Some said it was bad luck that they were twins. Like it would have been less eerie, less a sign of bad things coming, to find just one child in the forest.
Worst luck how they were found, curled together in the hollow of a tree. Wee little things, not as young as they were just skinny, as if they’d been living out there on nothing for a long time.
Blood on their bare feet. Not that they put it there, but a hunter found them while tracking a hart shot not quite true, and it collapsed at the foot of the tree. Its last breaths, a fine mist of blood, speckled their feet. They walked on blood when they were led into our village.
Bad luck. Maybe if they hadn’t been so quiet.
Speaking not even to each other, never mind anyone else. But holding tight, each to the other’s hand. One of the goodmothers tried to pull them apart so she could put them one at a time in the tub, wash off the mud and blood, and, the moment their fingers weren’t touching anymore, one of them screamed.
The other didn’t. Just struggled, fought and kicked like a little devil until they were holding hands again. She got them in the tub one by one in the end, but only with the other sitting on a stool next to it. They slept on her little trundle bed, still holding hands.
Bad luck? Or just two children who’d only had each other so long, letting go felt like the world might sweep them apart forever?
They shouldn’t have been out there. Sleeping with only a hollow tree for a bed and house, and a dying hart shouldn’t have breathed blood on their bare, scabby feet. There’s nowhere for them to have come from. Nowhere near.
Is it a curse, that the village has been so quiet since they were led into it? Quiet almost like them? Or are we all just thinking how cruel it is if someone left them out there, or how far and desperately they must have run if it was to escape something?
Something that might have followed them. If so, they’re not telling us. Bad luck, in any case. Bad luck for sure.
