Twelve Maidens by Jess Moody

Shortlisted for the first Lunate 500 competition

“We were hugely taken with this story. From the potent opening line to the gut-punch ending, its horrors unfold at a breathless pace; the language is chosen with care and its effect is kinetic. This is extremely skilful world-building, too. The reader is transported to that frozen field, caught up in the ritual of sacrifice. In just a few hundred words, Jess gains the reader’s empathy; with your fists clenched, as the full horror of the situation becomes clear, you will the narrator to escape her fate.”

Lunate editors

***

We stand in a trembling line. The cold leaches our courage out through bare feet and thin cotton shifts. I stare down at the shadows from the torches, the dancing edges blurring as dawn approaches. The girl next to me has been weeping since her father handed her over, an exchange on the threshold at midnight.

She went through this the last time. I was too young.

My mother had whispered incessantly as she’d stripped me and pulled the cloth over my head at least this way there’s a chance, with so many of you. In my day the men just chose one themselves, no discussion, no appeal. There was no hope. She talked of hope to hide her fear.

There must be no talk now though, apart from the rough intonations of the Headman. He speaks of duty and sacrifice, the way of ages and promises kept. He ignores the whimpers, the smell of piss.

Sunrise, and finally the scout calls a warning. My neighbour gulps off her crying and all I hear is the misty breaths of a dozen young women and blood in my ears.

A torch is dropped. A signal.

We run.

Flap

We run hard.

Across fields and through hedgerows, then along the riverside, frozen mud sending splints up through my heels.

Into the trees. Scraped and clawed at by branches and the runners next to me.

Frozen leaf-fall crackles like fire beneath us.

Flap

A steep incline, and I risk a look back. Some heavier and slower girls have fallen behind, already wearing masks of grief.

The panicked air I drag in and out is like a dagger in my sinuses, and I cannot feel my face to know what expression I show back to them. I would like to think there was more than pity.

I scrabble on and upwards, gravel engraved in my palms and nails tearing. My muscles are strong, forged by previous sufferings. I am pulling away from the group.

Flap

I run and fall and run until there is nothing but the taste of iron in my mouth, and my fists clenched white and cold, bullying my thighs forward.

I do not look up.

Flap

I do not look up.

Flap

There is a rasping wail that may be me, may be the sole girl still running behind me.

I do not stop when I reach the rock, but half-leaping, half crawling, launch myself up its dark jagged sides. Cloth and flesh tear.

Flap

I am pulling myself up and away when the other girl appears and grabs my ankle mutely but

Flap

I kick her away, the snap of a broken jaw

Flap

and haul myself up

Flap

and stand tall as the sunlight

turns back to night

Flap

A glimpse

Flap

of armour-plated hide and scything

wings and a

mouth breath furnace

sulphur and arrogance

my tears of happiness scorched away before they can fall

for I was the firs-