Survival Without a Fight

Most people would give anything to cheat death, but they don’t know what they’re really wishing for. It sounds nice in theory, I’ll give them that. Even I once thought I was lucky to be spared so often – tripping in the uneven street as a badly thrown knife whizzed over my head; landing in a passing cart piled with hay when I fell from the top of a tree; accidentally jamming the lid shut on the pot of boiling water before it toppled onto me… I could go on. Yet in some instances, staying alive isn’t all that wonderful.

By the age of eight, I was friendless. My birthday cake wasn’t big enough for me to have a piece, so I was the only one who didn’t die from the toxic wax that melted onto the icing.

By the age of nine, I was an outcast. Nothing particular really happened; everyone simply avoided me out of fear and jealousy.

And by the age of ten, falling asleep while I was out collecting firewood orphaned me and left me homeless after my entire village was murdered in a raid. I still regret succumbing to the temptation when I stumbled across an abandoned farm the day I would have starved to death. It could have ended then. I could have been free. Instead, I spent the next three years on the farm until it burnt down one night – another perfect opportunity that I wasted by jumping out the window onto one of the horses that had wandered there in distress – and the next six years on the road where I encountered too many fortunate ending dilemmas to count. The last of these was the aid I received from my kidnapper’s henchman who fell madly in love with me and helped me to escape across the sea – a dangerous voyage that I wasn’t surprised I survived. I was the only one, in fact; well, me and my unborn child.

I didn’t care about being alone or being a foreigner or being left with nothing. I was already beginning to forget what it was like not to own one of those labels.

Still alive, out of everyone. One would think I’d have started to grow suspicious, or at least wonder about my fortune… my theory is that it simply happened too often for me to think it out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until my daughter forced me to do something I had never had to do before that I began to notice.

From the moment she was born, she made me fight for her survival.

Despite having no one to help me deliver her in the cave I had called home for several months, I barely feared for my life during the painful process. As for little Isla, however, things were quite different. I passed the rest of that cold, rainy night lending her my breath to keep her tiny heart pumping, while clutching her against my tear-soaked chest to offer her as much warmth as I could. By morning, I had managed to keep her alive but in no better condition, so it was for her sake that I finally abandoned my place of refuge to beg the help of a doctor in the closest town.

“How can I help you?” he asked as I stood rigidly in front of his desk with Isla in my arms.

“Please, save my child.”

I still remember the look of pity that flashed across his face as he rose to examine my daughter. No one had ever looked at me like that.

“She must only be a few days’ old at the most.”

I nodded stiffly. “A day.”

“Beathing problems,” he observed. “I shall do all I can. Tell your husband that—”

“He is dead.”

He breathed in deeply. “Then, have you any means of payment?”

I shook my head. “Please, help her.” I hated begging. Nothing had brought me to this point before. “You must.”

Now, he sighed. “My son is looking for a housemaid to help his wife. If you are willing, I could suggest—”

“Yes.” How I jumped upon that opportunity. “Yes, I am willing.” It was for her sake.

The doctor did his job well, as did I. Isla survived, and I managed to remain harmless enough to keep my position of housemaid to provide for her as she grew. Things were quiet for a time… until Isla began to move around on her own.

At first, it was just small things. She got into my mistress’s sewing supplies and I found her before she could do too much damage with the needles; I bandaged her swollen head after one of the other children had thrown a ball too hard while they were playing; when she insisted I let her help cook, she would have fallen into the fireplace had I not turned around at the last moment and grabbed her as she toppled off her stool… again, the list continues.

It wasn’t what had happened to me that made me uneasy. It was what wasn’t happening to Isla. If it had been me in her place on all those occasions, I would not have needed my mother or anyone else to interfere. Something would have simply been arranged to save me before help was required at all.

By the time she was three, I thought I had found a solution in never letting her leave my side. As long as I was there to protect her, nothing could harm her.

I misjudged how ‘favoured’ my fate was compared to hers.

I had made the journey to the markets in the neighbouring town countless times before, so I didn’t think anything of it when I took Isla with me for the first time. She couldn’t contain her joy at the prospect and the entire journey was accompanied by her sweet voice singing merrily. Every stall at the markets encouraged her fascination and I couldn’t help letting her pull me here and there as she bobbed from one item to the next, even goading me into buying several of her favourites. It was worth spending some of our own money just to see her smile widen and her dark eyes brighten.

