fic: The Seventh Daughter
(written for picfor1000, for this pic.)
There are stories told of the seventh son of a seventh son, and the destiny he is born to fulfill. You have no doubt heard them. But what of the seventh daughter? What has she been granted by God and Fate?
I will tell you, for I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and all my life I have been aware of the uncanny and mysterious things I can do.
I am the youngest, and as such I have no dowry. My father has nothing left for a bride-price to offer a suitor along with my hand. I am not beautiful like my sister Emersende. I cannot sing like my sister Petronille. I do not have a head for figures and for business, as does my sister Gaude. I do not yet know how fertile I am, if I can give a man strong, healthy sons as has my sister Josiane. I can comfort a woman in labor, as my mother has been doing since before I was born, but this is a skill practiced by many women and is nothing special coming from me. But I can spin and I can weave and I can bake, and I have the buried power that the order of my birth has conferred on me.
I do not use it often. I do not have to. But I am not afraid of it, when the time comes that it is necessary.
My sister Alissende is married to a tanner. He is a good-looking man and a steady worker, but he has a temper and there is something about him that we have never trusted, myself and my mother and my other sisters. Alissende has given the tanner two children, both girls, beautiful and healthy and quiet. Tanneries are smelly places, and so my sister and her family live on the outskirts of the city, and we do not see them much.
One day she comes to my parents' house when my mother and I are baking. Her face is bruised, her cheek swollen.
"How could he do this?" my mother demands, her voice hard. It is not the first time the tanner has raised a hand to my sister.
"He is overworked," Alissende explains. "He did not mean it."
"Oh, he meant it. Men do not strike their wives without intention."
My sister looks tired. "What can I do?" she asks. "I cannot speak against him. He will take my children and the magistrate will not stop him."
"He will not," I insist. I take both her hands in mine. "We will not let him. I will not let him."
She smiles sadly at me, as if to say You are weak, and he is strong, and you cannot compel him to do anything.
Our world is one in which women are allowed very little power, either by the church or by the king. We care for our men and our children, and we work in shops and houses and fields and in corners where you do not see us. We are expected to accept what is handed to us, and to do what we are asked without complaint. We are made helpless by the laws of king and bishop, but we are not helpless by nature.
Ask any one of us - ask me, or my sisters, or my mother, or my aunts, or my aunts' daughters - and we will tell you: We do have power. We hold it close so you cannot see it and so cannot take what little we have wrested for ourselves, but some of us, when we must be, are far more powerful than the law would like.
And I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and the gargoyles on the great cathedral talk to me.
They tell me what to do, what to say, how to protect my sister. Their voices are harsh, like the stones from which they are carved. Some of them hiss at me. Some of them laugh. They have been around longer than I have, and they have seen more than I ever will. But they do not know me or my love for my sisters.
By all accounts my sister's husband has never harmed their children. I have never liked him and never trusted him, but this one thing I know to be true. Perhaps that is why Alissende cannot stand up for herself against him. So I will. I am the youngest, and by some accounts I have been coddled my whole life, but I am smart, and I am sneaky, and if you push me or my sisters, I bite.
"Where are you going, Oriabel?" my mother asks me.
"To bring Josiane's children some sweet bread," I tell her. I wrap a small loaf to bolster my excuse, but my mother hears the lie in my words. She has six sisters and seven daughters, and she knows the strength of those bonds.
And Alissende is her daughter, and what mother would not do everything necessary to save her child from hurt? Even if she cannot do those necessary things herself, but must leave them to another.
"Take care," is all she says.
My sister Flore, who has given herself to God, would tell me I should conduct my working by the light of the full moon, because the devil comes during the new moon when the world is in darkness. I do not need moonlight, or sunlight, or starlight, or the light of candles. I do not need light at all. I have the power handed down through all the women who came before me, six generations of them, and I have the things the gargoyles told me, and I have the things I myself know to be true.
The tanner vanishes three days later.
No one ever finds his body. No one ever will.
