Chapter 1~ Of a Girl with a Curse

Mira, Mira, on the wall,they shall beg but they shall fall...

 

            So it came to pass, Mira VaSon, born under a cursed star under the gibbering of a witch in trance, was never permitted to so much as touch a wall if it could be avoided. She recalled once, when she was eight, she had been climbing the ladder nailed to the side of a barn to jump into the hay with her cousins, only to be caught by Aunt Sophia.

“Oh, child! You must never do that!” the shallow-skinned woman shrieked. It was obvious she hadn’t adjusted to being a farmer’s wife in the eleven years she’d had. The constant outdoor work had left all but the gaunt woman pleasantly tanned.

“Why not, Aunt?” she had laughed, straw clinging to her dress and hair. That was when she was told: if she loved those near her, she would never touch a wall. At least that was all she was told then. In later years she found further restrictions the prophecy bound her in. But not then: being told she couldn’t jump into the hay because of some burst of words was confusing, and torment enough for a child.

“Superstitious git! I am not on the wall at all! I was on the ladder!” That was another thing she could still recall perfectly, what a temper she had possessed!

“Mira! What would your father say to such things?” Sophia chided.

In fact, her father had only laughed when the girl had dashed into the shop with a wail. “We won’t tell anyone now, but I don’t believe in such silly ideas either. But, if it pleases them, we’ll play along.” There was a weary sort of smile to his lips, one that spoke of eight years facing the town’s rumors with good heart already. “Mother wouldn’t have wanted you to wind up unhappy or in trouble, eh?”

And just like that there became two Miras. One who avoided any and all to do with her curse, and the one who returned home in the evening to touch every wall in the house out of spite. By her fifteenth year she wasn’t permitted to touch or be around red gloves, walls, ships, and a wide variety of other random objects, luckily (and sadly) most not found in a cobbler’s shop.

Mira, Mira…

To her own misery, it looked as if she would forever be nothing but a shoemaker, or the wife of a shoemaker, and more likely to never leave the seaside town with its superstitions and rules. Then, the summer after her sixteenth birthday, the world she knew began to change.

Author's Note

I know it's short, but it was for class. I got bored and ended up putting silly little junk in here and there, mostly in the titles and sub-titles. Enjoy