be, she began to rotate around into a circle in the grassy weeds she stood until they were beaten down, "May I ask where you are hiding?"

A subtle answer arose from the strange girl who was still unseen, "Look up to the trees and you will see me."

So, Evelyn did look to the treetops to see the girl hanging off a branch, her eyes widened by the sight; a girl with dangling bare feet pointed to the ground sitting on a twisted branch, ruining her already tarnished dress that Evelyn noticed around the girl was tightening around her because of tears and rips.

Cautiously, Evelyn took off her sullied shoes to toss them at her side as her eyes started to scale around the tall tree where the girl sat where Evelyn couldn't reach; although terrified for the girl if she'd fall, she was impressed how the tiny girl managed to climb such a high stock,

"How did you manage to get up there?" Evelyn asked her, drifting away her concern to amazement.

Almost prideful to have her own attention, the girl of the age of eleven smiled, "I used a rope."

Immediately, a sharp chill ran up Evelyn's spine almost feeling she was being watched in every gaping hollow of the oak trees, "Could you throw it down, please?"

Just as quick as Evelyn's shiver crawling up her back, the girl's smile faded into a long line on her mouth to show her thoughts well, "If you come up here, you'll scare him."

"Scare who?" Evelyn wondered aloud to her, "Him?"

The girl nodded her head to a bird's nest to the right of her that Evelyn somehow missed; the bird's nest had old fallen leaves buried around it, all nestled in black decaying feathers and gray fuzzies sprawled in the leaves above it that the wind had tossed around previously.

After the nest was addressed a small cry came from the mess of a nest, "What is it in there?"

Evelyn asked to her, looking for the rope to climb up the tree, but she could not find it.

The eleven year old girl calmly reached her hand into the nest to gently cuff the bird creature in her frail hands, "He is an odd looking bird," She told Evelyn with a sigh, "So, his parents abandoned him in this nest to die in the cold."

Evelyn-still unsure and concerned-tried squinting her eyes at what the girl held, she then recognized an odd looking wing of white, "The white raven?" Evelyn said without control.

"I suppose, but I call him Merlin." The matted hair girl said to her down below, "He is my only friend now, but lately he has been trying to leave me by flying away."

'A bird of hunt that always sets on a plan with ingenious attempts in order to get what they want,' Evelyn recalled, Lydia's spine crawling words said in her head, she then shivered away back into her shoes then carefully stepped away from the trunk of the tree.

"Where are you going, don't you want to see him?" The girl asked her with a tilted head over the raven's soft white head.

"I have to go home now." Evelyn told her as chill dripped down her nose.

"They all go home after dark, when the sunsets across the unknown woods everyone locks their doors, puts out their fires to drift to sleep to forget their fears of the day before," She said, petting Merlin's head, "There are secrets behind closed doors, be careful here, please." She warned Evelyn caringly to her with good nature as she tucked Merlin in his feathery nest.

Evelyn nodded before quickly dashing away on the trail again that she stomped her heels in wildly like a free horse on gratis fields, heading to a gloomy Salem Village.

Benjamin quietly slipped into his creeking home through the slanted entrance door then carefully stepped a foot over a well nailed floor board, trying to be silent.

"Ben, is that you?" A groggy voice asked, followed by a cough and a wheeze.

Now stuck out by being called, Benjamin replied to the sick voice, "Yes, father."

A loud and heavy cough echoed through the unstable house whichever made the coughs echoe poorly to Benjamin's ears, "Where did you go off to this time, don't you know there are witch hunts?"

Benjamin numbly placed down his bundle of sticks that were becoming to make his palms turn blue from holding them so long, "Firewood hunting."

"In the woods?" Benjamin's father quickly replied, then added after before Benjamin could defend himself, "Good folk die out there, y'know, that is what happened to Sylvia Clark."

Benjamin sighed, bending downwards to lift the heavy bundle of sticks to the fireplace where he set them down on the stones, "Sylvia didn't die in the woods, she died when she came out."

Out around the corner, a heavy man in a nightgown walked over to a small table with a hot kettle that he began to pour into a cup nearby, "She did die in the woods after my friends and I hung her," He snorted after, as if remembering fondly of that night, "Could she had been alive if she made it to the Indian lands without turning back, make her live and not die on a rope was a question my good friend Tobias asked. Do you know what I told him?"

Benjamin started to break the thin sticks against his knee to supply more than there was, then he tossed them into the ashy mouth of the fireplace, not answering at all to his father.