For I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and you threaten my sisters at your peril.
There are stories told of the seventh son of a seventh son, and the destiny he is born to fulfill. You have no doubt heard them. But what of the seventh daughter? What has she been granted by God and Fate?
I will tell you, for I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and all my life I have been aware of the uncanny and mysterious things I can do.
I am the youngest, and as such I have no dowry. My father has nothing left for a bride-price to offer a suitor along with my hand. I am not beautiful like my sister Emersende. I cannot sing like my sister Petronille. I do not have a head for figures and for business, as does my sister Gaude. I do not yet know how fertile I am, if I can give a man strong, healthy sons as has my sister Josiane. I can comfort a woman in labor, as my mother has been doing since before I was born, but this is a skill practiced by many women and is nothing special coming from me. But I can spin and I can weave and I can bake, and I have the buried power that the order of my birth has conferred on me.
I do not use it often. I do not have to. But I am not afraid of it, when the time comes that it is necessary.
My sister Alissende is married to a tanner. He is a good-looking man and a steady worker, but he has a temper and there is something about him that we have never trusted, myself and my mother and my other sisters. Alissende has given the tanner two children, both girls, beautiful and healthy and quiet. Tanneries are smelly places, and so my sister and her family live on the outskirts of the city, and we do not see them much.
One day she comes to my parents' house when my mother and I are baking. Her face is bruised, her cheek swollen.
"How could he do this?" my mother demands, her voice hard. It is not the first time the tanner has raised a hand to my sister.
"He is overworked," Alissende explains. "He did not mean it."
"Oh, he meant it. Men do not strike their wives without intention."
My sister looks tired. "What can I do?" she asks. "I cannot speak against him. He will take my children and the magistrate will not stop him."
"He will not," I insist. I take both her hands in mine. "We will not let him. I will not let him."
She smiles sadly at me, as if to say You are weak, and he is strong, and you cannot compel him to do anything.
Our world is one in which women are allowed very little power, either by the church or by the king. We care for our men and our children, and we work in shops and houses and fields and in corners where you do not see us. We are expected to accept what is handed to us, and to do what we are asked without complaint. We are made helpless by the laws of king and bishop, but we are not helpless by nature.
Ask any one of us - ask me, or my sisters, or my mother, or my aunts, or my aunts' daughters - and we will tell you: We do have power. We hold it close so you cannot see it and so cannot take what little we have wrested for ourselves, but some of us, when we must be, are far more powerful than the law would like.
And I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and the gargoyles on the great cathedral talk to me.
They tell me what to do, what to say, how to protect my sister. Their voices are harsh, like the stones from which they are carved. Some of them hiss at me. Some of them laugh. They have been around longer than I have, and they have seen more than I ever will. But they do not know me or my love for my sisters.
By all accounts my sister's husband has never harmed their children. I have never liked him and never trusted him, but this one thing I know to be true. Perhaps that is why Alissende cannot stand up for herself against him. So I will. I am the youngest, and by some accounts I have been coddled my whole life, but I am smart, and I am sneaky, and if you push me or my sisters, I bite.
"Where are you going, Oriabel?" my mother asks me.
"To bring Josiane's children some sweet bread," I tell her. I wrap a small loaf to bolster my excuse, but my mother hears the lie in my words. She has six sisters and seven daughters, and she knows the strength of those bonds.
And Alissende is her daughter, and what mother would not do everything necessary to save her child from hurt? Even if she cannot do those necessary things herself, but must leave them to another.
"Take care," is all she says.
My sister Flore, who has given herself to God, would tell me I should conduct my working by the light of the full moon, because the devil comes during the new moon when the world is in darkness. I do not need moonlight, or sunlight, or starlight, or the light of candles. I do not need light at all. I have the power handed down through all the women who came before me, six generations of them, and I have the things the gargoyles told me, and I have the things I myself know to be true.
The tanner vanishes three days later.
No one ever finds his body. No one ever will.
For I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and you threaten my sisters at your peril.