Two Girls Missing in the Woods

It is the 14th of October, 1348, and Ashwrath is holding its market because to stop would be to say the word nobody is saying. They come to the stalls in the cold morning and stand a little further apart than they used to and hold their vinegar rags like small, damp prayers, and they buy and sell and pretend that buying and selling still means what it meant before.Two girls went to the tree line before the market bell. Agnes in her mother's green shawl, Ruth with the basket, walking with the quick serious purpose of children who have been given a task and mean to finish it. They did not come back. The ground remembers nothing of them.Somewhere beneath the chapel, by one candle in a locked room, the priest reads. The chronicle is on his desk. It was not the same book yesterday that it is tonight. It will not be the same book tomorrow that it is now.He reads because someone must witness it. He is that someone. It is the only thing he has left that he is sure of.