“Mama, look!”

Before I could tell where she was pointing, she was pulling me over, soon presenting me to an array of orange flowers resembling pompoms.

“Aren’t they gorgeous?”

I frowned at them curiously, steadying myself after losing my balance momentarily. “Yes,” I murmured, though I don’t think I spoke loud enough for Isla to hear me.

A shape moved from behind the stand and a pale-skinned woman with flaming red hair floating past her hips smiled down at Isla. “I think they are the most gorgeous things in the world.” Her voice was smooth as silk, almost giving me the sense that her words were running down my own throat like cool, thick juice. “Would you like a bunch to give to your mother?” At that moment, I caught a fleeting sight of her sunset eyes as they flicked up at me for a fraction of a second.

“Could I really?” Isla was beside herself.

The woman leaned closer and pressed a small bouquet into Isla’s hands. “Of course, you can. Give them to her now.”

Isla needed no second invitation, passing the flowers on to me with a warm kiss and a large embrace. “I love you, Mama,” she whispered.

“I love you, too, my little flower,” I told her, then tugged her away to continue our shop before the woman could say anything more.

Isla’s side-tracks delayed our departure ‘till the late afternoon, meaning dusk was already approaching by the time we reached the forest. Worn out by the day’s excitements, she had fallen asleep across my knees, not waking even when the first howls sounded in the near distance. I flicked the reins, urging the cart on to greater speed. That was my first mistake. At the first bend in the path, the rutted ground betrayed us, jerking the cart up on its side and depositing us and all our contents onto the road. Isla woke in a fright and began to wail, attracting the attention of the nearby attackers before I could calm her. The horse was the first victim. All I heard of it was a growl, a whinny, then a thump as the wolf’s teeth sunk into the poor animal’s neck. Isla screamed and scrambled forwards, barely aware of my presence in her newly woken fit of terror. I dived after her, but my dress was caught beneath the edge of the cart. “Isla, wait!”

The next moment, I ripped myself free.

The next moment, the wolf knocked Isla to the ground.

The next moment, the cart fell on top of me, and I was trapped beneath, banging, screaming and pushing madly as I listened to the sounds that have haunted me ever since.

It took three days to break out of my prison, but I wish I had stayed put. I think it took another three days to wake from my faint after seeing what had become of Isla.

Alive again with the dead beside me. I still can’t decide whether I cheated death or death cheated me.

“Forgive me, my little flower.” There was so much more I wanted to say as I knelt beside the tiny grave I had dug for her in the field, but I could not utter the words without choking. So, I simply laid the small bouquet at the foot of the makeshift cross and stayed there in silence.

I didn’t realise until an hour had passed that my gaze had been fixated on the orange flowers. I picked one up, squeezing the stem between my fingers, but not yet finding the strength to crush the bright head. Some small part of Isla now lived within those fluffy petals. They were a sad exchange for her, but they were all I had left. These flowers were the first I had ever seen of their kind, after all.

Another sob erupted from my stomach, and I leaned forward to rest my head on the ground as I shook violently with quiet tears. They were watering the little flower that lay still beneath the earth.

I couldn’t stop my thoughts. The last thing I wanted to think about was my own life, but the memories surged through me with a will of their own. Only, I couldn’t help noticing something different this time as each near-death experience played through my mind.

The knife seemed to spin in slow motion as it flew over my head. There was an image carved onto the wooden handle and the version of me in my memory almost forgot to trip as I recognised what the image was: a flower – the same kind as the ones Isla had given me.

Now, I was falling from the tree again – backwards and looking up at the sky where a cloud shaped like the same flower hovered over me as I landed safely in the hay.

The flames boiling the pot of water danced in front of me in the same shape as I jammed the lid shut.

My mother had even used bright orange icing for the petals on my eighth birthday cake. How had she known about such a flower if I had never seen one before?

In the woods, I had been dreaming of those flowers as I slept beside my firewood.

A painting on the farmhouse gate, a branding on the horse, a tattoo on the henchman, a standard on the ship, an engraving on the cave wall… everywhere I looked, I saw it.

I tried to rip the flowers apart, but they would not be destroyed. The same thing has happened to me ever since.

Now I know that those flowers are called Marigolds. Marigold is my name, too.