Village

October 22, 2024

Just down the hill, and past the mangled old tree stump, that is where I live. It is where the women in my family have always lived. We have been set with a task, to watch over the village and its people for all of time, and so that is what we do. I know this, and in my heart I know that I am different, but all I have ever wanted was to be like the girls who live in the village. Mama caught me, a couple years back, stealing hair ribbons and some of their older, but equally as lovely, dresses.

“You know none of those things will ever fit you, Magnolia, and the children in the village are already afraid enough of us, why do you keep doing this?” She was fiery mad with me that day, but I could tell she was trying hard to take deep breaths and calm herself down. I know she used to do the same thing when she was my age, and she never got caught. Gran told me often how I am just like her, and that she could not have wished for a more perfect fit into our family, but Mama didn’t always make me feel that way. I annoyed her, and I knew it. “Maybe someday, when you have a little girl of your own, you will understand.”

The Villagers have always called us The Watching Women in their ghost stories because we look the most like what they call women, but I suppose that is where the similarities stopped. The Villagers were always trying to label things they didn't understand, and Mama told me over and over how much they were afraid of us, and how I was supposed to keep ourselves clear of them, so we moved about at night, when we did our deeper checks of The Villagers. During the day, we would watch them from afar, and most nights, we would sneak between the homes and peek into their windows, but once a month, on the full moon, we were able to take a form that almost looked like The Villagers themselves.

Many many moons ago, before I was even around, Mama had fallen in love with a Villager, so every full moon, she goes out and sees him. Gran always tisks her tongue and tells her that she needs to stop this, that once the rest of his family knows, she will never be able to visit him again. “That is a risk I am willing to take, Mother.” she always says. I hope to be that in love someday. To risk everything to be with someone even if it is just for one night a month, even if it is just for a number of hours and in the silence that hangs between dusk and dawn, I hope to love someone the way she loves him.