"Boy, do you know what I told him?" The father asked impatiently, craning his head with a boiling cup of water in his meaty hand.

"You told him 'no' because all evil is meant to be walked on over and over again." Benjamin responded back with a sarcastic sigh.

Pleasingly, the father drank the water down into his uneasy throat to then draw out another cough, "I've never been so excited for a witch to be hung in my entire six months of doing this, it's what makes the boldest of men blush, don't ya know?"

Now quickly disturbed and frustrated because Benjamin knew his friend's aunt was going to be the fourth witch tied up to a branch, he uncontrollably snapped a stick on his knee to crack it in his palm to open a scar; suddenly, trickles if scarlet began to dampen the stick he was holding, thus, by the mere sight made him ties it in the ashy pits.

"Wilford, I'm home, is Benjamin here yet?" A lady voice asked, then entering in the house in rags if a dress.

"Hello, ma." Benjamin replied in pain, clutching his hand tightly.

Without hesitation, Benjamin's mother fled to him to kneel in her awful dress to grasp his hand to examine it like a mother should, "Wilford, how did this happen to our boy?" She asked, staring upsettingly at the heavy man who was still drinking his hot water.

Wilford answered back in a sickly cough that he covered in his sleeves, "He's more of your son than mine, and I don't know how the weakling did that to himself, Gertrude."

Gertrude stood up slowly which followed by a loud cracking in her back then her resting her hand where it came from, "Benjamin, go wash up please."

"But the fire-" He began.

"Now." Wilford said to him with a chilling stare.

Without trying to be heckled by his father or given a saddened stare from his mother, be rose up to only dash into the kitchen of their poor looking home.

"Gertrude, Benjamin is just a weak rascal and so you cannot blame me for treating him the way I do-" Wilford explained, but was cut off by the mother.

"They found another witch today." She told him, "There will be a hanging at the same time as Wilmot's and Sylvia's, at the commingled of noontide is when the judge will bring her with the rest of the party."

Benjamin sluggishly threw a wet cloth onto his hand wound then held it on to listen to his parents gossip quietly.

"Who is she?" Wilford asked enthusiastically to her.

Gertrude fumbled her hands onto the walls carefully on the count of her pain in her back, she then criss-crossed her hands on the wood until she found herself in a wicker chair that she sat into, "The judge couldn't believe it, but after the other two witches who could believe a thing?"

Wlford made his way over to her while making the floorboards groan out their cries for being stepped on by such a heavy thing, "Trust is like a blind woman sewing a blanket, it's hard to see or know it's there until you get hurt by the point," He explained to her then asking, So, who is she, Gerty?"

Benjamin silently stepped on the floorboards hoping they wouldn't give him away like that had before with the slanted doorway.

"Adelia Daughtry." Gertrude said slowly to her husband.

"That's impossible!" Wilford gasped.

Benjamin dug the cloth accidentally into his flesh wound to appear redder as it swalled itself all over the damp cloth to then bleed his same blood,

But how? Benjamin asked himself, Wasn't it always Adelia to sway the rest of us children away from ever committing wrong to the church because she loved it so much to obey the Lord above, but now to be punished for it?

"What crime has she been committed of?" Wilford asked his wife nervously for the young girl to be punished this way.

"The judge made her confess to it this morning, now she is going to hang at noontide at the same place Wilmot still hangs now." Gertrude tiredly yawned to him.

Benjamin tossed his red cloth away then walked into the room with his head held high,

"Let me go."

Wilford and Gertrude stared at their son, but Wlford was the only one to break the silence with a wheezing laugh, "You?" He coughed violently in his laughter, "Son, your brother Dale is going to help the boys and I take that witch to gallows hill. Besides, he has the stomach for it unlike you, so don't try to act tough."

"Dale grew to have the stomach to tolerate hanging a witch, why can't I?" Benjamin protested.

"Well, Ben-" Gertrude tried to say.

"Benjamin, if you do this one then you'll have to help us with the rest of the hunts and other hangings from now on."

Benjamin nodded to his father, "Of course, father."

Gertrude sighed heavily, "Be safe tomorrow walking up that hill, my feet still hurt from walking it up and walking down," She calmly warned him, "Jury man Tobias fumbled down the hill and fell into a ditch with rats."

"Rats?" Wilford aked unbelieved, "In a single ditch?"

Gertrude nodded with curious eyes because she was the only one that knew about it in the room, "Yes, he just flew down the hill then into the ditch that is now filled with rat poison to ward off the rats from coming back."

"You don't say." Wilford thought out loud to himself.